TV Review : ‘On Our Own’ Caught in Family Twist

Title this “The Attack of the Cutes.”

ABC’s “On Our Own’ is one of those unredeemably awful comedy series that you can’t envision anyone even writing, let alone selling to a network. Yet somehow here it is, in brain-lock not only with “Full House,” its lead-in for tonight’s premiere, but also with “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” which will be its lead-in when it moves to its regular time slot Sunday.

More of a drag than even the Olsen twins of “Full House” are JoJo, Jazz, Jussie, Jurnee, Jake and Jocqui Smollett, who play six of the seven Jerricos, St. Louis siblings orphaned when their parents were killed in a car crash. Stand-up comic Ralph Louis Harris (are there any comedians left in clubs?) plays the seventh and eldest Jerrico, 20-year-old Josh.

Here’s the crisis: Without an adult relative to assume custody, the kids will be parceled out to foster homes. “Lady, please don’t split us up,” one of the smallest Jerricos begs the family’s caseworker. “We all we got.”

Josh’s solution is to cross-dress, inventing an aunt he names Mama J--shades of Mrs. Doubtfire. Although the sympathetic caseworker isn’t fooled, she plays along, and her gullible supervisor buys the ruse, even asking Mama J out on a date.

Hey, they don’t call it high jinks for nothing.

The crowning sequence--meant to have us reaching for our hankies--finds Josh alone in a room, speaking to a photograph of his dead parents. “Mom and Dad, I really miss you guys.”

At this point you want to dynamite the show’s writers, who are so shameless in their quest to manipulate that capital punishment seems appropriate.

* “On Our Own” premieres at 8:30 tonight, then will be seen Sundays at 7:30 p.m. on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42).