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[ J O Y C E_.M I L L M A N__O N_.T E L E V I S I O N ] Movin' on down The theme song of Fox's new Eddie Murphy-produced animated sitcom "The PJs" starts out with a male voice intoning, "Once upon a time in the Projects ..." And for the first two episodes, at least, "The PJs" had the quality of an urban fairy tale composed after a Nick at Nite binge. The "foamation" series, which features rounded, rubbery-faced characters by Will Vinton's studio (creator of the Claymation-animated California Raisins), stars Murphy as the voice of the superintendent of a "low-rent, high-rise" housing project. The show is set in the '90s, but it's crammed with compulsive (and, yeah, funny) references to black sitcoms of the '70s. As the blustery, undereducated, self-important super, Thurgood Stubbs, Murphy shouts and growls his lines like a cross between George Jefferson and Fred Sanford. Thurgood's nemesis, the ancient, sour tenant Mrs. Avery (voiced by Ja'net Dubois from "Good Times"), is a nasty biddy along the lines of Sanford's nemesis, Aunt Esther. Thurgood's building is named the "Hilton-Jacobs Projects," in honor, perhaps, of Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, who played Freddie "Boom-Boom" Washington on "Welcome Back, Kotter." even Thurgood's curses are from the '70s; he's always letting loose with agitated exclamations like, "Jiminy Walker!" and "Holy Moses Malone!" Initially, the show's depiction of lower-class black life seemed stuck in the sitcom '70s, too, with tired jokes about roaches and busted plumbing. A few of the writers and producers of "The PJs" previously worked on Fox's raucous skit comedy show "In Living Color," and the connection is obvious in the show's gross-out sight gags (Thurgood battling a tornado of a toilet clog) and hapless characters (the fat dumb kid who's always eating, the gentle, spacey crackhead who lives in a cardboard box and whines like Damon Wayans' fetid Antoine from "ILC"). The divide between the haves and have-nots is emphasized with wistful resignation: a radio weather report promises "a beautiful day in the suburbs, 75 and sunny," but "in the projects, the heat will be oppressive -- a blistering 105 with no relief in sight." Goofy and glib, the first two episodes of "The PJs" didn't even approach the level of despair of, say, "Good Times." Then, in the third episode, which aired Jan. 19, a gang showed up at Hilton-Jacobs, and "The PJs" took on a nightmarish Ralph Bakshi tone. There was real anger in this episode (it carried a warning label for violence), which featured unmistakably '90s-style gang members slouching around dealing dope, shaking down residents and brandishing handguns. At the end, Thurgood -- still given to anachronistic Jeffersonian outbursts -- led his tenants in a successful slapstick battle to take back Hilton-Jacobs (it may not be much, but it's home). Chalk one up for the good old days of inner-city poverty. I don't quite know what to make of "The PJs." It's not brilliant satire by any means, wobbling between the too-easy and the heavy-handed. And a lot of the jokes play off stereotypes of African-Americans -- Thurgood is lazy, the tenants make a mess of the building -- that seem, to me, offensive. Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that, with all his clout, the best Eddie Murphy can come up with is another ghetto sitcom -- especially since "The PJs" is the only comedy about African-Americans on Fox's prime-time schedule? Back when it was a fledgling network, Fox (which had most of its affiliates in urban areas) used black sitcoms like "In Living Color," "South Central" and "Living Single" to build an audience. More recently, The WB and UPN employed the same strategy. But now, the WB and UPN are both grouping all their black sitcoms together into a single night's programming block (Tuesday for UPN, Thursday for the WB), citing low ratings for the shows when they were scattered throughout the week. In a December New York Times article on this "segregation" of sitcoms, executives from several networks were asked to explain the near disappearance of black sitcoms from prime time; each termed it an economic necessity, complaining that it was impossible to get white viewers to watch what were perceived as "black" shows. Indeed, the debut of "The PJs" makes three, count 'em, three African-American sitcoms on the four traditional broadcast networks (the other two are ABC's "The Hughleys" and CBS's "Cosby"). The Times also waxed nostalgic about the golden days of crossover hits like "The Jeffersons," "Good Times," "Sanford and Son" and, in the '80s, "The Cosby Show," which were all hugely popular with both black and white viewers. But the biracial success of those '70s sitcoms had a lot to do with the times; back then, whites and blacks were moving toward, not away from, embracing one another, and TV execs saw promoting racial harmony as a (profitable) civic duty. As for the enormous popularity of "The Cosby Show," well, who doesn't like Bill Cosby? Much more significant than ratings alone is the fact that "Cosby" and two other popular black NBC sitcoms of the '80s, "A Different World" and "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," focused on middle-class or upper-class blacks -- as do most of the WB and UPN shows and "The Hughleys." The downscale "PJs," then, is clearly bucking a trend. Executive produced by Chris Rock, "The Hughleys" is a show about a successful businessman (played by comedian D.L. Hughley) who moves his family to a largely white upper-middle-class suburb. His guilt over fitting in so well there conflicts with his nostalgia for the old 'hood and his fears that his kids will lose their identity. While it won't win any awards for originality (it pretty much sticks to family sitcom formula), "The Hughleys" is probably the most sociologically relevant sitcom on TV. Hughley's dilemma (which is also a major theme of Rock's comedy) is familiar to boomers of every ethnicity and race who've risen above their class. But it's "The PJs," which airs opposite "The Hughleys" on Tuesdays, and was the sixth-most-watched show in the Nielsens in its debut week, that seems on the verge of bringing white and black viewers together in a way they haven't come together in a decade. And that's partly because of its canny references to those old '70s sitcoms -- Murphy (who became a superstar imitating Gumby and Buckwheat on "Saturday Night Live") and his co-producers know that TV is the communal memory that transcends racial boundaries. But "The PJs" also pushes the right psychological buttons for the times. Humor is a deeply personal thing to begin with, and years of political correctness and multicultural education have left Americans even more unsure of when it's OK to laugh. Add such poisonous, racially divisive events like the Rodney King riots and the O.J. Simpson trials to the mix and suddenly black sitcoms are risky business. Actually, the racial wounds exposed by the Simpson case might be the single biggest reason for the drop-off in white viewer interest in black sitcoms. One of the selling points networks used to win white viewers over to shows like "The Jeffersons" and "Cosby" was: Look how much they're like us! However, the poles-apart feelings of blacks and whites toward the Simpson case rendered that sentiment too simplistic. But the retro, of-a-simpler-time feel of "The PJs" -- and, of course, the fact that it's a cartoon -- appears to remove it from such troubling realities, to make it "safe" to laugh at Thurgood's foibles, whether you're white or black. (A Muslim community group in Los Angeles didn't see the humor, though, calling the show offensive and insulting on the eve of its debut.) Like its fellow animated Fox sitcoms "King of the Hill" and "The Simpsons" and Comedy Central's "South Park," "The PJs" can say things live-action sitcoms can't about racial, cultural and, especially, class tensions. All of these shows aim a large percentage of their jokes at both the very rich and the very poor; all make fun, sometimes savagely, of "trailer trash" and "homeys." When a little kid complains to Thurgood that "the hot water ain't workin'," he snaps back, "The hot water ain't workin' 'cause your daddy ain't workin'! Tell him to pay the gas bill!" "The PJs" taps into the frustration of middle-class viewers tired of being sensitive, fed up with suffering fools of any race -- even their own. I don't know if you'd call this a positive development, but at least it's common ground. SALON | Jan. 25, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.