It’s hard to know how to describe The Good Doctor from just one episode. The basic premise is a high-functioning autistic boy becoming a surgical resident. In the opener, while the Hospital board debates whether to hire the autistic resident, the kid saves the life of a boy injured at the airport. He sees problems with the boy’s response, diagnoses unusual symptoms, and comes up with unique solutions of almost impossible to detect glitches in the boy’s condition, thus saving him.

It’s almost like a combination of House and Sherlock Holmes, farther back on the autism spectrum.

Unfortunately, the autistic character isn’t particularly compelling. There’s really only one or two scenes where he connects with anyone, and without connections, he can’t connect with the audience either. The whole backstory for him is told in flashback and it is almost clinical detachment for the viewer too.

Add in hospital politics between people we don’t know, multiple doctors romancing others, a whole host of other relationships running around that look like a soap opera, and the show is a mess. The only bright spot? Richard Schiff (Toby from West Wing) is the doctor who wants to hire him. He has lots of gravitas, but the show doesn’t.

When I did my preview, I thought it would make it to renewal, partly as it is an in-house production. Now that I’ve seen Ep 1? Not sure the House audience will find it in time.

While the big news for the purists amongst Star Trek fans was the release of the new series, Star Trek: Discovery, the news for the rest of the ST universe was the release of The Orville. Seth McFarlane is a huge ST fan, and the show rips off just about 90% of its approach from the Old Series, the movies, The Next Generation and Voyager.

Originally billed as a spoof, most of the reviews that I saw of the show were noting that it was way less of a spoof than Galaxy Quest had been. GQ had people acting crazy, but it was because it was so far out of their normal wheelhouse i.e. science fiction brought to life for actors who had been on the show. For the Orville, you’re a lot closer to Space Balls than to Galaxy Quest, without the outrageous side. It is more like a like sitcom set in the ST universe.

But the weird part is the show actually still works as a sci-fi show. The series premiere focuses on a remote science post with a new discovery, alien invaders, and a new ship sent to investigate with a new captain at the helm.

Seth McFarlane of course plays the Captain, Ed Mercer, of the U.S.S. Orville. Success with The Family Guy and American Dad could have easily made this a natural fit as an animated series but apparently, he just wanted his own ship. The first officer character is a woman (a la the original Star Trek pilot), and his ex-wife, played by Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights, Agents of SHIELD). By the end of the episode, they’re working well together, and if that dynamic holds, could be fun to watch. If not, it’ll be like watching your parents fight.

The secondary characters — Penny Johnson Jerald as the medical officer, Scott Grimes as the helmsman, Peter Macon as a science officer, Halston Sage as security officer, and J. Lee as the navigator — are all more or less third or fourth-level characters. I’m sure they’ll grow in importance, but mostly they are just comic relief. And not very good comic relief. Across the board, and particularly the first two, I have pretty much never liked them in anything they’ve been in.

It’ll be interesting to see if they keep it going as Star Trek-lite or up the spoof factor.

So the quick premise is that the main character, inventor Alex Riley, has had a bunch of significant moments in his life, and three in particular — once as a kid moving from Chicago to L.A. when his mom got remarried, once as an adult catching his wife having an affair, and once as an older man having a heart attack. In the opening episode of the series, you get to see each of the three events unfold, with some basic links between them.

For those who saw This Is Us last year, this is a similar take, except it is focused on one man. As a kid, he’s played by relative newcomer Jack Dylan Grazer and there is a very strong The Wonder Years feel to it. The kid is good, the dad is fine, Mom and the new brother are difficult to watch. And that’s going to be a problem for the series — seeing this age have the same gravitas as later-in-life segments.

The middle age version is played by Bobby Moynihan, and most people would recognize him from Saturday Night Live. I’m not an SNL watcher, maybe some highlights now and again, but oddly enough his voice sounded familiar. Cruising through his bio, I see he was the voice of Chet for Monsters University, and I think that’s why he seemed familiar to me. An odd link, I must say. And to be frank, he’s not bad here, he’s just not particularly great in Ep 1.

The old version is played by John Larroquette, and while I would love to love him, as much as I used to on say Night Court, this character seems bland to me. Perhaps in part because he has nothing much to do in the episode, he’s at loose ends. At least for the other two, you know how it turns out in part at least by seeing where the older versions are at in their life. But the oldest version of Alex is just drifting.

Which is a pretty good summary of the show too. Drifting. I’m not hopeful CBS will keep it past its initial commitment.