Why Pretend Who’ll Win?

Suddenly success.

Barring an epic upset, NBC will crunch its opposition and soar in the ratings Thursday nights again this season, from “Friends” to “ER.” Thus, the Nielsen Games--with NBC tonight temporarily bumping “ER” to introduce a derivative but inviting new drama, “The Pretender,” hoping for an audience rub-off from “Suddenly Susan.” That’s the middling but blessed new Brooke Shields comedy that is expected to become a hit by virtue of the kadzillion viewers it inherits from “Seinfeld” in this lineup. Which worked on Thursdays last season for “Caroline in the City.”

In the realm of have-nots, meanwhile, the slow, so-so police-shrink drama “Moloney” arrives on CBS tonight.

Hereafter joining two other new NBC dramas on Saturday nights, “The Pretender” is the fall season’s super-hybrid: “The Fugitive” meets “Quantum Leap” and Woody Allen’s “Zelig.”

Its hero, Jarod Russell (Michael T. Weiss), we’re told, is one of those “geniuses with the ability to insinuate themselves into any walk of life, to literally become anyone.” Seems like a nice gig, except that one of prime-time’s most dependable meanies, Big Business, has insinuated itself into Jarod’s life since childhood. A corporation known as the Centre locked him away and used his genius to fulfill deadly military contracts that he knew nothing about.

When the adult Jarod learns the truth, he’s history, on the lam from these heartless technocrats but finding time for good deeds while keeping one step ahead of the Centre’s operatives, headed by enigmatic scientist Sydney Green (Patrick Bauchau) and a driven, nefarious, miniskirted Real Babe known only as Miss Parker (Andrea Parker). Yes, double Parkers. Don’t ask.

Jarod surfaces tonight at a malpractice-ridden hospital, ordering a life-saving tracheotomy for a patient in the emergency room. In broad strokes, this is TV’s 25th version of Richard Kimble, the difference being that instead of pursuing a one-armed slayer, Jarod is searching for answers about his parents, said by the deceitful Centre to have died in a plane crash 30 years ago. And unlike Kimble, Jarod is no real doctor, but just pretending, having the amazing ability to be and do anything he wants.

Tonight he wants to right the wrongs of the evil doctors at this hospital and make them pay. He somehow gets on staff there and charms and speaks Greek to an elderly Greek American patient who’s terrified of the surgery she’s about to undergo. So he cancels it and orders another treatment. “You’re no doctor,” she responds appreciatively in broken English. “You’re human being.” Well, sort of.

The major weakness of “The Pretender” is its predictability, plus its plot does not bear close scrutiny and tonight’s doctors are stock medical heavies. Yet this is a very good-looking series with an interesting lead in Weiss, his wise eyes and deceptively benign smile hinting at depths yet to be probed, layers of ambivalence yet to be exposed. And happily, there is the anticipated pleasure of seeing Miss Parker frustrated each week.

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“Suddenly Susan” is worth watching if only to catch another supporting player as the office nemesis of Susan Keane (Shields). She’s that tart farceur Kathy Griffin, who swipes every scene she’s in as neurotic smartass Vicki Groener and has a laugh that you can go to the bank with.

We meet Susan as she rips her dress while fleeing her church wedding and leaving the groom at the altar. She gets no sympathy from her father, who’s out $20,000, but gets plenty from her “nana” (Barbara Barrie) and later earns a surprise promotion to singles columnist at the hip San Francisco magazine where she works, even though the rich but vapid groom she fled is the brother of her boss, Jack (Judd Nelson). It seems he resents his own family’s wealth and arrogance.

“Suddenly, Susan, you’re interesting,” he tells her. Actually, not very.

There is some nice writing here occasionally, and the strong supporting cast helps mightily. Yet despite being heavily promoted by NBC as a pratfalling neo-Lucille Ball, Shields is still a clown in progress--not bad, really, but not yet someone to build this sitcom around. She earns credit for effort but not technique; her performance is so mannered, especially when going for whopper laughs, that you’re always conscious of her acting.

Not that it probably will matter to a series that follows “Seinfeld” in an hour that appears impenetrable, with ABC’s “Murder One,” Fox’s “New York Undercover” and CBS’ “Moloney” expected to battle for audience leftovers.

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The plodding “Moloney” doesn’t appear to have the magnetism to put up much of a fight, however, even though Peter Strauss performs confidently as Los Angeles police psychiatrist Nick Moloney, whose regular-guy persona includes wearing jeans with his jackets and ties.

Moloney’s best friend is an assistant district attorney (Wendell Pierce), his boss the tough but supportive Lt. Matty Navarro (Nestor Serrano). Meanwhile, that able British actress Cherie Lunghi has little to do but smile and look rich as Moloney’s amiable ex-wife, a therapist to the posh set.

After a pat early scene in which Nick uses words (“Let’s you and me try to work our way out of this”) to coax a murder suspect to release a hostage, “Moloney” addresses the issue of the hour: Is its hero’s first loyalty to law enforcement or to his patients?

The question arises when a cop whom Nick is treating confides that he committed a murder someone else is charged with. Does Nick rat on the cop in the interest of justice or abide by doctor-patient confidentiality? It’s an interesting ethical crossroads that he faces, but one that’s resolved predictably with a script convenience after being gabbed to death in an episode long on speeches, short on pace.

Nick has an amazing capacity to wilt people just by talking. Unfortunately for “Moloney,” that may include viewers.

* “Moloney” premieres at 9 tonight on CBS (Channel 2). “Suddenly Susan” premieres at 9:30 on NBC (Channel 4). “The Pretender” premieres at 10 tonight, then will be seen Saturdays at 9 on NBC (Channel 4), starting Sept. 28.