Me, Myself and I

A funny, charming, and optimistic tale of rolling with the punches.

The jokes are more bemused chuckles at this point, but the promise is there. Me, Myself, & I already feels like a comforting sitcom, easily digestible and warmly diverting. If enough people discover it, the series will have already cleared the first hurdle: We’re happy for another installment.

Good-hearted, a little too cloying, and the story flow needs polish. Of the three new CBS comedies this fall, this is the most promising.

It approaches family life in a fashion similar to that older Bryan Cranston family series: with warmth, a little cynicism and a great sense of humor. Moynihan, who rose to prominence on “Saturday Night Live,” anchors the show, largely because of his knack for playing the tragically average guy with humor and compassion. The young Riley isn’t as compelling, at least in the pilot episode, as his stepbrother (Richards). ... Larroquette makes the senior Alex just as likable, and almost as funny, as Monihayn’s Alex.

The plot of the Me, Myself & I pilot has a neat, muss-free poignancy to it that’s probably goosed by a decent soundtrack. (The inclusion of a track by the Flaming Lips is a nice touch in this regard.) The cast is enjoyable as well, particularly Brian Unger as Alex’s sage stepfather, Jaleel White as his loyal friend, and Sharon Lawrence, who pops up as Alex’s crush in 2042. All told, the premiere is solid from stem to stern.

It’s an interesting conceit to follow one character at three points in his life every week and see how things that happen in one era influence another. It also seems like quite a juggling act for the show’s writers. Time will tell how they manage to maintain it on a weekly basis.

The stories move briskly and come together in a surprisingly emotional finish. “Me” is smart enough to realize you can’t exist on brains alone. You need a little heart.

It’s high concept is fun but hard to sustain. ... But if it focuses on its strong stars, the logistical leaps will be easier to smooth over. The series just has to, well, listen to itself.

Me, Myself & I is mostly endearing, and it wins bonus points for adopting a structure you don’t see every day. But at the same time, the middle-aged and senior-citizen versions of Alex serve as human narrative markers, removing a certain amount of suspense from the story.

Takes a rather tired conceit and makes it reasonably fresh.

Me, Myself & Irene appears to have boxed itself in. The opening episode is pleasant enough to watch, although not really very amusing. But the prospects for a sustainable series seem highly limited by all that unfolds here.

Structurally, it’s an interesting approach, but ultimately a flawed one. It’s hard to invest too much in any particular timeline when we can see the origins, or the end result, in one of the other timelines. ... Still, Moynihan and Larroquette are charming enough, and threads about parenting, dreams, and basketball could make for a warm, if not particularly funny, family sitcom.

The pilot episode skips back and forth from one Alex to another like a three-way tennis match, making it challenging to get a purchase on the half-hour sitcom in one sitting. Added to that is the fact that you never quite shake the idea that there’s no way Grazer would age into Moynihan, or either of them would age into Larroquette.

A wonky framing device, where Moynihan fills in gaps in the storylines directly to the audience, is given no explanation as to why it's even there, or who he's talking to; you're left to suspect that the writers couldn't figure out a more organic way to clue viewers in on why these scenes are being show to them.

The tiered narrative of Me, Myself & I offers a lot of distractions, but whatever ambitions it has, the execution fails to benefit the show in terms of comedy or heart and if it's not doing those things, what you're left with is a show with a very fine cast and an empty gimmick.

The story here is emotionally hollow, and wrongly convinced that Alex is somehow an underdog.