Not All Ready for Prime Time

By Melissa August, Harriet Barovick, Autumn DeLeon, Michelle Derrow, Aisha Durham, Tam Gray, Daniel Levy, Michele Orecklin and Chris Taylor

The networks are busy promoting their new fall lineups, but there are plenty of rookie shows they'd prefer to forget. Play TV executive: guess which of the following shows were chosen to air and which never made it past the pilot stage.

1 Freaks and Geeks: Features "a smallish but hyper geek," "a friendly but slightly dangerous freak" and "a tall freak who dreams of stardom as a rock-'n'-roll drummer"

2 The Expendables: A buddy comedy about indestructible, human-looking robots who team up to be crime fighters

3 Now and Again: An updated Six Million Dollar Man, about a middle-age insurance salesman who suffers a strange accident and is rebuilt by the government

4 Partners: A comedy about a police detective who pesters his partner by pondering aloud such things as whether he would eat human flesh if he were shipwrecked

5 Student Affair: Animal House meets The Young and the Restless on a college campus

6 Then Came You: A romantic comedy about a 34-year-old book editor living in a hotel who falls for a 24-year-old room-service waiter

7 Quints: Billed as "South Park for women," with the voices of Sandra Bernhard and Jim Belushi

8 Roswell: Three orphaned aliens who are trying to pass unnoticed as "normal" teenagers

9 Sugar Hill: A sitcom set in a New York City police station, starring Charlie Sheen

Answers: 1 (NBC), 3 (CBS), 6 (ABC) and 8 (the WB) will air this fall