October 2001 Archives

Whatever they're paying David Clennon to be in The Agency, it's not enough.

Clennon, plays an acidic geek wrangler who, in the episode I watched, obsesses equally over the prospect of Fidel Castro's assassination and the prospect of attending his ex-wife's funeral. He is a delight to watch.

Unfortunately, The Agency is not the David Clennon show. It is the Gil Bellows show, the Paige Turco show and the Gloria Reuben show. All three actors possess fine, inoffensive presences and display a modicum of competency, but those aren't exactly qualities one would hope for from the ostensible centers of the show.

A quick who's-who: Bellows plays Matt Callan, an agent with, shall we say, issues. Evidently his older brother was also a CIA agent -- a darned good one, and now a dead one. Naturally, because this is the CIA, Matt's brother died in mysterious circumstances. Reuben plays the girlfriend of the deceased; according to expository dialogue, she's become something of a workaholic since her personal life died. If so, Reuben is the most mellow workaholic on television. This serenity may be a fundamental component of Reuben's acting style -- one of the most memorable traits she invested Jeannie Boulet with on E.R. was a bedrock sense of calm -- but it really doesn't do a whole lot to convey that Lisa is using her work to evade sticky personal issues. Finally, Turco -- who is, so far as we know, neither related to nor in love with the deceased -- plays that mythic creature, the Sexy Hacker. Her main job on the show appears to be to humanize Clennon.

If the show goes in the direction it all but spelled out in neon lights in this episode -- Matt will find out why his brother died! And he won't like the answer! -- both Turco and Clennon will be relegated to the background.

The plot device is transparent -- over the course of the first season, look for Matt Callan to continue poking and prodding away at the mystery of why his brother died, and during sweeps, look for the inevitable spiritual crisis when he realizes that the agency he's serving screwed up and killed his brother for no good reason.

In the meantime, feel free to pass out over the course of individual episodes. I watched this one three times and not one moment stuck. The Agency lacks the pedogogical enthusiasm of CSI or the adolescent energy of The West Wing, and the result is a tedious mishmash of expository scenes and improbable cloak-and-dagger action. The show flows smoothly only in the sense that all time appears to take on the elastic, interminable quality associated with stultifying boredom.

This, then, is why David Clennon is so necessary to the show. In the few moments that he's on screen, he manages to embody everything The Agency could be -- a tense narrative balancing the battered souls of the characters against the strange idea that all this furtive spy stuff could actually have a higher moral purpose. Unfortunately five minues of Clennony tartness isn't enough to redeem the rest of The Agency.

To hear the pundits tell it, the reality TV genre which has been an inescapable fixture on our collective TV set the past couple of years is finally showing signs of calling it a night. After September 11 came and altered our very perception of reality, it seems we can't change the channel fast enough whenever Temptation Island 2 and The Amazing Race appear on the screen. The problems of a boatload of sexy singles trying to hook up and win valuable cash prizes don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world any more. And who really cares about the trials and tribulations of the Samburu and Boran tribes when the once harmless act of opening your mail constitutes an Immunity Challenge of an entirely different nature?

So the reality genre is down for the count. ABC has already pulled The Mole 2 from its schedule, promising that the show will return later this season, but sounding none too enthused about the prospect. Lost and Love Cruise have both completed their initial runs -- neither would be a safe bet to return for round two. And Survivor -- once the swiftest vessel in the reality TV fleet -- now gets routinely lapped in the ratings by the wheezing geriatrics on Friends.

For the optimists out there, this is grand news: All those reality shows will soon disappear, like yesterday's Seinfeld knock-offs, never to be heard from again. For the pessimists, the news is equally dim: As quickly as reality programs are disappearing from the airwaves, they can't disappear fast enough.

If you're wondering whether TeeVee falls into the optimist or pessimist camp, then hello! My name is Phil. You must be new 'round these parts.

While I'm certainly happy that network TV is finally beginning to separate the reality wheat from the chaff, the sudden distaste for the genre didn't spare me from having to watch Elimidate Deluxe, the WB's foray into the tedious realm of dating programs. (Today The WB saved the rest of you the trouble, cancelling Elimidate.) As with its forbearers -- Love Connection, Blind Date, the deliriously awful Studs -- Elimidate Deluxe takes a lucky guy or girl and forces them to choose a soul mate from among a passel of simpering morons (presumably from the opposite sex, unless the WB becomes incredibly broad-minded). Elimidate Deluxe's twist is that all four chuckleheads are invited along on the date and whittled away as the half-hour progresses until just one dunce is left. Presumably, as the credits roll, love blooms.

The participants on Elimidate Deluxe are attractive people, far more attractive than you and I could ever hope to be. Actually, they are almost unnaturally attractive, sculptured and coiffed and pre-packaged much in the same way as porn stars. The difference? Porn stars eventually stop spouting idiocies and leaden innuendos and have the good sense to get naked. Sadly, Elimidate Deluxe offers no such payoff. The participants' clothes remain on while their mouths remain in motion and full of marbles.

The episode of Elimidate Deluxe I watched featured Leslie, an associate producer for a New York-based TV production company. Remember the outcry a few years back when Keri Russell ditched her curly tresses? After watching Elimidate Deluxe, I'm convinced that the Felicity star didn't cut her hair at all -- Leslie apparently scalped her and made off with the hairstyle.

"My dream guy has to be driven, smart, funny," says Leslie, having apparently read the "What Women Want in a Man" chapter of The Great Big Book of Clichés. "I want the whole package." You will be as interested as I was to learn that the discriminating woman of the aughties is so intent on seeking out the whole package she does not have time to put on a bra.

Leslie's would-be beaus include Mark, a tennis-playing college student; Blake, a real-estate consultant; David, who works in advertising; and Jaret, an attorney and, by the looks of him, Satan's familiar. Then again, that may be unfair to Jaret -- all of Leslie's suitors are simply repellant, the sort of folks you'd spot in a bar and hang a U-turn without breaking stride. In that sense, Elimidate Deluxe may be one of the first reality competitions where nobody -- certainly not the audience -- wins.

The date consists of a series of wacky, photogenic misadventures, the kind of dating itinerary that only camp counselors and cruise directors would consider anything but a forced death march. Leslie puts her potential paramours through the following paces: a paragliding session followed by a quick bite to eat, then dress-up time down at the local costume consignment store, capped off by an evening of karaoke. Which would have been a perfect end to the date had any of the contestants been drunken businessmen from Kobe. Presumably, dates featuring lanyard-making, shuffleboard and other fun things to do on a rainy day will be featured in future installments of Elimidate Deluxe.

After each activity, one lucky contestant gets the ol' heave-ho, so it's implied that Leslie has selected these activities with an eye toward the traits that make up her driven, smart, funny dream guy. "I think you guys think I'm looking for bravery," Leslie tells the bleating jackasses vying for her hand before the paragliding adventure. "Really, I'm looking for sensitivity."

Sensitive guys must achieve terminal velocity quicker, I guess.

"Karaoke's great," Leslie explains to us later in the show after everyone unfortunately escapes unharmed from the paragliding. "Because you have to perform, and you have to give it your all, even if you make a total fool of yourself."

Interestingly enough, the same effect can be achieved by appearing on Elimidate Deluxe.

All of this -- the contrived set-up, the forced camaraderie, the karaoke -- would be bad enough. But Elimidate Deluxe goes that extra mile of suck down the ol' Jon Seda Memorial Highway by having -- nay, encouraging -- the possible swains to fire off witticisms and bons mots about their competition. Think the Algonquian Roundtable, only with Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman and Robert Benchley replaced by a bunch of drunken fratboys. Indeed, you can't go 30 seconds on Elimidate Deluxe without someone enjoying a supposed laugh at the expense of his or her rivals.

"It looks like my grandmother's rug from the 1960s or something," says David, tapping into the biting wit one would expect from someone employed by the advertising industry to describe the sartorial choice of a fellow suitor during the costume consignment store adventure. Because rugs from the 1960s are ugly, you see.

"He picks Boy George," Jaret sneers as David sings along to Karma Chameleon at the karaoke bar. "There's a subliminal thing going on there." Because Boy George is gay, you understand, so by singing along to a song made famous by a gay man, he must also be gay.

Get it? Get it?

Oh God, neither do I.

You can't necessarily blame Elimidate Deluxe's contestants for coming up with these punchless zingers. After watching them for a half-hour, I have serious doubts they can muster the brain power to use simple tools.

No, the fault likely lies not in the stars, but in the creative team -- the wormy little production assistants and weasely writers cowering off-camera and encouraging the on-air talent to be as petty and back-biting as possible. Make fun of the other guy's hair! Laugh when he falls down! Use his choice of 1980s British pop to question his sexual predilections! The sniping takes what would have been a patently lame but otherwise inoffensive half-hour of television and gives it a surface sum of nastiness, an unpleasant tone that snuffs out whatever enjoyment -- guilty or otherwise -- that could have been wrung out of this slop.

In the end, Leslie picked off her supplicants one by one, until all she was left with were David, the Boy George-crooning ad man, and Jaret, the associate from the law offices of Death, Pestilence and Famine LLC. Leslie picked Jaret, presumably because she has no soul. Then again, the bumper crop of idiocy that Leslie had to select from made Sophie's Choice look like picking between paper and plastic.

"You guys are all quality," Leslie explained to her four beaus, apparently having mastered the Letting Them Down Easy chapter of The Big Book of Clichés. "But you know the name of the game."

Yes. The name of the game is Joyless Half-Hour of Humiliation. Though Elimidate Deluxe does make for a snappier title.

I am not a 15-year-old girl. I have never been a 15-year-old girl. And while there was once a time back in the Reagan administration when I spent an extremely large percentage of my brain power contemplating 15-year-old girls, that experience really hasn't prepared me to understand Maybe It's Me, a WB sitcom about a 15-year-old girl and a show that, I suspect, would be best appreciated by one.

Maybe It's Me is a single-camera sitcom about a bright kid trapped in a peculiar family, with oddball parents and annoying younger and older siblings. From that description, you might accurately assess that were it not for Malcolm in the Middle, Maybe It's Me would never have existed. That may well be true, but Maybe It's Me isn't just a non-union, north-of-the-border knockoff of the Malcolm format.

Unlike NBC's misguided Tucker, which aped Malcolm without any skill, there's a lot of skill behind Maybe It's Me. Even a 31-year-old man can see that. Reagan Dale Neis is extremely likeable as Molly Stage, a geek who's begun to transform into a cool kid, mostly because -- as we're painfully and repeatedly reminded -- she lost weight over the summer. But despite the presence of a gorgeous girlfriend (Vicki Davis) for Molly to hang out with, this isn't "Clueless," either. When Molly decides to drop cheerleading and rejoin her nerdy pals on the chess team, it's clear that Maybe It's Me is more about being true to yourself than about being popular.

Neis is surrounded by a bunch of familiar faces, none of them more welcome than Fred Willard. Last seen butchering dog show play-by-play commentary in "Best in Show," Willard is the latest in a long line of aging edgy comic actors to transform into goofy dad figures. Did he get tips from Eugene Levy (the goofy dad in "American Pie") and Joe Flaherty (the goofy dad in Freaks and Geeks) before stepping into the role of Jerry Stage? In any event, Willard is almost as entertaining to watch as the befuddled, soccer-obsessed patriarch of the Stage family as he was in "Best in Show." Willard's paired with Julia Sweeney, who as Mary Stage, has come a long way from the unabashed hell of "It's Pat." In a bit of bizarre casting, the Stages have a live-in grandma, played by Ellen Albertini Dow, the rappin' granny from Adam Sandler's "The Wedding Singer."

While the adults in Maybe It's Me might be in the same league as those on Malcolm (not as good as Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston, but in the ballpark), the news isn't as good on the sibling front: Molly's got younger twin sisters who aren't particularly interesting, and an older brother (Andrew Walker) who's a one-note bad boy. Most promising is brother Grant (Patrick Levis). Fresh from paying Donny Osmond in a TV movie, Levis is primed for his role as a Jesus freak who plays terrible Christian rock songs at the dinner table. Some religious groups will doubtless be offended by the simplistic way that Grant's religious fervor is depicted... and if the producers don't broaden the character soon, they'll be right to complain. But if handled properly, Grant could be the most worthy of all the show's supporting characters.

Even a talented cast can't succeed when it gets lousy material. But while parts of Maybe It's Me made me feel I had landed on an alien planet -- one populated entirely by adolescent girls -- many parts of it are downright funny.

Molly's embarrassment at her family's quirks are obviously at the heart of the show, which explains why it was called Maybe I'm Adopted until adopted people decided that the phrase seemed vaguely insulting and mounted a successful campaign to get the show's producers to change it. The result is, if I'm reading the otherwise cryptic runes of teenage girlhood correctly, a lot of jokes about how embarrassing it is to be a teenager.

But after watching Maybe It's Me for a while, I got a strange feeling -- the feeling that maybe it's not me, after all. Maybe it's the show.

I suspect that while Maybe It's Me may be one of the better Family Sitcoms out there, it will never break free of that mold and be in the same league as Malcolm. As male-dominated as it is, women I know still get a kick out of Malcolm. And while I spent most of my time empathizing with the geeks in Freaks and Geeks, I could also identify with what that show's female characters were going through.

Really good shows like those break through the barriers. They make you feel welcome, make you feel as if you understand the characters and can identify with them. They feel... more real, somehow.

Maybe It's Me doesn't make that leap. It's a funny show with a good cast and a lot of potential. It's the class of the Family Sitcom genre fronted in the past by such dubious headliners as Full House, Sabrina and Family Matters. Teenage girls will like it. Young women will like it. But I just couldn't quite connect with it.

So maybe it is me.

Somehow, it just doesn't seem right saying unkind things about Reba McEntire. Yeah, she performs in a musical genre that's not my bag, and if she held a concert in my kitchen I probably couldn't be bothered to turn my head -- but she seems like good people. I can't recall any instances of her going Sean Penn on some hapless paparazzo, she doesn't appear to surround herself with a legion of yes-men and sycophants, and if there are reports of her trying to do a creepy celebrity thing like buy the Elephant Man's bones or paint her mansion hot pink, I'm blissfully unaware of them. In other words, Reba McEntire comes across like a nice person who hasn't let the twin narcotics of fame and fortune mess with her head. She's like that nice friend of your mom's who doesn't point out that you've gained weight the last time she saw you or strong-arm you into buying Tupperware. One might even posit that she's somewhat attractive in that "I think you're trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson" sense, if one did not fear vicious catcalls from one's colleagues or the big skunk-eye from The Wife.

The point is, I bear no particular ill-will toward Reba McEntire. I gain no pleasure from saying cruel things about Reba McEntire. And so long as her interests and mine do not collide, I wish her nothing but success in all her future endeavors.

Which is part of the problem with Reba, the new Friday night sitcom on the WB that, coincidentally enough, stars Reba McEntire. Reba is one of those shows that mistakes "loud" for "funny," that thinks having snot-nosed kids firing off one liners is the height of wit and sophistication. It's an ugly, awful series that asks us to spend a half-hour each week with a family so reprehensible that if they lived next door to us in real life, you and I would be pricing moving services. Reba may well be the worst new show of the fall, and this is coming from a man who has seen Bob Patterson.

And the other problem with Reba? Reba McEntire is the worst thing about it.

McEntire's performance is stilted and painful to watch. She delivers her leaden lines with no nod to timing, no understanding of inflection. You get the sense that she thumbed through a copy of Sitcom Acting for Dummies and paid particular attention to the "Facial Expressions: Funny and Fun to Do" chapter. One of her snot-nosed kids fires off a bon mot, Reba makes a face. Some sort of wackiness ensues, Reba's there bugging out her eyes. No line is so insignificant, no joke so slight that Reba can't stand there, open-mouthed, mugging for the camera. Watch an episode of Reba on mute, and you might get the impression that McEntire is in the throes of a stroke.

You get the sense, watching Reba McEntire contort her face in a vain effort to underscore the supposed hilarity taking place on screen, that her role would be recast if her name weren't attached to the show. It wouldn't do, after all, to tune into a show called Reba, expecting to find a red-head country-western chanteuse and find Suzanne Sommers yukking it up.

Not that anyone could do much with the material that passes for comedic inspiration on Reba. The show fancies itself a shout-out to Middle America, an alternative to those ubiquitous sitcoms about gorgeous urbanities and their fabulous Manhattan apartments or L.A. beach houses. In truth, Reba couldn't be more contemptuous of its target audience if it clad them all in bib overalls and had them periodically rail against the evils of "fancy book-learnin'."

Instead, Reba's producers crib the show's premise from a Lifetime movie-of-the-week. Reba's husband, a dentist, is divorcing our heroine because he's having an affair with his dental hygienist, a simpering idiot. Hubby has also knocked up the aforementioned simpering idiot. Reba's daughter has been knocked up as well -- by the high school football hero, in this case, and thankfully, not dear old Dad. We learn all this in the opening scene of Reba in which the entire family -- Reba, her cheating husband, her slattern daughter and her two other awful children -- are, understandably in therapy. The therapy session ends with them physically attacking one another -- again, quite understandably.

So to sum up, Reba's husband is a cad, his paramour is a ninny, and their daughter is too dim to grasp even the rudiments of birth control. Reba hates her husband, really hates his idiot hygienist-lover, and doesn't appear all that fond of her kids. Everyone hurls insults at one another and shouts a lot and generally gives off the vide that they'd rather be anywhere but around these other, horrible people.

And despite all this, Reba's producers reckon, we're going to clutch these yokels to our bosom.

"They're ruined!" McEntire exclaims at one point during the pilot. She's talking about the hors d'oeuvres she's making for her oldest daughter's shotgun wedding and not, as you might imagine, her prospects for sitcom success.

"Much like our lives," says one of McEntire's mouthy offspring in what might have passed for Reba's funniest joke if not for two reasons: 1)it was spat out hatefully by an 11-year-old and 2) Reba reacted a face straight out of the Don Knotts Incredulity Collection.

Of course, spend a lot of time watching Reba and you'll find yourself having to feign amusement as well.

Money-back guarantee. Relatively painless dental procedure. IRS audit. All three seemingly innocuous phrases nevertheless summon up a sense of dread among anyone with a day's worth of experience in this oft-cruel world. They promise a degree of normalcy and routine they simply can't deliver, masking the discomfort and anxiety they're sure to bring in benign-but-meaningless terms. We're told not to worry, that this sort of thing happens to everybody, but we know better. We know better.

Add another entry into that collection of alarm-triggering HappyTalk phrases -- NBC sitcom. Utter those words to people in the know, and you'll detect a noticeable shiver run through their bodies. Why? Because like a money-back guarantee, an NBC sitcom usually ends up delivering less than it promises. Like a relatively painless dental procedure, it tends to register something between a dull ache and blinding agony. And like an IRS audit, an NBC sitcom isn't -- in any way, shape or form -- fun to endure.

Since the debut of Friends in 1994, NBC has enjoyed a widely viewed platform from which to launch new comedies. In the ensuing seven years, the network has managed to produce only one hit show, Will & Grace. A Just Shoot Me here and a Third Rock from the Sun there manages to eke out a meager existence every now and again, but the vast majority of NBC offerings in that time have featured Jonathan Silverman and Jenny McCarthy braying at jokes only they could understand, Brooke Shields and Christina Applegate staring silently off into space, and Steven Weber performing in front of an audience of crickets. Add to that dismal track record the sense of sameness that pervades NBC -- that you could swap out a Chandler Bing for a Niles Crane or a Jack McFarland and wind up with pretty much the same show -- and the Peacock Network doesn't have a lot going for it, sitcom-wise.

Of course, maybe you find things like originality off-putting and you're easily distracted by the sound of your own laughter. In that case, what NBC's been offering the past couple of years should be right up your alley.

So it's a surprise, then, to learn that the new comedy series Scrubs airs on NBC. First off, the show isn't about beautiful twenty-somethings who lounge around all day exchanging one-liners about their latest romantic conquests. There's no laugh track to tell you when someone's just made a funny. The characters don't meet at a coffee shop. There's yet to be an episode featuring a comical misunderstanding of some sort. And I seriously doubt if a crossover episode with Just Shoot Me is in the works.

Scrubs also happens to be very funny, which sets it apart from, what, almost every other NBC sitcom?

Since Scrubs focuses on the travails of first-year interns in a hospital, the show really has more in common with ER than any of the current sitcoms in NBC's lineup. The difference? On ER, if an intern were to botch a routine medical procedure, it would lead to pulse-pounding music, nausea-inducing camera work and a pained expression from Anthony Edwards. On Scrubs, that sort of thing is the cue for the comedy to begin. It's to the credit of the writers and the Scrubs cast that jokes about a draining procedure gone awry elicit laughter instead of groans or, worse, stony silence.

Rather than ER, Scrubs bears a greater similarity to Malcolm in the Middle. Normally, this would mean a pale knockoff featuring a smart-assed kid who always talked directly to the camera. In this case, however, I mean it as a compliment. Like Malcolm, Scrubs eschews the conventions of the sitcom genre. Instead of following the tried and no-longer-true setup-punch line pattern of sitcom humor, Scrubs allows its jokes to come from all directions -- even out of left field. The stock medical drama scene where the veteran doctor quizzes eager young interns on disease symptoms and treatments becomes a comic version of Jeopardy on Scrubs. The sight of two over-competitive colleagues trying to pass each one another down a hallway becomes a footrace worthy of "Chariots of Fire."

In the hands of a gimmick-crazed producer -- don't worry, David E. Kelley, we aren't going to finger-point here -- these flights of fancy could get really old really quick. So far in its admittedly brief broadcast run, Scrubs has managed to walk the fine line between inspired silliness and forced outrageousness.

The Scrubs cast is solid, if not exactly spectacular, with one notable exception. Whoever had the bright idea to cast John C. McGinley deserves a lifetime studio parking space, a year's supply of the frosty beverage of his or her choice and a three-show development deal at Fox. McGinley plays Dr. Cox, a weary veteran of the ER who has neither the time nor the patience to play father figure to a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears interns. McGinley's expressions are priceless; his line readings are a scream. It's impossible to do justice to the exquisite contempt and palpable irritation he infuses in every snippet of dialogue.

"Worst case scenario?" McGinely's Dr. Cox says to an intern about to spend his first night on call in the ER. "You kill somebody, and that hangs over your head for the rest of your life. But that is absolutely the worst case scenario."

Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke and Donald Faison are all acceptable as the fresh-faced interns, and I have a decided fondness for Ken Jenkins' portrayal of a seemingly kindly old doctor who may well be the most evil M.D. on earth. But if Scrubs should at some point morph into "The John C. McGinley Show," you will hear no complaints from this corner.

As inventive as the way "Scrubs" tells its story may be, the story it has to tell isn't exactly a new one. Fellow Vidiot and TeeVee medical correspondent Gregg Wrenn noted several similarities between the "Scrubs" pilot and a book called "House of God" by Samuel Shem which, coincidentally, is about fresh-faced medical interns and all their zany misadventures. The scene in Scrubs where an intern calls his resident to ask if he can dispense aspirin? In the book. The "Old patients are there so we can learn how to treat young patients" speech? In the book. And so on.

Of course, to notice those similarities, you'd probably have to be a fairly avid book reader. And if the e-mail we get is anything to go buy, that rules out about two-thirds of TeeVee's demographic. And at any rate, I'd rather my TV comedies draw on well-received medical satires for inspiration instead of aping Friends for the umpteenth time.

Original or no, Scrubs is certainly one of the better shows to debut this fall. It's funny, engaging and worth a look or two. Even if it doesn't make your own personal lineup of must-watch shows, you certainly won't walk away from Scrubs feeling like you've wasted a half-hour of your evening.

And when was the last time you could say that about an NBC sitcom?

Let's get one thing straight. ABC's new spy series, Alias, makes no sense. None whatsoever. That's what makes it so damned fun. Unlike some other new, incomprehensible action shows that try and convince you Jon Seda is the greatest American icon since John Wayne, Alias proudly tosses out bunches of incoherent plot points then says, "Screw it, let's go kick some ass."

What do you expect from a show that originated from a nonsensical five-word pitch: "Felicity... working for the CIA." J.J. Abrams, the creator of the collegiate hair-obsessed soapy coming-of-age drama Felicity is also the man behind Alias.

I was just as wary as the next red-blooded American male when I heard one of the dark, frilly lords of Chick TV was going to try and pull off an action series, but Abrams has taken his knowledge of the sunny life of beautiful college students, swirled it with "Mission: Impossible," and nailed the dismount.

In Alias, Jennifer Garner plays lead character Sydney Bristow, a graduate student who also happens to be a spy for SD-6, an outfit she believes is a covert arm of the CIA. This is no school-supported internship program, however, and we quickly learn SD-6 Rule #1: Don't tell anyone who you work for. So of course, Sydney tells her new fiance who she works for. Cheery british Dr. Danny is quickly whacked, leaving Sydney to understandably reconsider her relationship with her employers. Her cold feet make SD-6 and its shifty-eyed boss (Ron Rifkin, or is it Bob Balaban? We can never keep them straight) nervous, and so he decides to get rid of her as well.

Sydney is rescued by her estranged father, who tells her he also happens to work for SD-6. Unfortunately, SD-6 isn't really a part of the CIA, it's a tentacle of a vast conspiracy of freelance former secret agents. She then jets off to Taiwan on her own, to steal what looks like a cast-iron toilet seat before returning it to her bosses at SD-6.

I don't know about you, but if the head honchos here at TeeVee tried to make me worm food, I'd be hesitant to even return office supplies I "borrowed," much less risk my life (and my teeth, courtesy of a sadistic Chinese torturer) to retrieve a cast-iron toilet seat that could change the balance of world power.

It doesn't matter that the premise of Alias is slightly less plausible than most WWF storylines. This is that rare show that never takes itself too seriously and is happy to be nothing more than sixty minutes of pure entertainment. Why is the CIA recruiting college freshmen? Why is killing an agent's loved ones seen somehow as an employee-retention strategy? Just keep moving. Nothing to see here -- but look! Over there! Sydney's got a red wig on and she's about to do a backflip while handcuffed to a chair! Who needs petty distractions like logic?

Garner -- who spent some time on Felicity -- is a great find. She's got an authentic edge to her and pulls off the physical part of her job as if she were a veteran athlete. Plus, we can't forget her incredible ability to fill out a skintight pink cocktail dress. Although she spends much of the pilot crying and whimpering, Garner has the charisma and strength to make for a credible spy.

The pilot wasn't quite action junkie utopia. There were far too many Paula Cole-knockoff musical interludes and sensitive-male navel gazing scenes for my tastes. (This may be an indication that Alias will have a wider appeal, if you like that sort of thing.) But for me, the weepy Peter Gabriel interlude during the funeral of Dr. Danny was redeemed by Sydney, handcuffed to a chair and still bleeding from that anaesthetic-free tooth-pulling, head butting her interrogator and then subduing him with a nasty case of furniture kung-fu.

The plot may not make much sense, but Alias is television that's easy to understand. Fast, stylish and sharp, Felicity in the CIA may be the most fun you'll have this television season.

You've just had a tough day -- the latest in a three-week string of lousy days. The daily news alternates between depressing and terrifying, with a dash of heartbreak thrown in for variety's sake. The economy is gagging, everyone's feeling insecure, and the future we used to look forward to seems just a little less certain now.

So I'm sure you're just absolutely looking forward to a TV show that features shadowy federal agents, brutally thuggish villains and a hearty helping of mayhem and terror served up amid a hail of bullets.

No? Really? Then NBC is going to be really disappointed with you.

It's hard not to feel sorry, then, for the producers of UC: Undercover. All they wanted to do was create an escapist thriller featuring clichéd cops and excessive gunplay. It's not their fault that everything went to hell on September 11. Now, instead of just creating a lousy show, they're responsible for creating a lousy show that's about as enjoyable to watch in this day and age as a "Jaws" marathon right before you hit the water.

UC: Undercover focuses on an undercover investigative unit connected in some way with the U.S. Department of Justice as it attempts to take down baddies and thwart evil-doers in an unnamed Pacific Northwest city. Judging by the number of maple leaf flags flying proudly in the background, my guess is Vancouver. What exactly an elite U.S. government investigative unit is doing skulking around the mean streets of British Columbia, I have no idea. Perhaps it's a cross-jurisdictional thing with the Mounties.

The cops of UC: Undercover spend much of their time, as the title suggests, undercover. And there, the show makes its fatal mistake -- other than, you know, having the bad luck to be a violent shoot-'em-up hour of idiocy that premiered right after a horrific terrorist attack.

I can accept many things when I sit down to watch television. Things that fly in the face of all logic. A Justice Department strike force pretending that downtown Vancouver is, in fact, Seattle? I'll buy it. Computer hackers that can pound away furiously on a laptop and immediately summon up a database of every bank in the downtown area? Hey, it could happen. Vicious henchmen named Headache? I can hear that name and not even feel like giggling.

But one thing that I cannot accept -- one casting decision that simply doesn't hold water -- is Jon Seda playing an expert undercover agent. As an actor, Seda seems to have trouble mastering one identity; I'm supposed to believe he's capable of pulling off multiple ones?

(Let the record show that I waited until the eighth paragraph before getting in the first of what promises to be many cruel laughs at Jon Seda's expense. Those of you who had "eight" in the TeeVee office pool should now collect your bets.)

Lest this come across as mean-spirited mewing from someone who thinks Jon Seda could get out-acted by tree bark -- not an entirely unreasonable thesis, I might add -- it looks like the UC: Undercover creative team isn't entirely sure that Seda is up to the task of playing a master of disguise. Consider that in the premiere episode, when co-star Vera Farmiga went undercover, she donned a frizzy wig and sported a mostly convincing British accent. And Seda's disguise? Changing his last name from Shaw to Kowalski.

Perhaps in future episodes he can graduate to monocles, dueling scars and orange fright wigs.

In the pilot episode, Grant Show played the head of the investigative team. He spent most of the hour looking like he would much rather be back poolside at Melrose Place rubbing cocoa oil on Daphne Zuniga. Or on Andrew Shue, for that matter.

When not visibly reassessing his career decisions, Show is busy speaking forcefully and glowering and generally acting Very Serious. "This my unit," Show snarls at his bald and therefore dim-witted superior. "When you send out my unit, we do things my way."

"Grant Show seems very protective about his unit," my wife said, which I mention only because this witticism -- not exactly up to the Algonquin Round Table standards normally in use in the Michaels home -- may have been my one moment of enjoyment during the entire hour I watched UC: Undercover.

Show and his band of undercover experts -- and Jon Seda -- are looking to bring down chief baddie William Forsythe. Chief among his crimes is a tendency to speak in tortured metaphors and aimless allegories.

"Why does a wolf howl, Jake?" Forsythe asks Seda for no good reason at some point. "He howls because he's lonely. He wants other wolves around." For once, Seda's blank deer-in-the-headlights stare fits the scene perfectly.

For just a moment at the end of the premiere, UC: Undercover looked like it could improve dramatically. Hired goons were marching toward Jon Seda's apartment, automatic weaponry in hand, ready to fill him full of holes. And NBC's voice-over announcer promised that next week, the UC: Undercover team would "lose one of their own." But, given Grant Show's widely reported decision to live off Melrose Place residual checks rather than seek continued employment with UC: Undercover, it seems unlikely that the Seda character will be joining the Choir Invisible come this Sunday.

All of this -- the goofy dialogue, the subject matter made irrelevant by current events, the inextinguishable presence of Jon Seda -- would be hard enough to overcome. But UC: Undercover doesn't help its cause by cribbing from every TV series and movie ever made about undercover agents. The hardheaded commanding officer, the mob boss betrayed by an informant who was like a son to him, the obligatory "Shoot this guy to prove that you're one of us" scene -- it's all there, only blurry and out-of-focus like a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox. The climactic showdown in the first episode -- a bank robbery that goes horribly wrong resulting in a mayhem-filled shootout on the streets of a major metropolis -- was practically a shot-for-shot swipe of the movie "Heat," as I'm sure Michael Mann and his army of attorneys will be glad to point out.

On the plus side for UC: Undercover's, though, Forsythe's character does mumble a lot, so it's at least easy to see why he and Jon Seda would get along so well.

But other than that, UC: Undercover is mostly stupid and loud. If that sounds like a wise way to invest an hour of your life each week, more power to you. Me, I watch TV in part to escape the troubles of the day, and substituting real-life horror and violence with cartoonish variations of the same doesn't seem like a very good swap to me. UC: Undercover would be pretty much unwatchable under the best of circumstances -- these days, it's entirely that way.

As you might expect from a show brought to you by two of the movers and shakers behind ER, CBS's Citizen Baines begins with a bang. Its first episode has a thrill-ride aspect to it, not too different from an episode of ER in its heyday or even The West Wing: three-term Senator Elliott Baines is running for re-election, and it's the last day of the campaign. He's frenetically campaigning, stopping only to reflect briefly on his service, worry about losing the election, and deal with his three demanding daughters.

Making excellent use of the show's Seattle setting, Citizen Baines starts off as an interesting, fast-paced mixture of the personal and the professional, high-stakes politics and high-stakes marital challenges, the problemating relationships between politicans and their constituents... and parents and their children.

It all sounds good. But there's just one problem: At the end of the series' first hour, the election is over and Baines has lost. Thus begins the series... but without a lot of the energy that was in our introduction to it. It's usually hard to judge a series based on its pilot; when a pilot's plot is so unrepresentative as Citizen Baines's, it's almost impossible.

Judged by the performance of James Cromwell as Senator Baines, Citizen Baines has a good shot. Cromwell is a nuanced actor who really lends weight to the role. Baines comes across as a multifaceted person, an idealistic man who has become a pragmatic politician, and has sacrificed his children (and perhaps his relationship with his now-deceased wife) for the power that he suddenly, shockingly, no longer has. And Cromwell's long, furrowed, asymmetric face is fascinating to stare at, whether he's looking happy, angry, resigned, or simply puzzled by the whirlwind around him.

The whirlwind around Baines is the storm summoned up by his three daughters -- paging King Lear! -- Ellen (Embeth Davidtz), Reeva (Jane Adams), and Dori (Jacinda Barrett). They provide the serious dysfunction that will apparently drive Citizen Baines once the excitement of the election and its aftermath recedes into the past. And therein lies Citizen Baines's problem: without all the hubbub about the election, its pilot is a family-drama soap opera on the level of Once and Again, with all the angst but none of the charm of Jane Adams' last network series, Relativity.

Ellen Baines wants to run for congress... or does she? Her law firm is putting pressure on her to do it, her dad wants her to do it, but she's having second thoughts... and she's now got the albatross of her father's failed re-election campaign (which she managed) around her neck. Dori's a wild child who wakes up with a random guy in one of the series' first scenes, has a record of substance abuse problems that till now have been swept under the table by the Senator's staff, and is generally grumpy about being in Dad's shadow.

And Reeva's got the best package of the lot. She's trapped in a marriage that's going south, with a husband who may or may not be having an affair. He's checked out of the relationship, in any case. And that makes her election-day diagnosis -- she's pregnant! -- that much more painful.

Meanwhile, the two older daughters take a moment to point out to little sis Dori that their father's relationship with their sainted dead mother was also not as happy as she'd like to believe.

Herein lies another problem with Citizen Baines, on top of the fact that it's just too damned hard to judge what this show will be like after five weeks on the air: it's not clear how much of the show is going to be about James Cromwell trying to adapt to life away from the circles of power in Washington, about trying to become a regular citizen back in Seattle after 24 years away from home. That fish-out-of-water tale, using the intriguing Cromwell to his fullest, would be a show worth watching.

But the danger is that the show will only be peripherally about that topic, and will really be a more standard-issue family drama, with Cromwell playing the patriarch part as his daughters each get a chance to be dysfunctional and unhappy... all the while blaming it on the absentee father, Senator Dad.

If that sounds like a great show to you, Citizen Baines is right up your alley. For the rest of us, we can only cross our fingers and hope that Citizen Baines is more about Citizen Baines than it is his offspring.