BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson is afraid too many copycats have it all wrong.

The executive sessions at the TV Critics Association press tour give all the critics the chance to gather around and grill the network’s big boss, usually asking what the heck was going through his or her mind when they scheduled awful shows or axed great ones.

But Tuesday’s session with McPherson was more of a lovefest after a year when little went wrong for ABC and many things went well.

Everyone knows about the big hits, but even the more peripheral shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Boston Legal” and “Alias” exceeded expectations.

The success of “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” appears to have opened the floodgates for science fiction and soap opera dramas, and even “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “Dancing With the Stars” have paved the way for more feel-good reality shows in place of those that try to humiliate contestants.

But McPherson said there’s a danger in trying to pick apart why this or that show was successful, and then trying to duplicate it, as we’ve seen in at least three new shows being presented here for the fall schedule.

“People make the mistake on ‘Lost’ of saying, ‘Oh it’s a sci-fi show, so we’ll do sci-fi rip-offs and that will be what it is,’” McPherson said. “At the heart of ‘Lost’ is great character work. To me, what people come back to television for, certainly at ABC, is for characters.

“There is part of ‘Lost’ that has some sci-fi elements, although I would argue very little, people thought that was an element they could easily replicate, and I think that’s why you saw a bunch of sci-fi things kind of popping up.”

As for feel-good reality shows, including new stuff inspired by “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” such as NBC’s “Three Wishes,” McPherson said, “Through the years, you saw people were turned off by the really mean-spirited, cynical reality, and now, unfortunately, you’re seeing rip-offs of the stuff that was working to capitalize on that.

“You’ve got to be careful about at what point does that becomes overkill, because you have all the clones. ‘Dancing’ was another way of doing a wish-fulfillment, fun, vibrant show.”

‘Boston Legal’ news

Heather Locklear will be featured in the first two episodes of ABC’s breakout drama, which got short shrift last season when “Grey’s Anatomy” took off and bumped the remaining five episodes of “Legal” to the fall schedule at 10 p.m. Tuesdays.

“We weren’t very pleased” about getting bumped, creator David Kelley said. “It was tough. It was unfortunate when it happened, because we felt we were just coming into a run of our best shows of the season. But notwithstanding all that, we’re going to try to come back strong.”

Seen and heard

Evan Handler, best known as Harry Goldenblatt on “Sex and the City,” has moved on to an ABC sitcom, “Hot Properties,” where he plays one of the male counterparts to a group of four women who talk about sex a lot. But Tuesday’s discussion turned for a moment to a project he worked on with O.J. Simpson just five months before the infamous murders of his wife and a friend of hers.

“I’ve never seen it, I don’t know where it is,” Handler said. “I don’t know where O.J. is, and I don’t know where the real killer is.”

Victor Balta is on assignment at the TV Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles, filing dispatches on the fall TV season. E-mail him at vbalta@ heraldnet.com.