Technically, it should be “10 Items or Fewer”

“10 Items or Less,” TBS’s semi-improvised sitcom about the doofuses (in Latin: doofi) who work in a small, struggling grocery store, returns for a second season tonight by cribbing (sort of) a plotline from last season’s “Desperate Housewives:” People with guns take the store hostage. At least they’re not borrowing from “Rules of Engagement.”

It starts when affably clueless Greens & Grains proprietor Leslie Poole (series co-creator John Lehr) decides to bring in a blizzard-of-bucks booth as a store promotion. (The episode begins by suggesting – but not following through on – what I always thought would be a good gag, a blizzard-of-coins competition in which participants are pelted into submission by violently swirling coins.)

So a couple of gunmen show up trying to steal the cash in the booth – “If you come in tomorrow, you can walk in and take the money without a gun,” Leslie helpfully suggests. But no: One enters the booth and his mask is blown off, revealing him to be an employee of the rival Super Value Mart, a Greens & Grains goes so deeply Stockholm-Syndrome that she’s torturing her own colleagues and it’s all typically Murphy’s Law-ish.

Next week’s episode is funnier, until it isn’t. Amy (Jennifer Elise Cox), Super Value Mart’s grocery-natrix, is fired for being caught having sex in her store on a surveillance camera, and Leslie, who’s always had a thing for her despite her utter contempt for him, hires her: “Come make love with anybody you want in the employee lounge,” he, again, helpfully suggests.

But ever-driven Amy molds Leslie into her brand of sadistic manager; the other employees try to deprogram him in the basement of a character who still lives with his mom (“You’re deprogramming him? Can I watch?” mom inquires) and Leslie sees the light.

“10 Items or Less” veers with whiplash-triggering speed between droll one-liners and over-the-top buffoonish behavior; the episodes usually end with some idiocy-induced slapstick that kind of makes you feel a little foolish for kind of having enjoyed the thing to that point. Now, I’m tolerant (to a point) of imbecilic behavior, but not so much when it dissembles to no-human-being-on-the-face-of-the-planet-is-this-stupid behavior.

Anyway, following tonight’s episode at either 8:30 or 11:30 PT, there’ll be some kind of webcast where the show’s cast and creators happy-chat up their creation. That kind of thing is usually reserved for Electronic Press Kits, which I assiduously avoid, but hey, if you’re starved for entertainment (and given the writers strike you may be), have at it.

- “10 Items or Less:” 11 tonight, TBS.