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The A Is for AffluentEight questions about the ABC upfront.

By Troy PattersonPosted Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at 4:24 PM ET

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6) Will Dan Rather be making his debut on a fictional show? Or do you have to count that National Guard thing?

Dirty Sexy Money kinda looks like a hip Falcon Crest. That's a compliment. Six Feet Under's Peter Krause plays the consigliore to a clan of horny plutocrats. In the pilot, the former CBS anchor will advise William Baldwin's character to run for office.

7) Why do all of the following dramas concern cliques with four members? Is it that entertainment executives are used to thinking in quadrants?

Women's Murder Club derives from the work of trash novelist James Patterson. (No relation, I hope.) "Four working women" solve homicides while not forgetting to talk about their feelings. Angie Harmon stars, and it'll be interesting to see how they work around the fact that she's not a good actress.

Cashmere Mafia concerns "four ambitious and sexy women," friends from B-school, who have careers and sex lives and doubtlessly talk about them over dumb drinks served in martini glasses. Lucy Liu's character is exactly the kind of person whom someone who attends an ABC upfront is likely to crush on. "Whoever closes the biggest ad buy stays!" Lucy Liu exhorted her boss in the shamelessly excerpted clip.

Big Shots is a chick show for boys, or at least about them—"the story of four … competitive but dysfunctional CEOs" who get together at the country club to complain about women. I believe someone has sex with his ex-wife in a wine cellar. (Its petit bourgeois iteration is Carpoolers, a sitcom set in the HOV lane: "[F]our guys from very different backgrounds relish their daily commute as they commiserate about their lives, jobs, and families.")

I wasn't alone in deciding that watching the previews of ABC's dramas—with their sameness, their evidently cretinous gender politics, and their all-over air of self-congratulation—was somewhat soul-sucking.

8) Why is ABC's after-party the hardest to get into?

Is this, too, about being "upscale"? I was not permitted near ABC's cornucopia of shellfish and liquor, but, according to a reliable source, the party was awful: No one talked to anyone, and everyone had somewhere better to be. That said, the sushi and the filet mignon came highly recommended.