Among the victims of this week's fall lineup announcements by the broadcast networks:

Moonlight. (So much for my previous optimism.) Cashmere Mafia. New Amsterdam. Aliens in America. Shark. Carpoolers. Back to You. Women's Murder Club. Men in Trees. Canterbury's Law. The Return of Jezebel James. Miss Guided.

Plus the already announced departees Jericho, Las Vegas and Girlfriends.

And such long-MIA titles as Bionic Woman, Big Shots, Journeyman, Cane, K-Ville, Cavemen, Kid Nation, Life Is Wild and the immortally horrible Viva Laughlin.

A moment of silence, please. And then a look at what went wrong.

For some promising shows, it was the writers' strike. That forced hiatus helped put the stake in the heart of Moonlight. CBS' steamy modern vampire tale garnered a quick cult, and might have had a chance to grow with a full run of fresh episodes. (Don't worry, girls. Alex O'Loughlin will be back. His recent bare-chested shots in TV Guide sealed that deal.) Carpoolers, too, was starting to build a loyal fan base. But the early extinction of primitive lineup-mate Cavemen made it hard for ABC to drive new viewers to the quirky commuting quartet.

The strike deprived other shows of the time they needed to refine their voice. ABC's Women's Murder Club showed early promise, but the soapy procedural never quite defined itself (though Angie Harmon proved herself a series lead). Aliens in America had a cool concept -- Pakistani Muslim exchange student navigates Wisconsin middle school with a misfit American roomie seeking his own bearings -- but the culture clash comedy struggled to solidify a tone, wavering between astute observational humor and juvenile yuks. (Of course, it didn't help being on The CW, an entire network floundering in search of an identity.)

Shark should have worked, with James Woods' dominating star turn, but the rest of the legal setup was so uninspired that Woods steamrolled over his own show. I'm sorrier to see Miss/Guided go. Its dry school humor was a great showcase for Arrested Development geek Judy Greer and costar Chris Parnell. (Even babe Brooke Burns was funny!) But ABC didn't have a solid comedy to launch it behind. And its humor, too, could sometimes waver from slyly adult to inanely adolescent.

Other shows were also in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Back to You with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as bickering news anchors had no business being on Fox. Maybe CBS, or maybe a year or two back, when both actors were fresher in American viewers' minds -- and when its joke-joke rhythms weren't so utterly exhausted. Can't anybody do live-audience sitcomedy anymore? The Return of Jezebel James, from Gilmore Girls creator and Roseanne veteran Amy Sherman- Palladino, was an agonizing exercise in laugh track alienation, awkward at every turn (even as it hit the baby-mama zeitgeist).

Casting, scripting, basic concept clarity -- lots of series were at a loss for all of them. Viva Laughlin was jaw-droppingly wrongheaded, with unmusical and uncharismatic actors lip-synching to clichéd pop songs in a dreary saga of dull characters. What was to love? (Watch the British show that inspired it, Viva Blackpool, to see what's not to love. That one's a sparkler.) NBC's Bionic Woman remake built its story of a powerful superheroine around a bland lead actress, then piled on the sort of dark-and-broody milieu that always sends network viewers fleeing. The same network's Journeyman presented a nearly incomprehensible initial setup of flip-flop time travel, expending far too much energy at the expense of character development and story plotting.

But hey, there's always next year. The new fall lineups have been announced, and hope blooms anew. Ain't that why we love TV?