By ROB OWEN, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There are plenty of reasons to suspect NBC's "The Philanthropist" will be awful: It's airing in the summer dumping ground; it was part of NBC's terrible 2007-08 development season; and executive producer Tom Fontana ("Homicide: Life on the Street") wrote the pilot teleplay, got fired and then got rehired.

Often it's obvious why a network green-lights a show. In the best scenario, networks are drawn to smart, entertaining scripts. Or maybe it's a provocative concept.

Telling a TV scribe that his or her show is realistic is often one of the highest compliments a viewer can offer. Realism has been a primary goal ever since "Hill Street Blues" pioneered serialized storytelling in the early 1980s.

For some teen-agers, squabbling with parents, shrieking angrily and slamming doors is a by-product of adolescence. For Katelyn Pippy, it's a day at the office.
Pippy, 16, begins her second season starring as a series regular on Lifetime's "Army Wives" as Emmalin Holden, disgruntled daughter of an Army general (Brian McNamara).

A light, breezy show about a New York doctor who finds himself a fish out of water in the tony Hamptons, USA's "Royal Pains" is an amusing, enjoyable addition to basic cable.

Canadian actor Craig Olejnik sports choppy black hair and gazes with piercing blue eyes -- the only standout attribute in NBC's "The Listener," an otherwise generic procedural drama.
Producers understand that the eyes have it. The show's opening credits include several close-ups of Olejnik's baby blues.

When Conan O'Brien takes over as host of NBC's "The Tonight Show" this week, he'll be under a microscope among Jay Leno fans, TV critics and NBC executives, who will be crossing their fingers that he'll strike ratings gold.
But the real pressure won't kick in until fall when "The Jay Leno Show" begins airing at 10 five nights a week.

After its huge success with "Planet Earth" two years ago, it's no surprise that Discovery Channel would attempt more natural-science epics. "Nature's Most Amazing Events" promises to be another high-definition, eye-popping extravaganza.

If you're bereft without new episodes of "House" this summer and willing to settle for a pale imitation, there's always Fox's "Mental" (9 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

It's the music that makes "Glee" a gleeful delight.
Without the song-and-dance production numbers, this Fox pilot would be just another high-school-set comedy-drama, albeit one with a tonal mishmash that careens from dark humor to earnest drama.