• Trauma, 9-10 p.m. Monday, WTVJ-NBC 6

The Hollywood writers' strike has been over for more than a year now, but Trauma seems to be some sort of final shot across the studios' bow: See, guys, this is what a show would look like if you tried to make it without screenwriters.

Midair chopper collision! Massive freeway pileup! Gas-tanker explosion! Midair tracheotomy! Bullit-style car chase through the San Francisco hills! No intelligible dialogue! No discernible plot! No viewers! The death of network television! Chaos! Mass cannibalism! Cancellation of the Emmys!

There are worse shows debuting on the broadcast networks this fall, but none quite so pointless as this NBC drama about emergency paramedics. Apparently intended to remind viewers of the network's similarly themed Third Watch, which had a successful six-season run earlier in the decade, Trauma instead evokes the sensation of trying to watch TV inside a cement mixer.

It's one long session of bang-boom-bang, punctuated by bursts of incomprehensible medical jargon and the occasional scene of ambulance-sex being interrupted by an emergency call. In theory there are several actual actors in the show, including Cliff Curtis (Push), Anastasia Griffith (Damages) and Aimee Garcia (Postcards From Tucson), but I didn't recognize any of them through the smoke and flying debris. Which is just as well; otherwise, their careers would all be marked Do not resuscitate.

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