I won’t waste your time or mine.  I only watched fifteen minutes, and I haven’t seen all the new shows yet, but I’m ready to declare Knight Rider the worst new show of the season.

• KITT is now evidentally a Transformer.  He literally transforms from a car into a truck at one point (though not for any particular reason.)  Did you see the Transformers movie?  Knight Rider looks like it will have about that level of substance.
• In the overblown command center, one of the perfectly multi-ethnic beautiful people beams, “This just got interesting!”  Evidently, she’s quite pleased that her friends are about to be destroyed by a heat-seeking missile.
• The heroine has a “reason” to strip out of her cocktail dress before the end of act one.  She was still in bra and panties when I gave up on watching.
• The technology strains believability so incredibly far that “cartoon” is not an apt analogy.  The original Knight Rider may have been aimed at twelve-year-old boys.  But the average eight-year old watching this newest incarnation will stand up and yell, “Shyeah! Like THAT could ever happen!”

Sitcoms come in two general flavors: the workplace sitcom, and the family sitcom.  Cheers and Cosby.  30 Rock and Leave It to Beaver.  A recent trend among family sitcoms is the acknowledgment that family structure can be complex in our modern day, too.  Gary Unmarried is an example, featuring Jay Mohr as a newly divorcing father of two attempting to begin a dating life with a client, who has family complexities of her own.

Long story short, it’s a solid B-grade sitcom.  Nothing amazing, but not a waste of your time.  Jay Mohr, as always, delivers the needed charm.  The character quirks are (more than) defined, and the script offers a few solid laughs without being overly joke-y.

Best aspect: The cast.  Flat jokes aren’t oversold.  Characters feel full, even where they are 2-D in the script.  Of course, give some credit to legendary sitcom director James Burrows for his involvement (although he didn’t direct this particular episode.)

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A cynical, smirky rogue solves crime using his nearly inhuman observational skill, which is mistaken for psychic ability. Why yes, that is the premise behind USA’s Psych. But it’s also the pitch for The Mentalist, Tuesdays this fall on CBS. I haven’t been this unimpressed since Medium showed up as Ghost Whisperer.

The pilot episode features moments of highly intelligent writing, as one might expect from Bruno Heller, the man behind HBO’s Rome. You leave your comparisons to Psych behind pretty quickly when the opening draws you in. The depictions of our protagonist going around noticing and noticing are more elegant. The tone is readily dissimilar.

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Good enough. Not good, but good enough.

Are you the kind of viewer who expects a sitcom to deliver a little mindlessness at the end of a long day? Are you the kind of viewer who thinks Arrested Development or 30 Rock asks too much from you? If your TV is on CBS on Mondays at 9:30, you just watched Two and a Half Men, so the answer is very likely yes. If that’s your style, Worst Week will certainly be good enough for you.

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One doesn’t expect much from an awards show. Give me some small feeling of being friends with these people who make movies and TV. Let at least some of the jokes not be lame, maybe have a few entertaining moments, tell me whether my favorites are the favorites of others. I’ll trade you a few hours. But even with the bar set so low, the 60^th Annual failed miserably to clear minimum expectations.

Of course, from the moment producers made the call to give hosting responsibilities to the five nominees in the new category of reality show host, failure was written on the wall. Those personalities promptly proved how unworthy they are of the responsibility (and of having a category) by intentionally opening the show unprepared. Really? Following a major writers’ strike, you’ve chosen to slap that portion of the industry in the face? Their plan tanked, of course. Thanks, at least, for proving that there is a REASON that performers have chosen for centuries to have something prepared before stepping onto stage or screen.

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