'Bless This Mess' shows TV can't go back to 'Green Acres'

At least, that's the unintended message from "Bless This Mess," which premieres on ABC this week, a sitcom in the not-so-grand tradition of "Green Acres," with a dollop of "Northern Exposure." In it, a New York couple (Lake Bell, Dax Shepard) decides they "need a simpler life," as the wife puts it, and relocate to a farm in Nebraska.

As dated as that premise sounds (and it is), it feels even more out of step in the fact that the question of politics never really arises. A pair of yuppies (she's a therapist, he's a journalist) from the bluest of blue states move to a ramshackle farm in the Cornhusker state, and nobody mentions whether America's great or needs to be made that way again?

The "fish out of water" premise has been a venerable sitcom staple. But for better or worse, it doesn't feel possible to do a show like this anymore that ignores not only the elephant in the room, but the donkey too -- even if it's just to point out the misconceptions that divide us, or the arbitrary nature of the geographic barriers that are evident every time another election night rolls around.

Instead, the humor, at least in the pilot, stems from the run-down nature of the property they inherit, the ineptitude of its new inhabitants and the quirkiness of the neighbors, including one, played by Ed Begley Jr., who drops in occasionally to use the couple's bathroom, lacking an indoor one of his own.

To say "Bless This Mess" -- created by Bell, along with "New Girl" producer Elizabeth Meriwether -- feels like an anachronism is an understatement. And while ABC has fared reasonably well with a brand of light family-oriented comedy, the network has rather inexplicably scheduled the series alongside "black-ish," a show that grapples with serious matters pertaining to race in addition to seeking laughs.

In that context, "Bless This Mess'" failings seem more acute. Escapism has its place, but this feels more insubstantial than even the early-21st-century reality-TV version of this idea, "The Simple Life," which unleashed city slickers Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie upon America's heartland.

That's not to say every TV show has to be about big issues. But when the differences between New York and Nebraska are basically limited to open roads and farm animals, the network and producers look to be sticking their heads in the sand, while pining for the days when people watched them by default.

It's a long way back to 1965, when Oliver and Lisa (that is, Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor) said "Goodbye, city life" and took up residence in Green Acres, and in TV terms, that's a good thing.

Yet what "Bless This Mess" inadvertently illustrates, more than anything, is however appealing it might be to roll back to the clock, to paraphrase the old song, it's not so funny that we can't talk anymore.

"Bless This Mess" premieres April 16 at 9:30 p.m. on ABC.

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