Ellen Gray: The plots don't flow on CBS' 'Three Rivers'

THREE RIVERS. 9 p.m. Sunday, Channel 3.

IF IT'S NOT actually a rule that CBS shows must display a dead body within the first five minutes of every episode, it's probably only because the producers of "Two and a Half Men" might become a little too enthusiastic with the fractions.

It would be a tricky requirement, too, for most medical series, where death can be such a downer, but not for CBS' new "Three Rivers," where one person's demise can become several other people's life-saving opportunity.

That's an uplifting message, all right.

Too bad the show that's delivering it seems in danger of flatlining.

It's not just that Sunday's premiere isn't the actual pilot - reportedly, we'll see some version of that one the following week - or that there was recasting after its presentation to advertisers last May (the replacement of Julia Ormond by Alfre Woodard can't be counted as a bad thing).

Or even that this is the second CBS show starring the cute-but-too-often-wooden Alex O'Loughlin ("Moonlight") that's required pre-launch tinkering around him that did nothing to improve O'Loughlin's own performance.

No, as it so often is in television, it's the writing. Plots seem to have been harvested from bits and pieces of "House," "ER" and just about every medical drama you've ever seen, though the dialogue's unlikely to be claimed by any of them.

"I had no idea you could donate part of a liver," bubbles the woefully inexperienced new transplant coordinator, Ryan Abbott (Christopher J. Hanke) in Sunday's episode. "That's wild."

"It's called a partial hepatectomy," Dr. Andy Yablonski (O'Loughlin) tells him coolly. "It's fairly common."

Yablonski's the hot ticket at Pittsburgh's fictional Three Rivers Regional Medical Center, and we know this because Woodard's character, chief of surgery Dr. Sophia Jordan, actually waits for him to arrive - late - for meetings.

Center City native Katherine Moennig plays surgical fellow Dr. Miranda Foster, whose dead-daddy issues sometimes get in the way of her judgment, and it's worth noting that she seems to have grown out the haircut she sported in "The L Word" (and in the original pilot), as if CBS weren't entirely comfortable with her androgynous beauty.

Or maybe that came from a focus group, because "Three Rivers" plays like a show that was put together in one made up of transplant advocates.

One consequence of "Three Rivers' " hard sell on the organ-donation front, other than squeezing the life out of what should be heart-stopping drama, could be to discourage the very generosity the show's producers hope to encourage.

Hi, I'm Ellen, and I'm an app-aholic.

And so while some were pooh-poohing the idea of CNN's daring to charge for its new iPhone app, I was downloading it.

At $1.99 (with ads), CNN's app is challenging the notion that people won't pay for content, even when it includes video, at a time when apps for the Associated Press, Time magazine and the New York Times are all free.

For the past couple of days, it's been the most-downloaded paid app in Apple's online store. No. 2: A $1.99 program called RedLaser that promises "impossibly accurate barcode scanning."

CNN is luring users with promises of its own, including "live streaming video of breaking news," something I've yet to encounter on my visits, where most of the video selections appeared to be prepackaged.

Live video having been the lure, I'm less than jazzed so far, despite an interface that, among other things, lets users flip through news stories the way they might their iTunes library. It may require a big news day - with lots of video - to see if this one's ultimately worth it.

(Note to CNN: Stress on your not very groundbreaking entertainment coverage can only diminish the brand. No one's looking to you for snark. Want to give Americans something they don't see enough of on TV? Try a stream of your often superior international feed, the one people outside the U.S. get to see. That would be worth paying for.)

Depending on the strength of the 3G signal - something that comes and go inside my bat cave at the Daily News - the quality of the streaming ranges from shaky to the near-perfect. It's even better on my home wi-fi, but since I'm not interested in any more crippled apps, being able to stream away from hotspots is a definite plus.

Interestingly, users who are already complaining vociferously about having to see even relatively subtle advertising on a paid app - just how far do you think $1.99 goes, people? - don't seem to have a problem with the Tom Sawyer issue: Part of the app makes it easy for users to shoot pictures and video of news events and send them to CNN.

If that's truly one of the attractions, I have a fence that could use whitewashing.

Though chances are, there's already an app for that. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.