Defying Gravity

Gravity has an intriguing premise and its pacing--the action cuts back-and-forth between the present and five years in the past--heightens the drama and foreboding.

The first ep feels ridiculous; maybe it's the fact that despite being on a futuristic space mission, everyone acts like they're on "Private Practice." Then again, it's summer, and at least this isn't another cop/doctor show.

Fans of relationship-driven story-telling might just get hooked on this silly, lighter-than-air summer series.

Defying Gravity is a perfectly decent bit of sci-fi soap - some cool “Star Trek’’ futurism, plenty of pretty “Grey’s Anatomy’’ ensemble melodrama, and a twist of eerie “Twilight Zone’’ mysteriousness when characters refer to the high-tech spaceship as if it has a will of its own.

To ensure you understand the magnitude of all this emotional mayhem, Maddux helpfully narrates in generically navel-gazing voiceover.

Unfortunately, Defying Gravity will have to be listed as one of its well-intentioned mistakes, another of the many peculiar oddities churned out by broadcast and cable every year, every week, every moment of our earthbound little lives.

Nonlinear storytelling, with so many flashbacks and flash-forwards and dream sequences that pretty soon you can't even remember the last time you saw a naked chick bobbing around the cabin. My advice: Rent Barbarella instead.