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In addition to untold loss of life on the other side of the world, the new year brings its inevitable crop of midseason replacement shows. Tonight, NBC throws its sitcom Committed against the Nielsen wall to see if it sticks. The LAT's Paul Brownfield notes the cruel calculus of NBC's extreme comedy draught, illustrated by the strenuously wacky inclusion of a disturbed clown character:

Clown is a sad old clown who lives in Marni's closet because, well, I guess because it's New York. Clown is a wacky idea for a side character, and Poston, wearing the same bemused expression he wore on "Newhart," is good for at least one bit per episode. He's like half a Kramer when he enters, or one-fourth, but in these lean times for comedy you take what you can get.

And we're pretty sure that NBC's hit-starved Jeff Zucker would happily castrate himself for just one-eighth of a Costanza at this point. He'll be praying that the chubby-porn craving fans of Committed's lead-in, the Biggest Loser, pop so many Ding-Dongs that they're too incapacitated to reach for the remote.