Worst Week

Bornheimer absorbs every setback with such a beaten-puppy air that each fresh misery feels ludicrous, rather than merely annoying. Will it work, (worst) week after (worst) week? With Bornheimer, it's strangely possible. His is a feathery touch on wrecking-ball comedy.

This is one of the rare situation comedies that relies almost entirely on situations, each of which is more bizarre than the next and at the same time perfectly plausible. It's almost too good.

Worst Week is Rube Goldberg meets Murphy’s Law meets the parents. And it’s hysterical.

The show moves fast without seeming to rush you. The timing, on the part of actors and editors alike, is excellent--both Bornheimer and Smith are good physical comedians--so that even while you can set your watch by the Next Bad Thing About to Happen, tension is created, suspense maintained.

Worst Week is a dandy confection, as slight and silly and flat-out hilarious as anything that's come along on TV in a few years.

As adapted by Matt Tarses, there's something refreshing about seeing an utterly screwball comedy mounted on an episodic scale. Bornheimer, meanwhile, comes across as the kind of likable schlub who can't figure out why these awful things keep happening to him

It's too soon to declare Worst Week the fall's best new sitcom, but if the show's writers can find a way to sustain its seemingly unsustainable premise, it may overcome all doubts. It's certainly off to a strong start.

Yet for all that it revels in catastrophe, the most promising aspect of Worst Week is a sweet-tempered empathy that allows you to identify with all four characters.

There are signs that the premise may not sustain for long (the title, after all, gives it only a week), but it still shows that a good pratfall is the universal language.

Smith perfected the style on "That '70s Show." This time, he plays a mean judge who holds Sam in contempt. But the evidence suggests that Worst Week is the fall's best new sitcom.

The journey from Point A to Point B is both surprising and funny in spots, thanks to Bornheimer's likable doofus vibe and the usual waves of contempt coming from Kurtwood Smith (last seen as Red on "That '70s Show") as his prospective father-in-law.

It won't insult your intelligence, and it has a completely likable lead actor in Kyle Bornheimer; but Worst Week is nevertheless completely predictable and unambitious.

Even though it's obviously well-made and Bornheimer has a flinty wit that prevents him from being just another Ben Stiller–ish sap....if I'm being truthful, the original British version of this series was funnier.

Worst Week, a new entry in CBS' Monday lineup, is a luke-warm sitcom about a schleprock of a magazine editor named Sam Briggs (Kyle Bornheimer) who becomes nervous and accident-prone when around his fiancee Melanie's conservative parents Dick (Kurtwood Smith, reprising the gruff father figure he played on "That '70s Show") and mother Angela (Nancy Lenehan).

That the pilot fails to provide a foundation for the show’s future direction does not bode well. The only thing that is clear is how much the Claytons dislike Sam.

Though there are plenty of hard-earned (some might say forced) laughs here and Bornheimer is a real find, you can't help but wonder how they'll keep up the pace.

All in all, this is a much-watered down version of "Meet the Parents," and the only watchable things are the slow-burn looks of disgust from Dick (Kurtwood Smith), Sam's displeased future father-in-law.

Worst Week certainly has some genuine laughs, but they run out well before the pratfalls and pee-pee jokes do.

Worst Week has the primal simplicity of a Road Runner cartoon but less depth and, of course, far fewer laughs.

The lesser problem is that all the gags are telegraphed. We see them coming long before they arrive. The bigger problem is that when they get here, they all feel forced, as if someone thought of the gag first, then tried to manufacture a situation, however contorted, that would lead to it.