It's alright, Ma (you're only bleating)

A pivotal moment in sitcom history occurred Sept. 24, 1984, near the end of the pilot for "The Cosby Show." Theo Huxtable is trying to worm his way out of a bad report card by pleading for his father to accept him as a run-of-the-mill teenager.

"So rather than feeling disappointed because I'm not like you, maybe you should accept who I am and love me anyway, because I'm your son," he whines.

The studio audience, trained out of habit, breaks into applause.

Cliff Huxtable stands up, waits a beat, and delivers the zinger: "Theo. That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life! I brought you into this world, and I'll take you out!"

In that one scene, Bill Cosby reinvented the rules. No longer would cute kids run circles around their clueless parents. The grownups were now and forever in control.

Except on "I Hate My Teenage Daughter."

This insipid new sitcom, debuting Wednesday, ignores Prof. Cosby by offering two mothers, Annie and Nikki, who are raising the most spoiled kids on Earth not named Kardashian.

And how do the women respond to this abuse? By insisting the little devils go to their first school dance in a limousine.

You see, Annie and Nikki don't really hate their daughters. They hate themselves.

Tony winner Katie Finneran, who plays Nikki, reacts like a wounded puppy to every barb. In one moment of self-loathing, she dives into a fruit pie with her hands.

Jaime Pressly, who portrays Annie, shows signs of pluckiness, especially in next week's episode, when she insists the two families bond over pizza and games. But she always ends up dissolving into butter at the sight of her ex-husband's brother (an unlikely, inexplicable crush) and at any suggestion that her daughter isn't her best friend.

Pressly, a former model who won an Emmy for her impersonation of trailer trash in "My Name Is Earl," is a talented comedian, but you don't buy for one second that she was ever a big-butted, bumbling nerd in her youth. In an effort to get "revenge" on her daughter, Pressly's character dances in front of the girl's peers, who react as if Frankenstein's monster just teetered through the door. Yeah, right. If a hottie like Pressly boogied at my prom, I might actually have enjoyed myself.

This has been a banner season for strong, independent women, whether it's Kat Dennings' sassy waitress on "2 Broke Girls" or Zooey Deschanel's dare-to-be-different turn on "New Girl." It's also been the season of sniveling, insecure, sad-sack men who act like little boys. Too bad the women of "Teenage Daughter" turned its back on the gals and, instead, joined the pity party.