This has to be the most underwhelming new crop of network shows in ages, particularly the dramas. We're talking about good ideas badly executed ("freakylinks"), bad ideas badly executed ("The District") and shows so inconsequential they barely register on the screen ("The Fugitive," "C.S.I.").

There's little about the new season so far that's worth breaking old habits for -- or making new ones. Here are some of the not entirely terrible exceptions:

"Ed" (NBC) A winsome, hourlong comedy from "Late Show With David Letterman" producer Rob Burnett (with Letterman taking an executive producer credit), "Ed" has gotten the best reviews of the new season. I have a couple of suspicions about that. One, we critics love Letterman, and we love the idea of the Ol' Cranky Bastard throwing a monkey wrench into prime time. Two, we critics are looking for a quirky-sweet comedy-drama to replace the late, lamented "Freaks and Geeks," and "Ed" comes closest to anything out there.

The truth is, "Ed" has its charms, but it hasn't yet jelled (and may never jell, given NBC's propensity for prematurely killing off charming, quirky comedy-dramas that don't fit the must-see mold).

Chief among those charms is find-of-the-year Tom Cavanagh as Ed Stevens, a New York lawyer who catches his wife sleeping with the mailman and gets fired by his firm, both on the same day. He decides to move back to his quaint hometown of Stuckeyville. Packing up his belongings, Ed flips through his high school yearbook and lands on a picture of Carol Vessey (Julie Bowen), the cheerleader whom he adored from afar way back when.

Ed truly believes he can start his life over again and, back home, he sets out to win Carol's heart, even though she doesn't remember him; she's also in a long-term relationship with a pompous colleague at the high school where she teaches English. But the bighearted Carol is intrigued enough by Ed to not call the cops. This is a neat, Lettermanian premise to hang a show on -- Ed is both a sunny-side-up optimist and an obsessed stalker. It's like the male version of "Felicity."

There are moments when "Ed" makes good on its promise. When he first gets home, he takes Carol bowling, she kisses him and, in a burst of euphoria, Ed buys the bowling alley. When he starts a one-man law office in the back and people keep referring to him as "the bowling-alley lawyer," Ed corrects them the same way every time: "I own a bowling alley. I'm a lawyer. Two separate things." This doesn't seem funny when you read it, but believe me, there is something chuckleworthy about the apologetic, earnest way Cavanagh delivers that line.

Ed is not a laugh riot like Letterman's other producing effort, "Everybody Loves Raymond." Rather, it's a sweet shaggy-underdog story, and its humor arises from something almost intangible -- an inflection, a bit of odd wording -- that's more reminiscent of Letterman's earlier producing efforts, the sadly short-lived CBS comedies "The Bonnie Hunt Show" and "The Building" (also starring Hunt).

The problem is, the show's "Northern Exposure" quirkiness has already started to cloy. Ed's co-workers at the bowling alley -- Kenny the hulking idiot (Mike Starr), Shirley the psychotic wallflower (Rachel Cronin) and Phil (Michael Ian Black), who can only be described as the poor man's Jack Black -- were kind of kooky in the Oct. 8 pilot. But by the second week, they had worn out their welcome. There's an overly familiar feel to the show's small-town eccentrics, from beloved elderly magician Stuckeyville Stan to Ed himself. (He shows up to woo Carol in front of her high school students wearing a suit of armor.) You've seen them all before, back in "Twin Peaks" and Cicely and Rome (the one on "Picket Fences").

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