Philadelphia Daily News' Scores

  • TV
For 544 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average TV Show review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Rectify: Season 1
Lowest review score: 0 Big Shots: Season 1
Score distribution:
  1. Mixed: 0 out of 283
  2. Negative: 0 out of 283
283 tv reviews
  2. Given that the show largely consists of the animated Gervais and Merchant sitting around a table with the notoriously round-headed Pilkington, disabusing him of one oddball notion after another, it's strange that Gervais would've chosen this show to carry his name. But true believers--or fans of "The Life & Times of Tim," whose second-season premiere follows at 9:30--may well have a yabba-dabba-do time.
  3. I liked the original and also like what little I've seen of the remake so far, but won't know until it expands beyond the original stories - as American series generally must do - whether it's worth sticking with.
  4. It's Shahi, whose Kate may be grumpy but who somehow gets to smile more in one episode than she might have in an entire season of "Life," who lights up the screen and makes Legal a keeper.
  5. The formula may be hokey, but Traffic Light's execution of it is charming, and funny in a way that doesn't seem to be trying too hard, thanks to some happy casting and scripts that appear to have been written with real people in mind.
  6. The play's conceit doesn't work particularly well on film and it doesn't help that the performance took place at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater before an unstudent-like audience. But as static as the staging sometimes feels, Fishburne is more animated than he's gotten to be in a while, delivering a performance that's as funny as it appears to be heartfelt.
  7. Bower's not the most compelling hero--and Fiennes can be a bore--but the story, however twisted, remains amusing.
  9. As USA dramas go, Necessary Roughness is about halfway between "In Plain Sight" and "White Collar" on the believability scale, but it's summer and I like Thorne, whose character is feisty and funny and shrill only when shrillness is absolutely justified.
  10. If you're one of the people who've so far managed the suspension of disbelief required to accept that Close's Patty Hewes could yet again find a way to pull protege Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) back into her orbit, Season 4 shouldn't disappoint.
  11. When I come back it's not because Rescue Me can be insanely funny--though it can be, particularly when it sticks close to the firehouse--but because I still believe that buried under layers and layers of Leary's nonsense, there's an actual story that's dying to get out.
  13. While The X Factor may not on the surface offer anything that can't be found on "Idol," "America's Got Talent" and "The Voice" or their many cable imitators, it does have a level of showmanship that makes me want to believe again, whether it's in 13-year-olds who sing like established stars three times their age or in recovering addicts whose lives just may be about to change forever.
  14. My favorite so far of the fall's two "Mad Men" wannabes and a show with more moving parts than a jumbo jet.
  16. Mos Def, Colin Hanks and Edward James Olmos play characters with a religious bent in a season that doesn't yet feel as compelling as the one dominated by John Lithgow but allows Dexter to remain the way his fans most want him--alive and killing.
  17. Living in the Material World finds plenty to say, though, particularly in the final two hours, when Olivia Harrison's honesty contributes mightily to Scorsese's portrait of an artist more interesting than some of us may have realized.
  18. Compared with (sigh) "American Horror Story," the tale itself makes a certain amount of sense and like any good thrill ride, spaces out the scary parts just enough to make them truly scary.
  19. The second series, as they call it in Britain, shows signs of strain, as creator Julian Fellowes throws one obstacle after another between his sets of star-crossed lovers (some upstairs, some down).
  20. The River makes effective use of the idea that sometimes it's the things you can't see so clearly--or at all--that are the scariest.
  22. Yes, you've seen it before. But, hey, you haven't seen it with Ashley Judd.
  23. A big, sexy drama that doesn't take itself as seriously as "The Sopranos" or "Mad Men" and doesn't seem to expect us to, either.
  24. What starts out as a seemingly generic series about an assortment of showbiz wannabes becomes more engaging over the first few episodes.
  27. The Glee Project returns to Oxygen Tuesday with all the fun and frustration that marked its first round.
  28. I don't know if the show I thought I was watching is actually the show she intends to make. But I'm willing to stick around to find out.
  29. [Anger Management is] funny in that way where you might see the joke hanging there and even if it's a little bit obvious, you're happy enough when the actor hits it.
  30. Where American Gypsies shines--and it really does shine here and there--is in the glimpses we get of the internal system of justice that's developed among a people who don't trust government, and family rituals like the "red-dress ceremony" with which the Johns family welcomes its newest member.
  31. Though I sense the show is treading water a bit as Prohibition drags on and the operations of the black market become increasingly contentious, there's still plenty to see on the Boardwalk, thanks to the show's secondary characters.
  32. Ben and Kate has great sibling chemistry, a cute kid (Maggie Elizabeth Jones as Kate's daughter, Maggie) and an appealing premise.
  35. Plenty of new challenges await the survivors, led by Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), whose performance as a man who's had ruthlessness thrust upon him continues to be a series highlight.
  36. The plotting of the pilot is a bit too pat at times, but two subsequent episodes bolster the argument that Underemployed deserves a shot at going full-time.
  37. Not everyone's going to like this or other aspects of Sister Jude's story, which essentially does for nuns what the first season did for real estate agents. But it's the kind of cliché meant to appeal to parochial-school survivors of a certain age of which, yes, I'm one. And Murphy another.
  38. Though Ethel can't possibly be construed as a tell-all, much less the work of an impartial observer, it's great that someone finally got her to talk at all.
  39. This feels very much like the show I've been watching all along.
  40. Golden Boy works as a decent cop show. But an epic one? Not yet.
  41. In the light of Monday morning, a lot of what goes on in Red Widow is probably going to seem pretty silly. But shows like this are all about the chemistry, and the chemistry between Mitchell and Visnjic is everything you'd want in an essentially unequal relationship between a recent widow and the megalomaniacal drug dealer who can end her life at any moment.
  43. No one should base a term paper on it, but Da Vinci's Demons is at least an entertaining lie.
  44. At least one aspect of Stef's relationship with her ex (Danny Nucci) seems unlikely, and Lena works at the most beautifully sited school in America, which all the kids happen to attend. But there's heart here, and a message about not throwing away children that belongs on a network that puts "Family" in its title.
  45. Tenney and Romijn make fun partners, and the pilot by executive producer Shane Brennan follows an intriguing course that might have seemed far-fetched only a week ago, before we learned that truth might be stranger than "Person of Interest."
  46. No, it's not as unpredictable as "Mad Men," but at least it packs enough of a punch to keep the conspiracy theorists at bay.
  48. An entertaining romp with strong performances, it seems a good fit for Lifetime.
  49. That small towns aren't immune from the same problems that plague big cities isn't an original idea, and having the people living in them face some overwhelming menace isn't new territory for King. But the dome's a little different, and certainly a welcome break from zombie apocalypses.
  51. Who cares who runs the law firm? The petty office wars are where it's at.
  52. In four subsequent episodes I've seen, the stories and characters get to breathe a bit. [MacDowell's] Olivia's just headstrong enough to stay interesting.
  53. I can't fault the emphasis on some other characters' stories--including Nucky's valet, Eddie Kessler (Anthony Laciura), and nightclub operator Chalky White (Michael Kenneth Williams)--or the additions of Jeffrey Wright, Ron Livingston and Patricia Arquette to a cast that's already one of the strongest in television.
  54. They're [Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher] good together (even if I don't completely buy Samberg yet in the role), but the show's strength is its note-perfect ensemble.
  55. What Mom lacks in bite, it makes up for in balance, with a dependable number of laughs and a strong ensemble that includes French Stewart and Nathan Corddry.
  56. The adult cast is superb... but it feels as if the young actor playing Adam (Sean Giambrone) might have been kidnapped from a more conventional TV family.
  57. The show's still playing with the balance between work and home, but that's what the time's for. And what's there right now is definitely worth watching.
  58. As an eccentric genius, Williams is in familiar waters, and he's found a playmate in James Wolk, who's somehow able to keep up with an actor whose streams of consciousness can be Class V rapids. Gellar's playing it straight, but a scene in which she has to sing in front of Kelly Clarkson suggests she's game for anything.
  59. Together Bridges and Martindale pretty much steal the pilot from everyone around them.
  60. There are aspects of Coven that are stylish and clever, and others that are just "Carrie" on steroids. The cast, of course, is tremendous.
  64. The show's action-packed and wildly improbable, but Helfer looks as if she might be having fun, and if you don't think too hard (and wouldn't rather be watching the gunplay in "Justified"), you might, too.
  66. I don't know that Looking starts out being very good at what it thinks it is, either. But it's intriguing enough to be worth a second or third date before deciding.
  67. The scenery in Klondike ... really is impressive, the performances are solid and though the dialogue's sometimes less than natural, the added-for-TV touches mostly make the story more palatable, if no less sad.
  68. Driver's at her funniest in scenes where she and Marcus revel in their oddness, but "About a Boy" left me less sure of who Marcus is: He veers between painful naivete and canny opportunism with alarming speed.
  70. There's something faintly retro about a show that tackles fears many thought died with the Cold War.
  71. [It] so far boasts characters more intriguing than their interactions.
  72. If you watch "Shark," it's going to be for those Woods-ian rants and for the sheer exuberance he brings to them.
  73. The pilot for "Twenty Good Years" has some genuinely funny moments even as it makes no apparent effort to reinvent the form.
  74. [3 Lbs.], as medical shows go, is pretty, full of the kind of light-show graphics the "CSIs" and "House" have led us to expect.
  75. As much fun as it might be for some of us to start our Wednesday nights watching a shirtless Taye Diggs get out of bed - just as it was once fun to watch Agents Mulder and Scully chase goblins and ghosties and things that go bump in the night - these TV conspiracies have a way of ending badly.
  76. While there's nothing groundbreaking happening in "My Boys," there is something a bit fresher than we saw in any of the many "Sex and the City" wannabes that popped up a few seasons ago.
  77. Martin kills as a 12-year-old who is old beyond her years. I might watch just for her. As comedies go, Californication is a bit of a downer, and not just to fans of "The X-Files."
  78. An overly complicated pilot had me feeling that I, too, would like to time-travel, if not actually fast-forward, but a more straightforward second episode made me decide not to cancel my subscription just yet.
  79. Samantha Who? could easily be a complete mess. That it isn't is almost entirely due to Applegate, who brings sweetness, sarcasm and a steely edge to this story of a woman doing everything she can not to become the person she's always been.
  80. I can't say I was riveted by either of the episodes I watched, which largely consisted of interviews with the girls and their parents, together and separately, interspersed with scenes from extracurricular activities and parties. But if there are parents who can actually get their teens to watch with them, it might get a conversation going.
  81. The comedy's broad, the characters broader--Chris Parnell plays a control freak of a vice principal, Brooke Burns the former homecoming queen from Becky's year who's just joined the faculty--but there are moments when you can see it turning into something watchable.
  82. I'm thinking most of these kids seem way too old to be headed back to high school from the Hamptons. It's not so much the actors--it is their characters, who've morphed over the summer into people whose world-weariness is palpable and their genuine problems so few that the writers needed to manufacture some truly outlandish ones to keep things interesting.
  84. Across the pond, wisecracks, sexual tension and some broad shots at Britain's class system make for a predictable two hours with some pleasant scenery.
  85. Ball's done an entertaining job of turning Harris' stories about life in a small Southern town after vampires "come out of the coffin" into something adults who wouldn't dream of reading her books might be caught dead watching.
  87. Thank goodness for Danny DeVito, whose total commitment to this insanity often makes the unbelievable just believable enough to be funny.
  88. What's bad for Seattle Grace isn't necessarily bad for Grey's, which needs all the medical drama it can muster to distract its doctors from their (mostly) dreary love lives. Guest stars don't necessarily hurt, either.
  89. Certainly Swayze, as undercover FBI agent Charles Barker, is better than his material. If The Beast, which turns on the relationship between the experienced and not exactly by-the-book Barker and the young agent, Ellis Dove (Fimmel), he's supposed to be training, is more rooted than reality than, say, Fox's "24," it can't be by much.
  90. Parts of tonight's episode and next week's also focus on the Dubois offspring and their own burgeoning psychic abilities, yet another growth opportunity for a show that keeps finding a way to survive in an ever-tougher world.
  92. I gradually lost interest during the agents' first case together, which takes them on the road. Here's hoping the assignments get better. Because the warehouse itself is packed to the rafters with (sorry, Syfy) geeky fun.
  93. As Cycle 13 of America's Next Top Model gets under way, some of the stories seem sobbier than ever, though the young women telling them are shorter than usual.
  94. I found the first episode of "Survivors" incredibly depressing and began to think longingly of rewards challenges and hidden immunity idols. But a subsequent episode, though devoid of tribal councils, did provide enough heart and even occasional flashes of humor to make survival - and the continuation of "Survivors" - seem like a fate considerably better than death.
  97. Strahan's not yet up to his cast mates' level and the writing's uneven in tonight's back-to-back episodes--producers need, for instance, to figure out just how serious Weathers' character's forgetfulness is meant to be--but there are a few great moments.
  98. Nothing very important is happening here, but if you love "24" for its silliness rather than its sometimes muddled message, "Human Target" might just hit the bull's-eye for you.
  100. That for those of you who love True Blood for its soapy mix of sex and horror--and occasional flashes of humor--nothing important is missing from the three episodes I've seen of the new season.
  101. As for Scoundrels, it is, like its characters, far from perfect, but probably far better than you expected from a scripted network show in the summer.
  102. AMC's likely earned a little rope with a small but passionate audience. Whether Rubicon manages to establish more than an edgy mood will probably decide how long even the most masochistic of those viewers sticks around.
  103. I might not believe for a moment that any of these people actually exist in nature, much less Pennsylvania, but Big Lake, with its wink and a nod to a format that always required suspension of disbelief, is at least more than willing to own its silliness.
  104. Chase is a very competent action-adventure with a heroine who's so far not as interesting to me as, say, the deputy U.S. marshal Mary McCormack plays on USA's "In Plain Sight." That could change, though, if I gave her a chance, and for adrenaline junkies who appreciate the professionalism Bruckheimer's company brings to just about everything it produces, this is certainly a better way to spend an hour than wishing that guy would stop talking so you could get a better look at Hawaii.
  105. Now it's a talky but straight-ahead ensemble cop show whose cast includes Michael Imperioli ("The Sopranos") and James McDaniel ("NYPD Blue"). Think "Southland" in Detroit.
  106. Maybe there are superheroes who specialize in improving organic-farming methods or eradicating bedbugs, but they probably won't be getting network shows any time soon. Shows that parents might be willing to watch with their kids--and kids with their parents--remain few and far between, so it's too bad that the so far ordinary but at least well-meaning No Ordinary Family is facing off this fall against the phenomenon that is Fox's "Glee."
  107. If Harris, who's clearly meant to steal every scene he's in, seems a little too cool to be hanging out with the brothers from Omega Sigma, whose deficiencies haven't yet been fully cataloged, it's still not nearly as cool as he's going to need to be if he's to lead this slightly tired toga party right into "Conan's" waiting arms.
  108. Not every TV show has to leave you wishing for a Ph.D. in physics and total recall of Philosophy 101, and V, which seems to have embraced the cheesy goodness of the original, strikes me as a bit more fun this season.
  109. Southland, which seems to be at pains to give each of its characters and their stories equal weight, may just be a little too evenhanded for its own good.
  110. The premiere of Mr. Sunshine feels more forced at times than it needs to be, as if the writers mistrusted Perry and company's ability to wring humor from real-life situations and felt compelled instead to send in the clowns--with axes--to get the job done.
  111. Little of this stands up to close scrutiny, but there's a nice twist at the end of the pilot, and it looks as if every episode will begin with a fiendishly clever prison break by someone viewers might actually hope to see caught.
  112. I found myself more drawn to the part of next week's episode where we see Jo with her fellow physics grad students--think "Big Bang Theory" with "American Idol's" Kevin "Chicken Little" Covais--and wondering if a slightly less seductive Georgia (at any weight) might not have a better shot at being the funny girl.
  113. I can't disagree with those who insist the show passed its sell-by date a few years back, but it doesn't mean I'm not still fond enough of these guys to keep watching.
  114. Way over the top but potentially a guilty pleasure for those with the time to pursue it.
  116. It doesn't yet feel like just another cop show.
  119. Interesting enough to justify six hours? Probably not. But for those who watch "Game of Thrones" and "Spartacus" for the high body counts, it offers plenty of action.
  120. Silly doesn't even begin to describe most of what goes on in the first few episodes....And yet, like an addiction to free-range hemoglobin, there's something undeniably compelling about the characters, human and otherwise, in a series whose plotting grows more twisted every year.
  121. Between their personal history and their decidedly different approaches to running the place, they're dealing with plenty of built-in conflict, but if the show's a hit, I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually united, just as Perry and his fellow "Friends" stars once did, to demand an end to (or at least a dialing back of) the monkey business.
  122. While I'm intrigued, I'd prefer to be carrying something stronger than a candle before I head too far down this particular rabbit hole.
  123. People who like their procedurals with punch--there's plenty of punching, not to mention kicking, in the pilot--might like CBS' period cop show just the way it is. But if I'm going to stay with Vegas, I'm going to need to be wooed a little.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
  124. The World According to Dick Cheney has some chilling moments, from his dispassionate description of waterboarding ("It creates a sensation of drowning") to his 9/11 narrative, in which he takes responsibility for having authorized the shooting down of Flight 93 if it approached Washington. What it doesn't have is a lot of navel-gazing.
  126. As the series goes on and takes a deeper interest in the multitude of characters he's gathered around him, Mr. Selfridge begins to come into focus. Whether you'll find it as engaging as "Downton Abbey" may depend less on any single performance than on how invested you can become in the rise of the modern perfume counter and off-the-rack dresses.
  127. No matter how beautifully the dead bodies are staged--and, like Dr. Lecter's dinners, the corpse presentations in Hannibal could be ripped from old issues of Gourmet magazine, if Gourmet had featured cannibalism--they're still meant to represent once-living people. So, if I'm less amused by this than whoever chose to title those episodes "Aperitif," "Amuse-Bouche," "Potage," "Coquilles" and "Entrée," call me a party pooper. Still, it's a gorgeous party, with hosts that include "Wonderfalls" star Caroline Dhavernas as a colleague of Will's and Laurence Fishburne as Will's boss.
  129. McKenzie may look like Russell Crowe's younger brother - while playing nearly a decade below his own age - but for all the James Dean comparisons being bandied about, he's a character straight out of Dickens: a little bit Pip, a little bit David Copperfield. [4 Aug 2003, p.28]
  130. I'm reluctant to lose my heart again, much less encourage anyone to follow me down what could be a dead end. And yet I'm intrigued.
  131. Based on the few, non-consecutive episodes I've seen, it does seem willing, though, to pose some hard questions, including whether it's reasonable to expect that the people we pay to lie down with dogs won't ever wake up with fleas. Or worse.
  132. It's hard enough keeping track of the aliens in Falling Skies, but the first few episodes introduce so many new challenges and mysteries it makes my head hurt thinking about them.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
  133. It's hardly groundbreaking, but if you are documentary-challenged, or don't know much about Lee Harvey Oswald (Will Rothhaar) and his Russia-born wife, Marina (Michelle Trachtenberg), you might learn something. Also: Lowe's Kennedy hair is truly amazing.
  134. I don't mind seeing actors like Ed Burns, Milo Ventimiglia and Robert Knepper in nice suits, acting the way bad guys in old movies are supposed to act. I'm even happier to see Jon Bernthal all cleaned up and zombie-free. I just can't quite tell, after two episodes, whether their stories can compete with their setting.
  135. For all their macho posturing, you've got to wonder sometimes whether Leary and Tolan didn't spend their younger days watching soaps. [13 June 2007, p.43]
  136. You don't have to have lived through Watergate to know that it's the cover-up that gets you, but there's much more happening in The Red Road, maybe too much to be contained in a six-hour first season, and some of it more interesting than what's going on between these two men.
  138. Whether you'll want to go the distance with "Big Day" will probably rest on how close you feel to the family.
  139. Much of what's swept up in "Dirt," from gay action stars to sad sitcom actresses, seems more dusty than dirty.
  140. Their efforts to better their lives through grand larceny feel forced, not to mention doomed.
  141. I just couldn't buy in.
  142. I don't want to beat up on Meyers here. He does justice to Hirst's Henry, if not entirely to history's, and being young and good-looking is hardly a crime. But like Tony Soprano, Henry VIII brings more to the table than charisma: Corrupted by absolute power, he's a bit of a monster.
  143. The first hour left me a bit cold, but the second, which arrived yesterday, filled in enough of the blanks to take me as far as Monday.
  144. Like so many current serials, [it] requires viewers to buy into the idea that its heroes have no choice but to do very unobvious things.
  145. In January or February, I might not have found room in my own schedule for a combination murder mystery and teen soap. I certainly would have wondered more about setting a show about adolescents among the ancients of Palm Springs. Now I'm just inclined to appreciate the little things.
  146. In Tim Gunn's Guide to Style, it feels as if he's sometimes forcing himself to emote for the cameras.
  147. There's a distinct "Alias" overtone to her initiation into the dark side of the force. If I'd liked "Alias," this might have me all excited. But I didn't, so I'm not.
  148. Kranz does look like a writer, for what it's worth. But if he's really as good as they say, he'd have written something better than this.
  149. I should probably feel bad, too, about finding all this silliness passably amusing, especially after having trashed its evil stepsister on ABC. But somehow I don't.
  150. I'm ashamed that a wounded Marine, about to be discharged after 15 years in the service, needs help from an entertainment show to find and afford civilian housing for himself and his family.
  151. McCormack, a rangy actress who looks more comfortable in Mary Shannon's tank tops and casual jackets than she ever did in the lawyerly business suits she wore way back on "Murder One," manages to make all this crankiness intermittently endearing.
  152. It probably wasn't their intention, but the producers of The Principal's Office have succeeded in capturing one reality of high school life that's often been overlooked on shows like "Gossip Girl" and "One Tree Hill"--the sheer tedium of it all, from the petty rebellions to the sometimes even pettier responses.
  153. MacLaine, who apparently decided not to bother to attempt a French accent, isn't served well by a script that essentially has her introducing flashbacks.
  154. Truth is, there's not terribly much to dislike about Opportunity Knocks, a kinder, gentler version of Fox's "Moment of Truth" in which families win by having their members answer not unreasonable questions about one another. There's not much to get excited about, either.
  155. It's a subject that was explored more deeply, and even a touch more believably, in BBC America's "Jekyll," a nail-biter of an update in which James Nesbitt inhabited both personalities so completely they barely even looked alike. Slater, by contrast, just seems like a guy in need of a good night's sleep.
  156. Defoe's ambitious bachelor is transformed into an ardent husband and father, whose memories of his previous life are so tinged with romance they include falling rose petals. I kid you not.
  157. Teddy's impulses are undeniably good ones, but tales of African corruption are nothing new and often cited as a cause of viewer fatigue. And though Teddy's expected to range far and wide, it remains to be seen whether The Philanthropist, and its debonair title character, have anything new to do--or say--about the problems he'll encounter.
  160. Cassidys aside, the Ruby pilot, at least, feels more Disney Channel than ABC Family, with a sitcommy pace that doesn't allow for much in the way of plot or character development.
  161. How much you'll actually care about any of them may decide whether you're ready to embrace the new Melrose Place.
  162. So far, though, there's nothing on The Jay Leno Show that's worth losing sleep over.
  163. Gross, who couldn't look (or act) less like Jack Nicholson and is the No. 1 reason you should run out right now and rent the Canadian series "Slings & Arrows," is a happy bit of casting that could add a little zing to this warmed-over dish.
  165. For sci-fi fans, the new V, like a Visitor, clothes itself familiarly, with actors from "Lost," "The 4400," "Firefly" and "Smallville," but until we see something we haven't seen before, we should probably go easy on the devotion.
  166. I hated more how little I even giggled at Running Wilde, whose pilot doesn't quite live up to its pedigree.
  167. It's Los Angeles, a city that's all too familiar a location to viewers the world over, and with all due respect to Detective Winters' tired-but-gorgeous brown eyes, there's not nearly enough here to distinguish the transplanted Law & Order from its aged parent or, for that matter, from plenty of other L.A.-based cop shows.
  168. I think Hines' heart is in the right place, but I'm tired of seeing people in need used as entertainment to get help they're actually entitled to as Americans.
  169. Those who still dream of making a killing on "Antiques Roadshow" might conceivably get a kick out of watching a bunch of guys try to outmaneuver one another for the right to take home whatever's behind Door No. 3, but if there's an acquisitive bone in your body, you should probably steer clear, lest you find yourself the subject of yet another cautionary tale on A&E's "Hoarders."
  170. It's lighter than "Heroes," but also less coherent. Still, fans of Summer Glau (you know who you are) probably won't be able to resist.
  171. So what we have here is another show in which pretty, mildly tortured people perform deeds of medical derring-do while trying to figure out how they, and various parts of their individual anatomies, might fit together.
  172. Plopped down in Baltimore, the loose-living adolescents in MTV's seemingly line-for-line version don't actually feel American, no matter what their accents are, and the plots that always struck me as more teen movie than teen reality seem no more realistic than, say, "Gossip Girl."
  173. There being few original ideas in television, execution matters. And though "Couples" fields a good cast, including Kyle Bornheimer ("Worst Week") and Mary Elizabeth Ellis ("It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"), the two episodes I screened mostly felt forced and formulaic.
  174. This is Mad Love, which takes a good cast--however tired I am of Labine playing the same guy--and forces them to try to make themselves heard over people who seem to think everything they say is hilarious.
  175. If you don't care for Criminal Minds, Whitaker, Garofalo and company probably aren't going to be enough of a reason for you to tune in. Their characters may get to be interesting from time to time, but the crime's always going to be the main focus.
  176. It's a happy mix of childlike wonder and mildly adult humor--too mild for "Two and a Half Men," but maybe too adult for Saturday mornings--that allows Reubens to be timeless and yet topical. But again, only mildly so.
  177. Breckin Meyer and Mark-Paul Gosselaar go the buddy-comedy route in Franklin & Bash, a new lawyer show the network's calling an "offbeat drama"--though it's hard to think of something whose beats are this predictable as off-anything.
  178. Like Durant's ideal route, the five episodes I've seen of Hell on Wheels tend to meander a bit.
  179. There are a fair number of character quirks packed into that first hour, more, perhaps, than I remember from early episodes of "Bones," which built up its own quirky world a bit at a time.
  180. I'm not hooked, but I'm not yet planning my escape, either.
  181. There's a germ of a good idea in the massively overproduced Fashion Star.
  182. If you're moving on with The Killing, you're either a sucker for punishment or a hopeless fan of Detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) and her Scandinavian sweaters.
  183. Best Friends Forever is better than a blank screen, but beyond setting what I think might be a 2011-12 season record--0 to vagina joke in 15 seconds--it doesn't do much to break through the sitcom clutter.
  184. It offers tantalizing glimpses of other movies it might have been.
  185. NBC's Saving Hope, another of those Canadian imports with which frugal networks pad out their summer schedules, plays like a very special episode of Grey's.
  186. [Larry Hagman's eyebrows] are the most contemporary thing about the "new" Dallas, which otherwise looks and feels like a chunk of the '80s trapped in amber.
  187. The Newsroom is both wonderful and terrible.
  188. This is more soap opera than satire, an intermittently entertaining but not exactly subtle look at the private and public lives of one extremely colorful family.
  189. The first two episodes are so full of clunky explanations that it's impossible to forget for a moment you're watching a TV show.
  190. This one tries so hard to set up its premise that at times it ends up feeling more like a PSA than a comedy, which can be annoying if you're already on board with same-sex marriage and gay parenting.
  191. Frankly, it's a dispiriting season and I won't miss the show nearly as much as I'll miss Blake Ritson's charming turn as Sir Hallam's royal friend, the Duke of Kent.
  192. Hard-core lovers of historical drama who've made no other TV appointments this fall might find the time.
  194. The set-in-the-White House comedy starts off more annoying than funny in its Monday debut, overwhelmed by a single character, first son Skip (Josh Gad), a perennial college student and first-class screwup. Over the next couple of episodes the show becomes a little less grating and, occasionally, mildly amusing.
  197. What's a little messy about Hemlock Grove isn't so much the corpses as the oddly paced story and the sometimes eye-rollingly silly dialogue, which occasionally leaves a more than competent cast looking less so.
  199. The cops, led by Marc Lavoine, are an interesting mix, and the scenery's great. If only the crime itself didn't seem so drearily familiar.
  200. If you didn't like Sorkin's politics before, I doubt you'll be any happier with them this season.... Technology continues to be a bugbear for Sorkin (maybe that's why he was so prescient last season about the NSA stuff?), but stupidity in general seems more evenly distributed this season.
  201. As intrigued as I am by Sutter's willingness to bite off something bigger than his character's tongue to tell a story about the true costs of SAMCRO's business dealings, I'm not sure this is the time, or the place.
  202. If Ironside is going for more than cop-show-with-a-gimmick, it needs to go even bigger.
  203. There's nothing terrible about the pilot of NBC's Welcome to the Family, but nothing that explains how it attracted Mike O'Malley, Mary McCormack , Ricardo A. Chavira and Justina Machado.
  206. If not for Epps--and Fisher and Smith, who are terrific as two people trying to come to terms with the impossible--I might have preferred this one had stayed buried.