The <em>Shit My Dad Says</em> Pilot Script Lives Up to Its Name

CBS has officially picked up the Twitter-based sitcom, @#$! My Dad Says (shit, the word is shit), based on the ramblings of an old man, filtered by his son, on Twitter. We got our hands on the cliche-ridden pilot script.

It's not really a surprise that the William Shatner-starring sitcom is full of cliches. It is, after all, based on a not-terribly-funny Twitter account. But in an effort to pad the inherent boniness of a television series built around 140 character one-liners, the writers—Justin Halpern (whose dad says all the shit), Patrick Schumacker, and David Kohan & Max Mutchnick (of Will & Grace fame)—added some other hackneyed TV tropes that go clunk in the night. Like on the Twitter feed, some of Dad's little aphorisms strain credibility — do men that age really reference sex and genitalia that much, to their children?—but now there's also the tomboy who's secretly beautiful (and secretly in love with our rumpled but charming hero), a shrill wife to a dopey brother, and a general kind of witty-slacker reference humor that should have been put to bed long ago (maybe around the time of Mallrats?).

So this is how you do a Twitter show, we guess. Fill in the gaping holes with recycled parts of other shows and hope the dad jokes — supposedly adored by 1.3 million people on the internet — buoy the thing up. Judging from this script, which may not be the actual final shooting script (it's dated 2/5/10), the strategy doesn't work. The often funny Shatner is playing dad, but even that noble pedigree probably can't save this from becoming yet another web-to-something-else conversion that sputtered.

Here are some lowlights, from an unfortunate plethora of Asian jokes to lots of unwanted old man sex references.

The Tomboy Roommate/Friend Who's Secretly Beautiful...