NETWORK: NBC
AIR DATE: October 9, 2008
STARRING: Molly Shannon, Selma Blair, John Michael Higgins, and Mikey Day
CREATED BY: Michelle Nader

Episodes 1.1-2 - "Pilot" and "Old"

I realize there are probably different executives, personalities, and issues involved with every show, but I have to admit that one thought kept recurring to me as I watched the downright awful series premiere of Kath and Kim and the just-as-bad second episode - "They said no to one more season of Scrubs for this?" NBC notoriously turned their back on a final season of Scrubs (it will now air on ABC starting early next year) and one could be expected to assume that it might have something to do with the quality comedy they had waiting in the wings. When I heard that the great Molly Shannon and the sometimes-interesting Selma Blair were set to star in a comedy between My Name is Earl and The Office, the move seemed to make sense. Scrubs was never a huge hit for the peacock. Maybe a show with two comediennes as talented as Shannon and Blair would be. Not if anyone with any taste has a Nielsen box on their TV. Kath and Kim is horrendous, laugh-free, and one of the worst sitcoms to appear on the big three networks in years. Fox and The CW have had a monopoly on horrible laughers in recent years, but the big three have stayed a little clear of the fray. Not any more. Excluding the already-canceled Do Not Disturb, Kath and Kim is the worst new show of the year and a strong contender for worst show on the air, period.

It's hard to know where to start. First, to anyone writing a sitcom out there - your grating characters need to be at least remotely likable. Michael Scott on The Office may be annoying but he's got a good heart and is amply off-set by the genuinely nice and relatable Pam and Jim, who get as much screen time, sometimes more. Kath and Kim is all obnoxious without anything else to balance the comedic scale. The two leads - Molly Shannon and Selma Blair - play the two title characters, a mother and daughter who never met a gossip rag, Bedazzler, or sweat suit sale that they didn't like. There are plenty of over-the-top women like Kath and Kim in middle America. You need only stop by a mall in my hometown (a suburb of Detroit) on a Saturday to see them. However, I wouldn't want to watch a sitcom about those people either. And, to be honest, their lives are probably funnier than Kath and Kim's. Never mind the oddly-ignored fact that Shannon and Blair are asked to play mother and daughter but are only EIGHT years different in age but both of these performances are misdirected train wrecks. Shannon goes so far over the top that she can't see it any more and plays her role like an SNL sketch from the final half hour of the show. No one seems to have told her that what works in 3-minute doses falls apart in 22. And Blair is even worse. Going for sullen teenager when, I'm sorry, she's too old to pull it off. I don't want to spend another second with Kath and Kim, much less 22 more minutes.

The only bright ray of hope in this garbage dump of a comedy is Christopher Guest regular John Michael Higgins as Kath's new suitor. Higgins has the best comic timing of the bunch but even he looks lost whenever he has to step aside and let Shannon and Blair do their thing. In the pilot, Kim moves home after leaving her new husband (Mikey Day) only to find that her mom may be going the other way down the aisle herself. Kim is a whiny brat. Her husband is a wide-eyed moron. And the writers never bother to give the audience a reason to care. And laughs? There's not one. Really, if you've gotten this far, you've spent more time reading about Kath and Kim than you should watching it.