Former "Wonder Years" child star Fred Savage hasn't had much to do after an acting career that peaked with puberty, but ABC has given the falling star another chance with the new sitcom "Crumbs." And playing Mitch Crumb, a struggling writer trying to hide his homosexuality, might actually be his ticket back to TV stardom.

Crumb is presumably happy in Los Angeles, but he's soon called back to his small hometown to oversee the release of his mother Suzanne ("SNL" and "Third Rock from the Sun" alum Jane Curtin) from a mental institution. Here he comes back into contact with old friend Andrea (Maggie Lawson) and oversexed brother Jody (Eddie McClintock), both of whom work at a restaurant bearing the Crumb surname. Mitch now has a whole new set of problems to add to his offbeat life, including his mom - who maybe isn't as sane as the doctors who released her thought she was - and the return of his deadbeat dad Billy (William Devane, "24"), who announces he has gotten his current flame pregnant. The pair of morally and emotionally askew parents becomes the foundation of the show, with Savage's biggest comedic points coming in his reactions to them.

Then there's jealous Jody Crumb, who has serious sibling envy over Mitch's Hollywood career, launched by Mitch's adaptation of the death of their third brother. The mention of this dead sibling sends "Crumbs" into dark territory, where most shows don't venture in their pilots (and usually for good reason). "Crumbs" tries to show this dark side along with the hilarity of a fractured family, a novel idea that might prove too heavy for primetime.

"Crumbs," like many sitcom pilots, is flush with the usual topics - crazy jokes, gay jokes, sibling rivalry jokes - that do early work developing the characters. These jokes are typical, delivered with impeccably timed sitcom wit, and the characters' comments fit perfectly into the show's plot. But besides their normal, prepackaged sitcom musings, these characters also have a certain sense of reality to them. They're all flawed and very human: the insecure gay writer, the bizarre, frazzled mom and the womanizing chef all wallow in their imperfection, but we like it. In fact, each character's flaws are so much greater their reductive comedic "foibles"; the characters are actually all fairly twisted and unlike your typical sitcom makeup.

The show's pilot, like virtually all pilots, isn't great, but "Crumbs" has a future. It has the kind of open-ended premise that very successful series like "The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" had, where vagueness of plot can help it develop in almost any direction. The series that try to do something overly unique usually end up failing, but "Crumbs" is happy being another story of the not-so-average family. Granted, not-so-average families are sitcom bread and butter, but "Crumbs" shows a family that doesn't always conquer their flaws with pluck. Humor is just as likely to spring from dark moments as it is from laugh-track gags. Anchored by Savage and Curtin - two sitcom veterans who know how to make a show funny -"Crumbs" could be the plug to fill the hole in ABC's dismal primetime sitcom lineup.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Crumbs
Thursday at 9:30 p.m.
ABC