CBS is not only trying to beat Fox these days, but it's apparently trying to join Fox.
At least in terms of tacky, trashy little sitcoms.CBS's new "Muddling Through" is apparently its answer to "Married . . . With Children" - rude, crude and utterly without both socially redeeming value and laughs.
This is one baaaad show.
Trashy people talking trash and dressing trash and doing trash.
Here's the concept: Stephanie Hodge ("Nurses") stars as Connie Drego, a thirtysomething mother of two who has just been paroled after three years in prison.
She served time because she shot her then-husband (D. David Morin) in the bottom - accidentally, she insists - when she caught him in bed with twins.
Lovely.
Connie, apparently suffering from prison-induced hallucinations, arrives home at her truck stop expecting to find a perfect little life with a perfect little family.
Not exactly.
Her 18-year-old daughter, Madeline (Jennifer Aniston) is running the truck stop. She's also recently gotten married - to the state trooper (Scott Waara) who not only arrested Connie but whose testimony put her away.
And Madeline is the sensible daughter.
Sixteen-year-old daughter Kerri (Aimee Brooks) is a budding Madonna with approximately the same moral standards as the Material Girl.
Not only is she dating guys in leather and one of her teachers, but she proudly proclaims the results of a test she took on one of her infrequent visits to school.
"Not pregnant!" Kerri announces.
Wonderful.
Connie wants to take charge and turn her daughter around, but since she was once 16, unmarried and pregnant herself, she isn't exactly a role model. She's your basic white trash.
It doesn't help that young Kerri gets her tramp outfits from mom's closet.
If the girls and the son-in-law aren't enough, Connie's hound dog of an ex-husband has moved into one of the cabins out behind the truck stop.
There are plenty of lewd sexual suggestions in the script, and conflict without humor.
Oh, there's supposed to be humor, it just falls remarkably flat. Unless you're a big fan of "Married . . . With Children," you won't find anything to laugh at here at all.
And even if you are, you won't find much.
Laughs can cover a multitude of sins, and there's nothing covering "Muddling Through's" multitude.
One wonders what the folks at CBS were thinking when they bought this piece of junk.
Maybe they, too, were suffering some sort of hallucinations.
One also wonders what they're thinking now, scheduling it after "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" on Saturday nights (8 p.m., Ch. 5).
At least "Muddling Through" never made it onto the CBS schedule during the regular season. CBS is burying it during the low-viewership summer months.
They needed to bury it deeper to cover the smell.
TRUE ITEM: The USA Network, home of really bad made-for-cable movies and the sleaziest theatrical movies on basic cable, will launch a live-action children's show in the fall.
It's titled "Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills."
I am not making this up.
SAME JOB, DIFFERENT NETWORK: Greg Gumbel, who used to host CBS NFL pre-game and halftime shows, will be doing the same for NBC in the fall.
Gumbel will succeed Bob Costas as host of "NFL Life" come September.
Which, incidentally, will put him in direct competition with his former CBS partner, Terry Brad-shaw, who will be hosting Fox's pregame and halftime shows.
Gumbel (Bryant's big brother) makes his first appearance as an NBC sportscaster on July 12 when he hosts the pregame coverage of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.