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Rachel: Because I'm black or because I'm a woman?

Raylen: Because you're an idiot.

Rachel: Excuse me?

Raylen: (smiling) I didn't shoulder my way to the front of the line.

Rachel: I didn't say that, you did.

Raylen: Look, I understand I'm the low man on the totem pole, I understand that. But Rowland and I have a long history and I should be walking point.

Rachel: This isn't just about this case. You did cut to the front of the line. I don't know if it's because you know the chief from Glencoe, but you walked in and you went right to the front.

Raylen: You ever consider I happen to be good at the job?

Rachel: And you being a tall, good-looking white man with a shitload of swagger, that has nothing to do with it? You get away with just about anything.

Raylen: What do I get away with?

Rachel: Look in the mirror. How do you think it'd go over if I came into work one day wearing a cowboy hat? You think I'd get away with that?

Raylen: Want to try it on?

Aside from the unpredictable turns this conversation takes, what's wonderful about this scene -- and so many scenes in "Justified" -- is that we can't decide whom we like more, our hero or the person with whom he's trading barbs. Leonard once said he's never written a bad guy he didn't like, and that shows on the screen -- not just in sketchy types like Boyd (Walton Goggins, see also: Shane from "The Shield"), the white supremacist whose racist beliefs Raylen suspects are merely a shabby cover for his deep-seated desire to blow shit up, but also in Roland Pike (Alan Ruck), the hangdog criminal on the run from the law and from his drug cartel enemies. In fact, no character appears on "Justified" without kicking up a little of our interest: Flirtatious but murderous wives have an empowered, unapologetic air about them, bosses have a world-weary ease to their words. (When someone reports that they can't find Harlan, Ky., on an online map, Chief Deputy Art Mullen [Nick Searchy] replies, "I guess some places haven't been entered into the system yet, like North Korea, and Raylen's hometown.") Even Raylen's ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea) is sharp-tongued but sympathetic to him in a way that makes us hope for an eventual reunion.

On paper, FX's "Justified" might appear to be just another procedural with a little excess flair. The show is a western set in modern times starring our gun-toting hero Raylen, the sort of lawman who will politely ask for compliance, but won't hesitate to shoot a bad guy in the belly before he can even react. ("I want you to understand, I don't pull my side arm unless I'm going to shoot to kill. That's its purpose, to kill, so that's how I use it. I want you to think about that before you act and it's too late," Raylen tells one criminal who's considering his options.) Throw in the levity and appeal of USA's "In Plain Sight" or "Burn Notice," and it's easy to see why this is the sort of thoroughly modern drama that a channel like FX adores.

Based on the first three episodes, though, "Justified" is far richer and harder to ignore than other procedural dramedies of its ilk, thanks to the show's unusually seamless mix of sly humor, weighty moments and suspense. While the heaviness always feels a little out of place on the mostly wacky but always delightful "Burn Notice," for example, there's a heft to "Justified" that makes you root for Raylen the way you might root for the most compelling characters of the small screen, from Vic Mackey of "The Shield" to Jimmy McNulty of "The Wire." Now throw in imaginative storylines and characters whose motivations are never simple -- no one is evil, exactly, just stupid and deluded at worst, and we're offered at least a few reasons to side with even the most reprehensible bastards among them -- and you've got one of the best new shows of the season.

Yet somehow the complexity of "Justified" never leaves us in the same disheartening ethical mire we find ourselves in after watching other shows this dark. On "Justified," characters who do bad things sometimes pay for it, and sometimes they don't, and those who are "good" try to live up to their ideals, and often fail. Instead of concerning itself with malevolent forces or valiant heroes battling on an epic stage, "Justified" focuses on the trivial delusions and tragic screw-ups of everyday people. Jokes are told, mistakes are made, and no one can predict how it will all turn out in the end. Sound familiar?

Perhaps it's this historical depiction of females as unable to confront each other without jumping into the nearest swimming pool and ripping each other's blouses off that makes the growing love/hate chess match between Ellen and Patty on FX's "Damages" so compelling. Having indoctrinated Ellen (Rose Byrne) into the cutthroat world of high-priced lawyers by baptizing her in her fiancé's blood, Patty (Glenn Close) still refuses to acknowledge any animosity between the two of them. Instead, she gives Ellen expensive gifts, sends Ellen's "replacement," Alex (Tara Summers), to Ellen for advice, or calls Ellen at 4 a.m. to invite her over for dinner, purposefully telling her the wrong night so that she'll show up and find Alex and Patty working closely together over a bottle of red wine.

At first, Ellen is straightforward. She tells Patty, "If you want to talk to me, don't play games. Just pick up the phone and call." She believes that working for the assistant district attorney is her true calling and will deliver her from the evil of Patty's ways. But as the Bernie-Madoff-alike Tobin case unfolds, Ellen realizes that Patty gets results in ways that her naive and politically motivated overlords never will. She's also romanced by Patty's odd mix of flattery and ulterior motives; she's transfixed by this woman's manipulations, her deviance, all hidden by her "Who me? Don't be silly!" mask, which Close brings to life with some deliciously malignant undertones.

This subdued standoff was the highlight of Monday night's episode, which left us guessing about what the hell Patty is up to, what Ellen is trying to pull, and whose side anyone is on in the end. What's brilliant about "Damages," though, is that the exact alignment of these women, what their aims with the Tobin case are, or whether they love or despise each other underneath it all, hardly matters. They're locked in some twisted battle or dance or duel or sophisticated game of one-upmanship, and they're both being fed by it. The best moment of "You Haven't Replaced Me"? When Ellen, in bed with her new do-gooder boyfriend who's obviously a pawn and not a real partner, puts down the phone after Patty's rude, aggressive 4 a.m. call, and smiles. She matters to Patty -- either as a pawn herself, or as an ally, or as a foe. Somehow, this gives Ellen a charge. Whoever wins or gets the last word or falls the hardest for the other's charms/trip wires, one thing is for certain: In Ellen, we're seeing a young Patty, drawn in by the lures of intimidation, power and victory at any cost.

Sure, when we're not impaired by the relentless drumbeat of empty tweets and Googled tragedies and breathless press releases about the latest jackhole to sign up for "Dancing With the Stars," we do try to reach out to each other, tenuously, through Facebook and Twitter and sometimes even by picking up our telephones, which haven't held a solid charge since Monica Lewinsky was running around the White House in capri pants.

But it's not the same. One decade into the new millennium, one too many irresistible up-to-date blurbs and blogs and snippets and tweets have smeared our once-lively spirits across the dirty windshield of life.

Except when we're in a really good mood, and then everything's fine.

Butt cheek of the gods

Thank the lords "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" (10 p.m. Fridays on Starz) is here to show us exactly when, where and how we went astray. Apparently, back in 73 B.C., human beings were gigantic and horny and all they did was have great sex and slash each other with steely blades, resulting in big bursts of blood that splashed everywhere. Hurray!

It seems that ever since that time, humans have steadily grown more vague and sullen, losing more muscle mass and joie de vivre each century that they walked the earth. With each passing decade came another reason to slouch and feel discouraged: the spinning wheel (ouch), barbed wire (drag), pasteurization (enough already), the electric nose-hair clipper (please). All of it led up to where we are today, namely, watching "House" while sobbing into a laminated cup of cherry Jell-o.

But fear not, because our new hero Spartacus is here to lead us out of the darkness, demonstrating exactly how we might get our souls back: namely, by having lots of frisky humpy time with meat-Chiclet-adorned macho men, then throwing big sharp knives at offensive strangers from across the room!

Of course, it all starts with the raping and pillaging of our home villages after being betrayed by the Romans. Next, our lovers are carried away and enslaved by Roman fiends and we're made to fight four men at once in the Colosseum (much like the Superdome but with more people sporting the then-fashionable boobs-out look). That ends in lots of blood splashing, and a rowdy mass of boobs-out heathens yelling out our (new, fake) name, which forces powerful men to harness our 15 minutes of fame for evil, rather than good. Next come the muscle men who lecture us menacingly in the shower while their gigantic penises bob along with every step, and then we do some defiant stuff that almost gets us killed, but finally we give in and agree to lug around huge logs and spar with other greased-up ding-dongs, so that, eventually? We're all puffy and fierce and ready to beat people's faces in until blood splashes across the camera. Mmm, it feels good to be alive, doesn't it? Who knew that our deliverance would come in the form of hand-to-hand combat, impromptu orgies and around-the-clock sipping out of fancy chalices of red wine? All right, I had some inkling.

Even if it doesn't free humanity from our current lackluster path, "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" exists on an entirely different planet from other televised entertainments. This is HBO's "Rome" on steroids, Viagra, LSD and crack: The sex scenes feature bare asses, bare breasts, slaves on hand to help masturbate their masters into the proper state of excitement, and haunted lutes playing in the background. The fight scenes are half "300," half "Mortal Kombat," replete with rotating severed heads, slow-motion flying buckets of blood that occasionally expand to fill the entire screen with a sea of red, and warriors who bellow, "We'll fuck your women. We'll fuck them all!"

Hell, even the straightforward conversations between two characters typically feature some gratuitous twist: Spartacus' archenemy stands, berating him while fully naked, his big cock practically piping up with its own sidekick tag lines ("Yeah, like my boss just told ya! You're dead meat, mister!"); Lucretia (Lucy Lawless) lounges in a see-through top, having a long conversation with her husband that we can't understand because we're being glamoured by her huge breasts; some character whispers "cunt" or "fuck whore" or any number of salacious things (like this nastiness, from Lucretia: "It all comes back round to a pair of tits and a tight little hole"). Sure, it worked on "Deadwood," but without the Shakespearean adornments, "fuck" often feels like an extra bucket of fake blood that you didn't really need to get your point across.

But then, the point or story is just window dressing to the slugging and screwing that we came to see here. When extremely fit human beings growl their paint-by-numbers Hollywood historical epic lines ("Nothing will keep me from returning to your arms, not the Romans, not the gods themselves!"), making sweet lyrical Abdominizer love, then slash their opponents knees in half with their glittering hatchets, we're offered a glimpse into an animal world we traded in for the sterilized, vacuum-sealed alienation of modern life.

No wonder this basic formula -- seethe, slash, screw, repeat -- dressed up as it is by CGI effects and blue-eyed star Andy Whitfield, isn't shocking more audiences with its over-the-top flashiness and pandering. Sure, some have called it "too rude for British TV," but who are we sleazy, foul-mouthed Americans to judge? The blogs certainly lit up last week when the gay gladiator, Barca (Antonio Te Maioho), made athletic love to his partner Pietros (Eka Darville), who grinned from ear to ear as if to say, "This is really my favorite perk of being a slave boy."

But those two are actually fond of each other, and are engaged in the equivalent of a standard under-the-sheets, missionary position compulsory routine, compared to the frenzied humping unfolding elsewhere: Batiatus (John Hannah) takes his ample-bosomed slave woman from behind, Lucretia (Lawless) rides her gladiator Crixius (Manu Bennett) into the sunset, and all of it is merely foreplay for the decapitations and gory mess that comes after it. Somehow the special effects, the sandals, the swords, and the mystical lutes distract us from the fact that this sex-followed-by-blood-bath may be the closest TV has come to snuff.

Naturally, ratings are through the roof for Starz -- 1 million at last count. So what does this tell us about the state of cable television in 2010? Maybe that if you throw out the rules and boundaries of middlebrow network television and create something depraved and lascivious and gruesome, with plenty of slashed throats and greased-up abs and CGI flourishes, you will emerge triumphant.

Or, as Doctore (Peter Mensah) puts it, "Forget everything you learned outside these walls, for that is the world of men. We are more, we are gladiators!" 

Let's consider the portrayals of marriage on TV available to us up until now: Angry couples about to divorce on "Dr. Phil," cutesy couples guffawing over their adorable children's goofy shenanigans with homemade explosives on sitcoms, and exhausted couples squabbling over who lost the map on "The Amazing Race." In all of these cases, you provide the commentary and the laugh track (especially on Dr. Phil).

On "The Marriage Ref," Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Ricky Gervais and Jerry Seinfeld do it for you.

Now let's consider the portrayals of celebrities available to us: We can gaze at photos of them in sweatpants taking their kids to the park, we can listen to their stilted attempts at warmth and spontaneity on the red carpet, or we can endure their longer, even more stilted attempts at warmth and spontaneity on late night talk shows. When celebrities speak instead of just standing around and looking pretty, they tend to speak at great length about whatever movie or show they're promoting, then titter nervously through the balance of the interview.

On "The Marriage Ref," stars finally have something fun and concrete to banter about: the absurd quarrels of married couples. Here's a husband who wants his stuffed dead dog displayed in the house, a wife who would like the dining room only to be used on Thanksgiving (the rest of the year it sits, fully decorated, but untouched), a husband who gets pedicures instead of spending time with his kids, a wife who wants her husband to stop taking off his wedding ring when he plays basketball or goes out with his friends.

"I think if you're going to stuff your dog, you should stuff it in either a useful or attractive position," Alec Baldwin remarks in the show's sneak preview.

"If he did not say 'shnooki' he might get it more," offers Tina Fey of one husband.

Later she adds, "Sometimes if a man is naturally hairy, and they remove too much hair? He looks like a hot dog."

Even Eva Longoria is funny on the show's full-hour premiere on Thursday night, admitting that she, too, keeps her dining room table fully adorned but unused year-round. Later, when Longoria refers to times when her husband, Tony Parker, sees her without makeup or a weave or her "chicken cutlet things" (presumably those adhesive push-up bra devices women wear with strapless dresses), Seinfeld interrupts to say, "You're the human equivalent of the formal dining room!"

Sorry, but I love this show. Yes, Tom Papa's affectations can be a little much sometimes. Yes, they should turn down the microphone when everyone is laughing. Yes, they should lose the dorky bit where Natalie Morales from NBC News sits in front of a computer and looks up information online. (We really don't need to know that 1,000 people nationwide stuff their pets, that pole dancing can burn up 250 calories per hour, or that dust is made up of human skin and dust mite excrement. If Tina Fey's eyes are glazing over? So are ours.)

But the rest? Married people, angry at each other? Celebrities, making fun of each other? Chicken cutlets? I'm in.

And guess who's on the show next week? Larry David, Madonna and Ricky Gervais. That's right, Madonna, our own personal queen of light and sound, the human equivalent of the refurbished, redecorated master bedroom suite with gigantic walk-in closet and Jacuzzi-tub-equibbed full-bath, will sit between attack dogs Larry David and Ricky Gervais, and discuss, of all things, marriage. That, my friend, is the very definition of must-see TV. 

In order to answer our own looming questions about Wootton, we spoke to him over the phone from London, which he says is quite dark and rainy, but there aren't really men in black trenchcoats lurking around every corner, anxious to slit your throat. We don't picture that anymore, though; thanks to Marc Wootton and Sasha Baron Cohen, these days we're pretty sure that London is filled with men in fake teeth and bad wigs, anxious to make us look like ignorant Americans!

If you wanted to explain to someone what the difference is between you and Sasha Baron Cohen, what would you say?

I don't know. I'm a massive fan of Sasha's work. We've worked with some of the same writers. In America inevitably there's going to be bigger comparisons drawn, because ... I don't know, how should I answer that?

Well, the aim is a little different.

I'm kind of exploring character and it feels like the characters are going on a real journey. If you're comparing it to Ali G in the USA, those are interviews. And "La La Land," hopefully, feels like more of a slice of real life, because I'm massively intrigued by people. So I'd hope that these would feel like less sort of crowbarring jokes into a scene, and more letting scenes unfold. I would hope there's an equal measure of comedy and drama, because inevitably with conflict there's going to always be drama.

You seem to go into these things so armed with ways of handling people and confusing them. It's so much more elaborate than just being alarming and weird.

You know, I'm spending quite a lot of hours with those people. That's another difference between Sasha and me that he tends to go into a situation and leave quite swiftly. I spend time getting under people's skin and letting the characters breathe in the real world. So sharing that journey out to those mountains [in the episode where Wootton's documentary filmmaker alter ego, Brendan Allen, films a couple of rock climbers] was a good few hours. Sat in a car, chewing the fat, talking.

That's exhausting! Isn't it hard to stay in character for that long?

No, it's great fun. Because you're getting paid at the end of the day to play and when we're little people, playing is just the best thing ever, isn't it? And then as we get older, we forget about playing.

How do you choose your victims? How do you find the right people to interact with your characters?

It's really difficult. There's no way you can do it without a group. I kind of create the characters first, with the writing team in London. Then we went out and we played around with a few of them. There were several characters, and we sort of refined it down to three. Although, Gary [Garner, an aspiring actor that Wootton plays on the show] was a bit of a last-minute swap-out because there was another character called Robin that we thought we were gonna do, and then when I went and actually started being Robin in the real world -- he was kind of like a man-child and he had these really weird shorts and this suit, a little bit too tight, and everything was a little bit weird. And I had a bowl haircut, like a a child's hair. So I wandered about as that character without cameras -- this is where Wootton's therapy comes in -- I'm just wandering around the streets of L.A., you know, going to into Nordstrom's and hanging out downtown and just seeing what the vibe's like. You have to do this with all the characters, just to make sure that your hair's believable and people are buying the teeth and the turns of phrase. Because if you can't operate like that, then there's no hope when you get two cameras and suddenly the whole crew and, you know, questions could get asked. So Robin failed at that test driving.

So people didn't buy him?

No, people bought him, actually, and were really a bit freaked out by him and thought he was a bit mentally ill. Although, I love a challenge, and if we do any more of these, I'd love to bring that character to life again, because he's really sort of close to my heart. He's based on one of my nieces ... and a bit of Daniel Johnston. Do you know [of] Daniel Johnston (the songwriter and artist)?

Yes, and people's reactions to him were always pretty interesting, if you saw that documentary on him, "The Devil and Daniel Johnston." People were either a little stunned by him or they took him under their wing.

He's got that thing going on. And he's a bit special, if you know what I mean.

The character Gary Garner is pretty great, too, because people seem to really want to help him understand Hollywood and the business, God knows why.

We took some of that innocence, and I think Gary's pretty charming, even though he's a complete douche, he's got that charming edge. As Ruta Lee [a real-life actress who agrees to mentor Gary] sort of points out quite nicely -- she's gorgeous, isn't she, Ruta? -- I love the way she puts Gary into his place and reacts to him in the way that she does.

You want a character who's going to bring that out in people, their nurturing sides and their disgust.

Yeah, I love that. I think that's really important, and I really hope that people get that we don't just want to hit people over the head with a comedy hammer or run into a park and shout at an old lady. It's kind of about meeting people and letting them call me out as an idiot. Because we could obviously edit it to make people look bad. But I'm hoping that people fall in love with Ruta. She almost echoes what the audience is thinking and what they would perhaps say to such a ridiculous person as Gary.

The assistant Gary hires is great that way, too, the way she warns Gary about watching out for people who might take advantage of him.

Yeah, she's great isn't she? I felt awful repeating her comments [as Gary Garner] about [how one guy was wearing a] cheap watch. Those are the times when you're in character, but you're thinking, "God, I feel bad." But then she just went for me, that stuff by the lift, "You are never going to make it!" I really thought she was just spectacular.

People are the interesting thing. When you meet strong characters like that, they're inspiring. And I think, going back to your original question, how do we come up with all those people? It's really difficult. It's not me, it's a lot of clever heads sitting around and going, "OK, what would work with this?" So we pick a few people out who we actually want to undermine. So some people like psychics I've got a bit of an issue with, and, therefore I'd like to think that we've perhaps undermined some of them and perhaps been a little mean to the right sorts of people. And then there are other people like Ruta who go on a different place on the board, and they're people that it's not about going there and upsetting them, it's about them putting my character in his place. 

Now where do the climbers fall on the scale of people you want to screw with and people you want to enjoy?

Oh, god. I don't want to screw with the climbing community! I know the climbing community are probably going to hate me, but, if it's any consolation to them, I spent quite a few hours, which we couldn't show because we had to turn off all our cameras, being heavily grilled by park rangers. It was awful, we were penned in, and we got our comeuppance for being naughty. At the very end of the day, once police had turned up, because there becomes a point as well when police have got you and you've got your ID and it's Brendan's [one of his fictional characters'] ID and you've got Brendan's phone, and you think, Hold on, we're not filming anymore, do I just stop and go, "It's me, I'm called Marc Wootton, and I'm from London"? It's really awkward. And obviously that got to a point where there were charges being pressed and really an inflamed situation, and then I do have to come clean and say, "I'm really sorry I've wasted a lot of people's time here."

So are the climbers standing there listening to this?

Yeah, because everyone's being arrested at that point, so you've got someone saying, "That guy tried to murder us!" and you've got me going, "No, I'm just trying to make a film," and blah blah blah. This one park ranger was a bit angry because, I think it was the end of his day and I think he was probably looking forward to going home and having some food with his family, bless his heart, and my camera crew is standing there, some older guys, grown-ups, and this park ranger is going, "You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

What happened when the climbers found out that you weren't really Brendan?

I think they were really relieved. I did give them a handshake at the end of the day.

Did they think it was funny?

I think they did because they were in a situation that they were wound up by and fearful of, and then there's the release of the realization.

And it's not just people you encounter who aren't in on the joke -- Kiki, Chico the driver, Ruta Lee are all real people who don't know this is fake. Did you tell them afterward, or are they just going to find out when it's on the air?

There's a real mixture of people being clever enough work it out for themselves, and other people who don't question anything. It's kind of up to the field producer [what to tell people]. Sometimes the penny drops for some people as we're leaving, because suddenly there's a bit of time and reflection, and then some people guess and other people are told.

The person you torture the most would have to be the border patrol volunteer that Brendan Allen films for hours. You keep telling him "We have to start over! We have to do another take!" because Brendan wants it to be one continuous shot.

Yeah, he's protecting your wonderful country's borders.

Did you ever feel sorry for him? He keeps agreeing to do 50, 60 takes. Did you ever feel guilty?

Well, no. I know that on camera he comes across as a lot nicer, because you only have the benefit of seeing him on our show, and he's actually been really carefully researched. You could well have a different opinion of him if you looked at the way he talks and treats and speaks to anyone who isn't American in his eyes. Because I'd read all of the material on him, I was very aware of who I was dealing with. There is a point on take 60 where you're thinking, "Does this guy deserve it?" But he is quite a militant fellow. He is a figure that we wanted to poke fun at.

I did wonder if there was a sociopath behind this show, honestly, because so many scenes end with confrontations and tears. I felt a little sorry for some of the psychics in particular, because they all get so fearful and uncomfortable around Shirley.

Well, it's for Showtime, and obviously we're creating it for Showtime's audience. Hopefully it takes a bit of thought to work out. I know what you're saying. I suppose, if you feel sorry for those people who are professing to speak to the dead. I don't know, there's nothing I can do about that.

Hey, there's a clear place for the sociopath on television. Some of the most entertaining people I've known were borderline sociopaths.

There's a big moral dilemma because the people making the show are obviously executive producers, researchers, they're all sensible folk who have a conscience, I suppose. Obviously sometimes there will be the odd person who gets upset or angry.

But they also signed something saying they're fine with being filmed.

Yes, you're picking people who are auditioning for that type of thing. I wouldn't be able to get out of bed and look at myself if we just grabbed some folk off the street and put them through this grueling day of madness.

The show itself is about aspiration. You have these three aspiring characters, and really, every single person who's on camera is in their own way aspiring, too, or they wouldn't be on camera. That's why L.A. is the perfect place for this show.

People find out that my mum's passed away and I've got an inheritance, and one of those producers says to me that for $300 he could get me on IMDB. There are these really weird low-feeders, and as you say, L.A. is such an interesting place, because there are so many people feeding off others, and there's a whole little economic system that exists that's just quite scary, that hopefully we touch on. I hope that people laugh and think and argue and so on. I would love to chat longer but I have to go and… well, work with autistic kids now.

Nice try.

No, really, I know that sounds like a joke, but Wednesdays I work with autistic children! It's true, actually! 

In just three episodes, Abed has evolved from a potentially cruel punch line into a nuanced, fascinating and, thank heaven, still hilarious character, one who observes that documentaries are “like real movies but with ugly people.” His frequent cluelessness is a rich source of comedy, but he keeps the upper hand by being the source of the joke instead of the butt of it.

Last week, Abed, spurred by a classmate, took an introductory filmmaking class. His new obsession threatened to alienate everyone in his life, particularly his conservative, immigrant father. But in a witty scene with just the right amount of pathos, Abed showed his dad his short film -- a weird, dark little take on his mother’s abandonment. He had, movingly, found a way of expressing himself. And then he said something offensive.

The pleasure of Pudi’s performance is the way he lets Abed be as utterly exasperating as he is bright and talented. He’s not the huggable romantic hero of “Adam”; he’s just another goofus in the ensemble. Watch Pudi rap in Spanish or try his hand (and foot) at crunking, and behold the joy of an actor being funny without making fun.