TELEVISION : Do Families Matter?...

Ten-year-old Scott Cher started firing off the questions around 8:15 p.m., after he saw something on ABC’s “Charlie Grace” that he just couldn’t grasp.

Scott was watching the hourlong series, starring Mark Harmon as a private eye, with his mother, Lin Cher, at their Mt. Washington home.

In the Sept. 28 episode, the plane that Grace is using to transport a witness to a trial is hijacked by drug dealers who demand to be flown to a remote jungle to pick up a large cache of cocaine. When they arrive, one of the villains, an attractive blond woman wearing a miniskirt, takes a switchblade, cuts open one of the cocaine packages, puts her finger inside and tastes the narcotic.

“What is she doing? Is she going to die? Can’t she die from that? Why is she eating that?” Scott said as his mother valiantly tried to explain why the woman was testing the cocaine.

Later, Scott, who likes to watch “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” and “The Simpsons,” seemed to lose interest in the show as the woman inexplicitly started making advances toward Grace. He said the woman was dressed “like a slut.”

Lin Cher, a buyer for a gourmet food store, shook her head.

“It seems that all these shows are about sex,” she said on her fourth day of watching ABC’s 8-9 p.m. programming. “It’s all they can talk about. Kids are growing up so fast these days as it is. I don’t think it’s all bad--it’s better than having brains spattered all over the place. But still, it bothers me.”

Television plays a major role in the Cher household. Lin watches only about three hours a week--her favorite shows are “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” “Frasier” and “The X-Files”--but her husband, Stephen, who has multiple sclerosis, watches several hours a day, as does Scott.

“I think television is for vegetables,” Lin Cher said. “There’s no interaction. I was so tickled last year when Scott [got] a computer.”

She found plenty to be bothered about as she watched ABC’s programming during the traditional family hour throughout the week. Many of the shows, she reported, either revolved around sex or featured adult subject matter that might not be of interest to children but nevertheless struck her as insulting and filled with stereotypes.

“A lot of the morality in television is gone,” she said.

Cher found little fault with “Roseanne,” noting that she had never watched the comedy before. Roseanne and her sister were fighting over the proper way to raise a child. “Yes, they say butt , but it’s not too bad for a 10-year-old,” Cher said.

She was incensed, however, about “Hudson Street,” the new Tuesday night series that ABC calls an “adult-driven family comedy.” Tony Danza plays a New Jersey police detective who has a love-hate relationship with a feisty police beat reporter (Lori Loughlin). Much of the Sept. 26 episode took place in the detective headquarters where the Danza character works with other detectives, including a woman, Kirby McIntire (Christine Dunford), who was pleading to get a good case just as her male counterparts do.

Several jokes revolved around Kirby’s breasts. Butting heads with Loughlin’s character, for instance, Kirby said, “Honey, the only thing you and I have in common is a pair of. . . .” She stopped herself, looked at the chest of the more petite Loughlin and said, “earrings.”

At another point, Kirby was confused when a colleague began talking to her about “Lolita.” The lieutenant interjected, “You know, that movie with James Mason where he pops the teen-age babe.”

Cher said she was insulted by the humor and felt it was totally inappropriate for the family hour: “It’s a stupid, sexist show. They did everything to refer to the blonde’s boobs. They tried to throw in every stereotype in the book. I would not let my son watch it, and I don’t think any kid should watch it. It’s bubble gum for adults, and not very good bubble gum.”

She had an easier time with an episode of “Ellen” the next night in which the lead character accidentally taped over the video of the birth of a friend’s daughter. Scott watched with her and had some questions about the birth process, which his mother attributed to healthy curiosity. She still thought the show inappropriate for younger children.

Cher also didn’t have much problem with “The Drew Carey Show,” even though the episode had jokes about edible underwear and about how, when he was younger, Drew had once seen his female friend naked.

“This doesn’t offend me as much,” she said. “I don’t feel it was as over the top as some other things I’ve seen.”

But she was troubled by “The Jeff Foxworthy Show,” which airs Saturdays at 8 p.m. and features its star as a mechanic from red-neck country who marries into an upper-crust family.

In one scene in the Sept. 30 episode, Jeff and his pregnant wife decided to make love and she told him to get the rest of the cake they had eaten for dessert and bring it to bed. He then ran to the refrigerator, at which point his spouse screamed from off screen, “No whipped cream! And no honey!”

That sort of humor would go over youngsters’ heads, Cher said. More bothersome was when, on a fishing trip with his stuffy father-in-law, Jeff learned from the older man that he had once cheated on his wife. Then the father-in-law feared that Jeff would spill the beans.

“I didn’t like that at all,” Cher said. “It all had to do with cheating and lying. I didn’t like that at all.”

She also criticized that week’s episode of “Boy Meets World,” part of ABC’s kids-oriented Friday lineup. The story had a teen-age boy plotting to be alone with his girlfriend. “It was so disgusting. The whole plot was about deceit,” Cher said.

She did see aspects of ABC shows that she liked. She had particular praise for a scene in “Charlie Grace” that featured a lengthy discussion between Grace and his teen-age daughter about what would happen if he were to get killed.

“I thought it was good and sensitive for kids to see that kind of discussion,” she said. “It was nicely done.”

She found other shows such as “Family Matters,” “Maybe This Time” and “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” to be fairly innocuous and appropriate for young children.

“I just wish they would tone down some of the sexual stuff on these shows,” Cher said. “There really does seem to be too much. And a lot of it is so disgusting.”