ABC's new sitcom 'Suburbia' won't survive until next season

    Comedian Bob Saget, best known for his role as uptight patriarch Danny Tanner on all eight seasons of "Full House," has become something of a myth in the past decade. Thanks to his scene-stealing turn in "The Aristocrats" (2005) and his 2008 Comedy Central roast, people have started to ask their friends, "Hey, did you know that Bob Saget is actually funny? And that his jokes are filthy?"
    It's true that Saget's stand-up often refers to sex, drugs and unsavory facts about the Olsen twins, but any comedy in his act hasn't translated to his newest sitcom attempt, "Surviving Suburbia." Unlike Saget's other current project, CBS's "How I Met Your Mother," "Suburbia" revels in its sitcom conventions rather than defying them.
    Steve Patterson (played by Saget) is a lying, drinking schlub who seems to genuinely hate his own life. He and his wife Anne (Cynthia Stevenson) live with their two children in an anonymous suburban neighborhood that's full of gossip and competition between parents. The Pattersons' neighbors include Onno (ex-MTV VJ Dan Cortese), a strip club owner, and Dr. Jim (Jere Burns), an off-color dentist.
    The plots of the first two episodes, not even worth detailing here, are taken straight from the sitcom-writing handbook. Out-of-hand lies, wacky misunderstandings and grade-school drama are all present. However, the show never seems to have a happy ending. The show never reassures the audience that the Pattersons, despite their complaining, are actually happy with their lives.
    Moreover, the curmudgeonly characters never truly receive their comeuppance. Steve's big lie in the pilot episode is only exposed to his wife, not to his daughter or neighbors. Daughter Courtney's problematic bad grade is changed because she lies and tells her teacher that her parents are having marital problems.
    The show is overly conventional in its writing, and the cast is a group of misfits. Saget plays it loose and seems to be uncommitted to every joke he delivers. Steve's disdain for his American-dream lifestyle hints at a more interesting dimension — how he found himself in his suburban hell — but the writers have thus far ignored this question.
    Meanwhile, Stevenson, whose inherent somber cynicism fit in splendidly on the Showtime black comedy "Dead Like Me," is incongruous with the aggressively sitcom tone of "Suburbia." Anne holds such contempt for Steve's faults and poor decisions that one wonders how the two have stayed married for two decades.
    The two children who round out the cast are more fitting for a cut-rate sitcom of this type. Jared Kusnitz as teenaged son Henry is bland rather than charming. Seven-year-old Courtney is cloying instead of cute. Oftentimes, her too-adult dialogue is disconcerting coming from the young girl's mouth.
    Except for piecemeal references to Zac Efron and emailing, most of "Suburbia" seems like it could have been made by anyone at any time. The more current, edgy jokes seem not only out of place but downright inappropriate. In the first episode, the viewer unnecessarily learns that Steve "has a three-hour turnaround" for having sex with his wife.
    In the second episode, the show introduces Rhonda (Alexandra Krosney), Henry's friend, who not only has a child but is pregnant with another. Rhonda and Henry share a tense, laugh-free scene discussing the identity of the child's father. The tone and subject matter seem better suited for "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" than a show like this one. A couple jokes are shoehorned in, but the laugh track comes off as out of place and even insensitive.
    It's a shame that Saget doesn't seem to be making any effort to break new ground with his latest project. True, Steve Patterson is no Danny Tanner, but Saget's dry wit and quiet bitterness don't quite fit into the "According to Jim" mold of a sitcom hero.
    The show had been picked up for the CW's spring schedule before it was unceremoniously dropped at the last minute. One questions ABC's motivations for being the savior of "Suburbia."