Impeach Commander-in-Chief (The TV show)!

Here was a show with a winning concept (the trials and tribulations of the first female President, a moderate Independent), an attractive cast (Gina Davis and a handful of good-looking WB-kid clones) and first-rate production values. Oh, how I had wanted it to go well! It could have been this season’s “Jack and Bobby” – a plucky underdog that would be brilliant then get cancelled after its first season (Max Bickford, Vengeance Unlimited, Firefly, Freaks & Geeks, ad infinitum).

Instead, it has sucked ass right out of the gate. And I mean even the first few episodes that the critics liked. They took a show – called “Commander In Chief”! – and made a domestic dramedy out of it instead. Like it was “Father Knows Best” and in between burning the roast and helping Kitty out with her class project, Mom Anderson squeezed in high tea with the British Ambassador and squabbled with the caricature evil Republican House leader.

Instead of using the family stuff as backdrop for the International World Stage stuff, they did the opposite. Worse, the kids are attractive, but cookie-cutter generic with overblown, overused and overwritten “isssues” and thus obnoxious to spend time with. Left alone in the room with any of them, the girls would get a stern talking-to and I’d take the boy out to the woodshed for a good old fashioned switching.

They even brought Steven Bochco in to fix things, but the family-emphasis mandate remained so its downhill slide continued. Plus, Bochco brought in that Saved By The Bell kid in a character much closer to his TV sitcom roots than his impressive turn on NYPD Blue. Then the show was yanked from the schedule for a couple months.

I decided to watch it when it returned tonight, after its umpteenth retooling and timeslot switch. I mean, I really wanted it to work! Maybe they finally got the mix right.

Alas, no. It was so stupid. All the bad ideas from the previous retoolings were brought forward and emphasized. The writing was so bad some of the cast looked embarrassed to have to recite it. They’ve even expanded the President’s live-in mother’s role on the show — now she’s got a new boyfriend who’s married to a woman who’s been in a coma for eight years. Seriously, I am not making this up.

The show’s one bright spot has always been Donald Southerland as Darth Red-Stater. Even playing a one-dimensional cartoon, he manages to breathe some corrosive life into his stock character. On the other hand, the guy playing Davis’ husband has made a career of essaying weak-in-the-knees losers and wusses and his role here does not prove to be the exception.

I mean, what did its creators have against this show? Handled right, it could have picked up the Important Political TV Show mantle that “West Wing” is just setting down and slipped into that slot as it was vacated. If they had given this show to The Last Boy Scout and me to write, we’d be hip-deep in Emmys and Peabodys in no time. Not only are all the production elements for excellence in place, but this country is totally primed for a feel-good show about a make-believe President who always does the right thing, usually in the face of overwhelming adversity, and solves all the nation’s problems every week in time for the 11 o’clock news.

Instead, this Commander-in-Chief, just like the real one, reeks of flop sweat. When o when will it end?