‘ Surviving Jack’ looks to have a good shot at sticking around

Given a second chance, Justin Halpern has made the most of it.

That kind of progressive improvement is less common than you might think in TV. The landscape is littered with writers who are on their fifth, 10th or 20th flop, with no end in sight.

So it’s nice to see Halpern apply some lessons he learned in failure to Surviving Jack — which is not just the second sitcom he has helped create, but the second based on a book about his father, after the infamous $#*! My Dad Says.

There are improvements here that lift Jack over Dad, starting with turning the paternal lead over to Christopher Meloni, who can convey warmth, brains and masculine menace with a glance, and giving him an actual person to play, rather than an insult-spouting cartoon. Then throw in making his wife a regular character, casting Rachael Harris and moving the story back in time so that the son is a more empathetic teenager rather than an adult moving back home.

Created by Halpern and Patrick Schumacker from Halpern’s book I Suck at Girls, Jack stars Connor Buckley in an impressive sitcom debut as Frankie, an aspiring baseball player starting his freshman year. With the help of his two best friends and the occasional input from his older sister, Rachel ( Claudia Lee), Frankie has to navigate the social waters of an American high school in 1991.

But first he has to survive his father. And Jack has been put in charge of parenting by his wife, Joanne, who is starting law school.

It wouldn’t be a sitcom if Jack’s style were not unusual. He makes Frankie run laps at 3 a. m. He compares his kids to dogs, though unlike Dad’s dad, he’s less likely to say politically incorrect things for the sake of a cheap punch line.

But it’s also clear that he loves his family, with Harris’ Joanne serving as a sounding board and a reality check.

In the future, it would be nice to see Mom have a story that’s independent of Dad and to see their daughter develop into something other than a spoiled fast- girl foil. And even Meloni can’t make a line about bowel movements sound anything but forced and crude.

We get it: Dad will say anything. That was the point of the first show, and look how that turned out.

From this one, we expect more.

BETH DUBBER, FOX Frankie ( Connor Buckley, left), navigates life with his parents, Jack ( Christopher Meloni) and Joanne ( Rachael Harris).