Eight simple rules for dating my teenage daughter episodes

Bruce Cameron, it blatantly swipes elements from nearly every other sitcom on TV.

Paul is a sportswriter just like Everybody Loves Raymond's title character.

It is ironic that John Ritter -- who first found fame as Three's Company's Jack Tripper, the closeted, hormonally charged male third of TV's most unwholesome threesome -- is thrust again into the spotlight as a dad who would never dream of letting his two daughters go out with a man like Jack.

But even if the show is too familiar, I for one don't mind watching Ritter do his same old act, again.

The first two episodes of the series are concrete proof that Ritter's still got it, that intangible and inexplicable ability to elicit gut-busting laughter with a twitch of an eye.

But his character is too familiar, his context too trite.

Kerry is a milder version of Roseanne's acerbic Darlene (Davidson even shares actress Sara Gilbert's trademark curly coif). And Sagal's Cate is simply the latest in a long line of accommodating TV wives who shake their heads at their husbands' antics when the script says they should.

With no storyline of his own, Rory pops up every other scene with a cute punch line about his dad's inept parenting or his sisters' latest predicaments, just as Roseanne's D. What makes the show slightly twisted, however, is the knowledge that only a few years ago, Ritter would have been playing one of Bridget's or Kerry's sex-obsessed suitors, rather than protective father.