Anybody else watch this? New CBS "drama", which by this weekend will be hailed on that network as "the #1 Most-Watched New Show on Wednesdays in Its Time Slot!"

I watched the pilot episode tonight, because I had heard the gimmick involved Denver getting nuked. It's about a small town on the western border of Kansas that sees a mushroom cloud. All communication goes out and people start freaking. They eventually find out that Atlanta was also nuked. That's the basic premise of the show-- isolation, fear and confusion. Hey, for western Kansas, things sure look mountanous and scenic!

This thing was more over-acted than the worst Deadwood episode. Every scene was over-hyped, over-played and falsely pumped up with a sappy music score. There's a friendly mayor, who won the contest for "Human Who Most Looks and Acts like Papa Smurf". He makes sappy speeches and appeals to the good nature of the human spirit. Awww.

Then there's the mayor's two sons. One's returning from military school when he sees the cloud. He crashes his car, then ends up saving a busload of kids. He finds a crashed bus that's apparently been sitting against a tree for 6 hours... with all of its occupants conveinently waiting inside for The Hero to arrive. Even the teacher. Weak.

It seemed like the show was borrowing heavily from "Battlestar Galactica" and "LOST". Especially with the commercial "outros"-- all ended with a hollow echo, just like LOST. It takes the isolation and mystery of LOST and tries to meld it with the "sole survivors" morality vibe of Galactica. Note that the leader of the town has a young son who's out there on the frontlines... the Adama clan should sue.

Doubt I'll be back for more episodes...even with baseball going away and LOST taking another hiatus in mid-season.

I tried watching it, but I found every single character to be completely unappealing in one way or another, so I decided to watch Punk vs. Joe II instead.