Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB) The fall season is taking a while to get going, with Buffy shakily negotiating college life, Angel and Cordelia out of the show and Willow morose after her breakup with Oz. But "Buffy" still makes the best-of list for last season's rockin' second-half episodes, in which Buffy fought bad-girl slayer Faith almost to the death, thwarted the snake-demon Mayor's plans to eat Sunnydale High's graduating class and brought Angel back from certain death by letting him sink his teeth into her neck and drink the curative blood of a slayer. Ah, good times.

Roswell (WB) Writer Jason Katims ("My So-Called Life") and director David Nutter ("The X-Files") collaborated on this "my boyfriend is a space alien" teen drama (based on the "Roswell High" young-adult book series). The dialogue is seeded with meaningful inarticulate pauses, the cross-species lovers Liz and Max (Shiri Appleby and Jason Behr) are sweetly sympathetic, with expressive Dubba-Dubba/Keane-children eyes. And the plight of Max, his sister Isabel and buddy Michael -- they descended from ETs who died in that alleged crash of a spaceship in Roswell, N.M., and they just want to figure out who they are -- is a nice metaphor for the teenage search for identity (see "Freaks and Geeks," above).

Sex and the City (HBO) HBO's salty single-gal dish-a-thon earned unexpected (but richly deserved) Emmy nominations for best comedy and best actress (Sarah Jessica Parker). In its second season, the dating pool yielded more inventively unmarriageable throwbacks, but the girls actually seemed to learn from their mistakes and heartbreaks. In the season's bittersweet final episode, Carrie hears the news that her supposedly commitment-phobic ex, Mr. Big (Chris Noth), is engaged to a young model. Carrie is devastated, until she realizes that she's like Barbra Streisand's Katie in "The Way We Were" -- too complicated and wild a prize for an old stick-in-the-mud like Robert Redford's Hubbell. On the street outside the hotel where Big and "Natasha" are having their engagement party, Carrie reenacts the last scene of "The Way We Were," touching Big's cheek and telling him, "Your girl is lovely, Hubbell." "I don't get it," says the bewildered Big. Smiles Carrie, "And you never did." That goes for the critics (you know who you are) who dismiss "Sex and the City" as flimsy, dirty-girl trash, too.

The West Wing (NBC) Aaron "Sports Night" Sorkin and John "ER" Wells cooked up this drama about a fictional Democratic president and all his men and women, which explains why everybody talks real fast while they're sprinting down corridors with a camera at their heels. But some solid, intriguing characters have emerged from the tumult (notably, Richard Schiff's communications director, Bradley Whitford's deputy chief of staff and Allison Janney's press secretary) and Sorkin doesnt water down his liberalism for mass consumption. "The West Wing" is a workplace soap about people simultaneously held hostage by and devoted to their (extremely powerful and stimulating) jobs; it's the heir apparent to "ER" as NBC's drama flagship, President Martin Sheen's over-acting and all.

Everybody Loves Raymond (CBS) I've been trying to figure out why the best sitcom on network TV didn't win a single Emmy this year and there can only be one explanation: It's too funny.

For further study

Judging Amy (CBS) Amy Brenneman's pet project about a single mom/family court judge living with her prickly social-worker mother (Tyne Daly) has more intelligence and edge and less preciousness than its chick-show model, "Providence." But can it stay that way?

Popular (WB) The scariest depiction of high school since "Carrie." And it's a comedy. One to keep an eye on in 2000.

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (ABC) It's going permanent in January, three nights a week. Will the thrill be gone, now that it's no longer a country-unifying special TV event? Let me put it this way: Would you want to watch the Olympics every week, for the rest of your life? Is that your final answer?

Biggest flameout

Action (Fox) On second thought, maybe it was too inside-Hollywood.

Recent Stories