I spent most of the weekend watching soccer. Would it kill FSC to get a Liverpool game on one of these weeks? Help a brother out. Today I mostly caught up on the pilots that encored this weekend, in addition to two returning series that I figured I should take a look at since I'm trying to have a TV site now. Let's run them down from least interesting to most.

I'm all for the increase in serialization TV dramas are seeing in the wake of "Lost." It's no secret that some of my favorite series all-time are ones that managed to tell big sweeping stories like "Deep Space Nine" and "Angel." Or "Arrested Development" or "Gilmore Girls," for that matter, in their own way. But while "Buffy" and "X-Files" and "Stargate" (both flavors) kind of eased their way into overwhelming interconnectedness, mixing in plenty of standalone adventures among all of the arc episodes, these shows on this "Lost" model require close study from the outset. That can be a good thing, but it also puts a lot of pressure on the pilot. If a completely serial show can't draw and keep an audience from the beginning, it's not going to pick one up in midseason. Even if a show improves, like "Invasion" did, it's unlikely to recover from a weak launch. Despite its obvious excellence I have had next to no luck getting people to join "Veronica Mars" seasons already in progress. That's why I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that "Jericho" is in deep trouble after only one episode.

Somewhere in Middle America, an angst-ridden group of Middle Americans sees a mushroom cloud on the horizon. We've been nuked by the commies! Or the aliens! Or possibly alien commies! The power goes out. Communications are down. A voice mail message (which is played way more times than strictly necessary, perhaps to save the writers from having to come up with more dialogue) suggests that it's not only Denver that's been annihilated, but also Atlanta. Makes sense. Obviously the aliens' first move would be to deprive us of strip clubs, OutKast, and John Elway auto dealerships. It's a decent setup for a movie but the idea of suffering through weeks of this cast just to find out the big secret is distinctly unappealing. The first episode contains about four more unbelievably tiresome speeches than it does compelling characters. Does the world really need a Skeet Ulrich comeback? We don't find out much about Ulrich's character in the pilot except he's the black sheep son of Jericho's mayor (Gerald McRaney) and he knows how to intubate someone in an emergency. You know how I know that an intubation scene is not a suitably dramatic climax for a series pilot? Because I know exactly what an intubation is and feel fairly confident that I could perform one myself in a pinch simply because I have seen them performed so many, many times on television and in movies.

"Jericho" also features a new arrival in town (Lennie James) who seems to know way more about nuclear crisis management than you would expect for a St. Louis cop. I'm sure that it could turn out that he's not who he says he is, assuming the series lasts that long, but on the face of things it's still an annoying device. There's nothing I hate more on a TV show than the character who tells me what I should be feeling. Don't tell me what I should feel, make me feel it. "Jericho" seeks to create a feeling of distraught paranoia, "Lost" in America, but for the first hour it fails completely. So it's the end of the world again, eh? Why exactly should I care?

Between watching and re-watching Serenity and my acquisition of the "Undeclared" DVD, I spent a lot of time admiring David Krumholtz this summer. I figured now was as good a time as any to get on board with his series "Numb3rs," which has been running rather under the radar for two seasons now. If the Friday night third-season premiere is any indication, I'm not going to be springing for the DVD sets any time soon. I like Krumholtz in this show just fine. I like Judd Hirsch. I like Peter MacNicol, a good character actor with terrible judgement -- he was on "Ally McBeal" and in the "Mr. Bean" movie. I'm even willing to get over the unsettling presence of a ripped Rob Morrow. But I'm sorry, I'm just not on board for "Numb3rs." I just don't buy the concept. I believe that a giant styrofoam hula hoop with Egyptian writing on it can transport people to other worlds. I believe that a ninety-pound sixteen-year-old bottle blonde can kill demons. I'll even accept that someone who looks like Denise Richards can be a nuclear physicist. But I don't think you can use math to fight crime, or at least not in the way depicted on "Numb3rs." It's not ridiculously far-fetched, but the way it would work in practice would likely be pretty dull and would involve the same basic process for each case. I highly doubt it would involve a lot of fevered chalkboard-writing montages. The hook to this show is the one thing I can't stand about it. Why couldn't they just make a drama about a brilliant mathematican and his relationships with his colleagues, father, and very different brother? Why does every hour-long show on TV have to have serial killers in it? What is the deal with all of these death-fetishist procedural shows where the corpses are always more interesting than the living?

Another returning show to which you may have never given much notice is "Supernatural," the CW's genre drama about demon-hunting brothers. Formerly the property of the WB, that backwards former network did its best to keep people from watching the show by casting two of its in-house stable of pinup boys (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles) and marketing it predominantly to young teen girls. Guess what? It's a pretty good show. The two leads are quite adequate, particularly Ackles, and the show has a distinct style that miles away from the WB's usual look and feel. The soundtrack is southern rock and the visual signature is foggy, earth-toned exteriors that could only be British Columbia standing in for the American heartland. That's not the only "X-Files" connection: producers John Shiban and Kim Manners worked under Chris Carter for years. Despite the "X" similarities there's a very different dynamic at the heart of "Supernatural," which is doing the same kind of brother-bonds-with-brother riff as "Numb3rs," only I actually care about what else is going on on this show. The second season starts next Thursday; I'm on board.

"Supernatural" is a show that's not trying too desperately to be something new; it's a little horror show with a bit of style that makes it worth watching if you like that sort of thing. "Smith" is a show that has so much damn style that there's hardly room for anything else. Everything in the last week's pilot so screamed for attention, from the creepy robber masks to the angle at which Ray Liotta's cigarettes dangle, that actually separating major plot developments from little stylistic touches was a headache. I love caper movies, and there is an established style of laying out what is going to happen for the audience before the heist goes down. "Smith" is filled with meaningless noise, and it's limited to an hour besides. There's a nice little scene with Bobby (Liotta) playing the piano for his wife (Virginia Madsen), but why does the camera linger on them doing nothing for seemingly an entire act when there's an enormous and involved museum caper ahead? Why is so little time spent on the logistics of the crime and so much devoted to a scene on the airplane ride home where the members of Bobby's team all try to out-underact each other? This is very strange. If the show's creative team doesn't have faith in the story, characters, and cast to hold the audience's attention, they're crazy.

It's a good cast, too, with Liotta, Franky G, Simon Baker, Madsen, and Trainspotting's Jonny Lee Miller. The weak link is Amy Smart. Why does Amy Smart keep getting put in things? She's not talented. She's not that pretty. I've seen her topless already. Maybe this is her last hurrah. I don't have any problem with a show reusing old setups if they can find new places to take them, but it already seems like having Madsen's character unaware of her husband's criminal activities is the wrong choice. Didn't "The Sopranos" settle once and for all that having a family be complicit in their breadwinner's misdeeds makes for more interesting TV? Besides, if you even need a counterexample, Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Ugh.