'Listen Up' fails to stack up

Jason Alexander's blowhard style just isn't funny.
By FRAZIER MOORE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- In dismaying ways, Jason Alexander seems to have picked up the mantle of the late John Ritter.
As Ritter once did in "8 Simple Rules ...," Alexander plays a newspaper sports columnist and family man who takes a lot of guff from his teenage kids.
On CBS' "Listen Up," columnist Tony Kleinman is trying to connect with his 14-year-old daughter, Megan (Daniella Monet) and 15-year-old son Mickey (Will Rothhaar).
The difference
But unlike Ritter's character, who was lovable, Tony has a propensity for obsessive behavior and agitated outbursts that alienate everyone around him. In other words, Tony deserves most of the guff he gets. This may strike a blow for justice, but it doesn't make the show funny. (Certainly not as funny as Tony Kornheiser, the real-life Washington Post columnist on whom "Listen Up" is based.)
On the premiere, Tony's blowhard style blows a business deal for his fund-raising wife Dana (Wendy Makkena). He also mortifies Megan: At her soccer games, he screams coaching tips from the sidelines at the top of his lungs. Megan screams back that he's always wrong.
Meanwhile, after deciding to broaden his horizons beyond sports and cover lifestyle issues, he can't think of anything to write.
"I got nothing!" he erupts, sounding very much like the high-strung chap Alexander used to play on "Seinfeld," and like the title character of his short-lived sitcom "Bob Patterson" three seasons ago. "The inner life of Tony Kleinman is a bottomless, empty void!"
Family is his source
What can Tony do to make his deadline? Use his family as source material, of course!
"My daughter Megan realized I was always wrong at roughly the same time she began wearing a training bra," Tony tells his readers. Megan is further shamed.
Since few things are less interesting to dramatize than a writer at his trade, "Listen Up" also gives Tony a second gig: co-hosting a sports talk show with a jock sidekick, Bernie (Malcolm-Jamal Warner). This show-within-a-show, which enlivens "Listen Up" with high-decibel banter, is called "Shut Up and Listen."
But the best variation on the title goes like this: Don't listen and shut it off, then watch something else.