Trust Me

A fun show, but where, oh where is all this heading?

Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny, who created Trust Me (and have been writers on “The Closer") are former admen themselves; they chose the milieu to explore the creative process among a group of people with a collective-neuroses score high enough to maintain a smart and breezy comedy.

Mainly, underneath the sitcom setups and witty banter, this show moves to the pulse of the ad game. The mystique and power of raw ideas push this story as surely as they push the characters of "Mad Men."

For fans of "Mad Men," Trust Me offers a modern, more recognizable ad agency world but the tone of TNT's series is completely different. It is not "Mad Men: The Next Generation," not by a long shot. And the show's quality lags leaps and bounds behind.

The series is set in a world that praises the lie, and if the creators can mine that vein for inspiration and avoid falling for the conventional TV drama traps, they could have a better show to sell to their advertisers.

While it's nice to see McCormack and Cavanagh back in episodic form, their similarities diminish their interplay, inasmuch as it's not a reach to envision both in either role. Everyone else pretty much falls into predictable archetypes, from the nerdy young creative team to Griffin Dunne as the constantly frazzled boss.

Trust Me shares another characteristic of those series("Nip/Tuck" and "Mad Men": dumb, numbing soullessness. It has the emotional intricacy of a Ritz cracker.