“Crumbs”

Starring: Fred Savage, Jane Curtain

ABC

Thursdays, 9:30…

“Crumbs”

Starring: Fred Savage, Jane Curtain

ABC

Thursdays, 9:30 p.m.

ABC gives viewers another one of those shows where the parents hate each other and the audience is supposed to laugh because the situation is funny – only it’s not, and it never was. It wasn’t funny in “In-laws,” “The Stones” or “Out of Practice,” and it certainly isn’t funny now.

Fred Savage stars as Mitch Crumb, the prodigal child who ran away to Hollywood and made a movie about his brother’s death. Oh, and he’s gay, but don’t worry: The characters don’t care and neither do the writers. They just wanted the show to be “edgy.”

The show’s first scene takes place in Mitch’s bedroom where he sits with his boyfriend and tells him he’s going back to his family. The boyfriend is never seen again, and when he gets back to his “small hometown,” one of his female friends reminds both him and the audience that he’s gay.

Mitch comes home because his mom went to a mental institution for trying to run his dad over with a car after she found him cheating. He has to pick up his mom with his brother Jody who hates him for little or no reason.

They resolve the sibling rivalry at the end of the episode when both brothers find out they hate each other because they both felt abandoned after their other brother died. Now that that’s cleared up, Jody has nothing to do until Mitch comes out of the closet except make a bunch of tasteless gay jokes.

Jane Curtain, who starred in “Third Rock from the Sun” and “SNL,” has a few moments during the first episode where you can almost convince yourself you like the show. She throws herself into the character, but the character isn’t worthy of her talent.

It seems like the writers almost couldn’t decide what to do with her. She starts the episode yelling “lollipop,” because it’s her safe word, and waving a fake gun at her husband. But by the end she has an earnest discussion about her son’s sexuality.

Uneven writing doesn’t just affect Curtain’s character; it happens with the entire show. In the last two minutes of the first episode Savage’s character is walking around his family’s restaurant helping out while happy music plays in the background.

The scene doesn’t fit in with the rest of the episode: Mental institutions, attempted murder, gay jokes and illegal business dealings just don’t go well with musical montages.

William Devane, who plays Mitch’s dad, does absolutely nothing except hide in weird places. He just acts scared of his wife and sits under his desk at his restaurant all day. At the end of the episode he says he got his new girlfriend pregnant – but that’s a storyline for his girlfriend, not him.

The writers centered the show around Mitch’s mom going insane after discovering that her husband cheated on her, but what happens when she gets over it? Will she just always be insanely mad at him even if the show goes on for nine seasons?

“Crumbs” has a flawed concept; the show can only work as long as the mom and the dad hate each other and Mitch struggles to keep them apart. That’ll get old by episode three.

In a show like this, there needs to be a sane member of the family who stands there and shakes his head while everyone else goes crazy. The show doesn’t have crazy people or sane people; everyone’s characters change from scene to scene, so it doesn’t work.

“Crumbs” tries to be a safer version of “Arrested Development” but ends up being just another dysfunctional family sitcom where the family members aren’t nearly as dysfunctional as they want to be.

If you feel the need to have the television on at 9:30 on Thursday nights and the only station you get is ABC, then “Crumbs” is for you. But you would probably enjoy yourself more if you just stared at a wall for half an hour.