Lots of good people have lost their jobs during this recession, but for whatever reason, the development folks at NBC are still employed and making bad decisions.

It's no secret the network has some serious programming issues, and to a certain extent, that goes with the territory. Every network has some rough patches and some years when it seems that they just can't get a new show off the ground.

But generally in those rough times, the network is still doing good work. It's just the audience isn't paying attention. ABC was struggling hard in the late 1990s to launch new dramas, and they aired some programs that in a different climate would have been successful. But it wasn't until "Lost," "Desperate Housewives," and "Grey's Anatomy" that audiences finally tuned in. CBS aired some great dramas on Thursday nights for years until NBC's dominance began to fade.

What bothers me about today's NBC is that it's not only struggling in the ratings, but that it continues to add shows that seem as if they were grown in a petri dish as some sort of weird program cloning experiment. NBC's recent new dramas all seem to have that sad deja-vu quality that comes when you take promising ideas and run them through a network development process that sucks every bit of life out of the show.

Which brings me to "Trauma," which premieres Monday night following "Heroes." It is a medical/emergency services drama that contains as many character cliches as is humanly possible to include in one hour-long episode. There's the  troubled daredevil who follows his own set of rules (but still gets the job done, dammit), the female nurse who knows more than all of the male doctors, the tough rookie female helicopter pilot, the edgy EMT, the wiser mentor who reigns everyone back in....blah, blah blah. Yes, it's all about as subtle as a 19th-century dental procedure.

The frustrating thing about "Trauma" is that even the cliches are badly executed. Every character is watered down and given so many conflicting motivations that you end up a lot of people you really don't care about. Which is sad, because "Trauma" includes a lot of fine actors, from Jamey Sheridan to Anastasia Griffith and Aimee Garcia. In a better world, these actors would be in a show worthy of their talents.

But in a better world, "Trauma" wouldn't have even made the fall schedule.

"Trauma" premieres on Monday, September 28th, 2009.

Update: I heard from one of the actors on the show, who agreed with my points about the cliched characters, but who also thought my review was unfairly mean. I certainly didn't want it to seem mean-spirited, but the show did irritate me a great deal. The actors on the show deserve better, and in a season when NBC has fewer scripted hours to fill, you would think the overall quality of their new programs would go up, rather than plunge to new dismal levels.