Five New Shows That Met Their Doom...

Maybe you can't imagine Life With(out) Bonnie now or you've become swept up in American Dreams, but for every show that gets picked up, another gets canned. These are their stories:

Girls' Club (Fox): Probably the flashiest and most well-known of the canned shows, other TV critics said this is the show that proved David E. Kelley has lost his golden touch. But I'd like to point to Exhibit A: the last two seasons of Ally McBeal. Fox, next time you get an idea from Davy E., take a night and sleep on it--and if it has whiny female lawyers, throw it straight in File 13.

That Was Then (ABC): 'Nuff said. No really, pick a name that inspires at least some confidence that it'll move on to the next season. I guess Gen X-ers aren't quite ready to relive their teen years of wedgies, noogies and the oh-so-cliched tape on the glasses.

Push, Nevada (ABC): Did ABC--currently the low-man of the Big Three--really expect they could knock off CSI and Will and Grace with this thing? An IRS agent lead character sure didn't draw me in. The idea, combining a Twin-Peaks-style drama with a game show, was interesting, but ABC should never have expected to find a strong audience against two powerhouses, especially with a show that required tuning in every week to solve the mystery.

Haunted (UPN): We may want to see dead people, but not every week. Haunted is another series created in an effort to establish UPN as the sci-fi net--a task you think would be a lot easier considering the lack of shows in that genre. Even Party of Five's Matthew Fox's sex appeal couldn't save this show from an outlandish and confusing plot in which an enemy's dead spirit is trying to block other spirits from communicating with him in the living world. Sure, buddy.

Bram and Alice (CBS): People read writers; they don't watch them on TV. If this show doesn't prove that producers should stop funding shows with long-lost family members--this one featured a daughter, about to give up on writing, locating her Pulitzer-Prize-winning father--I don't know what will. They should've stopped at Sister, Sister.