Take your Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Preview. Open it to a random page. Look down. Study the shows on that page. By this time next year, one of them will be cancelled. In fact, by this time next month, one of them will be cancelled.

Once again, we've not watched a bunch of shows, so we can let you know not to watch them as well. Don't worry, they'll be gone soon, and then it will be like they never happened. Except C.S.I.: NY. Those things can't be killed, like hydras.

10. C.S.I.: NY

Premiere Date: CBS, September 22 at 10 PM
The Premise: Gary Sinise and Melina Kanakaredes act like the Crime Scene Invesigators in Las Vegas and Miami, which is to say they examine evidence, arrest suspects, interrogate witnesses, and basically pretend that Crime Scene Investigators do absolutely everything, while homicide detectives sit in the lunch room and catch the end of the baseball game while finishing a hero sandwich.
The Pitch: If you like the other two shows that are very similar to this one, why wouldn't you like this one, which is very similar to those other two shows you like?
Why It's Inessential: Even we're tired of the C.S.I.: N'Awlins and Law & Order: Parking Meter jokes. You realize we have A&E to blame for all this -- because it proved that, given a chance, people really will watch Law & Order three times a day, every day. (Hey, we've been there too.) And now this is what we get: C.S.I. spreading to every city on the U.S. map like an unstoppable cloud of sarin gas. Enough with the rubber gloves and little tweezers! Thanks to the resultant crippling ennui, we're not even excited that Gary Sinise is going to be on TV -- and normally we'd be very excited. Thanks a lot, C.S.I.!

9. Kevin Hill

Premiere Date: UPN, September 29 at 9 PM
The Premise: He's a black lawyer -- who just found out he's got to raise someone else's baby!
The Pitch: It's just like Mr. Mom meets Baby Boom! Think of it as Mr. Black Lawyer Accidental Dad Boom!
Why It's Inessential: Aren't there, like, thousands of couples trying desparately to adopt babies? Yet people in movies and TV seem to magically find random infants in between the couch cushions. Then again, who better to teach us what's important in life than babies? Tiny, magical babies.

8. Hawaii

Premiere Date: NBC, September 1 at 8 PM
The Premise: Eric Balfour and Ivan Sergei star as a duo of improbably young plainclothes detectives in Hawaii.
The Pitch: He's a hot, hunky cop, and he's a hot, hunky cop, and together they're cleaning up the streets of Hawaii! Wait -- they have streets in Hawaii, right? Well, they sure have hunks! Hot ones!
Why It's Inessential: Didn't they already run this show, except it was called Fastlane? And while we're on the subject, don't you have to serve some time on the police force before you can become a detective and go undercover and run around in street clothes? These guys are maybe fifty-four years old -- put together. Did they just walk in to the captain's office and he said, "Those haircuts are too good to keep off the streets. Get to work!" (Bonus Inessessentiality: By the time you finish reading this line, this show will already...be...cancelled.)

7. Center of the Universe

Premiere Date: CBS, September 29 at 9:30 PM
The Premise: John Goodman and Jean Smart deal with a whole houseload of wacky relatives.
The Pitch: John Goodman and Jean Smart are back on TV! So is Ed Asner. So is this premise.
Why It's Inessential: Don't feel bad for John Goodman. When this is cancelled, he can live off the cheques from Father of the Pride. Actually, feel bad for John Goodman.

6. Boston Legal

Premiere Date: ABC, October 3 at 10 PM
The Premise: James Spader is back as the same character from The Practice, but on a new show, sort of.
The Pitch: If you liked The Practice, you'll love Boston Legal, as long as The Practice you liked wasn't that first one, with Dylan McDermott.
Why It's Inessential: It looks like David E. Kelley just took some Practice scripts and some Boston Public scripts and smushed them together in a big vat of solvents. Then this drained out. What's next? Chicago Snoops? Picket McBeal?*
*FYI, we would totally watch a show titled Picket McBeal.

5. Medical Investigation

Premiere Date: NBC, September 9 at 10 PM
The Premise: An elite unit of medical people launch investigations into medical matters...and save lives.
The Pitch: All the excitement of C.S.I., but instead of crime and murder, it's got people complaining of persistent headaches. Wait -- is that corneal discoloration I see? Hand me a penlight!
Why It's Inessential: Assumedly, the titles Clinical Researchers and Authorized Hospital Personnel were rejected as too scintilating.

4. The Billionaire: Branson's Quest for the Best

Premiere Date: Fox, November 8 at 8 PM
The Premise: Richard Branson's doing something!
The Pitch: Fucking hell, we have got to get ourselves a show like The Apprentice. Who else is rich and vain?
Why It's Inessential: We're willing to give Mark Cuban's The Benefactor a pass because Cuban seems kind of nuts and he's always talking smack to the Donald, which we love. But Richard Branson? Quest for the Best? Is this the same Richard Branson who tried to cross the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon about forty-six times before he made it? What's his catchphrase going to be? "You're grounded! Grounded like me, in a hot air balloon, until I made it."

3. Commando Nanny

Premiere Date: The WB, September 17 at 8:30 PM
The Premise: A former British commando becomes a nanny.
The Pitch: Have you ever wondered whether Hulk Hogan's Surburban Commando would make a funny sitcom? No?
Why It's Inessential: Based on the life story of Mark Burnett, this is The WB's attempt to curry favour with Mark Burnett, so maybe he'll throw them a reality-show scrap one day, like, say, The Caddy or The Barbecue Stand or something.

2. LAX

Premiere Date: NBC, September 13 at 10 PM
The Premise: Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood run L.A.'s busiest airport.
The Pitch: If you only watch one new show with a title made up of entirely of initials, make it LAX. That's L-A-X, not Lax like sax. And no LAXative jokes, please. Not even if NBC "dumps" us. Boy, we just handed that one to you.
Why It's Inessential: Because if there's one place in the world we love to spend time in, and would actively choose to spend one more hour a week in, why, it's an airport. Or a dentist's chair. One or the other. Is Joe Penny free to star in DDS?

1. Listen Up

Premiere Date: CBS, September 20 at 8:30 PM
The Premise: Jason Alexander is a guy who writes funny newspaper columns and hosts a TV show.
The Pitch: Don't think of it as Jason Alexander's comeback! Think of it as Malcolm Jamal Warner's comeback!
Why It's Inessential: We're not saying that the Seinfeld actors should never work again. All we're saying is that their collected, post-Seinfeld work has been so unfunny that it's actually traveled back in time and made Seinfeld less funny. Not seem less funny, mind you. Actually less funny. It's like they killed Larry David's grandpa or something.

- MFF