The very first book I ever read on my own was Robinson Crusoe. I was seven years old, and had been reading for some time, but never with any interest. Between my short attention span and over active imagination, most story books were just too boring for me to want to read them all the way through.

Crusoe changed that however; I was bringing the book with me to the dinner table so I could keep reading, I would sit on the couch with the TV on and not look once at it all night, I would beg my mom to let me stay up just a little bit longer till I reached the end of the chapter. She must have been so happy (my mom is an avid reader herself, and I can only imagine how she must have worried that she had a 2nd grader who wouldn’t read).

Since I started reading that book, the story of Robinson Crusoe has always held a special place in my heart. For whatever reason, it wasn’t the same as Ghostbusters, or Back to the Future, or Knight Rider. Those were exciting, and I wanted to be them. With Robinson Crusoe, however, I was content with just “hearing” the story in my mind.

So, let’s get to how excited I was when the new series “Crusoe” was announced. I was very happy. VERY happy. So happy that I told my DVR to record every episode, and then stored them up for me to watch all at once. Too bad I can’t just learn that broadcast television is only out to ruin my childhood memories.

The series starts off with him waking up on the beach in the midst of a debris field left from his ship. The ghost of convenience has washed everything from the ship onto an area of the beach that is no bigger than my house (bodies and all), and the ship itself is only about 200 feet away in shallow water.

Suddenly he’s on a cliff, looking through a telescope at a landing party on his beach. He activates a whole slew of McGyver-esque gadgets to light signal fires and fly down to the beach at record speed. We also see his awesome treetop penthouse.

So, somehow, we’ve managed to skip from the very beginning of the book, to somewhere towards the end. Crusoe has a lot of flashbacks, which I guess would work well as a storytelling device, except they are only convenient for the current storyline and absolutely worthless for telling what happened up to this point.

Crusoe’s dialogue is now a cross between MacGyver and MythBusters with him constantly explaining scientific principles to Friday, and Friday’s dialogue is fast and witty with him constantly explaining that he doesn’t care to Crusoe.

Add to that the fact that in three separate episodes, the island is “stumbled upon” three separate times! I fail to see how this could be a “lost, deserted island” with people constantly landing and looking around!

I’ve cancelled the recording schedule for Crusoe now, as I can’t bring myself to watch “Knight Rider on an island, and no electricity” and longer. It baffles me how a network could drop so much money and time on what has to be a complicated series (in terms of location, sets, costumes, and filming) and then cheap out on writing, producing, and editing.

Are ANY of the new series this season worth it?