‘Man’ plans to avoid the daring, and that’s fine
Matt LeBlanc returns to broadcast series TV in a show that takes square aim at the middle of the road, and that’s probably just fine with CBS.
LeBlanc stars as Adam Burns in “Man With a Plan,” premiering on Monday, Oct. 24, as part of the network’s effort to stake a new claim on Monday nights with a sitcom lineup.
Adam is a contractor who agrees to work from home and take care of his three kids so that his wife, Andi (Liza Snyder), can return to her old job. How hard can it be, taking care of three kids, he thinks. Plenty hard, he finds out. The setup is pure “Mr. Mom” with roots that stretch back to “I Love Lucy,” when Ricky and Fred tried to be househusbands for a week and Ricky found out you can’t put starch in women’s stockings.
In fact, the show’s second episode revisits another familiar setup: Adam gets prime tickets for a Steelers game (the show is set in Pittsburgh) and invites his younger brother (Kevin Nealon) to go with him, but Andi thinks she’s Adam’s plus-one.
The kids are typical sitcom progeny: the wise-beyond-heryears youngest (Hala Finley), a preadolescent son who can’t keep his hands out of his pants (Matthew McCann) and a teenage daughter (Grace Kaufman) exhibiting a predictable adolescent desire to put as much distance between herself and her folks as possible.
It’s a very traditional and very safe sitcom, and will pair well with the equally tradi-