Conventional wisdom says the first new TV comedy episodes won't air until Monday with the return of CBS's comedy block in original episodes, but two comedies on the low-rated CW have been churning out new episodes steadily: "Everybody Hates Chris" and "Aliens in America."

"Chris" has already been renewed for fall, but freshman comedy "Aliens" is on the bubble. The series, created by David Guarascio and Moses Port, follows the travails of high school student Justin Tolchuck (Dan Byrd) and Raja (Adhir Kalyan), the foreign exchange student who lives with his family. Family comedies are rare in prime-time these days, making "Aliens" a welcome diversion.

In this week's episode (8:30 p.m. Sunday, WPCW), Justin gets dragged into a community theater production of "Rent" by his mother (Amy Pietz). The pair end up singing "Light My Candle," a totally inappropriate song for a mother-son duo.

" 'Rent' had not been done before," said Port, a 1987 graduate of Altoona Area High School. "It was the first time they'd given the rights to do something like that. It seemed particularly awkward for Justin to be doing that on stage with his mother."

Port said "Aliens" produced 18 of the 22 episodes ordered before the writers' strike. Most shows only finished 13 episodes.

"We were on a very aggressive production schedule with no hiatus weeks," he said. "We just kept producing [a new] one every week."

Because of the writers' strike, the last episode, airing in May, was not conceived as a season finale, so there's no cliffhanger. But there is a cliffhanger with regards to the show's future.

"I think the show has definitely struggled to find an audience," Port said in a phone interview Monday. The show didn't have much marketing support even at its launch (The CW concentrated on "Gossip Girl" and "Reaper" last fall). "A lot of people don't know about our show. My own family is unaware sometimes of where it is and when it's on. When people finally reach it, they seem to enjoy it."