Cupid: B-

In 2004 there was this show—this little, tiny show about this girl in this town. And she was damaged and jaded and full of so much emotional baggage you could just about see her staggering as she walked—except she was also smart, and beautiful, and funny. Plus, she solved crime. With the help of a sidekick. And a dog.For three years this show went on, struggling against low ratings and viewer apathy and a late-series outbreak of Narrativeitis (common symptoms: desperate guest spots, flashy storylines like serial rape, and harebrained structuring), until it was canceled. In 2007, the world saw the end of Rob Thomas’ Veronica Mars.

I talk my way through all of that as a way of better providing the context with which to judge Rob Thomas’ new show, which is actually a reboot of his 1998 romantic-comedy, Cupid. After having proven he’s a television writer-producer with a knack for writing dialogue marked by both wit and angst, the bar has been set awfully high—perhaps too high. Because Cupid, which airs weekly on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on ABC, while pleasing at times, is no Mars. It’s not as original, or as vivid, or as emotionally sincere. It is, instead, broad and rote and a bit sophomoric.

Bobby Cannavale, his caterpillar eyebrows scrunching and un-scrunching in pantomime of comedic timing, plays a man—“Trevor Pierce”—who may or may not be the titular Roman god of love. Sarah Paulson plays the shrink assigned to his case (she’s both monitoring him to make sure he doesn’t “harm” anyone and to do research for her next Dating 101 best-seller). The issue is that Trevor needs to match-up 100 couples before he’s allowed back on Mount Olympus. Problem is, both Sarah and the rest of New York City have a bit of an issue with “true love:” they hate it.

And so they head out, one tsk-tsking after the other. Sparks fly. Laughs are had.

Yet here’s the thing: as much as I wanted to write off Cupid after its first thirty minutes, I was thrown for a loop by its second act. Though the theme is cartoonishly clichéd—Trevor is all for the sizzle and passion, Paulson’s Claire is all for long conversations and deep connection—the stories that act them out give out a pleasant snap. In the pilot, for example, a man (Sean Maguire) flies all the way from Ireland to find a woman he met for twenty minutes. Once in NYC, he hooks up with a journalist (Marguerite Moureau, way better here than in Life as We Know It) to help get the word out to his mystery gal. Things happen, some of which you can guess and some of which you can’t, and the ending comes as a nice twist. The dialogue, for all it lacks in smarts, has more than enough heart.

Now here’s hoping the rest of Cupid could get into shape. Who knows—if that happens, maybe some god, somewhere, really is smiling down on Rob Thomas & Co.