Three Hits and a BombWhat to expect from CBS this fall.

The new CBS reality show Kid Nation
Yesterday, about eight-tenths of an inch of precipitation fell on New York City, so CBS's annual post-presentation party at Tavern on the Green was a moist affair. To venture into the courtyard was to get soaked, though it was still preferable to being inside the restaurant, which was as dank as a mosh pit. When a dude from CBS's New York affiliate told me that it had been eight years since rain fouled this parade, I wondered aloud where Leslie Moonves—the network's top dog, a charmer who traditionally stakes out an al fresco sweet spot about five yards from the coat check—would instead hold court. "Well," said the dude, "where he really holds court is the private party afterwards." Touché, Mr. Important Guy, touché!

When I finally found Moonves, he was standing just inside an entrance to the Crystal Room, but I had nothing to ask. Many partygoers had set aside their crudités for a moment to chat about CBS's six new shows, and everything now seemed powerfully clear. CBS—at the top of the heap in the ratings, at the bottom of barrel when it comes to buzz—had gone into pilot season looking to refresh a schedule horsy with aging procedural dramas. The network came out of it with one passable sitcom, three possible hits, one show I am never going to watch, and a high-profile bomb.

The Big Bang Theory: A sitcom in which two mega-nerd super-geniuses share an apartment. "They can solve any problem except one—the hot new girl across the hall." A) Nerds are in this year, so I'd like to inform the Nabokov scholars in the audience that, in the pilot episode, VN's name appears as an answer in a crossword puzzle. Eight down, I think. B) If these guys are so smart and horny, why don't they just invent Kelly LeBrock?