2 Broke Girls 9:30 p.m., CBS
Every season, critics require one sitcom that embodies everything that stinks about conventional network TV comedy.
That sitcom can serve as an efficient way to mention the most banal, insulting, trite, predictable, pointless, hopeless, formulaic, cruddy, laugh-track-cluttered, one-liner-driven television without having to use all those words. The emblematic show isn’t necessarily a spectacular disaster so much as a piece of bottomless mediocrity.
Over the years, titles that have occupied that position have included “Dads,” “Mulaney,” “Cavemen,” “Still Standing,” and “Work It,” the classic about men who decide they’ll do better in the job market if they pretend to be women. For a few years, one of my favorite exemplary bad shows was “According to Jim.”
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Currently, “2 Broke Girls” is my go-to title when it comes to summing up just how crummy a sitcom can be. Listening to the nonstop jokes on this show is like getting slapped across the cheeks repeatedly with a rubber ducky. The plastic writing relies solely on groan-worthy schoolyard sex jokes, bad puns, ethnic and racial stereotypes, menstrual humor, and quirky foreign accents. Unlike, say, the two women in New York on “Broad City,” the characters on “2 Broke Girls,” including stars Beth Behrs and Kat Dennings, are not characters so much as vehicles for quips.
Hilarity does not ensue.
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Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.