TV Reviews : CBS’ ‘Dorm’ Blunders Into Laughs

Targeting the younger crowd that so many advertisers are fighting over, the television networks are trying to serve youth by serving up youth.

Already, Fox’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” has spun off “Melrose Place” as a precursor to this fall’s crush of series dwelling on the under-30 bunch.

But it’s CBS that has really outdone itself. Not since Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue has there been the likes of “Freshman Dorm,” its new summer drama series about campus hanky-panky airing at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8.

It’s hilariously bad.

The setting is beachfront party school Western Pacific University (exteriors are filmed at Pepperdine), where, apparently, the only extracurricular activities occur between the sheets. Sharing a room in a co-ed dorm are three girls from drastically different backgrounds:

Lulu Abercrombie (Paige French) is a rich, free-spirited New Yorker who sleeps around to disguise, yes, a deep hurt. Molly Flynn (Robyn Lively) is a conservative drama student from Milwaukee who is (gulp) a virgin. And Kamala Consuelo Richardo (Arlene Taylor) is an ambitious but poor Latina who hides her ethnic background behind a false name, K. C. Richards, in hopes of getting pledged by the snobby Kappas en route to becoming a CEO “in an international corporation.”

Yes, three gorgeous honeys . . . IN ONE ROOM!!!

And here’s the shocking twist: Despite their differences, these kids REALLY GET ALONG!!!

K. C.: “You guys are so unbelievable!”

To say nothing of the unbelievability of Zach Taylor (Casper Van Dien) and Alex Woods (Kevin Mambo), two hunks who live across the hall on this campus where every other girl is a snot and just about everyone, including professors, is on the make. In fact, poor Molly’s resolve to save herself for her future husband lasts only 45 minutes.

It’s hard to say what’s worse, tonight’s script, the direction or some of the acting. One scene, in particular, has the makings of a classic: When exhausted K. C. topples from her chair in class after working all night in a local hangout, that big palooka Zach is beside her in an instant.

“Stand back, everybody,” he says, “I’m in pre-med.” He immediately bends over the unconscious K. C. and begins kissing her on the lips, after which he announces, stonily: “She’s out of danger now.”

Troy couldn’t have done it better.