When We Return …

As usual, CBS unveiled its new shows at Carnegie Hall. As usual, its upfront presentation was the week's most effective—a glossy and confident tribute to salesmanship itself. The network was feeling so confident, in fact, that it displayed unusual glee in ridiculing the competition. The president of sales mentioned she was proud "to actually show you our exciting new programs"—in contrast with NBC, say, which was all talk. Nina Tassler, the head of entertainment, bragged about how quickly she'd gotten her shows back on air after the writers' strike, "especially"—twisting a knife in the side of 30 Rock and The Office—"our comedies." On the one hand, that's a nice put-down. On the other, would you go around bragging about sating the appetites of Two and a Half Men loyalists?

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I took in this trash talk while seated next to a woman from a hedge fund invested in CBS Corp. She was less concerned about the network's fall lineup than about the uncertain future of television—that parade of elephants stomping through every room this week—and the presentation seemed explicitly tailored to help her relax. The emcee, Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, led a tour of the whole CBS empire. There were nods to the digital division, now boasting a partnership with the lonelygirl15 producers and threatening to have CSI murder suspects call your cell phone every night; to "the Outernet" (the screens leering at you in waiting rooms and airport terminals); and to the billboard business in Europe and South America. Professional frat boy Adam Carolla extolled the intimacy of radio: "Think of it as TV for blind people who drive to work." Kitchen-dwelling pest Rachael Ray made a pitch for the networks' syndicated shows by likening CBS Television Distribution to a "Chicken BBQ Sammie," with crusty Judge Judy as the roll, Entertainment Tonight as the sauce, and Oprah as the all-essential poultry. Burp.

Also, this company airs first-run shows on CBS affiliates—a fact that, judging by the network's demographics, young urban people may need reminding of. Last year's attempts to enliven a staid lineup of crime dramas and traditionally formatted comedies—the instantly imploding musical Viva Laughlin, the family saga Cane, the not-exploitative-enough Kid Nation—failed audaciously. This time around, the network is putting a slightly racier, raunchier, darker spin on such time-tested themes as the ineluctability of fate, the glamour of police work, and pee-pee jokes. A shiver went through the crowd at Tassler's mention of Swingtown, the wife-swapping drama coming to air next month, and that is the shiver the network hopes to ride into the fall.

• The clip from Worst Week—a lively farce of a one-camera comedy, a notable departure from the canned-laughs yuck and tin-eared dialogue of most CBS sitcoms—featured head trauma, profuse vomiting, and male near-nudity in depicting a guy's initial meeting with his girlfriend's parents.
• Project Gary, meanwhile, fits squarely in the tradition of CBS dude comedy, with Jay Mohr as a single dad who, at one point, encourages his shy son to invite a girl over. Gary's kid: "What if she expects me to, you know, tap it?" Two beats. Gary: "What would you be tapping?" Kid: "I don't know!"
• The Ex List was the show for which the crowd at Carnegie Hall summoned the liveliest murmurs of approval, with the women seeming to dig the premise, and the boys seeming to enjoy the profusion of glowing limbs, bare torsos, and receptive smiles. "Bella has it all ... except one true love." A psychic decrees that one of her past lovers will be her future mate, and there Bella goes, making a list of her old boyfriends and calling them up as if she'd just been diagnosed with HPV.
• Not just dark but dank, Eleventh Hour is a sci-fi crime show. Rufus Sewell croaks out dire warnings as a science professor tracking some clone-breeding baddies. This is supposedly the pilot that tested best with audiences, who either grew stimulated by its fanciful glance at rogue geneticists or else took comfort in the familiarity of everything else about it.
• The hero of The Mentalist, having grown rich and jaded as a celebrity psychic, becomes a police detective. The idea is that he's very perceptive. The more important idea is that the star, Simon Baker, looks very hot when swaggering through a crime scene at the side of his tart-tongued brunette partner.
• Harper's Island, a midseason replacement, is a slasher experience. At the risk of inflating its potential, let's call it Lost meets Twin Peaks by way of Saw II. Thirty-six people head to an island wedding, and someone starts filleting 'em. My money says it's a spurned wannabe bridesmaid.

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Troy Patterson is Slate's television critic.

Photograph of television set © 1999-2008 Getty Images.

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