No metaphysical problem of the last half-century has proven knottier than figuring out why some people are cool while others are, well, us. For instance, a couple of girls in my high school let guys explore their superstructures on the morning school bus. They were called many different things, but cool was not one. It seemed pretty clear that public promiscuity was not cool . . . and then came Paris Hilton. So go figure.

As the fall TV season continues rolling out tonight, two new dramas poke around at this question -- of what's cool, not Paris Hilton, who will still be baffling archaeologists from the Andromeda galaxy when they visit a burnt-out Earth several thousand years from now -- without coming to any definitive conclusions, except maybe that the social value of an ability to rip holes in the space-time continuum is unexpectedly low.

The best of tonight's premieres is Runaway, the first new series from the fledgling CW network. Like UPN and The WB, from whose collective ashes it rose, The CW covets a young audience, so Runaway's enthusiasm for teen angst is predictable and, often, amusing, as when a kid whose father is trying to hide the family from a vicious murderer screams at him, ''You're ruining my life!'' Not since Anne Frank jotted down dark suspicions that the entire Holocaust was a plot to keep her from dating has teenage self-obsession been so memorably expressed.

Runaway starts off with a time-honored staple of teen angst: The family is moving. But the Raders have more than just a new house. On the run from the cops, they've got a new name, a new history, and -- when, they discover they're being chased not only by the law but by whoever framed Paul Rader for the murder of his law partner -- a whole new set of fears.

This is an intriguing blend of The Fugitive and The O.C.: half suspense and half intergenerational melodrama. While dad Paul (Donnie Wahlberg of Boomtown) concentrates on outwitting the FBI and whoever framed him, mom Lily (Leslie Hope of 24) concentrates on the complicated logistics of a family that can't produce credit histories, school transcripts, or any of the paperwork that fuels modern life.

For self-absorbed teenagers Henry (Dustin Milligan of Final Destination 3) and Hannah (Sarah Ramos of American Dreams), cops and killers matter less than the impact on their social lives. For Henry, that means the loss of his football stardom and his cheerleader girlfriend. For social pariah Hannah, it's a chance to reinvent herself. ''You can't just decide to be cool. You are, or you aren't,'' Henry loftily warns her, smugly unaware that social regime change is on the way.

If Runaway seems at least faintly optimistic about the social mobility of cool, Heroes seems to take the opposite point of view: once a nerd, always a nerd, even if you suddenly develop the ability to fly or teleport yourself into the ladies' room. If that sounds like a lesson you already learned from the adventures of Peter Parker and Clark Kent, that's because Heroes is right out of the comic-book genre.

During an eclipse, various people around the world suddenly develop extraordinary abilities. These range from the relatively nifty (a Texas cheerleader can jump off grain elevators without hurting herself) to the utterly pointless (an Internet porn star discovers her image in the mirror has a mind of its own) to the wildly unintelligible (a Japanese office drone makes his clock run backward).

The dramatic point of all this is never clear, and unless Heroes starts offering some clues about where it's headed, the answer is liable to be the late hours of Nick at Night. But if not exactly compelling, the pilot episode is engaging and often quirkily funny, particularly when the characters are trying to explain their nascent super-powers to a disbelieving and ultimately disregarding world. When the office drudge (amiably played by Masi Oka of Scrubs) tells a co-worker he's punched a hole in the space-time continuum, the man patiently counsels him, ''We're not special, we're Japanese.'' When a whole country gives up on being cool, you know Paris Hilton has won.

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