Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
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The 2020-21 TV season’s first new scripted comedy, CBS’s “B Positive,” debuts this week and it’s very much a CBS comedy.
Created by Marco Pennette (“Caroline in the City,” “Mom”) and executive produced by Chuck Lorre (CBS’s “Mom,” “The Big Bang Theory”), the pilot (8:30 p.m. Thursday, KDKA- TV) offers a lot of setup but not a lot of clarity on what the show will be on a weekly basis.
Newly divorced therapist and dad Drew (Thomas Middleditch, “Silicon Valley”) needs a kidney donor and finds one in high school classmate Gina (Annaleigh Ashford, “Masters of Sex”).
He’s button-downed; she’s often a mess.
No surprise then that Middleditch’s straight man is fairly uncharismatic while Ashford’s Gina often sounds like Kate McKinnon’s imitation of Kellyanne Conway on “Saturday Night Live.”
Gina has to give up drugs and alcohol for three months before she can donate her kidney, a task that seems like it will be a challenge for Gina to manage, so that probably buys the show time until the end of its first season.
But once the kidney donation happens, then what is “B Positive” about? Presumably a romance between the pair will develop and the show plants the seeds for a Gina plot: She has multiple personalities.
The first time she mentions this, it comes off like a throwaway laugh line, but by the end of the pilot it’s clearer that this is a topic “B Positive” will likely explore.
That’s the thing about Lorre’s sitcoms: They often begin with an easy pitch — “straight-laced guy and his wacky kidney donor!” — and deepen as they develop. Lorre’s “Mom” (back this week at 9 p.m. Thursday), for instance, is a completely different show now compared to when it launched with an almost entirely different supporting cast.
The “B Positive” pilot is decent enough as CBS sitcoms go. It doesn’t show the promise of “The Big Bang Theory” pilot but it’s not as bad as plenty of other CBS’s past sitcoms, like last season’s “Carol’s Second Act.” Give “B Positive” a C+ — it’s off to a perfectly average start.
