Then again, sometimes they don't, which is why you would never want to form a final judgment on the broadcast networks' new fall offerings based solely on the short clips they show to advertisers when they reveal their lineups, as they did last week in New York.
Still, those clips are designed to entice those ad buyers to part with their cash and an even shorter variation will eventually be used as promos to entice you to watch the shows. So it seems fair to do a very preliminary evaluation on that basis.
Keeping those limits in mind, USA TODAY's Robert Bianco offers an early rundown of what, for now, seem to be the networks' most promising and puzzling choices.
ABC has fewer new fall shows than it had last year and more new shows from last year returning, which is the kind of progress networks want to see. And compared to last year, the dramas at least look slightly stronger, which is what viewers want to see.
Most promising: Nashville (Wednesday, 10 ET/PT)
Friday Night Lights' Connie Britton stars as a country legend facing off against a young, pretty, wildly ambitious and woefully untalented rising star (Hayden Panettiere) in this music-business mix of Smash a nd All About Eve. Panettiere looks like fun as the auto-tuned bad girl, and Britton is one of those actors who almost instantly comes across as both real and sympathetic. Combined, you have a show that's already being discussed as one of fall's frontrunners, though it's a long, long time from May to September.
Most puzzling:The Neighbors (Wednesday, 9:30 ET/PT)
ABC has this odd fondness for high-concept throwbacks (Work It, anyone?), and no show this fall is higher than this comedy starring Jami Gertz and Lenny Venito as a married couple who move into a gated New Jersey community. Life there would be perfect were it not for one small glitch: Their neighbors are visitors from another planet disguised as human beings. And if that weren't strange enough, ABC is putting this show behind Modern Family, which makes for odd neighbors indeed.
CBS
Wondering why CBS will once again finish the year as America's most-watched network? It's because CBS' programmers seem to have the best grasp of what their audience wants and how the medium works. And once again, they seem to have come up with the fall's strongest new slate â€" one that offers a few shows that look as promising as the best you'll fi nd anywhere, without any of the head scratchers the other networks have to offer.
Most promising: Vegas (Tuesday, 10 ET/PT)
Dennis Quaid, in his series debut, and Michael Chiklis are teaming for a TV series, which sounds pretty promising all on its own. Throw in that it's set in the early '60s, TV's current hot time period, and it's written by Nicholas Pileggi of Goodfellas and Casino fame, and this based-in-fact story about a rancher-turned-sheriff taking on the Mob starts to sound like it could be one of fall's best. And after the failures of Pan Am and Playboy Club, it also could be the network show that finally makes the '60s click.
Most puzzling: Made in Jersey (Friday, 9 ET/PT)
Some will be puzzled by the amount of, shall we say, nerve it took CBS to do its own update of Sherlock Holmes, Elementary, considering there's already a lavishly praised update out there called Sherlock. But if you can put that issue aside, Elementary looked different and solid enough in the clips to be intriguing in its own right. So go with the Jersey-Girl-in-Manhattan lawyer drama Made in Jersey, which looks unexciting but could work perfectly well for CBS' audience on a Friday night.
Fox
Like CBS, Fox has fewer holes to fill â€" though unlike CBS, that's in part because Fox doesn't air a full 22-hour schedule, and a big chunk of its schedule is filled by The X-Factor. Even so, stability is stability, and it gets a network extra credit.
Most promising: Ben and Kate (Tuesday, 8:30 ET/PT)
If you're a fan of The Office's Mindy Kaling, you may see promise in her sitcom The Mindy Project (though even fans should be warned that the clips made the show look painfully self-indulgent). If, however, the fuss over Kaling confounds you, go with this sweet- (if very familiar-) looking comedy about single mother Kate (The Social Network's Dakota Johnson) raising two children: her own little girl and her irresponsible man-child of an older brother, Ben (Nat Faxon).
Most puzzling:The Mob Doctor (Monday, 9 ET/PT)
The title pretty much tells you what the show's about: A brilliant young surgeon (Jordana Spiro) forced by a family debt to work for the Chicago mob. Unfortunately for Fox, the title also tells you what makes the show seem puzzling: Who would want to watch that? The pilot had better do a far better job of answering that question than the clips did.
When you dig as deep a hole for yourself as NBC has, there's no easy way out. Still, like ABC, the network has come up with a fall lineup that looks somewhat stronger than last year's slate (not, admittedly, a terribly high bar to reach). And that's how the climb begins.
Most promising: Revolution (Monday, 10 ET/PT)
If you want to see signs of improvement at NBC, you look to two nights. On Tuesday, the network has two sitcoms â€"Go On starring Matthew Perry and The New Normal from Glee's Ryan Murphy â€" that look like they might be funnier than NBC's norm. And on Monday, it has Revolution, a sci-fi action drama from J.J. Abrams about an America in chaos 15 years after all electric devices cease to function. The opening offers the kind of "wow" visual impact we've come to expect from Abrams, and the rest of the pilot looks to have enough bow-and-arrow action to please the most dedicated fans of The Hunger Gamesâ€" an audience the show seems designed to capture.
Most puzzling: Animal Practice (Wednesday, 8 ET/PT)
Alas, get p ast Tuesday, and NBC might as well be operating in Revolution's electricity-free world. In the grand scheme of things, the real puzzlement is the network's decision to bring back a Thursday lineup America has shown no particular desire to watch. But if it's a new puzzle you're seeking, go with this vet comedy that teams poor Justin Kirk (Weeds) with a monkey, and then gives the monkey the best lines. NBC actually said its little simian was its best-testing new character â€" an embarrassing condemnation of its human characters that the network somehow mistook for a compliment.
CW
Stop me if you've heard this before. This is "a new CW," one that's spending more money on more and better pilots. One, in other words, that isn't just going to throw whatever leftovers it could scavenge from the other networks on the air and then allow even the promising ones to wither and die. The wise course is to hope that's true, while remembering that the network has said much the same thing multiple times before.
Most promising: Arrow (Wednesday, 8 ET/PT)
All networks present viewers with the same problem when it comes to predicting quality: The pilots are often not as good as the clips, and the episodes that follow are often not as good as the pilots. But nowhere is that more true than at CW (think Ringer), which is why it wouldn't do to get too excited yet about Arrow, a splashy new twist on the Green Arrow comic book. Even so, the clips looked good and the show could click into that Hunger Games-fed fascination with archery. Time will tell.
Most puzzling:Emily Owens, M.D. (Tuesday, 9 ET/PT)
Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer stars as an awkward young intern in this companion piece for Hart of Dixie. It looks better than Dixieâ€" though so would dead air â€" but any connection, even familial, between Meryl Streep and CW is just bound to feel a little puzzling.
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