The first of the two, 10 Items or Less (Mondays, 11 p.m.), follows in the semi-improvised format that remains bafflingly popular despite the failures of four such shows in the last year (ABC's Sons & Daughters, Fox's Free Ride, Lifetime's Lovespring International, Comedy Central's Dog Bites Man). Set in a small-town grocery store populated by the usual cast of dim, clueless losers without a hint of self-awareness, 10 Items suffers from the same structural aimlessness that has befallen most shows in its genre that try to be more than a series of skits. Letting actors drive the plot improvisationally is a great idea for an acting workshop, but in practice on a TV show it leads to haphazard storytelling and an over-reliance on left-field jokes to fill space.
The other problem is that the jokes just aren't funny, and each actor takes the essentially single aspect of his or her character and riffs on it in a rather limited way. Occasional jokes hit, but that's more a product of quantity than quality. Star and co-creator John Lehr is an especially grating presence as the naïve twentysomething who inherits the family grocery store but has no idea how to run it.
While 10 Items unsuccessfully copies the format of a show (Comedy Central's Reno 911!) that appeals to the network's desired demographic, TBS's other new sitcom, My Boys (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.), makes the mistake of thinking that men will want their own version of Sex and the City, complete with a female star. Boys is about the tomboy version of Sex's Carrie Bradshaw, a Chicago sportswriter named PJ (Jordana Spiro) whose group of swingingly single friends is almost all-male. PJ is positioned as a breaker of stereotypes, but really she just embodies either male or female relationship clichés depending on what the plot calls for at the moment.
She also engages in tedious sports metaphors in her ubiquitous voice-overs, and otherwise finds herself stuck in every typical sitcom relationship problem, and any that she doesn't cover are handled by one of her equally one-note friends. Like 10 Items, My Boys hits on the odd funny line, and at least it's not improvised, so it has some tighter plotting. But the occasional gratuitous swear word aside, it's no different from any disposable broadcast sitcom, and not likely to give TBS the brand identity it's so obviously craving. Both new shows will, however, fit very well alongside reruns of The King of Queens.