'Class' is in session
CBS' only new comedy this year is "The Class," starring John Ritter's son, Jason, as a man who decides to get his third-grade class back together for a party. The party backfires, but the connections made at the bash create relationships that weave together and are the basis for the series.

Work and life partners David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik created and executive-produce the show. You'll remember Crane's name from "Friends," and Klarik from "Mad About You," among others. The inspiration for the show, Klarik confided, came from cleaning their basement and finding Crane's third-grade class photo, which sparked a conversation wondering about what happened to the long-lost classmates. (One male classmate is now a woman, though a character modeled on him/her has yet to make it into "The Class.")

The cast has eight main classmate characters at the moment, but unlike Crane's "Friends," he says they won't all have a main gathering place, a Central Perk-type place to hang out together. Some storylines will intersect, others won't, and unlike with "Friends," each character won't have the same amount of plot each week.

As of the pilot episode, the entire "Class" is Caucasian, a choice its creators say was not deliberate, and perhaps wasn't a choice they'd make again. The show was written without race in mind, the creators say, and plans are already on the canvas to add Korean, Hispanic and mixed-race characters.

Will people start talking about a "Friends" curse, one writer asked, pointing to the failed "Joey" as one example? "Probably," Crane said. "We just try not to let that happen"

• Completely unrelated, but because it's the kind of thing I would want to know: From a distance, Jason Ritter doesn't appear to resemble his famous father, but up close, especially around the eyes, it's very clear whose son he is.
• And at CBS' evening party on the Rose Bowl field, a colleague and I cornered Ritter to ask him about the unusual style of pants he was sporting: A pair of Mogg jeans in which both legs had been split completely up the back of each leg, then pinned together with a marching row of safety pins. He'd done the tearing himself in a stressful moment, confessed Ritter, mimicking how he tore the jeans with a gesture resembling Hulk Hands.
• We weren't the only ones curious: As we spoke to Ritter, "Numb3rs" star Rob Morrow jumped into the conversation to needle Ritter gently about the denim damage. Should this style of pants catch on, you heard it here first.