Mid-October cutdown

The fall TV season is nearing the end of its third full week, which means it's time to make the first round of Tivo cuts. This year we invited six new shows to camp — as of last night, three have made the roster, one is on probation, and two have been red-tagged.

The winners:

Cane. Didn't expect much from this show — in fact, what landed it on the tryout list was the cast: Jimmy Smits, Nestor Carbonell (formerly the smooth-talking Other on Lost), Polly Walker (formerly the “Lady MacAntony” Atia on Rome), and the best mom-and-dad sparring combo since Stockard Channing and Martin Sheen — Rita Moreno and Hector Elizondo.

This show launched itself right into the neutral zone between The Godfather, The Sopranos, and Dallas, with all the Shakespearian undertones one would expect to find there. It's so brimming with potential, the biggest pitfall the writers will face is the temptation to do too much in the first season. I can just hear the network execs screaming for a new Sopranos, but honestly, I think if they're going to cheat in any one direction, they should cheat towards Dallas. With just a little bit of restraint, a little deft sidestepping of some obvious plot-traps, this could be the best new show of the season.

Dirty Sexy Money. Where Peter Krause goes, we follow. Maus and I loved Six Feet Under, and over the summer we devoured both seasons of Sports Night on DVD. If there's one guy who can convey “dear-God-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into?” with one expression, it's this guy. Unlike Cane, this show need not show restraint — the fixings are in place for another Arrested Development here. And if there's any pair that will give Hector Elizondo and Rita Moreno a run for their money this year, it's Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh.

Expect at least three of those four names to come up around Golden Globe and Emmy time.

Back to You. The sitcom should be dead by now, shouldn't it? In the post-Friends-Frasier-Raymond world dominated by Lost, Heroes, and Housewives, isn't the 30-minute chain of punchlines a dinosaur? Last year, I would have said How I Met Your Mother was the last of the species (kept alive single-handedly by Neil Patrick Harris). But maybe not.

I don't know if Back to You (which carries on its back the ghosts of Cheers, Frasier, and Raymond) will ever be greater than the sum of its parts, but it does make me laugh. And surprisingly, it seems to ignore the sitcom formulas of the 90s and goes back to the pre-Seinfeld sitcom formula of the late 1980s: don't be clever, just be funny. If you've been watching this show, I can tell you precisely the moment that I was sold: it was the day the goldfish kept dying. All of a sudden it felt like 1986, Thursday night, NBC.

Still in the running:

Journeyman. It's Quantum Leap. I keep wishing they'd do something to make this show Not Quantum Leap, but after three episodes I'm still waiting for Dean Stockwell to appear in a garish shirt-and-tie combo. I haven't given up: Kevin McKidd is good, and some of the time-twists have been interesting (especially the ones where his leaps — I'm sorry, I mean “travels”— intersect with his own earlier life). But I'm still waiting for something to give this show a real hook. How about Ray Stevenson as Kevin McKidd's sidekick? Now that would be a show.

Hit the showers, rookies:

Bionic Woman. Too bad. I was such a fan of the Lindsay Wagner show, and this seemed to have everything going for it, not the least of which was its unmistakable Battlestar Galactica pedigree. Good cast, good writers, good concept. But, alas, yaaaaaaawn. There is nothing, nothing new here. Blow away the thin vapor of a plot, and you're left with a decent Katee Sackhoff performance worthy of a much better show.

The original Jamie Sommers was thoughtful, brave, vulnerable, always reluctant to use her powers, and most importantly, cared about by the people who had “built” her. What she was not was an ass-kicking, rogue super-assassin forced against her will to work for a clandestine government operation. Bourne Identity, Universal Soldier, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Angel, and Alias all did the same thing, and did it much better. Actually, there is one way in which Bionic Woman does outdo Buffy — they've somehow managed to give us a younger sister even more annoying than Dawn. If you can believe it.

Private Practice. Maus's show, not mine. But she's such a Grey's Anatomy addict that this seemed like a no-brainer. So much hype, so much buildup — I don't remember the last time a show was spun off with this much sheer momentum. But pffffft... plunk. Even Chevy Chase didn't fall this flat this fast.

That's OK — 3 out of 6, with a 4th still in the running, isn't bad. Besides, it's only 6 weeks until Galactica: Razor premieres, and then everybody can just step the frak aside.