TV REVIEW : ‘Sons and Daughters’: A Family to Forget

The new CBS series “Sons and Daughters” is not merely heartwarming. It’s a fiery holocaust of sentimentality, introducing another of those large, boisterously eclectic TV families that wears bathos and melodrama like a merit badge.

The setting is Portland. And arriving at 10 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, “Sons and Daughters” kicks off with absentee family patriarch Bing Hammersmith (Don Murray) resurfacing with his rural young wife, Mary Ruth (Lisa Blount) and toddler son, much to the dismay of his urban adult offspring from a previous marriage.

They are wise-cracking Tess (Lucie Arnaz), a single parent whose adopted daughter, Astrid (Michelle Wong), is having identity problems; Patty (Peggy Smithhart), whose husband, Spud (Rick Rossovich), is a plodding high school coach whose squareness offends their teen-age son, Rocky (Paul Scherrer), and shallow, image-conscious Gary (Scott Plank), whose indulgent lifestyle with his wife, Lindy (Stacy Edwards), has been curbed by the birth of their daughter, Dakota. Bing, Spud, Rocky, Dakota--yes, these are the names.

Meanwhile, Bing sends Tess into a tizzy by making it known that he’ll reoccupy the family house she’s been living in for five years, and Patty makes it known to Gary--in a shouting match inside a crowded supermarket, where families always air their dirty linen--that she resents his influence over the impressionable Rocky. And Rocky leaves school and heads for Seattle to become a model.

About the only credible and even moderately interesting character here is Tess. Otherwise, there’s an air of unreality about “Sons and Daughters,” capped by a finale in which the jerky Gary suddenly goes soft and serenades Dakota accompanied by oozy music.

But look, the premiere is at least watchable, whereas next Friday’s second episode--a pathetic attempt to mingle the serious with the comedic--is just appalling. Almost as if the writers were amnesiacs, moreover, Bing is gone and Rocky is back, without explanation. Well, this is a series you can easily forget.