TV: The Class

New sitcom from CBS, which doesn't premiere until next week, but had an exclusive sneak preview on TiVo this weekend.

The setup is wildly far-fetched: Ethan (Jason Ritter) throws a surprise party for his fiance, inviting as many members of their third-grade class as he can track down, because they first met in third grade 20 years ago. She arrives for the party and completely freaks out; she accuses Ethan of being too smothering and dumps him. But that's OK, because the party serves entirely as an excuse to get the show's eight principal characters together, and the show will follow the relationships among them; it looks like it will be another Friends variation, but with more characters.

In addition to Ethan, we have:

• Lina (Heather Goldenhersh), the wacked-out, blissed-out flake
• Kat (Lizzy Caplan), Lina's twin sister, the sarcastic, brooding cynic
• Nicole (Andrea Anders), the pretty blonde stuck in an unhappy marriage to an older ex-jock
• Duncan (Jon Bernthal), the popular boy who still lives with his mother and still wishes he had never split up with Nicole
• Kyle (Sean Maguire), the high-school heartthrob, now apparently the happiest of the bunch, living happily with his boyfriend
• Holly (Lucy Punch), successful news anchor
• Richie (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), who's depressed almost to the point of suicide

The first episode doesn't waste any time establishing new relationships among these characters (and re-establishing old ones); by the end of the half-hour, we've set up three romantic couples. Beyond those couples, though, it's hard to imagine how or why these characters will spend any more time together.

In general, it's the women who make the biggest impression in the pilot. Goldenhersh, playing the show's Phoebe-equivalent, has a voice and inflections that reminded me of Paula Poundstone; Anders (a survivor of the Joey fiasco) is extremely likable, with a loopy charm; Caplan is stuck with the most cliched character so far, but she delivers her zingers with great energy.

The men don't come across as strongly. Bernthal and Maguire are the show's designated hunks, and Ritter is clearly meant to be the sane voice of reason at the center (a job for which he's suitably bland).

Eight characters is a lot to introduce in a half-hour, though, so the show didn't have time to do much more than whip through a lot of backstory and quick introductions. There were enough good laughs, and there are enough interesting actors, that I'll give the show another week or two before giving up on it entirely.