Reality show follows 24-year-old on his own for first time

Hey, grown-up kids – sick of living in your parents’ basement?

Hey, frustrated parents – want that adult-age slacker outta there?

“Kicked Out,” a new series on ABC Family, bridges today’s generation gap by taking both sides of yet another dysfunctional family equation and adding them up to one more manipulated “reality” zero.

It debuts Wednesday night with the tale of a well-to-do black family in Long Beach, Calif., whose son just can’t imagine getting by for an entire week on $1,500, which is handed to him as he’s booted out of the parental manse.

Along with his sparkling new SUV. And keys to an apartment.

What part of “fending for himself” am I missing here?

“I feel like a teenager but I’m not,” mopes 24-year-old Verion (because it just isn’t a reality show without a fun name like Constantine or Omarosa).

The show also sets him up with a career interview. And delivers a big-screen TV so his parents can issue video “challenges.” Like doing the laundry. By yourself!

Yes, there can be some joy to watching “Kicked Out.” Savor the shock on Verion’s face when they take away the credit cards and cell phone. Enjoy the on-screen identification label: “Verion, Hopeless Slacker.”

But any such satisfaction feels like seeing justice done decades late, exonerating a prisoner after he’s served his sentence. Does this really mean the system works?

What’s Verion doing living at home, at age 24, unemployed and not hardly trying, anyway? Why doesn’t he yet know how to do much of anything? And whose fault is this?

“Kicked Out” has larger problems than logic, though. Verion is on his own, remember, which means alone. Get ready to watch a guy talking to himself. And talking to himself some more. How many different ways, really, can he whine, dither or convey “I’m helpless”?

I’m not sure he can do it even one way, interestingly. He’s a dud, and his parents aren’t much more lively. If you think his situation feels contrived, watch the folks throwing a he’s-gone party to gloat and dance the Electric Slide.

Where can this possibly end? Nowhere but Verion realizing he “took a lot of things for granted” and being grateful he can now “supply my own needs.” Huh?

Future episodes promise a wider range of social and economic situations (all in the L.A. area) involving single parents, stepfamilies, two kids kicked out at once and – I can’t wait – a 24-year-old named Sparkle.