For ‘Wasteland’ Characters, It’s Much Ado About Themselves

ABC’s premiering “Wasteland” is the cratered moonscape of the new season. A series as bad or as barren has yet to air.

Talk about bipolarity in prime time. Kevin Williamson, whose Fox series “Dawson’s Creek” is about teenagers who think and talk like adults, this time delivers a drama whose mid-20ish characters think and sound like teenagers. Dumb teenagers.

This hive of Barbies and Kens in New York is excruciatingly dull and vacuous, its cast of generic singles as wide-eyed and white-bread as they are dust-proof and pain-proof. You need a seating chart to distinguish one guy from another, and the females are uniformly gorgeous.

Marisa Coughlan, Sasha Alexander, Rebecca Gayheart, Eddie Mills, Dan Montgomery, Brad Rowe and Jeffrey Sams are the cast. Coughlan is Dawnie, a virginal grad student (in what, relationships?) researching a thesis titled “Wasteland,” about people like her and her friends. They include Rowe as her ex-boyfriend, Ty, who is trying to reenter her life. Also prominent is Montgomery as Russell, a secretly gay soap opera star who comes out tonight.

No member of this group appears acquainted with any world beyond his or her narrow self-interests. They talk about themselves and talk about themselves and talk about themselves and talk about themselves. Then they have lunch and talk about themselves.

* “Wasteland” will be shown tonight at 9 on ABC. The network has rated it TV-PG-DL (may be unsuitable for young children with special advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language).