Dining Out With ‘Wife and Kids’

Damon Wayans’ ABC hit “My Wife and Kids,” winner of a People’s Choice Award last month as best new comedy, stretches out with a 60-minute special episode at 8 tonight. Alas, this isn’t the show’s finest hour.

The program has spent most of its first two seasons anchored solidly in the TV family’s upper-middle-class home, taking fresh and funny angles on its domestic sitcom trappings.

With the hugely talented Wayans as Michael Kyle and Tisha Campbell Martin as wife Janet presiding over a rambunctious household that includes teen offspring George O. Gore II as Junior and Jennifer Cole Freeman as Claire, and Parker McKenna Posey as young daughter Kady, the show has led some to invoke the C-word (as in “Cosby”) in predicting its long-term potential.

Perhaps. But in tonight’s show, “Table for Too Many,” the family’s ill-fated outing to a Japanese restaurant may merely leave viewers hungry for more laughs.

Part of the problem is that every time Wayans gets that mischievous gleam in his eye, you expect a killer line to spill out.

However, the meager servings of truly mirthful moments just rattle around in the hourlong framework, unable to sustain the episode’s energy.

Wayans’ former “In Living Color” colleague Kelly Coffield Park and comedian Larry Miller are on hand as the unhappy tablemates of the Kyles at the Benihana-style restaurant. But the bickering mainly falls flat, leaving everyone, including the viewer, waiting impatiently for the check.