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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 ] L.A. without guilt ABC's new sitcom "It's like, you know ..." is a West Coast remake of "Seinfeld" -- not that there's anything wrong with that. BY JOYCE MILLMAN The phrase "It's like, you know ..." may be Southern California's linguistic gift to the nation, but it's a terrible title for a TV show. Yeah, a lot of people say it all the time as a reflex action, but it's virtually impossible to use those words consciously, in a sentence, as a proper noun. Go ahead, try saying, "Hey, did you watch 'It's like, you know ...' last night?" out loud. See? This ABC sitcom is not going to make it on word of mouth. A better title would have been "L.A. Without Guilt," because that's what this promising opposite-coast version of "Seinfeld" is all about. Created and written by former "Seinfeld" writer-producer Peter Mehlman, "It's like, you know ..." is as obsessed with the anthropological rituals of Los Angeles as "Seinfeld" was with life in New York City. On both shows, it's impossible to tell where individual craziness leaves off and a city's collective craziness begins. The difference between the shows comes down to an East Coast vs. West Coast quality-of-crazy-life thing, with the characters on "It's like, you know ..." seeming happier in their nuttiness than Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were in theirs. But, then, it's hard to be truly miserable when (as one character says in the "It's like, you know ..." pilot) "one warm afternoon you're playing softball and you think to yourself, 'My God -- it's January!'" "It's like, you know ..." is an unofficial "Seinfeld" remake with a semi-official stamp-of-approval: Jerry Seinfeld himself made a surprise appearance at the taping of the pilot and warmed up the audience with some stand-up comedy. And, as a "Seinfeld" remake, "It's like, you know ..." is shameless, which is to say, it's just about right. In the show, four unmarried, underemployed, self-obsessed Angelenos -- and one neurotic New Yorker who's "just visiting" -- spend a lot of time sitting around talking about, well, nothing. For variety, they drive around talking about nothing. Robbie (Steven Eckholdt) is a handsome, entrepreneurial ex-New Yorker who's living off the fortune he made from promoting pay-per-view cablecasts of High Holy Day services for Jews who didn't want to buy synagogue seats. His pal, the Costanza-esque Shrug (Evan Handler), comes from money (in the show's parlance, he's a "Trustafarian"); although Shrug has never worked a day in his life, all his hair has fallen out from stress. Robbie's best friend from back East, Arthur (Chris Eigeman), is a buttoned-up writer in town to research a book called "Living in Los Angeles: How Can You Stand It?" While on the plane from New York, he meets and develops an instant crush on Lauren (A.J. Langer), a kooky L.A. masseuse/summons server with an Elaine-ian propensity for dating jerks; coincidentally, Lauren also knows Shrug. And in an awe-inspiringly self-deprecating performance, Jennifer Grey of "Dirty Dancing" fame plays -- Jennifer Grey of "Dirty Dancing" fame. She's Shrug's next-door neighbor (and Robbie's ex-lover) and the painfully funny joke is that her career is dead because she's had a nose job since "Dirty Dancing" and now nobody recognizes her. Mehlman wrote some of the funniest, most notorious "Seinfeld" episodes, including "The Sponge" (Elaine hoards contraceptive sponges), "The Implant" ("They're real -- and they're spectacular!") and "The Yada Yada." And "It's like, you know ..." falls squarely within the bounds of Seinfeldian humor -- harsh yet satisfying, surreal yet dead-on. It helps that Los Angeles is a pageant of absurdity, which Mehlman often nails, hilariously. In one episode, Shrug visits an "amnesiologist" to have a painful memory removed. In another episode, the gang spends the whole show in front of the tube watching one of L.A.'s many televised high-speed freeway chases (yeah, the set-up is reminiscent of the "Seinfeld" set entirely in the waiting area of a Chinese restaurant). And while Robbie and Shrug's pointless debates ("Where would you rather be, on the corner of Florence and Normandie when the riots broke out, or at Normandy Beach on D-Day?") could have come straight from the mouths of Jerry and George, you can't get too huffed up about it because Mehlman is so good at writing this type of goofy verbal ping-pong. But while "It's like, you know ..." has its spirited moments, the three episodes made available to critics suggest that Mehlman has yet to get the show cranked up to cruising speed. It's funny, but not as relentlessly funny as you want it to be. Some of that has to do with the years of comedic abuse Los Angeles has already taken. Mehlman is going to have to dig deeper for fresh targets -- Woody Allen did jokes about white-knuckled New Yorkers driving on the freeways for the first time, shallow L.A. romances and corned beef sandwiches with mayo in "Annie Hall" 20 years ago. And in the pilot, at least, Mehlman and his director, Andy Ackerman (another "Seinfeld" regular), have the same tone shift problem the Farrelly brothers had in "There's Something About Mary" -- when the looniness gives way to romantic comedy, the energy sags. It's also sort of awkward that the best actor in the cast, Eigeman, has the least developed role. The deadpan Eigeman, who has played Arthur-type characters -- peevish, droll, faintly superior -- in the Whit Stillman movies "Barcelona," "Metropolitan" and "The Last Days of Disco," imparts an air of giddy weirdness to everything he's in; he makes you giggle in anticipation, even when he's not saying anything particularly funny. Which is fortunate, because Mehlman has made Arthur the straight man of "It's like, you know ..." and Eigeman spends most of his scenes reacting in disbelief; he's a stereotype of the uptight, hypochondriachal, Cali-phobic New York writer who, in Lauren's words, "lives in a constant state of moral outrage." But starchy Arthur is being set up for a fall; he's eventually going to succumb to the allure of softball in January and the Pacific Coast Highway and grapefruits outside your window and all those other natural wonders that make it possible to live in a place where (to quote Robbie) "the houses are ugly, the bagels are doughy, the pizza sucks, the murder trials last two years, the marriages last two months" -- and, oh, yeah, let's not forget the "earthquakes, aftershocks, mud slides, road rage [and] race riots." The shortcomings of "It's like, you know ..." are the shortcomings of Steve Martin's similarly uneven-toned film "L.A. Story": Mehlman, like Martin, is too dazzled by the abundance and beauty of the place to be as mean about its downside as he should be. Not that you can blame him. Who in their right mind would complain about living in paradise? SALON | March 22, 1999