Man With a Plan

There is something wrong with the most popular and prosperous broadcast network churning out work that is this witless and lifeless.

Chemistry wasn’t the problem with either version of the pilot. Indeed both actresses are fine in the role, as is LeBlanc; it’s the show itself that could use some work.

Less charitably, it's as if CBS has been sucked into a time warp -- delivering the fourth best sitcom of the 1989 season.

Uninspired, obvious and just not that humorous, there’s little reason to make a plan to watch CBS’s latest in a string of disappointing new sitcoms.

Man with a Plan is not a good show, even by low sitcom standards, and far away from the effective multi-cam format CBS has become used to employing in its massive hit lineup.

Not only is the series uncomfortably dated and anti-equality, but it’s also criminally unfunny. The canned laughter is almost entirely unearned and usually revolves around predictable wordplay instead of, you know, jokes.

The show places a tremendous amount of faith in LeBlanc, but in spite of the occasional flash of Joey Tribbiani panache, he’s always outshone by Snyder, Nealon, or the analogy-loving dialogue of husband-and-wife creators Jeff and Jackie Filgo.

There are opportunities here for something more interesting than what develops, which is laced with needlessly crass jokes (and no real humor), but Man with a Plan clearly has no plans to explore that.

The whole enterprise just feels very phoned-in. LeBlanc appears mostly disinterested during his scenes, and the script doesn’t bother to give Adam any character traits beyond “a slightly less dumb version of Joey.”

Imagine that this particleboard sitcom is in fact part of a lost season of Showtime’s “Episodes,” in which “Matt LeBlanc” (played by LeBlanc, in a nicely meta turn) winds up landing yet another sitcom that exists mainly to employ actors, writers and producers--and thus consciously squanders all the critical goodwill he gained by playing a version of himself on an ironic premium cable comedy.