Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Runaway; CW, Monday, 9:00 PM

Runaway begins in Illinois, where Paul Rader (Donnie Wahlberg, Boomtown) is dumping his Maryland-plated car into a lake, while Henry (Dustin Milligan, The Days) calls, then hangs up on, someone. As they leave the motel and hit the road they pass a police cruiser flying in the opposite direction, and they hear on the police scanner the APB put out on them, and their Maryland tags. They enter Bridgewater, Iowa, where a new house awaits the “Hollands” - a quick rehearsal in the car, and they take possession.

The Rader…er…the Holland Family has an uncomfortable dinner.

Lily Rader (Leslie Hope, Commander in Chief, 24) tries to make the house a home while needing to destroy the photograph of their old life their son brought with them. She meets the neighbor Bob Sullivan (Chris Potter, Wild Card) while her husband works on his PDA…and begins the flashbacks that begin to explain why the family is on the run. Paul is accused of murdering his mistress, and has been carefully framed to take the fall.

The rest of the pilot deals with how they all came to this, and in true CW fashion, the angst the children are going through. The family needs to constantly rehearse their stories (and the youngest son Tommy, Nathan Gamble, is the weak link), and watch out for the simplest things like a traffic ticket, which forces Lily to adjust the backstory from Philadelphia to New Orleans. The FBI, personified by Angela Huntley (Karen Leblanc, Kevin Hill) is hot on their trail…ok, mostly hot on their trail, once they find the car with information in it leading to the family. There’s a well-crafted yet predictable attempt to capture the family (you know it fails, since if it succeeded it would be a really short series), and there’s the tribulations of fugitive children entering school with the social pressures to fit in and be cool (remember, CW). Speaking of angst, Henry makes a big deal of leaving, but of course returns, during which we find out why the whole family is on the run. His constant need to call his old girlfriend gets really old and strained (and I’m getting really tired of twenty-five-year-olds playing high school students…we ain’t stupid, guys, we can tell the difference between a high school freshman and a college graduate) causing no end of trouble for the family (and you know that new tattoo is going to cause grief by episode six).

Paul finally enters his former mistress’ email account only to receive an ominous warning by IM to stay lost…and the title of the show appears in stark black-and-white signifying the end (wonder where they got that idea?).

I admit I cracked up when he said the computer was untraceable (dude, there ain’t no such thing, trust me). And the flashback scenes with Leslie Hope in long hair are alone worth the price of admission (she has a young Ann-Margret thing going on). There are some interesting bits here, and considerable talent (although Wahlberg’s silent hang-dog character is not going to wear well).

But this show suffers again from the same problem I’ve been warning about…since these guys have no idea where the show is heading, or how long it will be on the air, the mystery can never be solved - even if the show is a hit, it will eventually wear out its welcome as we find out more and more, and the goalposts by necessity get moved farther and farther away. We’re back to the question I ask a lot this season…is there anything pulling you to invest the time into what is essentially a soap opera with no clear ending?

I can’t answer that for anyone but myself; I’ll be watching the first few weeks to see if the writing and plot development is enough to keep me; but if the teenage angst overbalances the adult mystery, I’m outta there.