Ever the optimist, I decided to check out last night’s premiere of Mike and Molly on CBS.

It took optimism to do because virtually all the current sitcoms on network TV fall into one of two categories.

The first are the edgy single-camera jobs (think Scrubs or Cougar Town) that are so busy being visually and verbally clever that they arouse more smirks than laughs.

The second are the multi-cams that do go for out-and-out laughs but do so at the expense of true character development and any sort of sense of reality.

And, alas, Mike and Molly falls into the latter category by taking a potentially sweet (no pun intended) premise about two lonely people who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting at a local Catholic church and turning it into a string of predictable fat jokes and one unfortunate and unnecessary gag involving munching on Communion wafers as if they were crackers.

Anyway, to the plot. Mike is a cop played with a sort of Jackie Gleason-like warmth by Billy Gardell. Molly, a grade school teacher, is also nicely played by Melissa McCarthy. The supporting cast, including Swoosie Kurtz as Molly’s mom, are also good in their roles. So, there’s a lot of potential here in cast and concept. My problem is with the writing.

Obviously, a concept like this is going to have some weight jokes but they are overdone here and (this pun is intended) they do get in the way of fleshing out the characters.

But it’s not just the fat jokes.  There’s a nice scene in which Mike is addressing Molly’s class about what it’s like to be a cop — and why he chose to become one. He tells a warm story about his relationship with his father (who also was a cop).  The scene added nice depth to his character — but, of course, in these kinds of shows everything must end in a moment-destroying punchline. In this case it’s when a kid asks him what happened to his father and we are told (this is like soooo funny!) that he ran off with a hooker.

The thing is those kinds of warm moments totally undone by the need to insert a quick joke have become so standard issue in current sitcoms that they really can, I think, officially be deemed cliché.

And, of course, the Communion wafer bit was more offensive than funny to many Catholics. One critic writing for Media Life Magazine suggests “Since it’s unclear whether the hosts have been consecrated, Catholics probably
don’t have grounds to take offense.”

Well, speaking as one Catholic, I know the world isn’t going to end because of that joke but I could have done without it. I find it a little annoying that Catholics (and Christians in general) are supposed laugh or, at least, shrug off irreverence toward our religion and sensitivities in a way that groups on the most-favored list of the politically correct simply aren’t.

While we are called to “turn the other cheek,” many of us might also opt to humbly turn to the other channel where our values are respected.  

Another somewhat offensive bit has to do the African waiter at a diner Mike frequents. He seems to be in the cast to provide jokes about starvation in his part of the world (as opposed to the obesity in America). If this is meant to be a running gag, it’s ill advised.

In fact, it reminds me a bit of an old SNL spoof of Who Wants to be a Millionaire that should have been a lot more criticized than it was. It was about a version of the show in Bangladesh called Who Wants to Eat? and featured such supposedly hysterical lines as the contestant saying “This is very exciting! I am very hungry.”

Well, you know what?  Some things (like starvation) aren’t funny. And TV comedy writers need to learn that.

In any event, I didn’t stick around to watch the end of Mike and Molly.  I suspect I wasn’t alone in that decision.  I do, however, root for it. I hope if finds not only its footing — but its heart.

In the, meantime, here’s a clip from Everybody Loves Raymond that demonstrates how it is not only possible to be both hysterically funny and warm at the same time but that the two go hand in hand.