Six strangers just might "Crash" into each other on Six Degrees
Premiering: Thursday night, Sept. 21 at 9 central, 10 eastern, ABC
Starring: Jay Hernandez, Bridget Moynahan, Erika Christensen, Dorian Missick, Campbell Scott, Hope Davis
Produced by: Stuart Zicherman, Raven Metzner, J.J. Abrams

By ED BARK
Do you believe in magic? Then you'd better live in New York City or you're out of luck.

That's the basic setup for ABC's Six Degrees, in which chance meetings run ridiculously rampant after an opening barrage of narrative exposition by a goodly attorney named Carlos (Jay Hernandez).

"The person sitting next to you could be your soulmate," he says from a subway car. And furthermore, "It's my favorite thing about New York. You've got some people on top of the world. Others are scraping rock-bottom. On any given day, you never know who you're gonna meet."

As if New York had a corner on this. Us poor shleppers in Dallas and elsewhere will just have to swim in the same, tired, algae-infested human gene pool, with nary a chance of meeting anyone new, exciting or dangerous. Six Degrees has a New York state of mind, all right. And it can be damned off-putting.

The series lists J.J. Abrams of Lost fame as executive producer, although he acknowledges in a letter to TV critics that it's really in the hands of colleagues Stuart Zicherman and Raven Metzner.

"Clearly, in the wrong hands, this idea could be too vague," Abrams writes of the series' interconnecting plot threads. "Or worse, pretentious. But Stu and Raven have such wonderful wit and optimism that while this show certainly will explore dark themes and make dangerous turns, it will always have, at its core, a romantic, sweet spirit."

All right, already. Six Degrees actually is more than a bit pretentious. And it will be nigh impossible to follow in future weeks if you're not on board from the start. Those who take a look likely will predict many of the show's twists and turns well before they happen. Will PR executive Whitney (Bridget Moynahan) get around to hiring a smug, insulting, cocaine-marred photographer named Steven (Campbell Scott)? Will she also be burned by her fiance, Roy (guest star Jonathan Cake), after he says his Internet dating days are over? The answers to these questions should be readily apparent to anyone old enough to read, let alone the product-purchasing urban sophisticates at which Six Degrees is aimed.

Also featured is troubled Mae (Erika Christensen), who's on the lam from something. Still, that doesn't stop her from impulsively riding topless through Manhattan, for which she's arrested for indecent exposure. This enables Carlos to meet her in the slammer and immediately fall in love. But then she vanishes after he gets her off --- on the arrest charge, that is.

Carlos later meets chauffeur Damian (Dorian Missick), whose mounting gambling debts make him vulnerable to the advances of his crooked older brother. And the recently widowed Laura (Hope Davis), whose TV reporter husband was killed in Iraq, immediately befriends Whitney at a nail salon. First, though, she makes a cheap crack at the expense of the Asian woman who's doing her toes. It's also Laura's view that "Britney Spears is the devil, and that Keith Richards is God." This piece of information is from her li'l daughter Eliza, who has a new nanny named Claire, who's actually the runaway Mae in newly dyed hair.

Yes, this is a lot to digest, and much of it is too hard to swallow. Even with a high-powered lead-in from Grey's Anatomy, it's tough to envision Six Degrees as a can't-miss hit. That is, unless every single, solitary New Yorker never misses a single episode. Dream on.

Prospects: A definite longshot that likely will be viewers' third choice opposite CBS' new Shark and NBC's ER

Grade: C