Meeting 'The McCarthys,' re-meeting 'Mom'

* MOM. 8:30 tonight, CBS3.

* THE McCARTHYS. 9:30 tonight, CBS3.

IF THERE'S one thing I've learned about sitcoms, especially CBS sitcoms, it's that it can take time to figure out where they're headed.

It took a few years for "The Big Bang Theory," which returns from Mondays tonight to usher in a night of season premieres, to become TV's biggest comedy.

It didn't take quite that long for me to love it, but the show I fell for was considerably funnier - and smarter than the show I'd described, early in its first season, as "still dumber than I'd like but maybe not as bad as I'd thought."

So when I say I'm not wildly excited by "The McCarthys," which premieres tonight after the 12th and final season opener of "Two and a Half Men" (a show I took years to find unwatchable), I'm not necessarily describing a permanent condition.

Created by Brian Gallivan, who's based it on his own family, "The McCarthys" stars Tyler Ritter as Ronny McCarthy, a gay, athletics-indifferent member of a loud, sports-mad Boston family who are fine with, if mildly confused by, his sexuality but deeply upset by his plans to leave his hometown in search of a new life.

Ritter, who looks even more like his late father, actor John Ritter, than his brother Jason Ritter ("Parenthood") does, seems to have inherited more than looks. He's also lucked out with fictional parents in Laurie Metcalf ("Roseanne") and Jack McGee ("Rescue Me"). That the show itself feels like a bit of a throwback doesn't have to be a bad thing: It's a throwback to a time when millions more people watched shows like this.

I laughed more than once, but can't be sure I'll still be laughing this time next year.

Which brings us to "Mom," one of last season's more promising sitcoms, a Chuck Lorre-produced show about a recovering alcoholic named Christy (Anna Faris) that a year ago I saw as a possibly less-challenging version of Lorre's "Grace Under Fire," in which Brett Butler wasn't as perky a screwup as Faris.

CBS believes in "Mom" - or in Lorre - enough to be reintroducing it tonight, sandwiching its season premiere between Lorre's "Big Bang Theory" and "Two and a Half Men."

Based on two new episodes I've seen, "Mom" has earned the break. Yes, Faris is still adorable as a single mother in recovery and Allison Janney is still wacky as her recovering addict mother. But as Christy makes some mistakes with alarming consequences for her family, the show, already remarkable for portraying a waitress trying to support a family, takes a deeper dive into the true meaning of addiction and into the problems that sobriety in itself can't solve.

That it's still funny is probably a kind of miracle, the kind you just might not want to miss.

It was only a matter of time before MTV decided to do for Alaska what it's done for New Jersey.

"Reality" television's been mostly kinder to Alaska than it has to the Garden State, but "Slednecks" (10 tonight, MTV) could prove that neither televised stupidity nor tattoos can be confined to "Jersey Shore."

Set in Sarah Palin's hometown of Wasilla, "Slednecks" comes with a "Jackass"-style warning, thanks to some of the stunts pulled by the show's hard-partying twentysomethings. The scenery's occasionally spectacular, with and without random shots of wildlife, but the petty manufactured dramas? Been there, changed the channel on that.

Phone: 215-854-5950

On Twitter: @elgray

Blog: ph.ly/EllenGray