Pants? I just want my hour back

I’m getting too old for this $#!%. Seriously, it must be my advancing, practically decrepit age of 29, when profanity and raunchy behavior from attractive, scantily-clad twenty-somethings don’t do it for me. Right? That, or MTV’s new series I Just Want My Pants Back (Thursdays, 11 p.m. ET) and I are on entirely different parts of the television spectrum. I want to watch a good show and Pants doesn’t want to be it.

Pants tries too hard to be shocking, without a thought to being clever. Cheap ploys are jammed into one flimsy premise. Hipsters call out other hipsters for being hipsters. Drugs. A Brazilian wax, in the full reddened flesh. Midgets. Colorful curse words randomly tossed out, regardless of placement, meaning or effectiveness.

While the show goes wrong on many levels, the most grievous is also the simplest – it doesn’t make any of the leading characters remotely likable. They possess little charm and the actors aren’t really charismatic enough to get away with it. Jason Strider (Peter Vack), along with best pal Tina (Kim Shaw), are out to party and get laid with drunken strangers. Noble pursuits, if done right. Pants doesn’t.

Everything comes off as dull and almost pitiable in its earnestness. It’s like the crap drawing your kid makes in class that you have to put up on the fridge because they tried just so darn hard. Oh, look, the cute little thing is trying to be edgy. Isn’t that adorable!

There are hints at something fun and interesting, when the script relaxes and lets some of the supporting characters, including Strider’s boss (Chris Parnell) and friend Eric (Jordan Carlos), breathe. The focus shifts from one sleazy slacker on a dry spell to a diverse group of college friends dealing with their first steps into the dreaded real world. But, even then, the chuckles are few and grimaces aplenty. Only seasoned comedian Parnell managed to draw an honest laugh. Maybe he can coach some of the young stars on timing before he bolts back to Archer.

This show isn’t meant for me, or me for it. This show is for Jersey Shore fans who like trashy, exploitative conceits, and their tv sex drunk and stupid. I consider Jersey Shore to be a loud, obnoxious corner of my own personal hell.

Will the guy ever get his pants back from the after-hours tigress he banged in the fridge? Frankly, douche, I really don’t care.

Ugh. I guess I’m too old for MTV, too young for CBS. At least I still have FX.