The road to Warehouse 13 is paved with plenty of familiar TV touchstones: attractive heroes given to teasing banter (shades of Bones harking all the way back to Moonlighting); a layer of government secrecy covering up supernatural doings (traces of the much darker The X-Files); and for cult-show geeks with long memories, a premise involving an endless supply of cursed objects to track down and neutralize (anyone remember the syndicated Friday the 13th series?).

Warehouse is sci-fi—or, as the case may be, Syfy—lite, in the vein of the newly and unnecessarily rechristened network’s popular Eureka (which returns from a long hiatus in fine, fun form this Friday on a new night). Whimsy rules on Warehouse 13, the name of a top-secret storage facility in the South Dakota Badlands that’s described by its caretaker (scruffy scene-stealer Saul Rubinek) as a “supersize Pandora’s Box.” In a nice touch, he reveals the actual box of legend is stored in the vast warehouse’s Aisle 989B. “Empty, of course.”

Sounds like a future episode to me.

The enjoyable if less-than-inspired two-hour pilot (airing tonight at 9/8c) introduces us to the warehouse, its bizarre inventory and the mismatched new agents in charge: wisecracking Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClintock, a longtime sitcom vet who warmed up for this gig with an arc on Bones in 2007) and straight-arrow Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly). He’s all impulse, she’s all control. He thinks the job “could be, you know, crazy fun,” while she frets that it’s a career-ender. Guess whose POV the show favors?

If your first reaction to all of this is that you’ve seen it before, that’s by design. Warehouse 13 is comfort-zone, comfort-food fantasy. It playfully tweaks TV’s ubiquitous procedural formula with nifty gadgets and gizmos (some harking back to Edison’s age of invention) and the occasional demonic object creating havoc in the outside world. It would be right at home on Syfy’s thriving sibling USA Network, which speaks well for its mainstream potential while no doubt causing some concern for the genre purist.

I have nothing against the breezy escapism of Warehouse 13, but with Battlestar Galactica a fading memory (and I’m hoping Caprica as a series is better than its ponderous pilot), I’m getting antsy for the next Syfy show that takes me way out of my comfort zone and actually rocks my world (and my socks off), which is what the best science fiction and fantasy shows are meant to do.

(For what it’s worth, I look at Sci Fi’s much-mocked rebranding to Syfy as more of a name-changer than a game-changer. The network has been mainstreaming into reality and other formats for quite a while, and I don’t expect to like or approve of everything any channel does, even one that caters to a genre that generally intrigues me. My main concern is that Syfy, in its attempt to reach out to a broader audience than the traditional sci-fi fan, will be less welcoming to the darker, more disturbing and challenging realm of “out there” sci-fi and fantasy, such as the revered Battlestar. Time will tell.)

Also new tonight, but also not all that new: ABC Family’s redo of the Disney (then Touchstone) film property 10 Things I Hate About You (airs tonight at 8/7c), which is The Taming of the Shrew retold as yet another vapid high-school sitcom, this one seriously lacking the star power of the 1999 movie, which featured the then-on-the-rise Heath Ledger and the prickly Julia Stiles as modern teen versions of Petruchio and the shrewish Kate.

Here, they’re Patrick and Kat. He’s the motorcycle-riding, James Dean/Brando wannabe bad-boy pretty boy who speaks softly and smolders when he speaks at all; in tonight’s pilot episode, he’s nearly mute. She’s the school misanthrope, defiantly driving a junker into a status-obsessed school (Padua High) that appears frozen in time from the TGIF era of sitcomedy. Kat mocks everything and everybody around her and even pretends to see right through Patrick’s too-cool-for-school act, although she gets drawn into his bedroom eyes when he throws her taunt back at her: “Why are people scared of you?” When she tries to deny it, he purrs: “Sure they are. It’s why I find you interesting.”

Not much interesting going on here, although it can be intriguing to watch an old-fashioned-style sitcom shoehorned into the Gossip Girl age, as ABC Family continues to try to be relevant yet family-friendly. Hence the subplot about two nerds (one of whom is instantly smitten by Kat’s chirpy little sis, Bianca) who throw an impromptu party to attract the popular crowd but almost forget about the alcohol. (This being ABC Family and not the CW, the keg is full of non-alcoholic beer.) And there are lots of jokes about sex and a plot point that hinges on someone not being a virgin (although it’s not clear yet if that’s true). Larry Miller reprises his role from the movie as the sisters’ overprotective gynecologist father, who opens the show lecturing his kids about STDs as they drive to school while he’s elbow-deep in a delivery. Well, that’s the first thing I hated about this show.

It’s probably unfair to compare the pouty Lindsey Shaw to Stiles, given the weakness of the sitcom’s writing, and it’s impossible to gauge how Ethan Peck (grandson of late film great Gregory) stands up against Ledger, since the pilot’s focus is so Kat-centric poor Patrick barely registers. Everyone else turns in forgettably generic performances, but my heart really goes out to Dana Davis (Heroes) who has the thankless job of playing snooty social arbiter and head cheerleader Chastity Church, who Bianca longs to befriend while Kat antagonizes her at every twist of the predictable plot.

As with Warehouse 13, a show like 10 Things doesn’t pretend to have anything new to say. It’s all about the comfort zone, but in this case especially, it amounts to something that’s awfully disposable during a summer of TV when the options elsewhere are so much more appealing and memorable.