JUDGING A SERIES BY ITS PILOT? NOT ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA

“Caroline in the City,” “The Crew” and “Cleghorne!”

“Dweebs,” “Drew Carey” and “Deadly Games.”

As you sample one of these series or any of the other three-dozen fall arrivals, what if it isn’t love at first sight? Well, another prime-time newcomer reminds viewers that sometimes we “Can’t Hurry Love.”

Producer-writer David Black doesn’t have a new show on the fall lineup, but this veteran of “Hill Street Blues,” “Miami Vice” and “Law & Order” does have a joke with a pertinent message as the season kicks off:

A guy dies and ascends to the Pearly Gates, where St. Peter tells him, “It’s your choice: heaven or hell. But before you say anything, let me show you two videos, so you can make an informed decision.”

The first tape features heaven, which, though plenty swanky, still seems a little stiff and boring.

Then St. Peter pops in the other cassette. This one shows hell, which turns out to be one fabulous shindig. Plenty of refreshments. Great band.

“That’s for me!” the guy exclaims. St. Peter says, “You got it.”

But the next thing the guy knows, he is whisked to a filthy, gloomy tavern. Watery drinks. The jukebox is broken. The guy cries out, “Where am I?”

“You’re in hell,” replies St. Peter, “just as you requested.”

“But what about that videotape?” the guy wails.

“Oh,” St. Peter chuckles. “That was the pilot!”

The moral of the joke isn’t that you’re about to be thrown into an inferno of new programming.

No, the point is this: A premiere episode (the so-called “pilot”) is an iffy indicator of how the series it introduces is likely to evolve. As with hell, those who judge a series too heavily by its pilot sometimes do so at great peril.

“You pump a lot of time and money into the pilot,” says Black, referring to its hopeful producers. “You want to put your best foot forward.”

No wonder. More than a TV program, the pilot is a carefully crafted prototype whose purpose, above all, is to woo a network into giving the go-ahead for the series being pitched.

It may be many months after the pilot is finished, then sold, that its actors and crew regroup to commence the weekly grind of series TV. From then on, time and money, not to mention inspiration, may be in much shorter supply.

On the other hand, practice makes perfect. So can the momentum from the week-in, week-out routine. It may be that only after several shaky episodes will the series get up to speed and all its pieces fall into place.

In short, when a series goes on the air, exactly where it’s headed is something no one can know for sure--not the people on the show or at the network, not the viewers in their living rooms and certainly not the critics at their keyboards tapping out their reviews.

A TV review can be an odd endeavor, anyway. A critique of a movie, a live performance or a recording assesses pretty much what the audience will experience for itself, if it chooses to partake.

TV critics, by contrast, are sometimes called upon to draw a sweeping conclusion on a series based on one lone pilot episode. When that happens, the critic has leaped beyond the bounds of available knowledge, reviewing a series that hasn’t happened yet.

Viewers are sometimes no less guilty of a rush to judgment.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column imploring the networks to stick with each new series long enough for the audience to discover it.

But viewers might consider doing their part, sticking with a series long enough to give it a fair shake. That may mean catching more than one episode, even going back a few weeks after the series premieres, before rendering your verdict.

Any series deserves not only time to find its audience ... but also time from its audience to find itself.