October Road headed for a fall?

In today's TV Talk, I talked with Manitou Springs (well, Cascade, technically) actor Geoff Stults about his new ABC drama "October Road," which premieres at 9 p.m. today. Since I was interviewing rather than reviewing, let's let the critics have a say about Geoff's new show:

"Chockablock with cliches, sappy melodrama, paper-thin characterizations and affected dialogue, ABC’s “October Road”plays like a bad parody of a CW or Fox prime-time soap. Entire dissertations could be written on how much this show gets wrong,and how badly."

"October Road” opens on a photo of Kurt Cobain, but don’t expect to find much rock ’n’ roll in this humdrum prodigal-son soap opera. I kept waiting for the unexpected beat, the surprising plot riff, the inverted cliche, but they never came. The ABC drama, which premieres Thursday night at10, just plodded predictably down the middle of the road, uninspired, witless, tired."

"Here, I guess, is a dude’s version of an ABC chick show. No other network has 20- to 40-year-olds probing themselves quite so searchingly as ABC these days; they must be putting something in the lattes over there. Side effects include but not limited to: mooning, yearning, dry mouth. Might also swear you hear that song by Collective Soul playing somewhere."

"You certainly won’t want to rush home to watch “October Road.”The show, after all, is achingly earnest, frustratingly predictable and, at times, laughably bad. It’s hard to take a series that features characters saying ridiculous lines like “maturity is the destination” seriously. Nothing in this well-intentioned misfire feels real."

Um. Ouch.

On the plus side, Geoff did say there was a movie he was working on and excited about. And there'll always be more TV pilots.

One review did contain this gem, which I didn't think of, but wish I did: "Geoff Stults, looking disconcertingly like Peter Krause."

True? You decide: