I’m more than a little under the weather today, but even at full health, I doubt I’d have the enthusiasm to write a full review of ABC’s “How to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life),” which debuted tonight in the post-“Modern Family” timeslot. It’s a sitcom featuring a bunch of actors I often like (Sarah Chalke, Brad Garrett, Elizabeth Perkins), given material that’s alternately limp and frantic. (Though Chalke’s always been frantic; it’s just that “Scrubs” knew how to turn that to the show’s advantage in a way most of her other gigs have not.) Garrett demonstrated on “Til Death” that he had an ability to wring laughs out of weak material, but that was when he was playing to a studio audience; one of the disadvantages of the single camera sitcom format is that there’s no crowd whose energy you can feed off of.
It’s airing Wednesdays at 9:30 because ABC hasn’t given up on the idea that some show they air there will retain more of the “Modern” audience than “Cougar Town,” “Happy Endings,” “Don’t Trust the Breadbox in Apt. 23” and “Suburgatory” have managed to, and because it was either this or “Family Tools,” which is being held all the way until May. But it’s unmemorable at best, and in hindsight – given how much it evolved from its lame pilot – I wonder if ABC might have been better off just leaving “The Neighbors” there as originally planned.
For those who tuned in tonight, what did you think? You setting a season pass, or waiting for any or all of the cast to find other work?