There are so many new fall television shows to try out, with such little time. As a result, this column will break it up into three mini-reviews. This column will first shine a light on sitcoms for at least the next two weeks.

“New Girl” (Fox): The ads made this show look horrendous, and the pilot was just about as awful as expected. In the show, Zooey Deschanel plays Jess Day, which is essentially a microcosm of every annoyingly quirky character she has played in movies.

Her boyfriend just cheated on her in the most hilariously apathetic way possible. Jess comes back to their apartment, naked under a trenchcoat. She, then, takes it off and starts dancing with a pillow, while singing about being sexy in such a way that one nearly understands the cheating. (Hold it, readers. Don’t e-mail yet. I said “nearly.”)

So the guy and his mistress just come out, not trying to hide at all, and the guy has this look of bewilderment, like he is far more embarrassed for her than for himself. And, indeed, that is the intention the show is going for. Yet he was the one caught cheating!

So Jess decides to find roommates via Craigslist because that’s what hip, young single people do, I guess. She thinks she is interviewing for an apartment with three girls, but it happens to be three guys instead. And, of course, outside of one innocent joke at the end, the guys are completely platonic, supporting friends almost immediately. Because that’s what would happen in the real world.

You see, she has models for friends, so THOSE are the people the roommates are interested in. Because plenty of people only have models for friends, while being completely out of the industry themselves.

Deschanel then spends the rest of the pilot alternating between crying during “Dirty Dancing” viewings and making up her own theme songs. It’s the worst of the “quirky” genre all at once.

To make the show even worse, the supporting characters are either two-dimensional, like the physically built Coach, or almost as annoying as Jess, like fraternity-brother-in-training Schmidt. The other characters make fun of Schmidt for his idiotic sayings in the pilot, but somehow that’s just not enough. He should be banished from the show. Skip this.

“Up All Night” (NBC): Will Arnett and Christina Applegate play new parents getting used to the fact that they can’t stay “up all night” drinking and dancing with a kid at home. The premise is extremely one-note, and the pilot does nothing with it to make it more interesting or funny.

“Up All Night” is largely without laughs. Why do people keep casting Arnett in the straight-laced role? He is so good at the egotistical jerk role, exemplified in “Arrested Development” and “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.” Seeing him as a boring goofball in the canceled “Running Wilde” and now “Up All Night” is just depressing and a waste of resources.

Even worse, the show writes Arnett into a corner by having his character stuck with the baby during the day, while Applegate goes off and has a “30 Rock”-esque work plot with Maya Rudolph as a talk show host. The show feels extremely bifurcated as a result. The talk show seems like a completely different show than the new-parents angle.

The show tries, but its jokes are more miss than hit. After the pilot, even an Arnett loyalist like myself is left wondering if he should even bother with episode two.

“Free Agents” (NBC): Hank Azaria from “The Simpsons” gets a shot as the lead on a live-action sitcom, and it mostly works out. What makes “Free Agents” stand out from “New Girl” or “Up All Night” is the fact that “Free Agents” manages to establish a decent supporting cast within the span of just 22 minutes. Cut-throat Emma, night clubbin’ Dan and especially fun-deprived Gregg populate a public relations office and give the show a boost of adrenaline that only a well-working ensemble can.

The show follows recently divorced Alex (Azaria), as he hooks up for the first time with co-worker Helen (Kathryn Hahn), who lost her husband a year ago. Azaria is a little drab in the lead role, but the two have an undeniable chemistry. This show has been lost in the shuffle of the fall TV hype, but seek it out on NBC Wednesdays. Next week this column will look at three more new sitcoms: “How To Be A Gentleman” (CBS), “2 Broke Girls” (CBS) and “Whitney” (NBC).

— Robby O’Daniel is a graduate student in communications. He can be reached at rodaniel@utk.edu.