Only Universal HD reruns of "Northern Exposure" and the fact that each third-season "House" only gets better each additional time I see it is sustaining me in the lean weeks immediately following the end of the television season. The NBA Finals aren't going to be much of a consolation, either, as I suspect the Spurs-Cavaliers series will be essentially a rerun of the Spurs-Jazz Western Conference Finals. Cavs win Game 3, San Antonio takes the rest.

There is one low wattage new show that I am provisionally leaving on my Season Pass list, which is the ABC serial "Traveler." Like Fox's rapidly shuttered "Drive," this was a show that was originally developed for last fall's pilot season when "Lost"-style mystery-dramas were all the rage. "Traveler" isn't as far-fetched as "Drive," as aimless as "Smith," or as patently contrived as "Kidnapped," but without a peep of press or network attention it has about as much chance to make it past its initial order of eight episodes as Eric Snow does of being Finals MVP. If you manage to make it through the establishing section of the pilot, there's some fun to be had with "Traveler," grading on a heavy summer-replacement curve. Three recent grad school graduates are in New York planning a cross-country road trip when the most instantly dislikable of the group disappears in the wake of a museum bombing for which the two remaining leads are instantly made chief suspects. Trying to follow too closely seems futile, but there's some sort of "X-Files" style government conspiracy going on, and our two young protagonists can trust... no... one... as they attempt to prove their innocence and discover the true identity of the vanished title character. "Traveler" benefits from an assured visual style set forth in the pilot by veteran TV director David Nutter ("X-Files," "Supernatural," "Entourage") and some material-elevating performances by pros Viola Davis and William Sadler. Unfortunately, two of the three leads are almost unbearably unpleasant and the one who isn't, Matthew Bomer as Jay Burchell, isn't up to the task of carrying the show by himself. If "Traveler" was deliberately structured as a limited-run series, with all of the answers forthcoming within this brief summer run, I would recommend it more highly. It certainly delivers on the explosion and car chase fronts and is the rare our-heroes-are-on-the-lam show where the law enforcement characters aren't complete unredeemable pinheads. But I want to sucker punch the odious Logan Marshall-Green in the junk every time his Tyler Fog stops sneering for ten seconds to deliver a line of dialogue and as supposed cypher Will Traveler the breadth of subtext Aaron Stanford can muster is raising his eyebrows significantly at regularly spaced intervals. Happy summer, America!

Also going over the airwaves to little to no fanfare at this time are the last handful of episodes of Aaron Sorkin's failed "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." I held out hope for this series long after anyone else did, but even I have to admit that Sorkin completely buckled on this one. Overly sensitive to press criticism and fluctuating ratings (much like his proxy on the series itself, Matthew Perry's Matt Albie), Sorkin tried to retool the show two or three times on the fly and only ended up taking a show that began with one of the most fully realized, self-assured pilots I've ever viewed and turning it into something barely worthy of a retrospective DVD release. While it may be true that people simply weren't going to buy into the idea that the decisions being made by television comedy writers are worthy of the sort of life-or-death tension with which Sorkin infused "The West Wing," the showrunner would have been better off sticking to his guns and allowing the strength of his actors' performances to gradually make viewers care about all the network boardroom mishegoss. Instead the show first lurched towards romantic comedy, which wasn't a very good idea due to its not being particularly funny and the brittle, neurotic characters sliding right into very tired storyline patterns. Then "Studio 60" shifted into a more kinetic, ensemble inside-baseball show (more "Sports Night" than "West Wing") which didn't work either since to the modern TV watcher there really isn't all that much mystique attached to how television shows are made. We have our DVD special features for that.

I don't think there would be any way of framing the major plot threads of the first (and only) season of "Studio 60" that wouldn't be stupid. Perry's character gets hooked on pills! Bradley Whitford falls in love with Amanda Peet's network president even though she's pregnant with another man's baby! (Peet's pregnancy is one thing Sorkin couldn't control, but since her Jordan McDeere was utterly redundant under the vastly more assertive presences of her bosses played by Steven Weber and Ed Asner, they could have excised the character without missing a beat.) The allegedly Christian comedienne played by Sarah Paulson gets a movie role where she plays a crazy cokehead murderer! Nathan Corddry's character's brother is a soldier... who gets captured by the Taliban! I'm unsure whether Sorkin was flipping off the network or the Americans tuning out his show in droves (or simply mailing it in), but the show almost never worked after the first few weeks. Give all available credit to Timothy Busfield for maintaining dignity on a sinking ship; his harried director Cal had almost all of the good moments of the back end of the year, including the really fine episode with the blacklisted former "Studio 60" writer, the only midseason episode to demonstrate Sorkin's former mastery of the format. I hope Matthew Perry finds a better vehicle for his underexposed dramatic chops before too long. As for Bradley Whitford, so long as Sorkin is working, he'll be OK.

I recognized a pattern in a random sequence of shows I was watching earlier this week off of my two DVRs and my DVD collection. For some reason I kept coming across episodes involving dual roles and doppelgangers. There was the "Northern Exposure" oldie "Jules et Joel," with Rob Morrow playing both the familiar Joel Fleischman and his small-time hustling, possibly imagined twin Jules. There was the goofy "South Park" Halloween episode "Spookyfish," which while not beating a deeply unfunny menstruation gag into the ground involves a sweet, helpful Cartman from an alternate universe with a goatee and sharp, obvious line down the middle of the screen whenever he and the regular Cartman are in the same shot. Struggling to get through the early seasons of "Star Trek: Voyager," I had my spirits lifted mildly by "Faces," which splits B'Elanna into component Klingon and human halves and features one of the single creepiest scenes in all of "Star Trek" lore, where a hideously disfigured mad scientist grafts a dead Voyager crewman's face onto his own to better woo the fully Klingon Torres. Then there's the "Stargate Atlantis" installment "Duet." I'm not sure whether it's the inverse or the obverse or the whatever of an evil twin plot, but it concerns two people's consciousnesses being shared in one body. Another established sci-fi trope for sure, but as usual, "Atlantis" manages to take well-digested material and put an entertaining spin on it, highlighted by the delightful spectacles of David Hewlett swanning about like Nathan Lane in The Birdcage and finally smooching Paul McGillion full on the lips. Man, these Canadian actors, they just give and give and give.