It's morning in Manhattan. There's the sun rising over Central Park. There's the Wall Street 2/3 subway. There's the St. Regis, which is uptown. We're all over the place here. Busy cameras. There's Bendel's and Bergdorf Goodman. So, in six seconds, I'm gathering that the New York of this show is not the New York of the majority of us poor working slobs. Unless it's about janitors.

Now, here are Lucy Liu and Tom Everett Scott. They don't look like janitors, unless janitors have kicky little figures and expensive wrap skirts. Lucy and Tom are walking in a park that only looks vaguely familiar to me, having a good-natured argument about when their first date was. She's saying that the first anniversary of their first date is the next day, while Tom is saying the anniversary is today. Lucy says she's a woman; therefore, she wouldn't forget the occasion of her first date with her special fellow. Suddenly, Lucy's attention is grabbed by some street musicians (a guy with a guitar and a girl beside him) in the park. They're singing Modern Love's "Melt With You." They're the same people who were playing on the night of Tom and Lucy's first date. Crazy coincidence. Okay, I don't want to be this guy -- the one who's all saying what New York's like and how this isn't like New York. But the first character they introduced was the city, right? So, I feel obligated to point out that those street performers have never performed on a street in New York. They look like they just left a Scientology class in L.A. (just an observation; please don't hunt me, Scientology). The girl is just kind of bouncing and swaying. What do the crafters of this program feel that bouncing girl was adding to this moment? They look like mimes. Scientology mimes. So, Lucy is transfixed by the coincidence. When she turns to Tom, he's on his knee with an open jewelry box in his hand. She gasps and covers her face with her hands. "Will you just admit that I'm right?" he asks. "No," she giggles. That's kind of cute. "Okay, will you marry me?" Yes! She will! Applause from the people who were improbably paying attention to the street musicians along with Lucy and Tom as "Melt With You" melts into the actual Modern Love version. They're gonna be so happy.

Afterward, Tom and Lucy are walking hand in hand along the sidewalk. They get really nervous when they see some guy named Clive, dubbed "Lord Voldemort" by Lucy. Real mature. Clive, who has a British accent, says it's serendipitous that he's meeting them. I don't know what John Cusack has to do with this. Clive has just come from a meeting with "the board." I'm assuming it's the board of "Barnstead Media," because that's the name on the poster from Kinko's that some PA just tacked to the wall behind the actors. They're probably in the lobby of a movie theatre. I guess when your clothing budget exceeds the gross national product of some third -- nay, second -- world countries, you scrimp where you can. Like on guest actors. The dude playing Clive has surely made a happy career playing trees and other things made of stiff, unemotive wood. Clive walks and tells the trailing Lucy and Tom that the company's "consolidating on the print side" and will make either Tom or Lucy the publisher of U.S. print; the other will be out of a job. He says they are playing "Survivor West 23rd Street." They are gonna be so skinny when this is over! They "can't" base the decision on past performance (because Lucy and Tom are mostly equals), so whoever wins the biggest account in that quarter gets the job. But the quarter ends at the end of the week! Exactly. Uh oh. Clive sees that Lucy is wearing a ring, and says that one of them will be married to the next Publisher of Barnstead Magazine Group. So, the boss is a total caricature. Why is the cliché of the mega-evil boss so overused? Jobs actually are stressful and bosses often are assholes. It's one part of life that could be mimicked realistically for good effect. The histrionics are unnecessary.