'Three Sisters' dripping with shallowness

I was sick. My sinuses were clogged, and my head was pounding as I watched NBC's new sitcom "Three Sisters" (9:30 p.m. Tuesday on NBC).\nSo forgive me if I'm a little too negative.\n"Three Sisters" is about as enjoyable as watching your grandparents have sex. It's scheduled after "Frasier" and before "Dateline NBC" to attract viewers. But not even this clever scheduling maneuver, which we in the industry call a "crap sandwich," can save this show.\nI spit on everyone associated with "Three Sisters."\nSteven (David Alan Basche) is the show's narrator. Only, unlike "The Wonder Years," we really don't care what he's thinking. Steve's married to Bess (Katherine La Nasa), who's so warm, friendly and outgoing that she's even more annoying than those (SHUT UP!) voices in my head that keep screaming at me: "Destroy them, Jeff. Destroy all of them!"\nI SAID SHUT UP!\nAnyway, here's the show's premise: Bess' two sisters and her parents all hang around in Steven's house, turning it into a pressure-cooker of forced cheeriness and repressed rage. In other words, it's constantly like Christmas at Steve and Bess' home, but in a nice, sarcastic "Murphy Brown" way, not like the tense, claustrophobic and overheated environment of "I Love Lucy." \nThat's one of the things that makes "Three Sisters" shallow: There's no dark side to it. Steve and Bess aren't sitting on a boiler ready to explode like Lucy and Ricky.\nThe producers turned up the heat in the episode I saw, putting their legs behind their head and farting on all that smoldering resentment, creating a fireball of wackiness: Steve's divorced parents came over for a visit!\nHere's where things really get funny: Steve's dad is obsessed with sex. He hits on Bess' sisters, telling her that he enjoys spending the entire day in his apartment naked! It's like a weekend with the Kennedys.\nAnd if you liked that, you'll love this: Steve's mom drives Bess and all the other women in the house crazy because she's an anal-retentive control freak! How do the show's producers keep coming up with original material like this?\nThe episode reaches its hilarious climax when Steve's mom gives Bess a gift: the lingerie she was wearing when Steve was conceived!\nUsually, I would try to make a joke about this event, but I can't. "Three-Sisters" just sucks in all surrounding humor like a vacuum. Once inside, the joke implodes like a cosmonaut, leaving only silence, deafening silence.\nI noticed the studio audience barely laughed. This is particularly eerie, since even the studio audience for "The Michael Richards Show" managed to chuckle a couple of times.\nIf I were a broken record, I'd make some comment here about the demise of sitcoms, or I'd extol "The Simpsons" at "Three Sisters"' expense. But instead, I decided to call up random people and ask what they thought of the show.\nOne student I called, Christopher, "hadn't seen the show."\nAnother student told me he was "waiting for a call" and hung up on me.\nTom Shales, TV critic for The Washington Post was "not in." When I called back, I was told I had "the wrong number."\nTV critic and editor Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly was out too. But I did leave a detailed message on his voice mail asking why TV critics like us watch shows like "Three Sisters," and if he'd ever thought of just giving up his job.\nAs you can tell, I'm not a good journalist. And as I have nothing else constructive about "Three Sisters" to write, I'm simply going to pray.\nPlease God, cast the producers of "Three Sisters" into hell. Spare us from this abomination. \nAnd then please explain to me the popularity of Rod Stewart.\nAmen.