Don’t take my word for it. After you read Newsday’s reviews of the new fall shows, read everybody else’s. That’s easy to do at Metacritic, which aggregates up to 30 reviews for each series from around the country on one link-crammed page.
Metacritic also “averages” them, by assigning each review a numerical score (which, once you read the full reviews, doesn’t always seem accurate), then boiling them all down into one simple grade -- enabling each show to be labeled as green (acclaimed), yellow (maybe) or red (stinkeroo).
At Metacritic, “Reaper” tops the newbies with an 81, followed by “Chuck” at 74. Landing with a thud would be “Big Shots” at 33 and “Moonlight” at 36 (although I thought my own semi-appreciative assessment in Friday’s paper was scored way too low at 40).
Today’s debut of “Aliens in America” was still in the process of being compiled at Metacritic this morning, but looked promising with a preliminary 79. (My own review in Monday's Newsday was scored an 80.)
Metacritic is a great site to bookmark for TV opinions, and it also covers movies, music, DVDs, books and games (Halo 3 got a 95).
["Aliens in America" photo from The CW/Kharen Hill.]