Pilot Inspektor: An Advance Review of ABC's "Eastwick"

ABC's newest drama series Eastwick, which launches this fall, is the type of series where people are meant to be "serious" because they wear glasses.

Giving a new meaning to telegraphing rather than letting the plot unfold on its own, Eastwick--based on the 1987 feature film The Witches of Eastwick--tells the story of three women who are strangers to one another in the idyllic New England town of Eastwick. Each making a wish on a coin that seemingly magically appears in their presence, they unwittingly open the door to the return of an enigmatic figure into their midst. A figure whose arrival presages darkness, evil, and wanton destruction, along with sex, sex, sex.

But before that, there's the drinking of martinis, the discussion of menfolk, and some female bonding, making Eastwick something more akin to Lipstick Jungle with magical powers.

Rebecca Romijn (Ugly Betty) plays freethinking artist and single mother Roxie Torcoletti, a woman who is prone to jumping into bed with much younger men (like Matt Dallas' Chad) and sculpting fertility goddess statues. Lindsay Price (Lipstick Jungle) is deeply repressed local newspaper reporter Joanna Frankel, a woman who can't quite work up the nerve to ask her hunky co-worker Will (Dirt's Johann Urb) out on a date or ask her editor for a promotion. (Did anyone tell her she's lucky to have a media job in these dismal economic times?) And then there's Jamie Ray Newman (Veronica Mars), who plays devoted mother and wife Kat Gardener, a nurse whose marriage to the boozy, unemployed Raymond (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian's Jon Bernthal) is on its last legs.

Their wishes summon a man (or is it the Devil himself?) named Darryl Van Horne (Slings and Arrow's Paul Gross) to Eastwick. Arriving in the town, Van Horne sets about to answer all of their prayers, purchasing many a failing business as well as a historic estate (meant to be a snowy egret sanctuary) and the local paper. Eastwick quickly falls to Van Horne and so do its women. With the notable exception, that is, of local historian Bun (The Nine's Veronica Cartwright, who appeared in the original film), hospitalized after an attack by red ants who warns Kat against the coming darkness.

As for our trio, they are quickly bonded by circumstances out of their control, pushed together by the cone of power and they quickly let their hair down and become involved with this charismatic stranger, who changes their lives even as they discover access to abilities they didn't know they had. Roxie can see into the future via prophetic dreams and manages to come to the aid of her daughter Mia (Days of Our Lives' Ashley Benson) when she's nearly date-raped; Kat unleashes lightning to smite her husband Raymond when he threatens to divorce her and take their numerous kids; Joanna uses her mesmeric gaze to land that promotion and get Will to admit that he has feelings for her.

Rounding out the cast is Sara Rue, who plays Penny, Joanna's best friend and her co-worker at the paper, a dour woman who seems to have forgotten to get in line when they were handing out sympathetic qualities. I'm not sure how Penny fits into the larger picture but she uncovers evidence at the pilot's very end that indicates that Darryl Van Horne may not be who he claims to be.

The problem is that audiences will have likely lost interest by then. Eastwick, written by Maggie Friedman and directed by David Nutter, is the sort of series that tries way too hard by far to be likable, mixing its supernatural plot with discussions of vibrators and penis size, confusing predictable crassness for subversion.

But the real issue is that none of Eastwick's characters are remotely likable or compelling. In fact, some like Sara Rue's Penny and Jon Bernthal's Raymond are so irritatingly shrill and annoying that I wanted some divine intervention to smite them where they stood and then drop their ashes into that over-the-top fountain. The rest seem to be made up of the sort of cliches we find on female-skewing series that look to emulate the sort of feminine discourse made popular by Sex and the City.

Paul Gross tries his best as the seductive Darryl Van Horne but it's hard to separate his performance from that of Jack Nicholson's and Gross comes off as little more than a Nicholson manqué here. He's meant to be the Devil at his most magnetic but Gross' Van Horne is a little too stuck in the 1980s to be all that alluring. (Hell, Romijn's Roxie even makes a joke about his out-dated hairstyle.)

The three main actresses are all passable but none of them seem to be having a particularly good time. Price's Joanna comes across as equal parts frigid and socially awkward (hence the vibrator talk with Will) but then is transformed halfway through the episode into a vampish coquette able to get her way with everything. (She's actually far more likable when she's putting her foot in it.) Roxie dreams of being murdered and comes face to face with Jamie, the man responsible, at the episode's end. And Kat is tired of her husband's constant leeching and so moves the earth and opens up the heavens to strike him down. If this all unfolds just within the very first installment, how can the plot escalate?

It's hard to see just how much longevity this premise has. Now that Joanna and Penny know that Van Horne is an impostor by the end of the pilot and the women are all exhibiting fine-tuned use of their magical abilities, just where do we go from here? What is Season Four of this series? (Hell, what's Season Two?) Does Eastwick really have the legs to be an ongoing drama?

Perhaps if the dialogue were more clever and the writing less hackneyed, it would be easy to overlook the obvious flaws within Eastwick. But as it is, I found the pilot episode to be both cloying and grating and far less clever than it believes itself to be. No magic here, sadly.



Eastwick airs Wednesdays at 10 pm ET/PT this fall on ABC.

Pilot Inspektor: An Advance Review of NBC's "Community"

For the last two years, NBC has sought to find a series to cement its lineup of comedies on Thursday nights... with mixed results.

Last season's offering, Kath & Kim, didn't quite gel with the wit and dry humor of veterans 30 Rock and The Office and was quickly sent to the mall in the sky. And Parks & Recreation, from the executive producers of The Office, hasn't quite lived up to its potential or pedigree.

Next season, NBC will launch another new comedy series, Community, which will join returnees 30 Rock, The Office, and Parks and Recreation on the Thursday night roster. I had the opportunity last night to watch the full pilot episode of Community and believe that NBC may have finally found a worthy addition to its "Comedy Done Right" lineup.

The dry-witted and caustically funny Community, written by Dan Harmon (The Sarah Silverman Program) and directed by Joe and Anthony Russo (Arrested Development), tells the story of Jeff Crocker (The Soup's Joel McHale), a fast-talking lawyer who faces disbarment when it's learned that his undergraduate degree isn't quite as legitimate as he made it out to be. (It's from Colombia rather than, er, Columbia.)

So it's off to Greendale Community College, home of the world's worst dean (he inadvertently gives a speech to the student body in which he equates the school to "loser college") and a British professor, Ian Duncan (The Daily Show's John Oliver), whom Jeff managed to get off on a DUI charge back in 2002. Jeff figures that Ian can repay him (he successfully got the jury to acquit by convincing them that Ian's highway U-turn and call for chalupas from an emergency call box was a direct result of 9/11) by making the next four years at Greendale as easy as possible by giving him all of the answers to his exams. Ian, however, is not quite buying into Jeff's moral relativism.

Meanwhile, Jeff meets the beautiful Britta (The Book of Daniel's Gillian Jacobs)--described by not one but two characters as looking "like Elisabeth Shue"--and falls for her... to the point that he pretends to be a "board-certified" Spanish tutor in order to spend time with her. But his plan goes awry when fellow student Abed (Greek's Danny Pudi) invites along several other misfit members of their class, resulting in a situation that is intentionally similar to classic 1980s film The Breakfast Club, an homage that is invoked several times throughout the pilot episode.

In order to get into Britta's pants, Jeff issues a speech about them forgiving not just each other but themselves for the actions that have led them here, proclaiming them not to be a study group or strangers, but an actual full-fledged "community." It's played for laughs here but there's a real poignancy and beauty to Jeff's off-the-cuff speech. For whatever their original reasons for being there, this motley group is indeed united under Jeff's dubious tutelage by the end of their first "study session."

The rest of that group is comprised of mature student Shirley (Rules of Engagement's Yvette Nicole Brown), whose motherliness disguises a seething aggression; hyper-sensitive Annie (Mad Men's Alison Brie), who was forced to drop out of high school after getting addicted to prescription pills; former prom king and quarterback Troy (30 Rock's Donald Glover), who lost his sports scholarship after dislocating both shoulders during a keg flip; and creepy moist towelette mogul Pierce (Chevy Chase, most recently seen on Chuck), a man divorced seven times who has an unhealthy fixation on poor Shirley.

McHale is absolutely sensational as the compulsively mendacious Jeff, a man for whom lying comes so naturally, he might as well just be breathing. It's fantastic to see McHale embody such a despicable character, yet he imbues Jeff with an overwhelming charisma that makes it impossible not to root for the guy. (NBC attempted a few seasons back to launch a US version of UK comedy The IT Crowd with McHale and I'm happy that they stuck with their efforts to build a series around him.)

The rest of the cast is equally fantastic and their characters will likely be further developed as the series progresses, but I am already enchanted by Jacob's street-smart Britta and Pudi's hilarious Abed (whom Jeff accuses of suffering from Asperger's Syndrome), who issues one of the pilot's funniest payoffs when he channels Judd Nelson's "What about you, dad?" speech from The Breakfast Club.

The jokes come fast and furious throughout the pilot episode of Community, yet there's not only a self-awareness (witness Jeff's admission that, as he was raised on TV, he believes every black woman over 50 is a spiritual guide) as well as unexpected heart as well. Could it be that the community Jeff establishes on a lie will in fact provide him with the means to change his own life?

While it's not quite at the level of 30 Rock or The Office just yet, Community shows an immense amount of promise and could easily develop into--dare I say it--must-see TV next season, making it one community I'd gladly be a part of.



Community airs this fall on Thursday nights at 9:30 pm ET/PT (before moving to 8 pm later this fall) on NBC.

Pilot Inspektor: An Advance Review of ABC's "Happy Town"

ABC made a bold statement at its upfront presentation the other day when it presented new midseason drama series Happy Town as hailing "from the network that brought you Twin Peaks."

The statement rubbed me the wrong way for a number of reasons. First, it's not exactly like the executives who developed Twin Peaks even still work at ABC. Second, ABC may have brought us Twin Peaks but it just as quickly canceled David Lynch's groundbreaking drama, which aired a stunning nineteen years ago. And third, Happy Town should not be making any comparisons between itself and Twin Peaks because it is certainly no Twin Peaks.

I had the opportunity the other night to watch Happy Town's 90-minute pilot and the only similarities I could find between it and Twin Peaks were that (A) they both air on ABC and (B) they are both set in small towns where the sunny exteriors belie a secret underbelly of darkness. (Happy Town itself seems to relish the comparison, even having one character hail from Snoqualmie, Washington, where many of Twin Peaks's exterior shots were filmed.)

But while David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks reveled in its supremely surreal weirdness and slow-burn mystery, Happy Town, from October Road creators Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec, and Scott Rosenberg, tries way too hard to make itself different, throwing at the audience a kitchen sink's worth of bizarro plot twists, flatly quirky characters, supernatural goings-on, red herrings, secret identities, murders, kidnappings, druggings, mutilations, nefarious motives, blue doors, sigils, tattoos, stalkers, star-crossed lovers, forbidden boarding house third floors, and vigilante justice. (Not to mention "The Magic Man.") And that's just in the series' first episode alone.

It's a shame as Happy Town boasts a fantastic cast of well-known (and, in some cases, much beloved) actors but they are hampered by a ridiculous plot, insipid dialogue, and an overabundance of exposition that's about as subtle as an anvil. At its best, Happy Town comes off as a cheap knock off of Twin Peaks without that series' effortless wit, intelligence, or flair. At its worst, it's laughably bad and cartoonish.

The series' sprawling cast includes (but isn't limited to) Geoff Stults (October Road), Lauren German (Hostel: Part II), Amy Acker (Dollhouse), Dean Winters (Rescue Me), John Patrick Amedori (Gossip Girl), Linda Kash (Best in Show), Sarah Gadon (Being Erica), Jay Paulson (October Road), Robert Wisdom (The Wire), M.C. Gainey (Lost), Abraham Benrubi (ER), Peter Outerbridge (Fringe), and Sam Neill (The Tudors).

The effect is to create the feeling of community that such a small town would have but it means that several characters are given short shrift. Amy Acker in particular seems to have precious little to do and it's a shame to see her squander her considerable ability playing a one-dimensional bread factory tour guide and wife and mother here. (A single brief look between her and Dean Winters' character is the sole storyline her character warrants here.)

Happy Town's plot revolves around Haplin, a seemingly idyllic small town in Minnesota (nicknamed "Happy Town"), only just recovered after a slew of unexplained child abductions seven years earlier. The crimes were perpetrated by a man the town has nicknamed "The Magic Man," someone you could walk past in the street without knowing, and resulted in the disappearance of several local children who vanished without a trace. The only sign that they were taken was the positioning of their favorite toy in the spot where they were taken. After a period of seven years, Haplin is finally recovering from this series of tragedies but old wounds prove hard to heal and there is friction in the town over a banner displaying the faces of the children who disappeared at the town's annual Thaw Fest.

But this is almost incidental as Haplin itself is once again shaken to its core when another crime occurs: the murder of a local man who liked to watch women and who was rumored to be The Magic Man himself. He was killed by a railroad spike to the head and the town is baffled by the gruesome crime. It's a blow to Sheriff Griff Conroy (Gainey), who has overseen the town and presided over a community that boasted no major crimes since the end of The Magic Man's kidnapping spree. A blow that seems to have weakened his mind as the sheriff keeps mentioning a mystery woman named Chloe at odd moments. His son Tommy (Stults), a family man who serves as one of the deputy sheriffs, and Detective Roger Hobbes (Wisdom) are concerned... and even more so when the Sheriff locks himself in the office, rants about the Magic Man coming back now that blood has been spilled, and proceeds to chop off his own hand with an old Indian tribal axe that seems to have been ceremonially placed on his office wall for that very purpose.

But there are other mysteries in Haplin as well. Such as the sudden arrival of New Girl in Town Henley (German), who claims to be in Haplin after the death of her mother, who vacated there years earlier, and to open up a candle shop with her inheritance money. She's given a room at a local boarding house where the draconian owner demands absolute quiet during mealtime as well as punctuality and tells Henley in no uncertain terms that she is not to visit the third floor. (Dun-dun-dun.) Also at the boarding house, Henley encounters a group of widows and the single male resident, a British gentleman named Merritt Grieves (Neill), who has just opened a classic movie memorabilia store in town and who introduces Henley to an old film entitled The Blue Door, which seems to rip off Twin Peaks' Killer BOB/Dwarf/Giant plot about otherworldly creatures entering man's heart through a rip between worlds. Henley, of course, isn't quite whom she claims to be but many of the townsfolk, including Merritt, seem to be keeping secrets of their own.

There's also the "Romeo and Juliet" secret romance (and, yes, the two characters actually do refer to themselves as Romeo and Juliet) between teenagers Georgia Bravin (Gadon), the daughter of a ne'er-do-well meth head, and wealthy town scion Andrew Haplin (Amedori), whose parents (including Dean Winters'John Haplin) never recovered from the disappearance of his little sister. Visiting Griff at the hospital, Georgina is seemingly drugged by a Mystery Man (referred to in the script as "Handsome Sam") in the hospital cafeteria and begins a strange hallucinatory journey that includes the transformation of the elevator into the blue door, the repetitive use of Carly Simons' song "You're So Vain," and the creepy smiles of the Mystery Man as she collapses in the vacant hospital lobby. When she awakens, she finds herself in the rundown junkyard home of local outcasts the Stiviletto Brothers. How did she get there? What happened to her? Why was she deposited there? We don't know and, honestly, we really don't care.

Exhausted yet? It's just one of the omnipresent mysteries that we're meant to be invested in but none of them are particularly original, compelling, or well-executed. The real tragedy with Happy Town is that it's nowhere near as clever or engaging as it believes itself to be and the haphazard plotting, hackneyed cliches, and painfully extensive pilot storylines demonstrate a lack of narrative editing on the part of the creators. After all, Twin Peaks took a few episodes to introduce all of its surreal and terrifying subplots before paying them off.

Ultimately, it's hard to imagine just why ABC decided to greenlight this project (based on a spec script written by the trio), even if it is as a midseason replacement that could use the down time to massively retool. My advice: stick to the highway and avoid this Happy Town.



Happy Town will launch in midseason on ABC.

Pilot Inspektor: An Advance Review of ABC's "V"

One the most eagerly awaited projects of this development season was ABC's reinvention of the classic 1980s sci-fi cult series V.

I had the opportunity last night to watch the gripping and electrifying pilot for ABC's new V, from studio Warner Bros. Television, and was completely sucked in by the promising vision and deft skill of the pilot installment, which sets up a slew of intriguing possibilities for the ongoing series.

For those of you not in the know, V, originally created by Kenneth Johnson, was a series about an alien invasion that aired on NBC during the 1984-1985 season following a successful run as two separate mini-series. Likewise, this new incarnation of V, overseen by The 4400 creator Scott Peters also tells the story of the arrival of an alien race to Earth via behemoth spacecrafts that appear out of nowhere to hover above 29 cities around the world.

Calling themselves The Visitors, their leader Anna (Firefly's Morena Baccarin) quickly makes contact with Earth's leaders to deliver a message (in multiple languages) proclaiming that they come in peace and, in exchange for the use of Earth's water which they need to survive, they will provide the human population with technology, the curing of 65 different diseases, and universal health care.

After all, the world right now is not in a good place. Beset by economic meltdown, multiple wars, and rising discontent, our planet desperately needs a savior and The Visitors seem to have arrived at just the right time, bringing with them the very tools to our salvation. Or have they?

However, despite the populace's open-armed acceptance of The Visitors, not everyone falls under the spell of The Vistors' charismatic charms and studied propaganda. FBI Agent Erica Evans (Lost's superb Elizabeth Mitchell) and her partner Dale Maddox (Dollhouse's Alan Tudyk) are investigating a terrorist cell that could have links to the arrival of The Visitors but Erica quickly learns that the cell, whose chatter has increased after the Visitors turned up, may have informants within the FBI itself. Erica must also contend with her rambunctious teenage son Tyler (America's Logan Huffman) who feels himself drawn to The Visitor's cause. Against his mother's wishes, Tyler is tempted to join The Visitors' Young Ambassadors program and spread the "message of hope" that The Visitors claim to bring, partially because of his blatant attraction to Lisa (Smallville's Laura Vandervoort), an alluring young Visitor guide assigned to the New York mothership.

Elsewhere, Ryan Nichols (The Perfect Holiday's Morris Chestnut) is buying an engagement ring for his fiancée Valerie Stevens (Cashmere Mafia's Lourdes Benedicto) when The Visitors arrive. He seems extremely uneasy about the presence of The Visitors and is quickly drawn back into a conflict that he wants no part of when he is contacted by members of a covert group that could have ties to the terrorist cell that Erica and Dale are investigating. And then there's dashing news anchor Chad Decker (The Nine's Scott Wolf) who is able to use The Visitor's arrival to leverage a better profile for himself when Anna selects him for an exclusive on-air interview. Will greed overwhelm his instincts to question The Visitors' motives, especially when Anna tells him that they "can't be painted in a negative light"? Or will be fall victim to the lures of fame and fortune?

Meanwhile, Father Jack Landry (The 4400's Joel Gretsch) finds himself in a difficult position, having to explain the co-existence of a divine presence and an alien race among us. His job is complicated by the fact that the congregation of his small Manhattan church has suddenly ballooned with people turning to religion in the face of fear and uncertainty and his superiors are pressuring Father Jack to toe the party line and accept The Visitors as a miracle in itself. But Jack worries that gratefulness can quickly turn to worship... and worship to devotion. His fears are realized when he receives a package from a mysterious wounded man who dies after passing along a mission to Jack: he should fear The Visitors and take the package to a specific address.

SPOILER ALERT! It happens to be the very same address where Erica and Dale are themselves headed, after receiving a tipoff at a crime scene about a possible meeting of a terrorist cell. Erica agrees to go in undercover to the meet and, after meeting Jack, discovers just who these people are in a fantastic twist: they are members of the underground human resistance and membership to their group is depending on various conditions. One, that the candidates have been referred by someone they trust. And two, that they agree to be anesthetized and have a section of skin behind their ears peeled back.

Why? To prove that they are human as The Visitors are actually a reptilian race that has successfully cloned human skin, which they wear as camouflage. Worse still: The Visitors haven't just arrived, after all. They've been here for decades and have been fomenting dissent and chaos on the planet for years, destabilizing the markets, creating unnecessary wars, stirring up paranoia and persecution. The fact that they've now revealed themselves is a sign that they are moving into the final steps of their plan. That terrorist group that Erica and Dale were investigating? It's a sleeper cell of Visitors.

I won't spoil what happens next (sorry, I'm not going to give everything away!) but I will say that what follows is a rather obvious reveal about Dale's, er, heritage (which can be glimpsed at in the below trailer), followed by a surprising plot twist that sets up a new direction for the series and creates an interesting situation that, I'm sure, will be mined in quite a lot of detail as the series progresses.

Coming off of her run as Juliet on Lost, the sensational Elizabeth Mitchell is absolutely captivating here as tough-as-nails Erica Evans, a woman scarred by the breakup of her marriage, emotionally distant towards her son, and driven by her job as a federal agent. It's impossible not to root for Erica as she kicks down doors, solves crimes, and seriously kicks ass. It's especially nice to see Mitchell, typically more reactive as Juliet, take a firm, proactive role here. Mitchell and Alan Tudyk make a hell of a team and it's hard not to jump with joy the first time they appear on screen together at the start of the pilot. Joel Gretsch is fantastic as Father Jack, a man torn in half by questions of faith; you wouldn't ordinarily think to cast Gretsch as a man of the cloth but the casting plays against type here and gives this priest a visceral and virile quality not normally seen in portrayals of priesthood.

Scott Wolf is perfectly cast as the suave womanizing news anchor Chad and he oozes the confidence and ego-centric charisma of a man used to getting his way. Morris Chestnut gives a subtle performance as a man caught in a battle he's fought to stay out of for years and find himself pulled between duty and his love for his fiancée. (Sadly, Lourdes Benedicto doesn't have much to do here but act suspicious and cry, but I am hoping that she has more to do as the series progresses.)

And I can't say enough wonderful things about Morena Baccarin's glossy performance here. She seems to radiate a Zen-like calm as Anna, the charismatic and polished leader of The Visitors but there's also an insidious reptilian quality to her as well. The way in which she moves her head and body speak to this effect and her rapid blinking is not only apt for the truth of what lies beneath her skin but it also gives Anna an uncharacteristic tell that is utterly appealing. (I was worried about Baccarin cutting her beautiful locks but her shorn hair works really well here, allowing her show off her classical good looks.)

While the characters aren't as deeply sketched as they ought to be, Scott Peters manages to set up a remarkable amount of conflict during the forty-odd minutes of this pilot episode and he creates enough characterization to set up the players in this sprawling story effectively enough that you're anxious to see just what happens to them next. (The one exception seems to be Logan Huffman, but I am hoping he can grow into the role of Tyler.)

What Peters does do extremely well here is imbue the pilot of V with an immense amount of promise and potential. After seeing just the first intoxicating installment, I'm already delirious with excitement about seeing just what happens next. Like The 4400, V excels at juggling multiple characters, each with their own storylines, and a number of subplots. There's a little bit of exposition at the start and, as I indicated earlier, the characters need some more shading but for a pilot (and one with the run time decidedly under an hour), I think that V perfectly sets up what looks to be an exciting and thought-provoking sci-fi series.

Ultimately, this reimagining of V captures the essence of the original while moving it firmly into our post-9/11 reality and it seeks to answer questions about race, religion, duty, family, compromise, and co-existence. Personally, I can't wait for midseason to find out just what Peters has up his sleeve for these characters and the coming battle.



V will launch in midseason 2010 on ABC.

Pilot Inspektor: An Advance Review of ABC's "Modern Family"

I have to say that ABC may have offered the most memorable upfront presentation in recent years, not because of the self-deprecation comedy stylings of Jimmy Kimmel but because they pulled off what many thought was impossible: they showed an entire pilot to advertisers and press. At the upfront itself.

Yesterday's upfront presentation, masterfully overseen by Anne Sweeney and Steve McPherson, led up to this groundbreaking moment by first showcasing the entire first act of its new drama series Flash Forward (a treat in itself) but then ABC went one step further by screening the full pilot episode of its new comedy Modern Family.

Modern Family, from creators/executive producers Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan (who most recently collaborated on FOX's short-lived comedy Back to You), tells the story of three very different families living in suburban America. Told in a mockumentary style that's clearly influenced by the work of director Christopher Guest, Modern Family seeks to shine a light on just how neurotic and idiosyncratic--and at the same time how reassuringly normal--every family is, no matter what its makeup.

This winning series follows the lives of three diverse families: there's Jay (Ed O'Neill), an older man who has taken a younger bride in Gloria (Sofía Vergara) and become a reluctant father to her idealistically romantic young son Manny (Rico Rodriguez). There's a traditional nuclear family, overseen by Phil (Ty Burrell), a dad who's far less cool than he believes himself to be, and Claire (Julie Bowen), a mom who struggles to keep her family moving in a straight line. Their kids, Haley (Sarah Hyland), Luke (Nolan Gould), and Alex (Ariel Winter) are a motley bunch, prone to getting their heads stuck in banisters and accidentally shooting one another with BB pellets. (In the pilot episode, 15-year-old daughter Haley brings home a high school senior and chaos--and painful hilarity--ensues.) Finally, there's gay couple Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and the doughy Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) who return from Vietnam with an adopted baby daughter Lily in tow.

I have to say that I was completely captivated by the pilot episode, directed by Jason Winer, which offered a nice blend of character introduction, comedic timing, and a nice twist ending that neatly ties the action together.

The cast is a real treat, with each of the actors perfectly cast in their roles. The role of Cameron could have been a stereotypical gay role but Stonestreet plays it (no pun intended) straight, offering a performance that's as naturalistic as it is nuanced, even as Cameron retains his sense of a dramatic entrance. (Cue the soundtrack to The Lion King.) The same holds for the talented Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who gives Mitchell an uptight, severe personality that's at odds with the messiness of real life he's about to encounter as a new parent; yet Ferguson's Mitchell never comes off as unlikable, despite a rant on an airplane about cream puffs. Sofia Vergara is hilarious as the sexy Gloria, who tosses off random facts about her past life and previous husband without filtering herself. Ty Burrell and Julie Bowen are welcome additions to any cast and they are well balanced as a married couple whose mission in life seems to be raising their kids so that they don't get pregnant or shoot anyone. (Seeing Burrell's solution to son Luke's inadvertent shooting of his sister is hilarious.) Additionally, it's fantastic as well to see the curmudgeonly Ed O'Neill back as a series regular; here, his gruff demeanor and caustic comments belie a, well, gruff interior as well.

Unlike NBC's Parks and Recreation, which doesn't quite know how to use the mockumentary format to its advantage, Levitan and Lloyd employ the usual tricks of the trade: hand-held cameras, talking heads, etc. but they use them significantly better here than the writer/producers of Parks and Recreation. As it's the pilot installment, the talking heads--in which the couples are paired together, talking about themselves and their families--serve to introduce the characters and explore their relationships, but the reveals are always based in humor and never feel overtly expositional. (One rather humorous example: Gloria recounts the small village that she hails from, turning to her husband to remind her how to say in English what her town was number one in. "Murders," he says succinctly. "Ah, yes, the murders," purrs Gloria, who later recounts how she and her former husband fell out of a window while making love.)

Modern Family is one part of ABC's new comedy strategy on Wednesday evenings, where it will launch a two-hour block of half-hours that also includes fellow family comedies Hank and The Middle, which separately boast Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton, both of whom worked with Levitan and Lloyd on Back to You. Despite the marquee names of Modern Family's lead-in series, I can't help but root for Modern Family after falling for this series' winning combination of biting wit, subtle humor, and heart. Ultimately, this is one family I'm more than happy to spend time with each week.

Modern Family airs Wednesdays at 9 pm ET/PT this fall on ABC.

Televisionary Exclusive: First Look at ABC's "Flash Forward" Pilot Script

ABC has had a tough time attempting to find a timeslot companion for its signature series Lost. Over the past few years, it's attempted to to find a series that could either sit beside the Bad Robot-produced series or fill the timeslot during Lost's hiatus period. Such series as The Nine, Invasion, Daybreak, and others have attempted to do just that with limited success.

Until now.

ABC's new drama pilot Flash Forward, written by David S. Goyer (Batman Begins, Blade) and Brannon Braga (Enterprise, Threshold) and loosely based on Robert J. Sawyer's 1999 novel of the same name, might just be the one to do the trick. With Lost set to end in May 2010, the network seems hellbent on finding a suitable replacement for the series and Goyer and Braga's project seems the best suited so far to capture the imaginations of Lost's devoted band of obsessive followers.

It was with much curiosity that I sat down last week to read the pilot script for Flash Forward, entitled "No More Good Days." (If you're at all spoiler-phobic, I suggest you avoid reading what follows as I'll be fleshing out the logline that's been floating about the media and discussing specific plot points from Goyer and Braga's pilot script.)

What is Flash Forward about? In a nutshell, it's the chaos that ensues after everyone on the planet blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. But that's not entirely true. First, about 40 million or so poor souls don't survive the global event; airplanes fall from the sky, cars collide, people fall down stairs, drown, etc. as they lose consciousness during whatever they're doing at that moment. Second, the effect isn't so much a blackout but a Lost-appropriate flash forward in time as each of the survivors experiences a snippet from their own future during that time loss. And not just any moment, but a very specific moment five months from then: 8 pm on April 20th, 2010.

Why do each of them witness that specific moment? That's one of the script's central mysteries, along with what caused the worldwide blackout, whether it was a natural event like an earthquake or whether it was a man-made, terrorist-style attack, and whether the future can be altered. (Other possibilities for the Event not discussed in the script: extraterrestrial or a 4400-style warning from the future. And, personally, I would have made that future date, oh, sometime during the end of May sweeps.)

The survivors are, in many cases, deeply disturbed by the visions of their own futures and the FBI, among other agencies, begins to look for patterns emerging in the overlapping visions of everyday people, visions that include a new rollout of Apple's Lion OS XI operating system, Dow Jones highs, and other facets of the future that could change the course of life around them. But that comes later; mass pandemonium is first step immediately after the Event as people attempt to make sense of what has occurred and make their way to their loved ones.

So let's meet our cast of characters. Los Angeles-based FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), a recovering alcoholic, and his partner Dominic Witten (John Cho) are in pursuit of a group of suspected terrorists when the Event occurs. Mark has a vision of himself, badly cut up, beaten, and unshaven at the FBI field office. He stands in front of a white board containing elements of a case codenamed MOSAIC: a photograph of a badly burned doll, the name D. Gibbons, etc. when he hears two people approaching outside. He takes a swig from his hip flask (obviously having fallen off the wagon), draws his gun, and takes the safety off. Whoever is out there, they are gunning for him. Dominic, meanwhile, experiences no vision whatsoever and begins to fear that it means he'll be dead, a suspicion made all the more real when he receives a phone call from a woman in South Africa who claims to have seen a vision of a newspaper article about Dominic's murder.

Their boss Stan Wedeck (Law & Order: Criminal Intent's Courtney B. Vance) quickly tries to take control of this bewildering turn of events. Computer-savvy agent Janice Hawk (Welcome to the Captain's Christine Woods) reluctantly admits that she had a vision of herself with her baby daughter. The only problem is that she's not pregnant and she can't conceive as she recently battled cervical cancer. (Curious that.) The FBI quickly look to solve the riddle of what happened and try to find overlapping visions of the future that can corroborate others' stories (hence the Mosaic in Mark's vision), leading Janice to discovers a quite shocking revelation about the blackout, one that could provide some answers... or merely more questions. (Sorry, folks, I won't reveal exactly what she finds!)

Mark's wife Olivia (Lost's Sonya Walger) is an emergency room doctor at UCLA Medical Center; she's involved in an operation during the Event and nearly loses the patient. Olivia and Mark have been through some rough times during his drinking and their marriage is barely holding on by a thread. So what then of her vision of her own future, one that she shares with a stranger in the bed she now sleeps in with Mark? Curious. Olivia has little time to ponder her fate when a child, Dylan, is brought in; Olivia performs emergency surgery on him but before she does, he recognizes her and calls her by her name. Hell, he even refers to the rooster cookie jar in her home that contains Nilla wafers. Meanwhile, Dylan's father Lloyd Simcoe (Swingtown's Jack Davenport) attempts to reach his son from Northern California. In a twist of coincidence (or is it?), he just happens to be the mysterious stranger in Olivia's vision with whom she is romantically involved five months in the future.

Other characters in Flash Forward's sprawling cast include Mark and Olivia's daughter Charlie, who says that she had "a bad dream" during the Event and presages major disaster ahead for the survivors when she says that there are "no more good days"; Charlie's teenage babysitter Nicole who views the Event as a punishment from God; Olivia's fellow doctor Bryce Varley, who was about to commit suicide when the Event occurred; Mark's AA sponsor Aaron, who has a vision of his daughter Shawna--killed overseas in the military--alive and well; and New Scotland Yard FBI liaison Inspector Fiona Banks who has a shared vision with FBI agent Gough about something called the Rutherford Case.

Whew.

While Goyer and Braga's script stumbles in a few parts and the dialogue could use a little tweaking in some places (the scene between Dominic and Kathryn was a little on the nose, for example), the overall result is pretty damn strong, offering up a potential series that--like Lost before it--tackles the notions of fate versus free will, preordained destiny versus random chaos, and a life-altering experience that will shake several characters' perceptions, outlooks, and core identities as they adapt to new circumstances. In order words: Big Life Issues, all nicely wrapped up in a genre series that will fulfill the needs of fans of action, sci-fi, drama, romance, etc. and attract men and women of all ages.

Overall, Flash Forward is an extremely formidable offering for series contention. And while many networks have strayed from overly complex serialized dramas with large casts of characters of late, Flash Forward could be the one to buck this trend. ABC knows that it has to find a replacement for Lost sooner rather than later and, if handled properly, this could be a suitable contender to the throne.

I would be extremely surprised, given the level of talent that ABC Studios has already attracted to this project, if Flash Forward doesn't earn itself a place on ABC's 2009-10 schedule. The mere fact that Jack Davenport has been cast in such a small role in the pilot script (he has about 30 seconds worth of screen time in this undated draft) leads me to believe that the studio and network have major plans for this project.

Given the strength of the pilot script and the potential for franchise possibilities (not to mention the opportunity to offer Lost fans a new fount for complex mysteries), I'm already looking forward to see just what Goyer and Braga have up their sleeves for the series... and just what new tragedies will befall Mark and the others as they seek answers. One need not have a flash forward of their own to see that ABC would be wise to order Flash Forward to series.

Stay tuned.

Second Bite: Another Look at HBO's "True Blood"

Back in May, I wrote a pretty negative review of the original pilot for HBO's upcoming Alan Ball vampires-in-the-South drama True Blood, based on the novel series by Charlaine Harris. (You can read my original review here.)

Since then, I was contacted by HBO, who asked me to take another look at True Blood's revised pilot ("Strange Love"), which recast one major character and altered a few scenes, and the series' second episode.

Always willing to take another look at something, I agreed, especially when the project in question is the next HBO Sunday night lynchpin and comes from such storied auspices. So did writer/director Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) and producers manage to fix some of the problems I had with the original pilot for True Blood? Let's discuss.

For those of you who didn't read my original review of True Blood (and shame on you if you didn't!), here's the quick recap of the plot of True Blood: vampires have "come out of the coffin" thanks to the advent of a Japanese synthetic blood called Tru Blood but poor, misunderstood telepathic waitress/social pariah Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) hasn't seen a single vamp in her sleepy Southern town of Bon Temps, Louisiana... Until, that is, a vampire named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) comes into Merlotte's, the bar Sookie works at, and changes her life forever, especially when Sookie realizes that she can't hear his thoughts for a change.

If that reads like the near perfect set-up for a series, you'd be right. However, the earlier version of the pilot jumps around uncomfortably in terms of tone, offering a mishmash of satire, soft-core porn, horror, domestic drama, supernatural thriller, and race relations metaphor. The revised pilot tones down these disparate elements slightly but still meanders a bit too much for my liking. While the pilot episode is an improvement over the original, there's still something... off about the production that I can't quite put my finger on. It's almost as though it's itself missing a soul.

Special effects still grate, especially the transformation from human to vamp; given how smoothly Buffy the Vampire Slayer managed this effect so many years ago, it seems both cartoonish and clunky here: the fangs themselves seem too oddly close together and when they drop into position, as it were, they're accompanied by a silly clicking noise. Another attempt at effects wizardry is the combination of sped up and slowed down footage when Bill "quickly" comes to Sookie's side. It's clearly intended to be spooky and jarring but it's just downright funny to watch. Not the intended result.

One of the major improvements, however, that the series has made is the casting of Rutina Wesley (How She Move) as Tara; she replaced the original pilot's Brook Kerr (Passions), whose shrill, unsympathetic performance made me want to smash my television to smithereens. Kerr's Tara was as irritating as nails on a chalkboard; Wesley imbues her character with a vulnerablility that she masks with hard-edged armor and gives her an added ironic twist: how is it that this strong woman who feels the need to tell everyone exactly what she's thinking at that moment can't bring herself to tell the truth about her long-standing feelings to Sookie's brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten)?

An added scene between Sookie, Jason, and their grandmother Adele (Lois Smith) adds a dimension of believability to their characters' connectivity, giving them a moment of domestic bliss before things start to go off the rails. It also allows Sookie and Jason to display some semblance of emotion towards one another, which was somewhat lacking in the original pilot.

The revised pilot also alters the climactic showdown between Sookie and the Rattrays, the trashy couple who capture Bill at Merlotte's and begin to drain his blood in the parking lot. After telepathically hearing their intentions and noticing that Bill has disappeared, Sookie sets off to rescue him. In the original pilot, a female vampire lurks nearby and appears to assist Sookie in her quest to free Bill and punish the Rattrays. In the revised pilot, however, this woman is removed altogether, leading us to believe that Sookie was somehow able to take down Mack and Denise on her own. Though there still is the matter of that dog that's always seemingly lurking about Merlotte's as well... Hmm.

As much as I still didn't connect with the pilot episode, I do have to say that the series' second episode ("The First Taste"), also submitted for review, is a vast improvement over the premiere installment.

Tonally, the series seems to have settled down a little bit and the characters all seem a hell of a lot more comfortable in their own skins. Additionally, the story kicks into high gear with Bill repaying Sookie by rescuing her in turn from the sadistic Rattrays when she is savagely beaten as payback for robbing them of Bill's "v-juice." This being a vampire drama first and foremost, Bill is able to save Sookie through some unconventional means that bring them much closer together than either could have possibly realized.

If there was a way to skip the first episode (which does, unfortunately, set up the series) and watch the second, I would definitely advise you to figure that out. The second episode is a clearer realization of Charlaine Harris' novels, blending together backwoods humor, underworld menaces, and homespun wisdom into a much more appealing package and we're given a much clearer sense of Sookie's world and how each of the characters interact.

Wesley's Tara and Paquin's Sookie definitely seem like mismatched best friends and we learn that Lafayette, the bar's drag queen short order cook, is Tara's flamboyant cousin. Likewise, the murder investigation of Maudette Pickens (who still, to me, looks way too old to have attended high school with Sookie) takes an interesting turn, especially once Jason Stackhouse gets to see the video tape that Maudette secretly recorded of their sex session, and Sookie finds herself in way over her head when she drops by Bill's house one night and discovers that he might not be the only vampire in Bon Temps.

Additionally, True Blood's second episode sets up a seedy underbelly of Bon Temps involving fangbangers, drugs, rough sex, and all sorts of illicit behavior, all of which mirror the inclusion of a literal underworld invading this sleepy town in the form of vampires. While at times a little heavy-handed with the metaphors for vampires as a recognized minority group (a subplot involves a racist preacher and an ACLU-type organization fighting for vampire rights), the inclusion of vampires and the ghost of slavery in the Deep South is an intriguing proposition and provides real sparks during a heated discussion between Bill and Adele as he talks about his family's slaves during the 1860s as Tara sits uncomfortably nearby.

All in all, I do think that HBO made some improvements to the open installment of True Blood but the overall effect isn't enough to salvage that pilot episode. However, I do think that they seemed to fix some of my issues in time for the series' second episode, which gives me a much clearer idea of where this series is going creatively and sets up a slew of intriguing subplots.

Based on the pilot, I don't know that I'd stick around to see True Blood take flight. However, the second episode's relative strength does make me a little more willing to come back again for another bite.

True Blood premieres September 7th at 9 pm ET/PT on HBO.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Greatest American Dog (CBS); Last Comic Standing (NBC); Smallville (CW); Ugly Betty (ABC); Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? (FOX)

9 pm: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS); Last Comic Standing (NBC; 9-11 pm); Supernatural (CW); Grey's Anatomy (ABC); So You Think You Dance (FOX)

10 pm: Swingtown (CBS); Hopkins (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching:

8 pm: Greatest American Dog.

I think this looks absolutely cheesy but my dog gave me her saddest eyes when I was setting up this week's TiVo To Do List so I'll record it for her to watch when I'm not around.

9 pm: Dragons' Den on BBC America.

It's the US series premiere of the British reality series, in which inventors pitch a variety of products--like a machine that helps babies sleep--to a panel of multi-millionaires (a.k.a. the Dragons). I'm still feeling burned that BBCA cancelled my beloved MI-5 but I'll check this out anyway.

10 pm: Burn Notice on USA.

I wasn't crazy about Burn Notice's first season but I am crazy about BSG's Tricia Helfer and she joins the cast with tonight's sophomore season premiere ("Breaking and Entering"), in which Michael discovers he's been recruited by the very same people who burned him, tries to get to some intel that's being guarded by some mercenaries, and meets his new handler.

10 pm: Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List on Bravo.

Okay, I know, I know, but I find her acerbic overeagerness somehow calming. On tonight's episode ("Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace"), Kathy looks forward to performing at a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden and sets out for Manhattan to spend time with her friends. Something tells me not everything will go according to plan...

10 pm: Swingtown.

On tonight's episode ("Friends with Benefits"), the green-eyed monster rears its ugly head when Trina meets up with her high-school sweetheart, leading Tom to get jealous; Susan attends a ladies' lunch to try and help promote Bruce's career but Janet ends up making more of an impression on the organization.

Where Pilots Go to Die: FOX's "The Oaks"

It's always sad when you watch a botched pilot of a script that you really, really loved and are just wholly disappointed by what you see.

In this case, I'm talking about the pilot episode for FOX's supernatural drama The Oaks, which wasn't picked up to series. Last I heard, studio 20th Century Fox Television was attempting to shop the project to other networks, but I would be surprised if anyone picks it up after what I've seen. (You can read my original review of the pilot script here.)

It's not that there isn't an interesting story there because there is. I was utterly captivated by David Schulner's gorgeously nuanced script for The Oaks, which tells the story of three very different couples living in the same house in three different decades: there's twenty-something couple Mike (Matt Lanter) and Sarah (Shannon Lucio) who have recently weathered the death of their young daughter and have fallen apart as a couple; middle-aged blue collar parents of two Frank (Michael Rispoli) and Molly (Romy Rosemont, who replaced Gina McKee) whose daughter Lucy (Mackenzie Milone) seems troubled and whose son Brian (Kyle Kaplan) is prone to spying on his developmentally challenged teenage neighbor Jessica (Shanna E. Braddy); and expectant professional couple Dan (Jeremy Renner) and Hollis (Bahar Soomekh) who are in the midst of completing renovations on their historic home even as they interview midwives for the arrival of their child.

Some interesting stories and the action often transitions seamlessly from each decade to the next, their plots often overlapping as they serve a dual purpose: the first to explore the invisible thread that seems to connect these couples to one another through time (the ghost story) and the second to explore that most fragile of states: wedlock. Each of the couples faces an enormous hurdle in their married life, from the loss of a child to the non-existence of a sex life to long-buried secrets that, in the case of Dan and Hollis, could threaten to derail the life they've build for one another.

See, Dan did Something Bad as a teenager growing up in the very same neighborhood that he has now moved back into with his wife, something that 1988's Little Brian witnessed and something that involved taking advantage of Jessica, who--in 2008--is all grown up but still living in her parents' house right across the street from Dan and Hollis' new house. Dan claims that he doesn't remember Jessica but it's clear that he does, even if Hollis isn't quite suspicious enough.

Add to this a secret room, an oak tree planted by Sarah in 1968 that refuses to be cut down in 2008, whispers and visions in the water, and characters showing up in various eras seemingly by chance and you have the makings of an interesting and provocative supernatural-tinged drama, albeit one that seems more designed for a limited run than an open-ended series.

So what doesn't work? The majority of the casting for one, sadly. While the script brings these characters to life in vivid detail, many of the actors seem strangely out of place or unbelievable in the roles. Yes, I get that Mike and Sarah are a young couple but I found it extremely difficult to accept Lanter and Lucio as adults old enough to own a house (even with his father's help) and have had raised and lost a child, even as producers have tried to age up Lucio a bit with some period-appropriate makeup, hair, and clothes. By the reverse token, I had a hard time feeling connected to Rispoli and Rosemont's, er, dumpier characters who seemed to have zero chemistry between them whatsoever; while their sexless marriage is a huge element to the plot, I didn't see the whiff of any previous attraction between them evident in their interactions.

As for Jeremy Renner, he just looks... distractingly odd in the 2008 segments and I wanted to see him express some sort of moral conflict going on inside him. Or anything really. Renner's Dan is meant to be wholly emasculated by his Blackberry-obsessed career-driven wife Hollis (Soomekh) but we don't even see a clue about this dynamic between them. They just seem like any other tech-savvy modern couple expecting a baby and paranoid about disabilities and end up little more than ciphers on screen.

The direction was also disappointing. I'm usually a fan of Michael Cuesta (Dexter) but here I didn't see any elements of his trademark flair; camerawork was pretty straightforward and pulled some cliche zooms and close-ups right out of the 1980s horror flick handbook. For such an evocative and imaginative script, the produced pilot of The Oaks felt wholly flat and unrewarding, a scenario that may have occurred since both writer David Schulner and executive producer Shawn Ryan (The Shield) were not on set during production, due to the writers strike.

I can understand why The Oaks didn't make it to series at FOX and I can also understand why studio execs would possibly want to scrap the filmed version, recast, and start over again at another network: the script and the characters are intriguing and the concept is original and thought-provoking. But like several of the characters in The Oaks, after watching this, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I needed a bath to wash off my disappointment.

Sigh.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Price is Right Million Dollar Spectacular (CBS); Baby Borrowers (NBC); America's Next Top Model (CW); Wife Swap (ABC); So You Think You Can Dance (FOX; 8-10 pm)

9 pm: Criminal Minds (CBS); Baby Borrowers (NBC); Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious (CW); Supernanny (ABC)

10 pm: CSI: New York (CBS); Celebrity Circus (ABC); Primetime: Crime (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

9-10 pm: Secret Diary of a Call Girl/Weeds on Showtime.

As I am still catching up on telly that I missed during my honeymoon, I actually missed this week's episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Weeds on Showtime, so I'll be watching them tonight. On Secret Diary of a Call Girl, Belle is booked by a return client for the entire evening and gets to test out her time management skills. Over on Weeds ("The Whole Blah Damn Thing"), Nancy makes her first official run across the border for Guillermo and Celia is offered a deal by Captain Till.

Pilot Inspektor: HBO's "True Blood"

It's funny how your expectations can completely derail your perceptions of a series' strengths or weaknesses. As longtime readers of this site know, I have been beyond excited to watch the pilot for HBO's upcoming series True Blood since I first read the pilot script during the winter/spring of 2007. (Yes, it's really been that long since I first started blathering on about it.)

So imagine my shock and chagrin when I sat down to watch the pilot for True Blood--written and directed by Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) and based on the novel series by Charlaine Harris--last week and was royally disappointed. Consider me a vampire faced with the prospect of feasting on an anorexic: all of the pieces were there but it was just flat, empty, and remarkably tasteless.

Sure, Anna Paquin (X-Men) is absolutely cute as a button as telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse; she's a blonde, perky barmaid at Merlotte's, a backwoods bar in post-Katrina Louisiana, and a social pariah, rejected by most of the townspeople for the unnerving way she is able to hear people's innermost thoughts in a constant cacophony of sordid audio details. But her luck takes a turn for the better when a vampire--named Bill, no less, and played by NY-LON's Stephen Moyer--comes into the bar one evening.

Sookie's amazed that she can't hear Bill Compton's thoughts and then is called upon to rescue him from some predatory lowlifes who want to drain him for his narcotic-like blood and sell the plasma to the highest bidder. (In this world, vampires have "come out of the coffin" and walk among humans, thanks to a Japanese-created synthetic blood called Tru Blood that's sold at most liquor stores.)

It's a convincing setup for a series that aims to be a mature, pay cable version of, say, Buffy the Vampire Slayer-meets-Dark Shadows or similar, but the inclusion of graphic sex into the mix makes the entire thing play more like soft-core porn. A storyline involving Sookie's lothario brother Jason (Summerland's Ryan Kwanten) having sex with local bad girl Maudette Pickens (Dirt's Danielle Sapia)--a woman addicted to having sex with vampires and filming it--turns into a gruesome S&M-charged affair that doesn't jibe at all well with the innocence of Sookie or the off-kilter humor of the rest of the episode. Maudette is found strangled and a tape of her having rough sex with Jason is found at the scene and he becomes the chief suspect in her murder... even though we now know there are several vampires hanging around town, including Bill and a mysterious female vampire who comes to Sookie's aid after she tries to free Bill.

(Aside: It bothered me that Maudette and Sookie supposedly went to high school together; the woman playing Maudette looks like she has about twenty years on Paquin and that little revelation threw me for a loop and took me off page for a few minutes.)

What I loved about the script was the interplay between the characters and how well each of the supporting characters were developed: how Sookie's boss Sam (Sam Trammell) sublimates his obvious desire for Sookie even though he's shouting his love for her inside her head; how alternately attracted and repelled Jason is by the notion of vampire sex; or how Sookie's friend Tara (Passions' Brook Kerr, who was later replaced by Rutina Wesley) can't censor her thoughts at all, either inside her head or when they're spoken aloud. But intsead, in the filmed version of the pilot, I find that none of the supporting characters are particularly sympathetic. They're all loud, irritating, and shrill. It's like they're all shouting all the time inside Sookie's head. Only, like Sookie, we're doomed to hear them all the damn time. (Kerr is definitely hellishly annoying; her Tara won't shut up for a single second she's on-screen.)

Tonally, the pilot was all over the place: a sex-fueled drama, off-kilter comedy, and a serious exploration of class warfare in small-town Americana after the storm. Then you throw in telepathy, vampires, and murder--not to mention some seriously cheesy special effects (they make the vampire transformation in Buffy look like the work of CGI geniuses)--and what you're left with is a bit of a muddle.

It's a bit of a headscratcher whether this will be seriously reworked (or, hell, completely reshot) before True Blood launches... well, whenever it will inevitably launch after such a long delay. But given the recent regime change at HBO, I wonder whether Sue Naegle will step in to fix this bloody awful mess. Pun definitely intended.

Pilot Inspektor: FOX's "Fringe"

Every once in a while a pilot comes along that is so perfect, such a shining indication of what the final series will be, so perfectly cast and directed, that it's impossible to look away.

That pilot, ladies and gentlemen, is definitely FOX's phenomenal science-tinged drama Fringe.

In a nutshell, Fringe is The X-Files for the new millennium: eerie, gripping, and still haunting even after the final credits have rolled, albeit containing an overt (rather than subtle) humor that never existed in that series. In this case, the aliens aren't from outer space: they're the mega-corporations that dot the American landscape, pushing science and technology past their limits and exploiting that for their own gain. It poses several ethical questions: when does the pursuit of scientific discovery go too far? Who is monitoring the rapid advances in technology in today's day and age? And what happens when a scientist--or a group of scientists--decides that the world is their laboratory?

Longtime readers of this site know my longstanding love for the pilot script, from Transformers scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman... who previously worked with executive producer J.J. Abrams on his seminal ABC series Alias and on the feature films Mission Impossible III and Star Trek. My original review of Fringe's pilot script from last October can be found here.

A quick recap: a German plane self lands at Boston's Logan Airport with no signs of life on board and the windows covered in what appears to be blood. An inter-agency team is quickly assembled to investigate the incident; a team which includes Agents Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and her secret lover/colleague John Scott (Boston Legal's Mark Valley) and is overseen by Philip Broyles (Lost's Lance Reddick). Broyles puts Olivia onto a possible lead involving a storage facility; they discover a makeshift lab, which their suspect detonates, unleashing a wave of chemicals onto Agent Scott... and then he escapes into the night. Looking for a way to save John's life, Olivia tracks down the only man capable of saving him: Dr. Walter Bishop (Lord of the Rings' John Noble), a genius scientific researcher who had been committed to a mental hospital years before. But the only way she can get to him is through his estranged son, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), a genius misfit with no love lost for his father.

Still with me? During his years working on a classified project for the US government, Walter Bishop investigated the shady area of fringe science (ha, not just a clever name), studying things like teleportation, telepathy, reanimation: the inexplicable things hovering on the, well, fringes of pure science.

The produced pilot of Fringe, which I ran home to watch last evening, doesn't differ all that much from the written script. Under the master direction of Alex Graves (Journeyman), it's even more taut, suspenseful, humorous, and downright scary as the pilot script but now has the added benefit of a top-notch cast and stunning visuals. Hell, even the on-screen graphics that announce the varied locations of the pilot episode are creative and innovative, existing not so much as words on the screen but words embedded in the actual landscape, through which the camera moves like thick smoke. It's a genius visual and one that gives the action a distinctive and unique flair. And the special effects--particularly those involving Agent Scott's transformation into a transparent, crystalline structure--are absolutely breathtaking.

As Olivia Dunham, Australian newcomer Anna Torv is transcendent. Once again proving that no one picks a star in the making like J.J. Abrams, Torv is positively radiant on screen, effortlessly combining the steeliness of Jennifer Garner with the soulfulness of Cate Blanchett. Simply put: she's riveting, whether she's jumping off the roof of a building or climbing into a sensory deprivation tank. You can almost see the wheels turning in her head as she begins to put the pieces of this puzzle together as she begins to see that isolated and inexplicable incidents may be linked, as she begins to see The Pattern.

In reading the original pilot script last year, I was a little concerned with how the character of Dr. Walter Bishop would really be portrayed: it's a difficult character to play, one gifted with genius and cursed with madness and the line between the two facets of his personality seem pretty darned blurred when Fringe first begins. In the gifted hands of John Noble, Walter does spring to life and his scenes are master classes in the making: at once heartbreaking (he's unable to find the appropriate words when he first lays eyes on his son after 17 years), disturbing (he admits he's wet himself in the car), and hilarious (his astonished amusement at SpongeBob SquarePants).

As for Joshua Jackson, he seems as though he hasn't ever left television. He is such a natural as the gifted and misunderstood Peter, so adept at running from his problems, that it almost seems written for him. Jackson gets to play wry, sardonic, and romantic, sometimes all in the same breath. The chemistry between him and Torv is outright palpable as much as both of their characters might fight against it. The scene in which she disrobes in order to slip into the tank is so understated (and Peter's awkwardness and attraction to Olivia so apt) that it's easy to root for them. ('Shippers, start your engines now.)

Fringe could have been a bleak, darker-than-dark series but instead the tension and foreboding atmosphere are abated by the inclusion of some off-kilter humor, often from Walter Bishop himself. And, hell, there's even a cow. But these moments aren't overused, still shining like little gems among the darkness of the rest of the plot.

Ultimately, Fringe is spellbinding television, flawlessly setting up both an intricate overarching mythology (another J.J. Abrams specialty) as well as the possibility for self-contained procedural storytelling, a rare combination and one that will undoubtedly work for the series in the long run. As for this jaded critic, I'm going to be the first one in line for what promises to be yet another dizzying and mind-opening J.J. Abrams rollercoaster ride.

Fringe launches with a two-hour premiere on August 26th on FOX.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: NCIS (CBS; 8-10 pm); Most Outrageous Moments/Most Outrageous Moments (NBC); Reaper (CW); Dancing with the Stars (ABC); American Idol (FOX)

9 pm: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC); Reaper (CW); Dancing with the Stars (ABC; 9-11 pm); Hell's Kitchen (FOX)

10 pm: Shark (CBS); Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC)

What I'll Be Watching

8-10 pm: Britcoms on BBC America.

I don't know about you but by Tuesday night, I'm usually in need of some comedy in my life. Why not stick around on Tuesday nights for BBC America's new comedy lineup, consisting of classic episodes of Coupling, new comedy Not Going Out, and Absolutely Fabulous? You'll thank me in the morning.

Pilot Inspektor: ABC's "Life on Mars"

ABC had very little to announce for next season at this year's upfronts; most of its pilots have yet to have been shot and won't film a single frame until later this summer. And the few things that ABC did end up ordering were either picked up from another network (Scrubs) or had been shot last year (Life on Mars).

What's my point? I finally sat down last night to watch the pilot for Life on Mars with bated breath. After all, longtime readers know how bloody much I love the UK original series of Life on Mars--starring John Simm, Liz White, and Philip Glenister--and I had pretty low expectations for this David E. Kelley-created US remake, which keeps the basic plot intact (detective Sam Tyler gets hit by a car whilst investigating a serial killer and wakes up in 1972... or does he?), along with much of the dialogue, shot compositions, and graphics. (Kelley, for his part, won't be involved with the series; ABC has hired Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg, the executive producers/creators of the recently axed October Road, to come on board as showrunners.)

I wasn't sure how the action would really transport from 1970s Manchester with its Northern accents, creepy Test Card girl, and satirical humor intact (not to mention a rocking soundtrack from David Bowie et al). It's an odd juxtaposition with Los Angeles, which lacks the same essential temperament as Manchester and was undergoing a very different transition of its own in the 1970s. The essential look of the show, with its sunshine and palm trees, seems very much at odds with the sort of haunting, slow burn atmosphere of the plot. The fact that Sam Tyler is quite possibly laying in a coma in a present day hospital seems to lend itself better to the wet, damp, grey atmosphere of Northern England than sunny Southern California.

Jason O'Mara (Men in Trees) plays Sam Tyler who, like his predecessor, is on the hunt for a serial killer in the present day when his colleague/girlfriend Maya (BSG: Razor's Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen) is kidnapped by the madman; distraught, Sam pulls over onto the side of the road (or in this case a median on a completely deserted road by the Disney Concert Hall) and, while listening to Bowie's "Life on Mars" in unexpectedly hit by a car. While the shots are almost perfectly lifted from the original, that version shocked and disturbed me when Sam was struck out of nowhere; here, it's laughably bad and telegraphed a mile away. O'Mara isn't bad as Sam Tyler but he lacks the intensity and rapid-fire thought of Simm's interpretation; he's more brawn than brains here.

Sam wakes up in 1972 Los Angeles and wanders the streets in a dazed, bewildered state before ending up at the police station where he (A) discovers that he is still a detective and has been transferred (from where?) to this precinct and (B) meets the adorable Annie (What About Brian's Rachelle Lefevre) and gruff boss Gene Hunt (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Colm Meaney).

While Lefevre is absolutely charming as sweet-as-pie Annie (though doesn't quite match the kewpie doll innocence of the original's Liz White), Meaney is a pale imitation of Glenister's Gene Hunt; while Hunt is an amoral psychopath in his own right, he manages to still be sympathetic and fascinating at the same time, no small testament to the acting prowess of Philip Glenister. Meaney plays Hunt as an aggressive thug but with little of the charisma that has made the character so memorable on not one but two series (including Life on Mars spinoff Ashes to Ashes). When Hunt slams his fist into Sam's stomach as a way of introducing himself it just didn't ring as true, especially as O'Mara towers over Meaney physically and isn't as slight or wiry as Simm was in the role.

Overall, I was deeply disappointed by Life on Mars' pilot episode. The original had such spark, creativity, and vision--from the overarching plot to the set design, costumes, and visual look of every shot--while the US version seems fairly... generic. It's dully colored puddle of an episode that looks to have been shot on a soundstage and has none of the nail-biting tension, subtle satire (of British cop series like The Sweeney, among other things), or the psychological drama of the brilliant original.

No, Life on Mars seems more like mass-produced, microwavable fare; it's boxed macaroni and cheese: loaded with calories and fat but no soul.

Life on Mars launches this fall on Thursday nights at 10 pm on ABC.

Playing with Dolls: An Advance Look at Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" Pilot Script

I am still trying to catch my breath.

I'm talking about my reaction last night after reading Joss Whedon's brilliantly evocative script for his new seven-episode drama series for FOX, Dollhouse.

If there's one thing that Dollhouse has been this development season in Hollywood, it's been THE script to try to get your hands on. After weeks of conniving, begging, and bartering, I finally managed to get my greedy mitts on the script and hungrily devoured the 54-page script in about fifteen minutes, seemingly without pausing to breathe.

While I had extremely high expectations for Dollhouse (I always trust in the Joss), I was worried that, after all of the hype and hoopla, it wouldn't quite live up to my preconceived notions about the project. I am happy to say that not only were those expectations matched but they were exceeded. This isn't latter-day Alias by any stretch of the imagination: while there are still costume changes and choreographed fight sequences, it delves into bigger issues of morality and mortality and asks hard questions about the ethical ramifications of science and technology.

Yes, there is much more to Dollhouse than meets the eye and Whedon succeeds here by filling his script with a multitude of morally grey characters engaged in one of the most sickening and intriguing displays of human trafficking ever devised. I don't want to spoil anything but I will say that there there's an unexplained back story (referred to as Alpha) that will likely come into play down the line and the power structure within the Dollhouse is a fluctuating, living thing unto itself. As for the Dollhouse itself, it certainly didn't "look" anything like I expected it to based on the information that was trickling out during casting: it's not a draconian prison nor an icy SD-6-type operations hub; instead it's more like a serene, Japanese-influenced, high-tech spa for the Actives.

But there's a real undercurrent of danger lurking here and the staffers--from jokey and amoral tech Topher and gruff handler Boyd to the physically scarred Dr. Claire Saunders and manipulative overseer Adelle DeWitt--engage in a high-stakes game of human chess, with the Actives little more than expendable pawns. Or, well, dolls.

As for Dollhouse's lead character Echo, this is quite a role that Whedon has written for Eliza Dushku, allowing her to play a variety of personalities and moods in a single episode. In fact, we get to see Echo in no less than five (off the top of my head anyway) identities in the pilot episode alone. As we all know, Echo is struggling with self-awareness, as she begins remembering things from her previous "engagements" that she shouldn't, things that should have been wiped clean from her memory by Topher. Things that her "captors" don't want her to remember.

So is it an action-adventure yarn? A story of science gone mad? A tale about a cop determined to get at the truth no matter what the cost? Or a metaphysical drama about the nature of memory and identity? Why can't it be all of the above?

In the gifted hands of Joss Whedon, Dollhouse is a beautiful enigma wrapped in a riddle, a gripping conspiracy story for the ages filled with urban legends, memory tampering, and long-buried secrets coming to the fore. It's a Shakespearean story of hubris and likely vengeance, filled with sound and fury and signifying, well, lots.

I'm hungry for more.

Joss Whedon's seven-episode drama Dollhouse launches this fall on FOX.

Pilot Inspektor: CBS' "Cane"

Question: what do Jimmy Smits, Hector Elizondo, Polly Walker, Nestor Carbonell, Rita Moreno, Paola Turbay, and Alona Tal have in common?

Answer: they all appear in CBS' cracking and taut new drama Cane, which launches this fall. Cane charts the soapy twists and turns in the lives of the Duques, a wealthy family in the lucrative rum business who must fend off takeover advances from the shifty Samuels clan, who'd like nothing better but to put the business started by pater familias Pancho Duque (Hector Elizondo) and now run by adopted son Alex Vegas (an incandescant Jimmy Smits) firmly under their thumb.

The matter at stake in Cane is the titular sugarcane, used in rum-making, which is now being considered by politicians as an ethanol fuel alternative... which means big bucks for who ever gains control of those massive sugarcane fields. Add to this the fact that there's bad blood--as in Shakespearean-scale blood feuds--between the two families (the Samuels may have played a part in the kidnapping and murder of the youngest Duque a few decades back) and you have a series that positively thrums with the beat of conflict.

In Cane, Jimmy Smits is at his most magnetic, playing Alex as a family man deeply divided by conflict; in his case, it's the pull between duty and morality as what's best isn't always what's right. In the pilot episode alone, he must decide whether to step up as the new head of Duque Rum and cast out his jealous brother, focusing his energy on building up their budding empire, or whether to succumb to the tantalizing lure of revenge.

As Alex's parents, Elizondo and Rita Moreno provide a gravitas as well as an emotional pull; Elizondo is all charm and rules his clan with an iron fist in a velvet glove. The rest of the cast is equally luminescent: Rome's Polly Walker does her best Southern black widow here, imbuing Ellis with a lithe energy matched only by her bitter poison; Lost's Nestor Carbonell radiates with the jealousy of an overlooked sibling and an air of self-entitlement that is fueled by years of rage at his family. Together, Carbonell's Frank and Ellis make the perfect pair, blending spite and acidity. Paola Turbay is perfectly cast as Alex's wife Isabel, who turns a blind eye to the conflict within her husband, seeing only the product of his upbringing: the luxury of the Duques family set against his childhood as an orphaned Cuban refugee.

Rounding out the cast is Eddie Matos as youngest son Henry Duque, who'd rather avoid the rum business altogether and focus on his passion: clubs; Michael Trevino as Alex's equally conflicted son (family business and college or the love of his beautiful girlfriend and the military?); Veronica Mars' Alona Tal as Jamie's girlfriend Rebecca; and Lina Esco has Alex and Isabel's deceitful and rather spoiled daughter Katie.

Cane, created by Cynthia Cidre, is a slick, beautifully polished production that sucks you in from the opening scene. It's filled with heat and color and perfectly captures the Cubano scene in South Florida, each scene bursting with a vibrancy rarely seen on network television. CBS will have its hands full convincing a fickle viewing public that it's not a "Latino series," per se, but rather a soap opera that happens to revolve around a Latino family. Those unwilling to open their minds and watch a series populated by minority actors will miss out on a gripping, sensational series about what it means to fight (sometimes tooth and nail) for the ever-elusive American Dream.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: The King of Queens/The King of Queens (CBS); Most Outrageous Moments/Most Outrageous Moments (NBC); Hidden Palms (CW); The Next Best Thing: Who is the Greatest Celebrity Impersonator? (ABC); So You Think You Can Dance (FOX; 8-10 pm)

9 pm: Criminal Minds (CBS); Last Comic Standing (NBC); Hidden Palms (CW); American Inventor (ABC)

10 pm: CSI: New York (CBS); Dateline (NBC); Traveler (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8-10 pm: Hidden Palms.

On the sixth episode of this eight-episode teen thriller/relationship drama ("Dangerous Liaisons"), Johnny confronts Greta about the bloody angel costume Liza discovered in Cliff's room, while Nikki catches Cliff kissing Eddie's mom at a party. On the penultimate episode ("Stand By Your Woman"), Johnny tells Greta and Liza about Cliff's affair while Cliff tries to win back Nikki while fending off Maria Nolan.

10 pm: Top Chef on Bravo.

On tonight's episode of Top Chef ("Family Favorites"), the chefs are tasked with working with some exotic shellfish, CJ makes a muddy mess out of tuna, and the contestants get themselves into hot water... in the jacuzzi.

10 pm: Traveler.

On tonight's episode ("The Trader"), Tyler and Jay go back to New York to investigate some financial ties to the bombing while Will attempts to avenge his girlfriend's death.

Pilot Inspektor: NBC's "Journeyman"

What is it exactly that sparks our imagination when it comes to time travel? Is the notion of traveling beyond our lifetimes to catch a glimpse of a future world, unfettered by the bonds of our mortality? Or is the sense that we all would love a chance to travel backwards in time and get a shot and fixing the wrongs in our own lives?

In NBC's new fall series, Journeyman, Dan Vassar (Rome's Kevin McKidd) gets an opportunity to do the latter when he finds himself unwittingly traveling back in time to points within his own life. It's the first time travel story on television that I can think of that doesn't use a time machine (thank god!); instead the wherefores and hows of Dan's ability are left a mystery... for now, anyway.

Created by Kevin Falls (The West Wing), Journeyman deftly manages to combine several different genres--sci fi, relationship drama, action, romance--into one slickly produced package that is beautifully directed by Alex Graves (The Nine). The effect is more akin to The Time Traveler's Wife than Quantum Leap, presenting us with a series that can be at the same time procedural and loosely serialized, as Dan is forced, each week, to prevent/cause some change in the past and figuring out the limitations and causes behind his time traveling ability.

This being a drama rather than a wish-fulfillment fantasy, Dan's ability is more of a curse than a blessing and, as a lead character, Dan is a wholly flawed hero (the very best kind, one could argue); he's married to a beautiful woman, Katie (Gretchen Egolf), with whom he has an adorable moppet of a son, but their marriage is tested by several factors, including the fact that Dan is a recovering gambling addict who drove his relationship to the brink of failure. He's a brilliant reporter, but his job is in jeopardy already when he begins to have unexplained absences... and time-travels while behind the wheel of a car, resulting in a spectacular auto collision. Oh, and did I mention that his wife Katie was once the girlfriend of Dan's estranged police officer brother Jack (Reed Diamond)?

There's also the ghost of Dan's dead fiancee, the beautiful Livia (Moon Bloodgood), haunting the proceedings. Livia died years before in a mysterious plane crash, putting Dan right into the orbit of his bro's girl Katie, who is seen in the past giving Dan the once-over. We're not told what exactly led Katie to leave Jack for Dan, but it's clear that her decision is one factor in the distance between the two brothers.

In the past, Dan saves the life of Neal Gaines (Christopher Warren), a man attempting to kill himself; not unsurprisingly this has major consequences in the present day and Dan is forced to clean up the mess he created... while also attempting to save his marriage in a dramatic and romantic reveal after Katie begins to believe that, rather than time traveling as Dan claims to be doing, he has turned to drugs. If you've seen the teaser trailer, you know exactly the moment I'm talking about, but rather than spoil it for everyone else, I'll be deliberately vague and just say that it involves Katie's wedding ring, a toolbox, and a certain patio.

Of course, this is a weekly drama, so there's never a happy ending at the end of the first hour. In the past, Dan is lead into temptation by a run-in with Livia; if he sleeps with her in the past, is he really cheating on Katie? (Short answer: yes.) But it underscores the notion that he's still, after all of these years, in love with his dead fiancee. And with the power to travel through time, couldn't Dan alter the past and save her life? The pilot episode doesn't answer this question though it does raise several others with a jaw-dropping reveal late in the game. As for what that is, you'll have to watch the series this fall. (I can't spoil everything now, can I?)

Besides for the lush visuals (check the scene with the falling bits of calendar) and taut plot, Journeyman also sports a fantastic cast. Gretchen Egolf (Roswell, Martial Law) is wholly believable as a suspicious but loving wife, going out of her skull trying to figure out what's going on with her husband and whether she wants to hold onto him. Moon Bloodgood is perfectly cast as the mysterious Livia; you can see why, years after her death, she has still managed to infect Dan's thoughts and dreams. As Dan Vassar, Kevin McKidd is absolutely magnetic in this role, presenting Dan as a man of constant inner conflict, propelled by a reporter's need to seek the answers to all of life's mysteries. McKidd presents Dan as a wounded man, humbled by his circumstances, attempting to atone for his past and unable to fix his present life. In the hands of a lesser actor, Journeyman could have crumbled under the audience's disbelief at Dan's time traveling abilities; instead McKidd grounds the series with a palpable gravitas. You do believe that this guy's guy can really travel through time and that he has as difficult a time wrapping his brain around that as the audience at home.

NBC has given Journeyman an amazing sign of confidence by granting it the plum post-Heroes timeslot on Mondays at 10 pm. It's a testament to the depth of this series, the creativity of its creators, and the strength of McKidd's leadership that the network would get so fully behind a high concept like this one.

If Journeyman proves as thought-provoking and thoughtful as the pilot episode indicated (as well as lure in both male and female audiences), the Peacock may have finally found a promising companion for its sole break-out drama hit. Fingers crossed.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Ghost Whisperer (CBS); 1 vs. 100 (NBC); WWE Friday Night SmackDown (CW; 8-10 pm); Kyle XY (ABC); Bones (FOX)

9 pm: Close to Home (CBS); Las Vegas (NBC); National Bingo Night (ABC); Standoff (FOX)

10 pm: NUMB3RS (CBS); Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC); 20/20 (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

9 pm: The Gil Mayo Mysteries on BBC America.

It's an all-new mystery series on BBC America starring Alistair McGowan (Bleak House) as Gil Mayo, a single dad and detective. On tonight's episode, Mayo and the team investigate a a murder in a residential care facility.

Pilot Inspektor: FX's "Damages"

Other than Pushing Daisies (already a favorite pilot/drama of mine for next season), the single best pilot script (among, yes, the 120+ scripts I read for work) was for FX's new legal thriller series Damages.

Ask anyone in the television business who read the script and they'll tell you the same thing. Written by the writing team of Glenn Kessler, Todd A. Kessler, and Daniel Zelman, the script for Damages was a taut, gripping, be-careful-or-you'll-fall-over-the-knife's-edge sort of affair, a rare feat for a legal drama that also has the distinction of not having a single scene set inside a courthouse. (Legal drama-adverse readers, take note, the writers claim that this will carry over into Season One and promise nary a single courtroom cross-examine.) So I was breathless with anticipation when I finally got to see the completed pilot for Damages a few weeks ago.

What exactly is Damages? I can only describe it as John Grisham's The Firm meets Murder One, an intricate stunner of a mystery spread out over the first season that sets righteous crusader/litigator Patty Hewes (the transcendant Glenn Close) against corporate fat cat Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), a billionaire who screwed his employees out of their pensions. Patty and Frobisher will each stop at nothing to win this case and literally millions of dollars hangs in the balance of this lawsuit.

Enter Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), a promising young lawyer with heaps of ambition making the rounds at all of the top New York City law firms. She's offered a job by Hollis Nye (Philip Bosco) but when she mentions that she's also meeting with Patty Hewes, the offer is rescinded; as soon as Patty meets Ellen she'll fall in love with her. Of course, working for the icy Patty has its price. The woman makes The Devil Wears Prada's Miranda Priestly seem absolutely radiant by comparison and Hollis later has Ellen sign his business card... over which he writes the rather disturbing words "I was warned." Not exactly a promising start for young Ellen's career choice.

Of course, all of this happens in the past. In fact, Damages' pilot begins in present day when we see Ellen, dressed in lingerie under a trenchcoat, stumble out of a luxe apartment building's elevator, covered in blood, and stagger out onto the Manhattan streets. It's a jarring image, recalling somewhat the image of Ronette Pulaski doing something similiar in the beginning of the pilot for Twin Peaks. (Tonally, it also recalled the opening of the BBC's mini-series State of Play.) Ellen is taken into custody but she's non-responsive. She's finally identified by Hollis after the police discover his business card in Ellen's pocket.

Just what happened to Ellen and whose blood is all over her comprises the series' first season mystery arc. But first we're treated to a series of flashbacks that establish just how Ellen entered Patty Hewes' world. Ellen interviews for a position with Patty's right-hand man Tom (Tate Donovan), who vets her before scheduling a meeting with Patty, which happens to be the very same day as her sister's wedding. Tom forces her to choose between her career and her family and Ellen chooses the latter, only to have Patty herself show up at her sis' wedding and offer her the job. After all, it's a rare day that someone turns Patty down. And before you know it, Ellen signed a deal with the devil... though in a story as intricatedly plotted and skillfully executed as Damages, there are a number of well-dressed devils, all of which make an appearance in the pilot episode.

The casting in Damages is flawless. As Frobisher's vicious lawyer Ray Fiske, Zeljko Ivanek (Lost) is fantastic; luring his victims in with false Southern charm and a cheshire cat's smile. It's fantastic to see Ted Danson in a role that truly challenges him as an actor; his Frobisher is all arrogance and crude will, walking through life with the naivete of the super-rich and the self-entitled. Rose Byrne is perfectly cast as Ellen Parsons, brimming with naive enthusiasm and palpable ambition who finds herself caught between the domestic pleasures of life with her adorable boyfriend David (Noah Bean) and his sister Katie (Anastasia Grffith) and the visceral pleasures of working for the tyrannical egomanaic known as Patty Hewes.

As Hewes, Close has perhaps found the role of her career; while I used a Devil Wears Prada reference earlier, Patty is nothing like the Anna Wintour-clone from that story. Instead, she's a multi-layered career woman and mother, conniving and brutal, Machiavellian in her plotting. Patty plays to win, not just her legal cases, but in life and she's made a career of stamping out the opposition. In Ellen, she claims to see much of herself and wants to mentor her young associate and mold her into something fierce. Close transforms Patty from what could have been a caricacture in the hands of a lesser actress and imbues her with a courage of conviction; the viewer walks away believing that Patty really does sleep the sleep of the righteous at night, so much does she believe in what she's fighting for.

One of Damages' many strengths are its savage plot twists so I won't reveal more than I feel is necessary, but I will say that both Patty and Frobisher are cunning adversaries, willing to do whatever is necessary to win this thing for themselves and both have everything on the line: their lives, their reputations, their very core of being is at stake here. Look for both to bend--and ultimately break--the line between right and wrong, between black and white, between reason and madness. And keep your eyes open for a major reversal at the end of the pilot episode, which makes the viewer question everything that has come before.

Ultimately, Damages underscores FX's commitment to genre-breaking dramas and hard-hitting series that break the rules of network television. This is no exception, elevating the legal drama to a gripping, Dickensian story with a serpentine plot and characters that truly are snakes in every sense of the word. Damages is first rate television that cannot, and should not, be missed.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: NCIS (CBS); America's Got Talent (NBC; 8-10 pm); Gilmore Girls (CW); On the Lot (FOX)

9 pm: The Unit (CBS); Veronica Mars (CW); House (FOX)

10 pm: 48 Hours Mystery (CBS); Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC)

What I'll Be Watching

9 pm: MI-5 on BBC America.

Missed MI-5 (aka Spooks) the first time it aired (if you can call it that?) in the US on A&E? BBC America is giving you a second chance to catch this taut espionage series from the beginning. On tonight's episode ("Traitor's Gate"), a new agent ends up compromising a mission and the agency when he falls for a member of an anarchist group while undercover and ends up supporting the very people he was assigned to take down.

9 pm: Veronica Mars.

I'm still so bloody angry at the CW I can taste it. But before Veronica Mars disappears off the airwaves completely, catch the few summer repeats while they last. On tonight's repeat episode ("Charlie Don't Surf"), it's two Logans for the price of one as Logan enlists Veronica's help when he realizes that his inheritance is suddenly running low... a mystery which leads them smack into Charlie Stone, played by Gilmore Girls' resident Logan, Matt Czuchry!

Pilot Inspektor: NBC's "Bionic Woman"

One of the more interesting concepts this development season was the "re-conceptualizing" of 1970s cult drama The Bionic Woman. Ordinarily, I'd have sighed and bemoaned the lack of imagination of television creators for simply repackaging an old series with a flashy new cast and better special effects.

But of course NBC's new drama, Bionic Woman, set to launch this fall, isn't just from any creator but from executive producer David Eick, who had his hand in re-conceiving another 1970s cult series, Battlestar Galactica, for Sci Fi. As any longtime readers will tell you, BSG is one of my favorite current series, so I had built up a lot of anticipation for this project, especially having read multiple versions of the pilot script over the last few months.

So imagine my surprise when I finally saw the completed pilot for Bionic Woman a few weeks back and actually did enjoy it. Some of the concerns I had whilst reading the script had disappeared (a polish by Kidnapped creator Jason Smilovic certainly helped matters) and I quickly found myself sucked into this new world.

It's definitely not your father's Bionic Woman. If you're looking for a sunny story about a gorgeous pro tennis player who finds herself turned into the world's most expensive surgery candidate, look elsewhere. This version is a dark (and at times darkly funny) take on the familiar story. Michelle Ryan, best known for her role as Zoe Slater on long-running UK soap EastEnders, plays Jamie Sommers, a put-upon twenty-something who works a thankless job as a bartender while raising her younger sister Becca (Arrested Development's Mae Whitman), who also happens to be deaf.

On the first viewing, I did take umbrage with the deaf sister issue, which had the potential to seem cloying and OTT. (Oh, she's got this rebellious sister AND she's deaf to boot.) While Whitman is a fantastic actress (her Becca is the very definition of raw nerves and teenage angst), it was a little uncomfortable seeing Whitman play a deaf character. However, now having watched the pilot several times, I think the choice to make Becca hearing impaired is an interesting approach. After all, this is a series that is based on the notion that, in our current age, reconstructive surgery is not only possible but prevalent. Chris Bowers' Will raises this issue early on during a lecture to his bioethics class: is it right for scientists to tamper with nature? Do we have the right to make ourselves faster, stronger, larger bossomed than we were born? Will Jamie have the government agency attempt to "fix" Becca's hearing? And what will the fallout from that be?

They're interesting questions that definitely push the envelope in a show that many have already written off as a typical sci fi actioner. I for one am glad that Ryan was cast as Jamie; she's not only a likable and sympathetic lead but she represents the Everywoman that Eick and co-creator Laeta Kalogridis set out to empower. (After all, Buffy Summers was "just a girl" as well.)

So what's this pilot about? (BEWARE: SPOILERS AHEAD!) We begin with the sight of a blood-covered woman in a hospital gown (Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff) in a government installation, surrounded by the bodies of her victims. She's feral, unstable, and more than a little dangerous. An entire squadron of men--lead by her lover Jae (Will Yun Lee)--surround her. She asks Jae to tell her he loves her as she pounces; Jae fires his gun, killing her. Several years later, Jamie and her surgeon boyfriend Will talk about their future. Will is about to take a fellowship in Paris and urges Jamie to accompany him; she blurts out that she's pregnant. Their happy evening is shattered when, driving home, their car is struck by a semi and rammed into a telephone pole.

Accident? Not quite. A familiar-looking blonde (Sackhoff again!) slinks out of the semi, mission accomplished. Will manages to escape with minor injuries, but Jamie's body is mangled in the crash. Will has her airlifted to a top-secret government installation, where her blood is transfused with anthrocytes and several of her body parts (arm, legs, eye, ear) replaced with bionic appendages. Jamie attempts to escape the facility and is ultimately allowed to go, but not before alerting Jae, installation chief Jonas Bledsoe (Miguel Ferrer) and handler Ruth Treadwell (Molly Price) that Sarah Corvus (Sackhoff again!) is still alive. Just who did Jae bury all those years ago? And how is her reappearance connected to Will's father Magnus (Battlestar Galactica's Mark Sheppard), who happens to be incarcerated in a federal supermax prison and who started the entire bionics program?

(Aside: Sackhoff and Sheppard aren't the only BSG cast members to pop up; look for Aaron Douglass to turn up as a supermax prison guard midway through the pilot.)

There's a conspiracy afoot, one that involves Sarah Corvus, Will's father, and a mysterious man (let's call him Smith) with a penchant for self-surgery. Jamie unwittingly finds herself drawn into a war between the government and these bionic collaborators. Corvus herself has been making alterations to her own body, cutting away her humanity with a scalpel and turning herself into a machine. Which is all the more interesting because she continually seems to display human emotion, like sorrow, lust, regret, and the need for revenge. She's Number Six with a cigarette and a well-placed quip. Sackhoff's scenes with Ryan crackle with energy and she is perfectly cast as Jamie's new nemesis, the first Bionic Woman, a former military volunteer with more than a few screws loose.

I won't reveal any more but I will say that the fight scenes between Jamie and Corvus are brilliant, especially on the rain-slicked roof of an apartment building as Jamie discovers her strength and cunning while facing off against an opponent who refuses to back down. Production values are high, as would be expected for a large-budget action pilot as important to NBC's schedule as this one. I was worried about the special effects, particularly when Jamie ran or jumped, but they are effective and understated.

In fact, there's only one groaner of a moment that drove me crazy in every single version of the script I read and in the completed pilot. As Jamie uses her newly found speed to escape from the facility, she's seen by a little girl in a nearby car, who tries telling her distracted mother what she's seen. When told not to lie, the girl simply smiles and says, "I just thought it was cool a girl could run like that." It might be true, but it's hitting the nail far too closely upon the head to keep me from groaning aloud. Perhaps a judicious trim might be in order?

Ultimately, Bionic Woman isn't perfect but it is fun, escapist sci fi with some social messages sewn into the lining. While Ryan is a winsome lead, she can't help but be upstaged slightly by the visceral Sackhoff, who sinks her teeth into a role that allows her to act dangerous, crazy, and sexy all at the same time. Someone once said that a superhero is only as good as his rogue's gallery of villains (Batman/Joker, Superman/Luthor, etc.), but with Sarah Corvus as her nemesis, Jamie Sommers might just become one hell of a memorable hero after all.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Creature Comforts/The New Adventures of Old Christine (CBS); America's Got Talent (NBC; 8-10 pm); Everybody Hates Chris/All of Us (CW); Wife Swap (ABC); Hell's Kitchen (FOX)

9 pm: Two and a Half Men/How I Met Your Mother (CBS); Girlfriends/The Game (CW); Ex-Wives Club (ABC); Hell's Kitchen (FOX)

10 pm: CSI: Miami (CBS); Dateline (NBC); Supernanny (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8 pm: Creature Comforts.

On this week's installment of the US adaptation ("Self Image; Winging It; Art"), animals talk about what it would be like to fly while some dogs discuss art.

9 pm: Big Love on HBO.

It's the second season premiere of HBO's polygamist family drama Big Love. On tonight's episode ("Damage Control"), Bill tries to regain control of his life after the family's exposure; Barb retreats into her own world; and Sarah discovers she has a suitor.

9 pm: Hell's Kitchen.

No, I don't know why I am still watching this train wreck of a culinary competition. On tonight's installment, the teams prepare for the next challenge after a disastrous opening night while Aaron, unable to cope with the mounting pressure, tries to quit.

Pilot Inspektor: NBC's "Chuck"

While Pushing Daisies is undoubtedly my favorite new series for this fall, I can now say that I've definitely found my runner-up: action dramedy Chuck, which launches this fall on NBC.

Chuck is a perfect blend of kick-ass action, hilarious comedy, romantic intrigue and nerd humor. It also, like fellow Warner Bros. Television series Pushing Daisies, has one of the most instantly likeable, charismatic casts on television.

For those of you not in the know, Chuck revolves around lovelorn twenty-something Chuck (Zachary Levi), the head of a Nerd Herd (think Geek Squad, only without the product placement) at a Buy More store; he's still after years hung up on a college girlfriend who left him for his far cooler roommate Bryce Larkin (Traveler's Matthew Bomer). Said roommate, a gymnast and engineer, has since moved onto bigger things. Like being a rogue CIA spy who breaks into a highly secure government facility to steal an image-based intelligence software program that encodes secrets into easily digestible imagery. Before Bryce is killed, he managed to download and email the program to the one person in the world that would be least likely to be involved in any plot: one Chuck Bartowski.

Chuck himself is a down-and-out loser, unable to speak to women and more likely to break into a chorus of "Vicki Vale" (Batman, natch) than ask for her digits. So imagine his surprise when the beautiful Sarah (Yvonne Strzechowski), a Buy More customer whose mobile he repairs, expresses interest in him. Naturally, it's not Chuck's body she's after, but what's inside his head, namely that sophisticated intelligence database. But the beautiful and deadly Sarah isn't the only agent after that database; cutthroat John Casey (Firefly's Adam Baldwin) is also tracking the whereabouts of the database and he is willing to kill anyone that gets in his way, including Sarah and/or Chuck.

So what happens? You'll have to wait until the fall to find out (I can't spoil everything, now can I?) but I will say that I was blown away by the strength of the pilot's action sequences, especially the opening sequence featuring Bryce (Bomer) stealing the database in a whirl of acrobatic moves, explosions, and kickass fight choreography, a car chase--driving backwards, no less--between Sarah and Chuck (in a Nerd Herd mobile) and the sadistic Casey, which leads spectacularly to when Sarah triggers an emergency barricade and kneels behind the pillars, resulting in an explosion of glass and auto parts inches above her. It's a jaw-dropping sight and sets the stage for a climactic showdown on the roof of a downtown skyscraper.

While the action is sure to get many a fan's adrenaline pumping, it's the humor that runs underneath the kinetic fight sequences that kept me even more engaged. Chuck and his best friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez) are hilarious together and their rapport seems natural and easy. I was rolling on the floor during the scene in which they (seriously) face off with a ninja assassin in the process of stealing Chuck's hard drive as Morgan begins to chuck (heh) various household items at the thief, who quickly deflects them right back at Chuck.

Chuck's perfectly balanced combination of raw action and witty humor is enough to win me over, but I have to quickly say how well cast Chuck's entire crew is. Zachary Levi displays the right mix of nerdy daring- do and leading man amiability, resulting in a truly memorable character whom you want to return to each week. Sarah Lancaster is adorable as Chuck's sister Ellie, who pushes her brother to get out there and meet women (she also catches him attempting to escape his own birthday party); she's eager-to-please but not obnoxiously so and blissfully in love with her boyfriend, the preening Captain Awesome, a surgeon extraordinaire. One can't say enough about the sexiness of Yvonne Strzechowski, who proves herself prone to wandering around expensive hotel rooms in color-coordinated underwear (when she's not wearing form-fitting body armor) as well as being a deadly fighter and driver; however, she also displays a rare vulnerability as she too attempts to recover from a monumentally failed relationship.

Finally, Adam Baldwin is so well cast as the Machiavellian John Casey that you want to forgive the networks that cancelled all of his others shows over the last few years just so he could be free to play this part. Baldwin seems born to play Casey, imbuing him with a blend of mercenary detachment, a sadistic penchant for killing, and a lopsided sneer that never seems to leave his face. I won't give away the pilot's ending but suffice it to say that Agent John Casey has a new cover by the pilot's end (along with a new assignment) that doesn't win him any favors towards our boy Chuck. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: NCIS (CBS); Dateline (NBC); Veronica Mars (CW; 8-10 pm); The Bachelor (ABC); American Idol (FOX)

9 pm: Jesse Stone: Sea Change (CBS; 9-11 pm); Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC); Dancing with the Stars (ABC; 9-11 pm); On The Lot (FOX)

10 pm: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC)

What I'll Be Watching

8-10 pm: Veronica Mars.

I'm so angry at the CW I can taste it. On tonight's two-hour series finale of Veronica Mars ("Weevils Wobble But They Don't Fall Down"/"The Bitch is Back"), Veronica must clear Weevil's name when he's arrested for selling fake credit cards but he claims that he's being framed, Keith and Vinnie debate, Dick apologizes to Mac, a sex tape of Veronica and Piz makes its way onto the internet, and Veronica tells Logan once and for all that she wants nothing to do with him. I'm crushed.

9 pm: On the Lot.

Fox's newest reality show (from reality TV ubermeister Mark Burnett) begins tonight with a special "preview" episode in which the semifinalists undergo their first Hollywood pitch meeting and must shoot and edit a short film in 24 hours.

Pilot Inspektor: FOX's "The Return of Jezebel James"

I can't tell you how heartbroken I am. It's always a sad day when something fails to meet your expectations and, while there were several pilots I was anxious to see, The Return of Jezebel James was definitely towards the top of my list.

Let me begin by saying that I've been talking endlessly about Jezebel James for the past few months. As a huge Amy Sherman-Palladino fan, I've reported every single casting decision on the pilot and have been more than a little in love with the script since I read it back in December. Which made my recent viewing of the pilot all the more, well, upsetting.

Quick 411 on the pilot: it's written and directed by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino (she of the whip-smart dialogue and penchant for wacky hatwear) and follows the complicated relationship between two very different estranged sisters: older sis Sarah (Parker Posey) is a children's book editor for a major publisher (one of her series of novels revolves around the adventures of the titular Jezebel, a.k.a. "Pippi with a Blackberry"); younger sister Coco (Lauren Ambrose) is a free-spirited if somewhat jaded bohemian whom Sarah had evicted from her last home: a shelf above a noodle station in a Chinese restaurant. Sarah has recently discovered that, despite being ready to have a baby (even if its not with her commitment-phobic boyfriend Marcus, played by Gilmore's Scott Cohen), she can't conceive a child... so she turns to Coco to carry the baby for her and offers to pay her (and house and feed her, along with giving her access to TiVo) in exchange for the life-altering favor.

It's a cute premise and a real departure from Gilmore Girls, which at its heart was about the relationship between the closer-than-humanly-possible mother-daughter combo of Lorelai and Rory. Here the same central relationship is fractured, possibly beyond repair, and these two women couldn't be more different or carry more baggage. What the shows do have in common, beyond their creator, is the sort of quick-witted repartee that's so sharp it could cut someone.

So why doesn't The Return of Jezebel James work? For one thing, it's mostly shot as a multi-camera traditional sitcom, complete with an obnoxious and off-putting laugh track that literally makes you not want to laugh; it's disconcerting and awkward and doesn't match at all with the sort of smooth dialogue and character interplay that would be much more at home in a single-camera comedy. The laugh track actually distracts you from the funny, covering several jokes and making the flow much more of a set up-beat-punchline-pause format than the material warrants. (Old Christine is the perfect example of a show that succeeds in spite of the raucous laugh track; 30 Rock would be a mess with such a device.) These well-crafted lines of dialogue are smashed into verbal mush by what I believe to be the network's inability to trust the audience. Trust me, FOX, we don't need to be told when to laugh.

It's not to say that Jezebel James doesn't show some potential, because it does. I've never wanted to like a show, despite the painfulness of the pilot, as much as I did while watching this. So how would I fix the show? Easy. A few suggestions:

(1) Eliminate the laugh track altogether. Sherman-Palladino is known for her dialogue so don't drown it out; her shows are also known for their fantastic use of music and cues (think Sam Phillips here) rather than the clunkiness of the dreaded track.

(2) Reshoot the pilot as a single-camera comedy without a live audience. Relish in the freedom and possibility of not having to pause for the punchline each and every time. Use those beautiful sets (especially the sweeping office set) to their full advantage.

(3) Have Posey tone it down a bit. I'm a huge fan of the inimitable Parker Posey but her delivery here is a little overly theatrical, possibly heightened by the fact that there's a live audience watching her on the set and it's easy to slip back into old habits. The scene between Sarah and Marcus, in particular, felt a little too stagy; her hysterical breakdown a little too over the top to be taken seriously. Subdue some of that theatricality and Sarah will seem a little more sympathetic and three-dimensional, rather than approaching cartoonishness.

(4) I'm not sure what they were going for with Posey's overall look, but it needs serious retooling. She's meant to be somewhat bohemian (though not in a punk, Coco sort of way) but she's been dressed in some dowdy outfits that don't do anything to make the character more appealing. Instead, Posey's thin frame is lost in billowy materials that make her seem frumpy and her hair is permanently in front of her face (forcing her to constantly readjust her bangs). Lose the shabby, sack-like dresses and make Sarah more slick and stylish. She's a creative-type, yes, but she's also more corporate than Coco, who can definitely afford to be the more quirky dresser of the two.

As I said before, I really do want to like The Return Jezebel James but the pilot isn't doing the series (intended for a midseason launch on Wednesday nights) any favors. At first I was disappointed that the show wouldn't air until midseason but now I'm hoping that the extra time will give them the opportunity to make some simple adjustments that could possibly elevate Jezebel James from one-note sitcom to the smart and funny comedy I know it could be.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Two and a Half Men/Two and a Half Men (CBS); Deal or No Deal (NBC); Everybody Hates Chris/All of Us (CW); Dancing with the Stars (ABC); 24 (FOX; 8-10 pm)

9 pm: Two and a Half Men/Two and a Half Men (CBS); Heroes (NBC); Girlfriends/The Game (CW); The Bachelor (ABC; 9-11 pm)

10 pm: CSI: Miami (CBS); Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC)

What I'll Be Watching

8 pm: Waking the Dead on BBC America.

It's the return of the stylish smart UK murder investigation series. On tonight's episode, Boyd and his team investigate a decomposing corpse found buried in Hampstead garden while a murderer escapes from a psychiatric unit. Is there a connection? Will Boyd be grumpy? Find out tonight.

9 pm: 24.

It's the season finale Day Six of 24. While FOX doesn't give us much in the way of previews, here's what we do know: that international incident looms ever larger and Jack is once again foced to save the country. Will he succeed? Will he fail? Well, FOX renewed the series for another two seasons, so it's not really much of a mystery. Let's just hope next season proves to be a little more enjoyable.

10 pm: The Riches on FX.

Is anyone else watching new drama The Riches on FX? On tonight's episode ("Anything Hugh Can Do, I Can Do Better"), Wayne gets a taste of being the boss when he fills in for Hugh as the head of Panco, Dahlia attempts to bond with DiDi, and Dale fills Hartley in on what he's really doing there in Eden Falls.

Pilot Inspektor: ABC's "Pushing Daisies"

Every once in a while a pilot comes along that completely shocks and surprises you with its dazzling beauty, pitch perfect cast, and its casual ability to create a whole world that you never want to leave.

I'm talking, gentle readers, about Pushing Daisies, which ABC recently ordered to series for the fall season. From the fertile mind of Bryan Fuller (Wonderfalls, Heroes), it's unlike anything you've ever seen on television, a Burtonesque vision of mortality, morality, and, er, pies that sucks you in from the very opening scene and never lets go.

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family), Pushing Daisies has a super-saturated color palette that jars sharply (and intentionally) with its life-and-death theme: Lee Pace (Wonderfalls) plays Ned, a lonely pie maker who, as a child, discovers that he has the ability to bring dead things back to life, a gift he uses to full effect, when his beloved dog Dibney is hit by a truck in the pilot's beautiful and brutal opening. But this new gift has a few caveats: he can bring something back to life but if he ever touches them again, they die instantly and can't be resurrected again; additionally, if he keeps them alive for more than a minute, someone else in proximity will die. Think of it as the law of conservation: if someone lives, someone else has to die.

Just that happens when his mother suffers a fatal aneurysm whilst baking a pie one afternoon. As she falls to the floor, Ned revives her and she pops back to life as though she had been taking a nap. But when Ned keeps her alive, the father of his beloved girl-next-door Chuck (a.k.a. Charlotte) drops dead watering the lawn. As if that weren't enough psychic trauma, Ned's mother kisses him goodnight and then she too kicks the proverbial bucket. What is a resurrecting lad to do?

It's a concept with a few inherent problems for Ned. For one, he can't ever touch Dibney again (he pets his beloved pooch with a hand on a stick) and it's made him reluctant to share any human contact with anyone, especially wanton waitress Olive (Kristin Chenoweth). But Ned doesn't have any qualms entering some morally grey areas to exploit his gift with his business partner, an ex-cop named Emerson (Chi McBride). Their business model? They follow the news for any suspicious deaths, with reward money attached, then animate the corpse to learn who killed them, pocket the cash, and go on their merry way.

It's a plan that's helped pay for Ned's true passion: baking pies (not too Freudian, huh?) at his own little slice of heaven, The Pie Hole. And everything would have been fine if the latest murder victim hadn't been his loved-and-lost Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, now an adult (Our Mutual Friend's Anna Friel) who has gotten herself murdered on a cruise. Ned and Emerson head back to Ned's daisy-laden childhood home of Coeur d' Coeur to revive Charlotte but Ned finds himself in a bit of a Sleeping Beauty quandary and he can't bear to let Charlotte die again, especially as she never saw who her killer was.

What happens next? You'll have to wait until this fall to find out, but let me just say that it's incredibly worth the wait and involves a Fuller favorite (monkeys), a murder mystery, a pair of over-the-hill synchronized swimmers, and a shady travel boutique called, well, Boutique Travel Travel Boutique. It's a mystery, a love story, a quirky comedy, and a drama about morality rolled into one and lovingly filled with a delicious cherry pie filling that's sweet but never saccharine.

Pushing Daisies, in short, is the rare television show that actually changes the way you look at television, a dazzlingly lush production that seems more at home as a big budget feature film (think Big Fish and you've approximated the look) filled with charmingly eccentric folk whom you can't wait to meet up with again. (Watch the scenes in which Ned and Chuck nearly touch hands from opposite sides of a wall--or pretend to hold hands by holding their own--and if your heart doesn't break, you're made of ice.)

The series' casting is inventive and spot on. Star Lee Pace perfectly captures the pathos of a man unable to touch anything but who channels his love into his pies (we should hook him up with Waitress' Keri Russell); it's a star turn that makes me scratch my head as I wonder why Pace isn't yet a household name. Anna Friel, whom I've adored since I first saw her in the British mini-series Our Mutual Friend, simply lights up every scene from inside herself; she's adorable but also displays a grace and maturity beyond her years, deftly juggling being the lead's object of affection with being a wry modern woman (think Nora Charles) as well as a sensitive soul. It's her Chuck, as the series' moral compass, that comes up with the thought that none of the other characters do: why not ask the deceased for any final words or thoughts? It's an altruistic spin on the crime-solving, reward-collecting business that Ned and Emerson have created. (FYI, the British actor's American accent is absolutely and astoundingly flawless.)

Meanwhile, Chi McBride brings a comedic gruffness (and moral ambiguity) to a role that's vastly different than his normal fare and it's wonderful to see him in a more comedic role for a change. Likewise, as Charlotte's reclusive maiden aunts, the former Darling Mermaid Darlings synchronized swimming duo, Swoosie Kurtz (here in a delightfully neurotic role as a one-eyed woman) and Ellen Greene (yes, Little Shop of Horror's Audrey) are endearingly out there. Additionally, Jim Dale (yes, he of the Harry Potter books-on-tape fame) exudes an enchanting blend of gravitas and humor as the story's narrator; in a development season where 95 percent of the pilots had voiceover, this is the rare bird that makes it work.

If I have one complaint, it's that I'm not in love with Kristin Chenoweth, who seems an odd choice for the vixen-like role of Pie Hole waitress (and Ned's neighbor) Olive; there's just something... off about her performance that's the sole detraction from an otherwise perfect pilot.

Ultimately, I was completely smitten with Pushing Daisies and it's set an impossibly high bar for the rest of this year's freshman drama series to meet. But if there's one thing for certain, it's that I'm already dying with anticipation to see what happens to Ned, Charlotte, and Emerson next.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: How I Met Your Mother/Two and a Half Men (CBS); Deal or No Deal (NBC); Everybody Hates Chris/All of Us (CW); Dancing with the Stars (ABC; 8-9:30 pm); House (FOX)

9 pm: The King of Queens (CBS); Heroes (NBC); The Game (CW); The Bachelor (ABC; 9:30-11 pm); 24 (FOX)

10 pm: CSI: Miami (CBS); Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC)

What I'll Be Watching

8 pm: Waking the Dead on BBC America.

It's the return of the stylish smart UK murder investigation series. On tonight's episode, Boyd and his team investigate the case of James Jenson, a criminally insane man who is released from a psychiatric unit; only thing is two days after his release, the wallets of his victims turn up at their relatives' homes. Creepy.

8 pm: Everybody Hates Chris.

On tonight's episode ("Everybody Hates the Last Day"), with the end of the school year nigh, Chris enacts his revenge on Caruso for making his life miserable for the past year, while Drew becomes so obsessed with his graduation cap and gown that he begins wearing it around the house.

9 pm: 24.

It's Day Six of 24. While FOX doesn't give us much in the way of previews, here's what we do know: CTU reels from the death of Milo while the hostage crisis continues, Jack's dad makes his move, and Jack, well, he's still trying to protect the country from the zillionth international crisis that day. Yawn. I wonder what Bill Buchanan and Karen Hayes are doing.

10 pm: The Riches on FX.

Is anyone else watching new drama The Riches on FX? On tonight's episode ("This is Your Brain on Drugs"), Wayne attempts a drug intervention to help Dahlia, while Dale shows up in Eden Falls.

Stacking the Comedy Pilots: A Pilot Inspektor Preview

Following yesterday's discussion of my personal favorites from the current crop of drama pilots up for consideration for the 2007-08 season, I'm today turning my attention to this year's comedy pilots.

I do have to say that things are looking pretty grim for comedies this year. Sure, the TV landscape is surprisingly lush at the moment with quality comedies like The Office and 30 Rock, but this year's comedy pilot scripts were, at best, sub-par. Which isn't to say that there weren't a few gems glistening among the wreckage (Area 57, pictured, wasn't one of them). So which comedy pilot scripts did I like best? Let's find out.

The Return of Jezebel James (FOX): What can I say? I loved it. It's a return to form for Amy Sherman-Palladino, revisiting the multi-camera set-up of her days as a scribe on Roseanne, and a female-driven comedy that crackles with wit and depth as it tells the story not of an unbelievable close mother and daughter, but an estranged pair of sisters (Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose) brought together when the older, more responsible sister, Sarah (Posey), asks her impulsive sib, Coco (Ambrose) to carry a child for her. Plus, Scott Cohen turns up as Marcus, Sarah's debonair, if commitment-phobic beau. Quippy repartee, Parker Posey, and Amy Sherman-Palladino? I am so there.

The Middle (ABC): I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this script, a family comedy about a middle-class family living in Middle America. I had presumed that it would probably be a boorish According to Jim-style comedy but instead, it's a thoughtful and funny look at a lovingly eccentric family, seen through the eyes of Frankie (Ricki Lake), the Hecks' harried mother and wife , who is pulled in twenty different directions at once, when she starts a job as a car salesman. From there, she ends up walking down a deserted road in a Superwoman costume after pulling a Thelma & Louise that goes, well, a little awry. You fill in the blanks.

Back to You (fka Action News) (FOX): I'm still hoping that the title reverts back to the original Action News, which perfectly sums up the series, instead of the current title, which vaguely reminds me of I'm With Her or another generic comedy title. In any event, I thought that the script, from Steven Levitan (Just Shoot Me) and Christopher Lloyd (Frasier), crackled with comedic potential, giving us some neurotic, if fully formed, characters that I would enjoy spending one night a week with. (A review of the original audience run-through can be found here, before some eleventh hour recasting.) With a formidable cast, including the likes of Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Fred Willard, and Ty Burrell, and an interesting milieu, this is the comedy to beat this season. Taut, witty, and soulful, it leapt right off the page.

Sam I Am (ABC): This season's comedy pilots were all about quirkiness, but few were able to pull off their conceits. Not so with Sam I Am, which intriguingly blends a mystery plot with its funnies. The plot: a female psychiatrist (Christina Applegate) suffers amnesia following an accident and retains no memory of her life as an evil, embittered soul. Trying to solve the mystery of what happened to her and who she was (not a nice person as she discovers), she learns that she's cheating on her boyfriend and her parents (including Jean Smart) are in fact insane. Look for Gilmore Girls' Melissa McCarthy to pop up as a childhood friend of Samantha's and Jennifer Esposito as her current worst best friend.

Deeply Irresponsible (FOX): Could be FOX's hope for a Malcolm in the Middle replacement, about a family of overachievers disrupted by the arrival of their boozy, irresponsible grandfather (Brit actor Tom Conti), who views his youngest grandchild Brian as the only one he can save from a miserable life of drudgery. The casting of the kids (Macey Cruthird and Nathan Gamble) is crucial here, but I'm definitely tracking this one.

Zip (NBC): If you couldn't already tell, I'm more of a fan of quirky comedies rather than the middle of the road ones. This is sort of The Riches as a straight comedy, about a family of con artists, lead by get-rich-quick-scheme planning dad Trip (Rob Huebel), dreaming of the good life in Beverly Hills. It's offbeat, funny, and the characters are memorable but it might be just a little too out there for NBC to place on the fall lineup, which is a shame, as we could do with a few more intelligently written comedies out there.

Danny & Noah (aka Untitled Kohan & Mutchnick) (CBS): This was towards the bottom of my script pile so I only recently got around to reading it (after the painfulness of Cavemen and its brothers in awfulness) and was somewhat pleasantly surprised by it. Written by Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, it's about two writers (Brian Austin Green and Jay Mohr)--one gay, the other straight--who are longtime best friends attempting to write another book after a best-selling trilogy and the long-suffering assistant (Jessica Capshaw) who tries to keep them in line. It's cute without being pretentious and hopefully lacks the ability to stunt cast the guest star of the week.

And there you have it. There were a few that I tried really hard to like but just couldn't get behind (The Thick of It and Mastersons of Manhattan, for example) and others that were so bad that I couldn't get them out of my mind (Cavemen, Dash 4 Cash). I did like the script for Fugly but, sadly, just can't get behind the casting choices that the network has made.

Which comedy pilots are you excited about? And which ones are you hoping make it onto the networks' respective fall scheduled?