BOOB TUBE REVIEW

The new television season has begun--hip, hip . . . okay.

Do you get the feeling that every show coming on this year is a fourteenth-generation xerox copy of either Lost or CSI or 24? (I was also going to say Medium, but with Ghost Whisperer returning, it would be hard to know who's ripping off whom.) The ingredients of most of these clones seem much the same: large casts of pretty, buff-looking actors; vaguely out-of-this-world mysteries; and shows that pay morbid attention to equally morbid details. (I can't wait until the premiere of CSI:Boise.) It's as if the only way to get your show on the air is to present it as a hybrid of other shows, a new slant on the tried-and-true that, in truth, is not a new slant at all.

You can bet, for example, that since Hugh Laurie and House have made it alright for leading characters to be snarky, mean and unlikable, we'll have many unpleasant lawyers, cops, accountants and professors on the air--James Woods is already suiting up for Shark and Victor Garber is rumored to be an equally unpleasant lawyer on the Fox Network's Justice. (Or maybe he's just grumpy that ABC finally gave up on Alias.) It's nice that the arbitors of taste don't want to feed audiences pablum, but acid (as well as saccharine) should be used in small doses. What seems to be going over the network executives' collective heads is that it is specificity that audiences crave. It's not that every story must be new--there are, they say, only seven real storylines under the sun--but they have to be grounded in something connected and truthful. Hugh Laurie is at times a total bastard on House, but a) the man's in a lot of pain that he's trying to distract himself from, and b) it's refreshing to see a doctor as arrogant on TV as some of the real ones. Likewise, it is the first medical show in recent memory to show that doctors, however well-educated, are often shooting in the dark, hoping to hit the right diagnosis or, better yet, a cure. You actually see that they have to do some creative guess work, with risky and potentially deadly results. There are consequences to the decisions they make, and the results are not always good. Likewise, Medium succeeds not because of the mumbo-jumbo from the spirit world but because the show IS so grounded in real relationships--sweaty, messy, loving perhaps but at times testy. It truly would be a pain if your daily life were disrupted by these rather gruesome visions that ruined every night's sleep and spoiled the family dinner hour. (It also doesn't hurt that Medium's exemplary cast, led by Patricia Arquette and Jake Weber, have genuine chemistry and resemble real people.) One need only take a look at Jennifer Love Hewett's fake eye lashes, worn even in her sleep, to know that we're nowhere near any kind of reality. And no wonder we're a nation of sexually-confused people, when the hearty, dorky, stereotype locker room sexuality of CBS' Monday night lineup (Two and a Half Men, How I Met Your Mother) tells us that we are all a mess and that men and women will always behave badly, it's in the genes. (At least Yes, Dear is finally dead and buried.)

That said, here are a few quick comments about recently-viewed new offerings:

The Class (Mondays, 8pm, CBS) - Better than expected, with an attractive cast led by Jason Ritter and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, a script from one of the writers of Friends, and direction by the venerable James Burrows, looking for a new post-Will-and-Grace home. A 20-something tries to re-unite his third grade classmates to find out if they're still smiling or if they're as messed up as he is, with rather amusing results. Yes, it seems that the 20-somethings have nothing on their minds but sex and partying, but at least there's a genuine sense of longing here, laced with a range of different types of wit--for once, everyone in the ensemble contributes with different voices versus sounding like they all came out of a homogenous machine. The dating exploits of this mix-and-match group could get tiresome, but for now, there's some genuine sweetness and charm.

Men in Trees (Fridays, 9pm, ABC) Tough night on TV, but you've got to give ABC credit for trying something quirky opposite the detective dramas that rule Fridays. Anne Heche (yes, Ellen's ex, now straight again and a mommy) stars as a relationship counselor whose own romance hits the skids and ends up re-settling in Elmo, Alaska, where the men outnumber the women ten-to-one. In its attempts to figure out what makes men and women tick, it comes off as a particularly strange hybrid of Sex and the City meets Northern Exposure. Does everything have to be quite so cute and quaint? Still, Heche always has been talented despite her bizarre personal ups and downs, and she is surrounded by a cast that is charming in a back-burner way. (Abraham Benrubi is finally out from behind the ER desk and is actually fairly romantic--though not as Heche's love interest. They just had to get the spectacular-looking guy for that.) Still, there's a desire to sneak some truth in there, and if allowed to run for more than a couple of episodes (which the rumor mill says won't happen), this show may relax into a more a adult look at male-female relationships.

Standoff (Tuesdays, 9pm, FOX)- All right, Ron Livingston is a talent that's been waiting for a vehicle, but c'mon! Hostage negotiators, male and female, who are work partners and having a relationship while simultaneously talking down suicide bombers, kidnappers, crazy air traffic controllers and the like? Sorry, but there's nothing really cute about those situations, and tying them up with a bow is more than a bit disturbing. (The real test--we taped the second episode to watch but we just haven't gotten around to it, and I'm not sure we ever will.)

More to come over the next few weeks as the networks set their paper boats adrift. Which will float, which will sink, and which will take anchor? Tune in, TV addicts.