Grade: B | Genre: Comedy Summary: While its still early in the game, I think its worth hanging around the bar for a few more episodes to see if Emily can take shots with the big boys, or if she's destined to be wasted under the table with a cocktail napkin glued to her forehead. You've got to feel for ambitious, single women. They are constantly fighting to be independent and taken seriously professionally, yet always keeping an eye peeled for any errant knight in shining armor that might saunter into the local Starbucks. Sex and the City was the show that came along and spoke their language, airing out all their problems and the delicious frustrations with men. Then one day they wake up, and their voice is silenced, only to show up neutered on TBS. The closest thing they have to eternal bliss is a bunch of wickedly Desperate Housewives. What's a girl to do? Well ABC thinks it has the answer with its new star vehicle for Heather Graham entitled Emily's Reasons Why Not. While it may smack as a cheap designer knockoff of Sex, it is a return to the City for the single ladies everywhere who are not quite ready to settle down in the kettle of desperation, brewing in suburbia.

Heather Graham has played everything from a teen sex goddess named after a pillar of German engineering (License to Drive) and a roller-skating porn star (Boogie Nights) to an Austin Powers chick and the swingin' lady that finally boogied Mike out of his funk (Swingers). Unfortunately, the fickleness of Hollywood hasn't been serving up those choice roles for Ms. Heather of late so when the fifties for the powder room start drying up, a girl's got to start looking towards other creative avenues. After making a quirky guest turn on Scrubs, Heather has officially been handed the reins of her own series. She plays Emily, self-help book editor with a malfunctioning picker steering her towards loser men. After getting dumped by her latest beau, she decides she's finished trading one slim bag in for its newer model, and she's going to start listening to her gut. From now on, any guy who waltzes into her life gets five strikes before she casts him onto the heap of ex-heartthrobs.

Honey, you need a breath mint. Emily's Reasons Why Not Starring: Heather Graham, Smith Cho, Nadia Dajani & Khary Payton Related Articles First Look: Winter 2006 Television Pilots Scrubs: Season 5 Premiere Desperate Housewives: Dark Days Ahead Email this article to a friend

So Mr. Wonderful can whip up a gourmet meal, has a black belt in Brazilian Jujitsu, and doesn't bat an eyelash at the hot, Latina, porn star waitress cooing at him? Emily only wants to know what talents he has hiding the salami. Suspicion rears its ugly head after she gets turned away with no goodnight kiss then it flares into a raging hemorrhoid when her wanton attempt to sex him up turns into a dreaded "let's cuddle" moment. After her pride has been sufficiently bolted, she assigns reason number 1: when he says he want to sleep with you, he means he wants to sleep with you. Then the reasons just start raining down after she discovers he wears make-up, has a subscription to Martha Stewart Living, Brazilian Jujitsu just happens to be the gayest sport ever created, and her friend's gaydar perks up when around him. The perfect guy seems to have gotten tangled up in his own sexual orientation.

So as all girlfriends of homosexual men do, Emily dumps him over voice mail, inadvertently tossing him out of the closet in front of all his coworkers. There's just one minor problem. He wasn't gay. Evidently, he was saving himself for marriage because of the teachings of his Mormon faith. Emily tries to right the sinking ship, but that bad boy was meant to be a goldfish playground. At the end of the day, she decides a Latter Day Saint just wasn't her style so her instincts, while wrong, ended up watching out for her in the end.

Well since Emily is taking the strike count to my gender, I feel its only fair to the return the favor. How many reasons do we have to flip away from Emily's escapades in single-land? First, by copping the formula of Sex in the City without adding much original spice, she suffers from showing up to the party with the dress her friend has on. Second, her supporting cast (Nadia Dajani and Khary Payton) is hardly helping Emily to be the vixen she could be. I think cardboard cutouts might have been just as effective. Third, its family friendly slot on network TV won't be able to keep up with the vibrators and leaning dicks of the racy Sex in the City. Fourth -- well there isn't a fourth. By and large, this is an enjoyable comedy that will probably find its feet as one of the newest fixtures in the ABC lineup. Graham is very likable, and we empathize with her string of bad luck because we've all uttered the phrase "men/women suck" at some point. The evil spawn, ex-assistant is a great foil, sitting just a grasp away from eating Emily alive. This premise of giving potential swappers of body fluid five chances not to drop the ball sounds pretty fair to me. Maybe the He's Just Not That Into You crowd can learn a thing or two about cutting loose some of these zeros before they tarnish anymore of your valuable female essence.

So while its still early in the game, I think its worth hanging around the bar for a few more episodes to see if Emily can take shots with the big boys, or if she's destined to be wasted under the table with a cocktail napkin glued to her forehead.

Checkout Emily's Reasons Why Not Monday nights at 9/8C on ABC.