Jonathan Storm | Not a winner in this lineup

Doctors, lawyers, cops and a cyborg all go to the plate in the biggest one-night barrage of premieres this season. If they were New York Mets, Phillies fans would be ecstatic: four strikeouts.

NBC has two tonight: Bionic Woman at 9 (it needs major reconstructive surgery) and Life, which is deadly, at 10. ABC has the other two: Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice at 9 (they could use a lot more practice) and Dirty Sexy Money, whose title is as much of a joke as the show itself, at 10:01.

Oh, maybe they're not all so terrible. The ABC shows have a barrel of recognizable stars, and the bionic woman is beautiful, and the cop in Life drives a cool Bentley. You could watch a couple of them every week, but it's hard to understand why, when real life, and Courage the Cow on the Cartoon Network, both beckon.

All four have a feeling of cartoon about them. Sometimes, they'll elicit a gasp or a laugh, but the overall tone is generic, high-gloss drudgery.

Dirty Sexy Money sends Peter Krause and no-credits-needed vets Donald Sutherland and Jill Clayburgh into the fray in the story of a good-hearted young lawyer who finds himself enmeshed in the sordid affairs of a billionaire family, the Darlings.

Executive producer Craig Wright sent a second episode out to critics "to give you an idea of where we're going," he said.

The wrong direction, sadly, even after a disappointing pilot. I turned it off when the naked guy and girl in the bed started making big-banana jokes.

Apparently, I missed a later scene where she ties him up for a little bondage sex play, old hat to ABC viewers who saw last spring's Grey's Anatomy finale (the setup for Private Practice). In that one, a pediatrician found himself in a naked, knotty predicament.

Not only bondage, but transsexual hookers are occupying ABC's fevered brain. It offers up one here, while another waits in the wings on tomorrow's new Big Shots.

America may be desperate for more kinkiness, but it's hard to imagine it will have the patience to hang with the dully overindulged Darling family.

Kelsey Grammer's Chuck Darling, on Fox's new Back to You, is no relation. Preening gasbag that he is, he's an improvement on many of these folks.

Here are the star-studded docs on Private Practice:

Kate Walsh (Grey's Anatomy), obstetrician; Tim Daly (Wings), alternative medicine; Taye Diggs (Kevin Hill), internist; Amy Brenneman (Judging Amy), psychiatrist; Paul Adelstein (the wicked Secret Service guy from Prison Break), pediatrician; and four-time Tony-winner Audra McDonald, fertility specialist.

It's amazing there's no orthopedist, since the show's so lame.

"I'm ovulating," the bubbly patient chirps. But her smiles soon turn to sobs when the would-be daddy succumbs over his sperm donation, and a big custody fight ensues over his little swimmers.

The patients' stories are more interesting than the cooked-up relationships between the doctors, and that's a malady that may be hard to cure.

Jamie Sommers' malady is basically that she's dead, creamed by a big rig in a car crash. But then her boyfriend, boss of bionics Will Anthros, puts her back together with lots of high-tech parts.

He's a great doctor, but not exactly the boss of the top-secret national defense bio lab. That would be Miguel Ferrer, who has a few other henchmen living with him in a legally dark area where civilians are expendable. And it's not just legally dark. The whole place could use more lights so you could see what was going on.

Sci-fi freaks are beside themselves that Battlestar Gallactica's Katee Sackhoff plays the original bionic woman (or at least the original one in this show - everybody knows Lindsay Wagner is the real original), Sarah Corvus.

Sarah's no regular, but she'll drop by from time to time to cause trouble and may even brag some more about her bionic chest. But she's not as beautiful as little-known Brit Michelle Ryan, who plays Jamie, with her pale skin, dark hair, blue eyes and puffy, pink lips.

The show has the ultimate catfight when Jamie and Sarah square off. Its outcome is absurd, even in the absurdly contrived universe of this show, but core fans probably won't be keeping score.

And then there's Life, which doesn't threaten to have a long one. Band of Brothers' Damian Lewis channels Vincent D'Onofrio as a wrongly convicted cop who returns to the force after 12 years in super max.

He's got a $50 million settlement and has taken up Zen, saying things like, "It is the universe that makes fun of us all."

I could make more fun of Life, but it probably wouldn't be too good for my karma.

Private Practice

Debuts at 9 tonight on 6ABC

Bionic Woman

Debuts at 9 tonight on NBC10

Life

Debuts at 10 tonight on NBC10

Dirty Sexy Money

Debuts at 10:01 tonight on 6ABC