Gordon Ramsay's impressive new show "Kitchen Nightmares" launches by cleaning up the operations in a stereotypical Long Island Italian eatery. (While dramatic and humorous, it fits into the "reality" category so it is not being reviewed by the Season pass crew. That's a shame; this is fabulous television).

While the name on the building belongs to the loudmouth in the expensive yet tacky suits, the owner is the quiet sister who figures she'll be closing the joint soon if baby bro doesn't stop raiding the till. He, Peter, who treats his duties as host like some union no-show job.

Ramsay, with the help of the world's fastest heavy equipment installers, redoes the kitchen, the menu and the mindset almost overnight.

It is gripping storytelling with demonstrative characters - the expressions of the head chef are priceless; the directing and editing service the story so well, "Nightmares" immediately shoots to the upper reaches in the ranking of this season's new shows.

The restaurant that gets the redo, Peter's Italian Restaurant in Babylon, N.Y., apparently used to be called Peter's Pasta House, but nearly any mention or review of the eatery - and its mediocre food - seems to have been erased from the Internet save for this one numerical rating.

— Phil Gallo

Welcome to Season Pass, Variety.com’s blog for dishing about fall’s new scripted TV shows.
We wanted to give readers a wide range of opinions on the fall fare so eight of us spent a good chunk of our summer watching all of it. We like to complain, but it was really kind of fun.

Each of us has rated all the shows using four categories:

Love it, setting a season pass now

Worth another try

OK, but not for me

Won't watch again

"Reaper" (below) was one show that took us all by surprise. I did not expect to like it and it ended up being one of my favorites

The shows that rated the highest (one or two thumbs up) among our group of TV junkies were: ABC’s “Pushing Daisies” (seven season passes), NBC’s “Chuck” (four season passes), the CW’s “Reaper” (six season passes), CBS’ “Big Bang Theory” (three season passes), the CW’s “Gossip Girl,” (one season pass), Fox’s “Back To You” (one season pass) and CBS’ midseason entry “Swingtown” (one season pass).

See the chart for more details.

Our opinions are meant as a guide only. We encourage you to give all the shows a try and see for yourself what shows speak to you.

We’ll be blogging after each episode to track the shows’ progress. And we’ll weigh in on topics related to the season.

Have fun and happy channel surfing!