Remember when The Goldbergs was going to get a spinoff called 1990-Something (or something like that)? After a couple of tries, ABC has finally made a series set in the ’90s with Mr. Glascott and Coach Mellor. Only in this version, Lainey Lewis has joined them as a newly-minted music teacher at William Penn. Does this sequel have as many laughs as the show it came from? SCHOOLED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? Opening Shot: Scenes from The Goldbergs, with Patton Oswalt’s signature voice over. The voice over then switches to Lainey Lewis (AJ Michalka), who talks about being single and in financial trouble after making a go of it in the music business. The Gist: It’s 1990-something and Lainey finds that there’s an opening for a music teacher at her alma mater, William Penn Academy. She has no teaching experience and Mr. Glascott (Tim Meadows), who has just been promoted to principal, is reluctant to hire her, until Lainey deploys her secret weapon: Beverly Goldberg (Wendi McLendon-Covey), who browbeats Glascott into giving her the job. Lainey finds that being a teacher at the high school where you weren’t exactly the world’s best student is a little weird. On her first day, she’s late, calls a kid a “nerd” and can’t wrap her mind around teaching her music class doo wop songs for a school assembly. She especially has problems connecting with a talented student named Felicia (Rachel Crow), who happens to be Glascott’s neice; Felicia pulls all the same tricks Lainey did when she was in school — though Lainey would have never been caught dead with a Zima in her bag. Meanwhile Coach Mellor (Bryan Callen) finds that he’s having trouble getting Matty (Hunter Doohan), the most talented basketball player he’s ever had, to stop doing monster dunks and play team basketball. Matty pushes back that, with Michael Jordan dominating the NBA, things have changed, including the fact that basketball players don’t wear short shorts anymore. Mellor can’t adjust; he calls the baggy shorts “culottes”. But he wants Matty back on the team, and so do the school’s trustees — led by former Principal Ball (Stephen Tobolowsky). So he plays Matty in HORSE, which includes a shot where Matty throws a football into the basket (more on that in a second). Our Take: This version of Schooled is Adam F. Goldberg’s second attempt at doing a 1990-something spinoff of The Goldbergs. If you remember a flash-forward episode from last season that featured Meadows, Callen, Crow, and Nia Long as Glascott’s sister, then you’ve seen the original version of the pilot that was not picked up by ABC. Judging by this retooled version, though, the network made the right decision. Making Glascott and Mellor the centerpiece of the show wasn’t going to work, as talented as Meadows and Callen are. There needed to not only be a younger influence on the show, but a character that has a more recent connection to the school. Goldberg and the show’s co-creator Mark Firek getting Michalka to leave her safe haven as the ’80s version of Lainey on the parent show was a fine move; Michalka is not only funny but is a real-life pop star, which will attract her fans, as well. Lainey makes a good centerpiece for this show, because her teenage self was a good kid who just was not into school, and now she has to navigate being a teacher, having to connect to kids who are like she was and also listen to people like Glascott and Mellor. It takes a little bit for the pilot to ramp up to its parent show’s signature combination of high-speed laughs and earnestness, but Goldberg and Firek get there eventually, especially during a talk Mellor has with Lainey about how being a teacher was never his dream but it has become his dream job because he can get through to kids and see them grow and do well. That segment showed us that Schooled has the potential to be as funny as The Goldbergs, even if there will be jokes about using Netscape and watching Friends. Sex and Skin: Nothing. What, did you expect Lainey to get freaky in this show? Glascott joins the mosh pit after he finally agrees that Lainey’s idea to make the doo wop show into a grunge show was a good idea. During the credits, Callen talks to the real Coach Mallor, who talks about encouraging Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan (yes, the same Matty in the pilot) to try football. Sleeper Star: We liked Rachel Crow in the original pilot and we like her here. We’re also looking forward to Brett Dier joining the cast — we’d imagine as a love interest for Lainey. Most Pilot-y Line: As you’d expect, the ’90s references are obvious. Lainey gets the idea to do a grunge show when she sees Felicia wearing a Nirvana shirt. What, a Mother Love Bone or Soul Asylum shirt wasn’t going to be obvious enough? Our Call: STREAM IT. Schooled takes a while to get going, but it looks like Michalka can carry this sequel quite well. Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere. Watch Schooled on ABC<doc-sep>A selective critical checklist of notable Wednesday TV: Schooled (8:30/7:30c, ABC): In what seems an oddly abrupt transition, The Goldbergs (8/7c) airs a new episode involving the frantic run-up to the wedding of Barry (Troy Gentile) and Lainie (AJ Michalka), with the groom beginning to have second thoughts. Then it’s time for Schooled, a broad and scattershot spinoff moving forward into the 1990s, focusing on Lainie as a failed — and notably single — rocker who returns to William Penn Academy with attitude intact, trying her hand at teaching music. (Glee this most certainly isn’t.) Tim Meadows is now Principal Glascott, looking askance at his new hire, and Bryan Callen blusters as Coach Mellor — who in a charming sign-off interacts with the genuine article. You’re the Worst (10/9c, FXX): Now here’s a match made somewhere south of heaven. The bawdy comedy opens its fifth and final season with Jimmy (Chris Geere) and Gretchen (Aya Cash) plotting their raucous way to the altar. But first we’re treated to an allegory — for reasons that ultimately become naughtily clear — of a love match between two film buffs who celebrate stories that are “messy and complicated… forged out of passion and madness.” Just like Jimmy and Gretchen’s relationship! I’m Sorry (10/9c, truTV): Or you could satisfy your snark quotient with the second season of Andrea Savage’s cringe-tastic comedy in which she stars as an unfiltered comedy writer who keeps the off-color jokes rolling at home with husband (Tom Everett Scott) and child (Olive Petrucci). In the opener, Andrea sends daughter Olive off to kindergarten, where the girl is exposed to precocious insights about puberty. Mom would probably be more upset if she weren’t so busy speculating how much money she might make as a prostitute. No apologies necessary. See Also TV Reboots, Revivals, & More Arriving in 2019 Also be on the lookout for shows turned into movies and sequel series. Inside Wednesday TV: More parental concerns on ABC’s Modern Family (9/8c), when Claire (Julie Bowen) and Phil (Ty Burrell) move Haley (Sarah Hyland) and Dylan (Reid Ewing) into their own apartment, fretting they’re not quite ready for the arrival of a baby. (Who is? )… Does Fox’s The Masked Singer (9/8c) have legs, or were the strong opening-night ratings a result of novelty and perverse curiosity? We’ll see, when six new masked contestants — a Rabbit, Alien, Raven, Pineapple, Poodle and Bee — take the stage… PBS studies the history of oppressive authoritarian regimes in the six-part The Dictator’s Playbook (10/9c, check local listings at pbs.org), starting with the rise to power of North Korea’s Kim Il Sung.<doc-sep>As the frontiers of television have been pushed out to new platforms and cutting edges, network situation comedy has become ever more itself, a place where homilies live and hugs happen. It is true that broadcast prime-time comedy has become a more morally complicated, sexually implicit zone than in days of old when Lucy or Mary ruled the air. But on the whole it tends to be bright and optimistic, even when it is full of snark and snickering. Network comedies run longer seasons with a minimum of serial action; you can drop in any time and be assured that whatever changes may have occurred since you last watched will be quickly apparent, and won’t matter much. The message of these shows is that life is stable, whether anchored to a family, a pack of friends, a hangout, a workplace. That is why even as dysfunctional a sitcom as “The Office” can also feel like a not unhappy home. Two new sitcoms join the long parade this week. “Schooled,” a spinoff of “The Goldbergs,” adds a workplace-as-family comedy to the ABC lineup Wednesday; “Fam,” whose point is embedded in its title, comes to CBS Thursday. Each is concerned, in different ways, with the care of sometimes difficult young people, and each features a lead character who was herself trouble in her youth. Each is a fairly efficient delivery for good feelings and some actual laughs, depending of course on what strikes you as funny. Taking a leap a few years into the 1990s (somewhere between the release of “Nevermind” and the death of Kurt Cobain), the likable “Schooled” moves three recurring characters from the parent series and puts them at center stage in a high-school workplace comedy. Advertisement AJ Michalka, left, plays Lainey Lewis, a teacher getting up and getting down with the student body in the ABC comedy “Schooled.” (Erica Parise / ABC) Lainey Lewis (AJ Michalka), who was still engaged to oldest Goldberg child Barry when that show went on winter break late last year (it also returns Wednesday), is still single here and, having failed to achieve rock stardom, is back at her old high school as a new music teacher. Tim Meadows returns as John Glascott, now principal of William Penn Academy, as does Bryan Callen as Coach Rick Mellor, who, Lainey observes, is “looking weirdly the same.” (Michalka is 27, more chronologically in tune with her character now than previously.) In the pilot episode Lainey has to win the respect, or at least the cooperation of one of her students, Felicia (Rachel Crow), “an angry rage monster” and an echo of her younger self (and also Glascott’s niece). This requires that she become the adult she has resisted becoming, even as her still-active inner adolescent provides the blast of fresh air that is just what these musty old halls of high-school academe needed. It’s a device of course that has powered countless films and television series down through the ages — you can call it trite, or proven and reliable. “The Goldbergs” has a warm, squishy center and every episode comes with a dedication, a convention continued in “Schooled.” (The pilot goes out to “teachers who inspire their students.”) If anything, the sentiment has been intensified here, though this may also be a side effect of a pilot episode in which all the characters need to accept themselves, or someone else, or their present situation, or a changing world, and because the tone overall is less hectic. These actors use their indoor voices. Lainey, who states her qualifications for the job as “I love music; I work well with children, probably,” begins the episode teaching for economic expedience — she asks if she can get her year’s pay in a lump sum. That will change soon enough: “Even though I might have put my dreams on hold for this job,” narrating future Lainey recalls, “in the end I got a lot more back than I ever thought possible.” “I Believe I Can Fly” plays on the soundtrack. Rough edges are quickly sanded, and yet the players are good — Meadows, especially, seems more valuable to comedy with every new role; they make it possible to look past the homilies. Unless of course the homilies are what you come for, and they are there for the taking. AJ Michalka is a failed professional musician teaching high school and Tim Meadows her helpful principal in ABC’s “Schooled,” a spinoff of “The Goldbergs.” (John Fleenor / ABC) Just so, there is no irony in the title of “Fam” — it’s what the kids call family now, the kid here says, to clear up any confusion. There are troublesome characters here, but they are troublesome only for the sake of comedy, as much as some sort of professional help might be appropriate. Snappy lines may fly around, but hugs are all you need. Advertisement Nick (Tone Bell) and Clem (Nina Dobrev) have just gotten engaged. Clem loves Nick’s parents as well — Rose (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Walt (Brian Stokes Mitchell), theater people with a nice place that seems to overlook Central Park. Nick’s a college professor; Clem plans parties for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are respectable and responsible and fun in ordinary ways. Into their cozy world comes Clem’s 16-year-old, high-school dropout half-sister Shannon (Odessa Adlon, Pamela Adlon’s talented daughter), long unseen, followed shortly by her estranged father, Freddy (Gary Cole), a homicide detective and “narcissistic sociopath” with numerous bad habits and no talent for parenting. But the arms of family will be opened wider to accommodate them, as Shannon moves in with Clem and Nick and Freddy at least comes to dinner, bringing wine from the evidence room: “You remind me of the woman that broke up my first marriage,” he tells Rose. “How sweet of you to say,” she replies. Created by Corinne Kingsbury (a story editor and staff writer on “The Newsroom”), it’s a multi-camera comedy in the familiar CBS style, popping off jokes in rapid succession. A surprising number are about drugs (because that is the sort of 16-year-old Shannon is), and a less surprising but still quite considerable number are about sex, because that is how things go even on CBS sitcoms nowadays. It’s all pretty predictable — isn’t that why you’re here? — and, again, the cast is good. It works often enough; a beachhead has been established. Advertisement ‘Schooled’ Where: ABC When: 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays, premieres Jan 9 Rated: TV-PG-L (may be unsuitable for young children, with an advisory for coarse language) ‘Fam’ Where: CBS Advertisement When: 9:30 p.m. Thursdays, premieres Jan. 10 Rated: TV-PG-DL (may be unsuitable for young children, with advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language) ALSO: Review: Mary McCormack is more than all right in ‘The Kids Are Alright’ Advertisement ABC’s new fall schedule looks to build on the success of ‘Roseanne’ with a focus on the family Review: With ‘The Neighborhood’ and ‘Happy Together,’ CBS offers two comedies of upsetting proximity Not the fall CBS expected: ‘Murphy Brown’ returns as Les Moonves exits robert.lloyd@latimes.com Advertisement Follow Robert Lloyd on Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd<doc-sep>
TELEVISION REVIEWS “Schooled” Series premiere tonight at 8:31 on ABC. Grade: B “Fam” Series premiere tomorrow at 9:30 on CBS. Grade: C+ New TV is here. That doesn’t mean you have to like it. Here are two new network sitcoms looking to fill your valuable time. ABC’s “Schooled” has a leg up as a spinoff from “The Goldbergs,” debuting right after that series. If you watch the first, you’re already familiar with many of the characters, though you don’t need any prior knowledge. “Schooled” shifts the spotlight from the ’80s to the ’90s and a favorite recurring character — Lainey Lewis (AJ Michalka). Lainey’s dream of becoming the biggest rock star have been pretty much dashed. She even gets dropped from a Chili’s jingle. Then she sees an ad for a music teacher at her old high school and figures this is her meal ticket. “I work well with children, probably,” she tells Principal Glascott (Tim Meadows). He rightly wants to show her the door until one of the Goldbergs intervenes in a funny cameo. “Is it possible to get the whole year’s salary in one lump sum?” Lainey wonders. She is challenged by a student who wants music more relevant than doo-wop. To get her to participate, Lainey isn’t above blackmail. Elsewhere, Coach (Bryan Callen) has his hands full with a rising star who emulates Michael Jordan. The use of R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” in a running riff is horrific in light of the revelations of Lifetime’s recent documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly,” but this was filmed months ago. “To be a great teacher you have to be a great human. Clearly that’s what I am,” Lainey decides. The grade is out on that, but “Schooled” at its goofiest recognizes the value of teachers. ABC only made the pilot available for review, so one can only wonder how the show will introduce its other remaining regular, “Jane the Virgin’s” Brett Dier — the not-so-dead Michael — as the newest teacher, named Charlie Brown. While “Schooled” is silly, CBS’ “Fam” is exhausting. Clem (Nina Dobrev, “The Vampire Diaries”) is hiding a secret from her new fiance, Nick (Tone Bell, “Disjointed”), and his adorable if pompous parents, Walt (Brian Stokes Mitchell, “The Path”) and Rose (Sheryl Lee Ralph, “Claws”). Her father, homicide detective Freddy (Gary Cole, “Veep”), isn’t dead, he’s just a horrible person she’d like to forget about. That deception is blown up when her 16-year-old half-sister, Shannon (Odessa Adlon, “Nashville”), breaks into the apartment she shares with Nick. She just needs a place to crash while her boyfriend sells a pound of weed. As to how Shannon managed to leave school without their father noticing, Shannon says, “I keep telling him I’m on Christmas break. He keeps not caring about my life.” Dad remains as much of a nightmare as Clem remembers, so she makes Shannon her responsibility. Clem is an event planner at an art museum; Nick is an associate professor of world literature at NYU. Neither one is ready to take on a high school dropout whose next stop will probably be an appearance on “Cops.” The first three episodes CBS provided find Clem trying to plan her wedding while Shannon and her dad up-end her middle-class life. Adlon brings a surly, subversive charm to her scenes, and Bell is endearing in the straightman role. It’s not enough. If your attention wanders during “Fam,” and it surely will, study Clem and Nick’s apartment and ask if it’s Jerry’s apartment from “Seinfeld,” remodeled and redressed with, of all things, a piano. As for that series title, it’s a nod to selfie-crazed teen Shannon, who claims no one says family anymore — it’s just fam. Here’s something she would understand. “Fam” is kinda terr.