TV Reviews : ‘Dreams,’ ‘Jack’: Sweeps Must Be Over

Since sweeps are over, it’s time for the networks to burn off the programs that weren’t quite bad enough to be rejected immediately after their pilots but weren’t good enough to merit space on the regular season schedule.

ABC and Fox introduce a couple of laugh-free sitcoms this weekend. Both offer stand-up comics playing parents taking a hard look at what it means to no longer be footloose and fancy free; both feature protagonists who work in the media.

And both feature characters, performances and plotting so deadeningly generic that one half expects title sequences patterned after plain-label grocery items, with “SITCOM” simply appearing in black stencil on a white background.

“Bringing Up Jack,” on ABC tonight, stars Jack Gallagher as Jack McMahon, a regular guy who hosts a radio talk show about sports and is fairly bewildered as to how to raise his two step-children from his recent marriage to Ellen (Harley Jane Kozak), who is also pregnant with their first child.

Jack tries to walk the line between buddy and authority figure to his step-son in the first episode. A typical gag has a supporting character drooling over an uneaten hot dog found in a dumpster.

In a future episode, Jack goes camping--and he hates camping!--and makes a joke about that current hot topic, the Exxon Valdez. Don’t expect “Bringing Up Jack” to last until that “very special episode” when Ellen has their kid.

Even worse is Fox’s “My Wildest Dreams” on Sunday, which is mild by Fox standards--heck, it’s mild by any standard. Lisa Ann Walter stars as Lisa McGinnis, a regular gal who toils at a recording studio and is fairly bewildered how to juggle her career, her marriage and her commitment to her children.

Sunday’s premiere centers on the fact that Lisa and her husband, Jack (John Posey), don’t know much about one another, even after eight years of marriage. That much is convincing--the two performers truly approach one another as if they had just met on the set a week or so earlier. Sample wit:

“You don’t like mustard on your sandwiches?” Jack asks Lisa.

“I don’t like mustard in my house,” she quips. “When I play Clue, I don’t even like to be Colonel Mustard.”

“OK, so I’m bad with condiments,” Jack uproariously replies.

The episode also has Lisa making a joke about that current hot topic, lambada, “the forbidden dance.” Moreover, the show is shamelessly maudlin, with the studio audience “ooh”-ing and “aw”-ing so forcedly that the only logical explanation is that network pages were threatening them with cattle prods. “My Wildest Dreams” may represent your darkest fears.

* “Bringing Up Jack” premieres at 8:30 tonight on ABC (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42). “My Wildest Dreams” premieres at 9:30 p.m. Sunday on Fox (Channels 11 and 6).