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 liteterally 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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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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Privileged is the story of Megan Smith, a journalist struggling because she wants to do REAL journalism instead of fluff. (Yes, we’ve seen that before. It won’t be the last overused story element.) Her boss essentially fires her, but offers to set her up with another employment opportunity, presumably interviewing or writing for an uber-wealthy foundation chairwoman, played by Anne Archer. Archer’s character has two granddaughters, spoiled heiresses. (Even the show points out how often we’ve seen that before.) Grandma offers Megan a super-plush arrangement–room, board, a sweet car, and her days free to pursue her writing—if Megan will tutor the grandkids in the evenings. There’s some other stuff with a down-to-earth prince charming, an estranged sister, etc., but I don’t want to make it sound too much more complex than it is.

Perhaps its because I pay the bills as a professional yuppie larva trainer myself that I connected a bit with this show. Yes, it’s light fare. Lite, even. But, hey, while Privileged may be painting in archetypical characters, it promises to focus on the relationships between those archetypical characters in a worthwhile way. If this is your type of show, Privileged is at least a solid entry in its genre.

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The only thing worse than the one-dimensional lady’s man played by Jerry O’Connell is the unbelievable way he suddenly reverses his habits when his staff confronts him. His main antagonist making herself a hypocrite helps slightly, but not enough to make this show worth sitting through.

No, the three-camera sitcom is not dead. But, no, Do Not Disturb won’t revive it.

By the way, in its identity struggle, the sitcom doesn’t know what to do with the laugh track. But one thing I’m certain is NOT the right answer is unenthusiastic, bemused half-laughter at each “joke.” It’s a trend from the last few years that has really confused me. If even the laugh track doesn’t think your show’s any good…

Jerry O’Connell will have to keep trying. His Carpoolers sitcom last year was better. Actually, I’d rather watch old episodes of My Secret Identity. It’s all in a day’s work for Ultra-Man.

Best aspect: I guess there’s a mix of characters here that will keep stories coming. Can you tell I’m reaching?

Worst aspect: Clunky exposition, forced plot, pat ending, lame jokes, staging as smooth as a Disney tween comedy.

Verdict: I knew after about a minute that I wouldn’t be following this show.

Odds of success: FOX is still playing ‘Til Death. They have some desperation for comedy. And anyone willing to waste their time on that might enjoy this. And for a script this unfunny to reach prime time, someone powerful must be rooting for it. But if there’s justice in the universe, Do Not Disturb will crash hard.

In Dirty, Sexy Money, Donald Sutherland plays the patriarch of a family of spoiled eccentrics. Their exploits have always been covered up by the lawyer father of Peter Krause’s Nick. Then, as the pilot begins, Nick’s father has died, and Sutherland’s character lures Nick into filling his father’s shoes.

Did you ever watch Arrested Development? (If not, go get rent the discs RIGHT NOW.)  D,S,M is a bit like what AD would be as a drama. While the one sane person’s struggle to rein in a family of crazies plays great in a comedy like AD, it promises to grow tiresome in a drama. Fortunately, the last act of this pilot borrows a note from Veronica Mars, offering a long-term mystery underlying the daily episodes.

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Geeks everywhere have been wondering whether Ronald D. Moore and company, now universally loved by critics for turning the 1970s sci-fi cheesefest Battlestar Galactica into a relevant and beautiful allegory for the 21st century, would be able to work their same magic on an even cheesier sci-fi show. So far, the answer seems to be yes.

If there’s one thing any screenwriter knows, it’s to hook your audience on the first page of your script. This show absolutely did that for me. And for the most part, it kept my attention and respect. There were a few moments when I rolled my eyes, or when I spent my time discussing with my housemate what a bionic vagina might feel like, but for the most part I was interested in the handling of this new incarnation of Jamie Sommers. So far, her character is a little thin, but the texture of her world filled that gap, and giving her a badass nemesis helped plenty.

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In the late nineties, a trend began in which a movie coming into a theater faced the need to sell a whole lot of tickets in its very first weekend, or it would get pulled, and the next movie would come along to take a shot at a big opener. No time for the flick to build up an audience via word of mouth. Quality becomes less important than hype. Then, at the early part of this decade, the trend hit hard for TV as well. If a show’s pilot didn’t pull big ratings from the right demo, it might get canceled after only a couple of episodes, investment be damned. Fortunately, the last year or so has seen a few shining examples of networks bucking the trend, and sticking with a show because it’s just good.

Cane is the type of show that will benefit from having time to gestate. The pilot is worthy, but one is left more interested in the potential of the story than what was presented in this first installment. Two families, each controlling a sugar farming empire, are at a time of generational transition. Alejandro, played by Jimmy Smitts, inherits control of his father-in-law’s company, against the wishes of the heir apparent. We catch a glimpse of a complex web of characters, and see some backstory between the two families, but it’s not enough to satisfy yet.

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