Meanwhile

There is a hiatus within a hiatus in the baseball postseason, as rain has washed out the critical fifth game between the Mets and Cards as the Tigers await the winner on Saturday. I've been off in my predictions (well, largely underestimating the Tigers at least), but I think that whichever NL team prevails, its pitching should not be a match for Detroit's.

Meanwhile I get a chance to review some of the news TV series that have graced the hard drives of my DVR and computer. I did more than my share of sampling of the network output, and like many of my fellow citizens, have been a bit overwhelmed by the plethora of serialized dramas. The glut of choices forced, I'm sure, some hurried and frantic creative decisions to ratchet up the action to outdraw the competition. Maybe that's why "Vanished" got so audacious in the face of "Kidnapped" that it saw fit to kill off its detective protagonist in the seventh week.

Neither "Vanished" nor "Kidnapped," though thematically nearly identical, promised the plot fabric that would entice a viewer to stay on for more than a season, if that. In the case of these two, I don't believe two months. "Kidnapped" was a bit grittier and had the intriguing actor Jeremy Sisto as its troubled lead. "Vanished" was bloodier and trashier, combining obvious "Da Vinci Code" devices with an unconvincing interplay of attractive actors who looked better than they performed.

The surprise of this season, for me as for other paid TV analysts, is the breakout of "Heroes," NBC's nearly buried comic-book lead-in to the ambitious "Studio 60" with its "West Wing" pedigree. While "Studio 60" is proving to be fascinating to former players such as yours truly, it has yet to demonstrate a broader public appeal. Not many people welcome the disillusioning fact that sketch performers are not making it up as they go along, and are not especially impressed by the process. I thought that was proved by the failure of "The Comeback," a dead-on TV satire already geared to a sophisticated HBO audience. Notice how HBO's only successful Hollywood-based series, "Entourage," is about the characters, not the making of the movies.

But "Heroes," unlike "Studio 60," makes no pretense to satire or faux documentary or any kind of reality. It is a well-conceived X-Man variation, with a sense of humor about itself, and seems to revel in its total outlandishness. The last episode ended with the "Immortal Girl" discovering that her body was undergoing an autopsy. (It's setting a rather high standard to continue topping itself, somewhat like "24.") There is cleverness in the selection of superpowers, usually an inane collection of physical mega-abilities, but here fraught with an intriguing eclectism, from Supermanish flight to personality projection to the very useful bending of the space/time continuum. Hiro, the Japanese Hero (fuck subtlety) may be the break-out character of this TV season. Who'd a thunk it? The producers also understood the need to insinuate a major Jeopardy early on the grab the audience, and the nuking of New York is catastrophic--and, unfortunately, credible--enough. I feel a degree hoodwinked that I am falling in with the rest of the crowd, but damn, this show is fun.

A few other noteworthy new series--and after three weeks any judgment is reservable and reversible--are "Justice," "The Nine" and "Brothers and Sisters." The latter has the potential to fall into flat predictable family drama, but it has a terrific cast--one in which the amazing Rachel Griffiths practically gets lost. It needs to keep intensifying the mother-daughter rift between Calista Flockhart and Sally Fields, and also not mince the words of Flockhart's character, who is supposed to be an amazingly glib national conservative voice. The politics has been severely downplayed, surely after a lot of creative in-fighting among producers, writers and the network.

"Justice" is a flashy legal variant on "House," but it wears its glossiness well. That it has an irascible personality-challenged lead with a staff demographically mirroring that of "House" I'm sure is not a total coincidence. And it's Jerry Bruckheimer, yecch. But its cynicism is somewhat refreshing, though not as much as it would if it were on pay cable (like Showtime's nihilistic and totally amoral "Dexter.") As for the highly touted "The Nine," two episodes cannot tell me much about its slow revelations and the potential of its characters, but it is not as compelling at this stage as its lead-in and model "Lost" was. Will I care to be watching in 2012? Eh.

One show I know will not be on my DVR list or computer menu five years hence is the wildly overrated "Ugly Betty," a thin and simplistic comedy drama that by no means justifies its weekly hour length. We get the gist of "Ugly Betty" from, well, two minutes of reviewing "The Devil Wears Prada" or "Working Girl" or "Nine to Five," for that matter. The glam aspects of the fashion world may hold fascination for some, but not in this household. I've never even watched one episode of "Project Runway," which is supposed to be one of the better reality contests--and I like reality shows. This show obviously has some general audience underdog appeal, or it would not have been an international phenomenon. But being an international hit is no special measure of greatness. Witness "The Man from Atlantis," David Hasselhoff and The World Cup.

My problem is that its portrayals are hopelessly broad and obvious. And its characters seem like stereotypes populating a particularly dated musical. And I like musicals. At any second I expect the extras to jump into a chorus line and berate our poor heroine about her nerdiness while high stepping through a maze of dancing wardrobes. Dull stuff. There may be enough material and story machinations to fill a bland half-hour comedy, but I'm sure anything it could do, "The Office" can do a lot better. And there, everyone is Ugly.