So I checked out this news series on TNT starring Will and Grace‘s Erick McCormack, Perception. Think House meets Monk meets A Beautiful Mind. Only bad. Really bad.

McCormack’s character, Dr. Daniel Pierce, is a neurosurgeon who also suffers from schizophrenia and helps solve crimes. Well, who doesn’t? What might have proved a multidimensional series of puzzles in which we all played along while a snarky, tormented “hero” fought off bureaucracy, bad guys, and personal demons — and one more day out of the wacky ward — proved to be manic and just plain silly. And derivative. Muy, muy derivative.

In the episode I caught, it’s election season, and Pierce has voted for the lesser of two evils, who happened to have won in an election fixed by An Evil Corporation that makes Rigged Electronic Ballot Boxes. The boxes make you think the state is evenly divided between “red” and “blue” but in fact the Reds are overwhelmingly in the majority — and have been robbed of an election because of these nefarious machines, bought and paid for by the evil Republicans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where does Pierce live? Chicago. And so what state does the fraud occur in, to the advantage of Republicans? Illinois.

You read correctly. And whom is Pierce imagining is talking to him throughout this attempt to unmask right-wing fraud? John F. Kennedy.

Can. Not. Make. It. Up.

Now, if you think Illinois, you think corruption, certainly. But what party immediately comes to mind? Republicans?

And when you think the presidential election of 1960, you may also think voter fraud. But to whose benefit? Nixon’s?

I know it’s never been proven that Joseph P. Kennedy asked Frank Sinatra to ask Sam Giancana to deliver West Virginia to his son. But Sinatra’s daughter Tina certainly seemed to think so.

McCormack brings a requisite frantic energy to the role (unlike Hugh Laurie, who approached House with a misleading indifference, at times even torpor), but he’s a thinly drawn character whom the writers think can run on hallucinations and right-wing hate alone.

In short, to watch Perception is to visit a poor man’s House: a crime-medical-drama mash-up where a supposedly brilliant “diagnostician” uses his skills to detect criminals, not disease, but is merely off his meds (instead of on them) may have looked great on paper but plays out as one face-palm moment after another. Add uninteresting and for some reason petty ancillary characters; sloppy, dull-witted writing; and politics so blatantly partisan (I believe it officially declared itself anti-Bush in episode 1) and historically daft and you have all the makings of What’s left on the DVR that I haven’t watched?

I also caught Matthew Perry’s new comedy, Go On. I didn’t realize it was a one-camera format, like Scrubs. And about as funny. (I never for the life of me got the appeal of Scrubs, which played like one long series of wedgies.) Perry plays a sports-talk-show host who goes into therapy to cope with the death of his wife but who ends up playing therapist to a “group” of supposedly wacky regulars.

Again, on paper…

Unfortunately, the characters, who I think were supposed to play like the Community cast of regulars, are just one-joke wonders to whom Perry plays straight more often than not. And again, Perry, who looks worse for Friends wear, weathered and older than his years, is pretty wired throughout, trying to cope with his own issues as he helps his fellow patients battle their various, supposedly hilarious neuroses, and only dimly aware of failings that affect both his recovery and his relationships (not unlike Charlie Sheen’s character in Anger Management — there must be something in the water these days).

I found it tiresome and flat.

So…bring on the fall lineup!