Until recently, TBS has been largely known as a recycling plant for dead TV shows. From Friends to Everybody Loves Raymond to bowdlerized repeats of Sex and the City, TBS has been the go-to place if you want to relive your favorite sitcoms long after they had shuffled loose the network coil. The network has finally thrown a hat of its own brand into the ring, though, offering original programming in the form of two new sitcoms: 10 Items or Less and the charming My Boys (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.).

My Boys borrows pages from each of the sitcoms listed above, most notably from Sex and the City: the central character is a female journalist who sprinkles the show with voiceovers comparing her line of work to her life. But there’s a twist: P.J. Franklin (Jordana Spiro) is a baseball columnist for a Chicago paper. And instead of sipping martinis with her coven, P.J. chugs draught with the boys. Her tomboy attitude and adorable appearance seems like everything a guy would want, but it somehow winds up getting in her way - take as evidence the second episode, when she hooks up with the “new guy” in the group, Bobby (Kyle Howard), and ends up freaking him out because she’s more conditioned to act as hunter than seductress. Her character allows viewers to be a fly on the wall in the inner circles of both sexes because her guy friends let their guard down in her presence while her one female confidant (Kellee Stewart) pushes her to be more feminine.

The ensemble cast is among the more balanced groups on sitcom television right now, not counting the casts of The Office and Scrubs, with each actor embracing their role with aplomb. Surrounding Spiro with a group of talented stand-up comedians (among them Jim Gaffigan as P.J.’s married brother), the directors throw gasoline on a ready fire of comfortable repartee between the characters.

The biggest flaw in the execution of My Boys is the voiceover effect lifted directly from Sex and the City. P.J. is stuck comparing the free-form world of dating to the intricately rule-based world of sports, and the awkward mashup doesn’t read well as narration. The writers should consider letting the analogies play out in plot and dialogue; when it does, the show moves along nicely.

My Boys, to its credit, feels like a sitcom that belongs on network television. Hopefully, its presence on cable will let it live long enough to build an audience.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed