Be forewarned, though. The first scene — teenage daughter leaves house in slutty outfit — might give the impression that this is just another bad parade of parenting clichés. But don’t touch that remote, because things get very funny, very quickly, particularly from the moment that Phil (Ty Burrell), father of three, tries to act as if he speaks the same hip slang as his daughter’s new suitor.

“Let me meet this playa,” Phil growls at the boy, who just stares at him, dumbfounded. “Phil Dunfee, yo!” Then in a voice-over Phil explains. “It’s like that. You just stare down at them, let the eyes do the work. Your mouth might be saying, ‘We cool.’ But your eyes are like, ‘No, we not.’” It’s tough to do justice to just how ridiculous this scene becomes when Phil pulls a muscle in his back, falls down the stairs, and ends up being carried like a baby to the couch by the kid he’s trying to intimidate.

But the real stars of “Modern Family” are Cameron (Eric Stonestreet) and Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), Phil’s brother-in-law and his partner, who’ve just adopted a daughter from Vietnam. Like the best actors in a Christopher Guest film, these two are at once absurd enough and understated enough in their delivery that they don’t oversell their scenes.

Mitchell: So, Cam, that orphanage, it was all women. Maybe she can’t fall asleep unless she feels a woman’s shape?

Cameron: I suppose that’s possible.

Mitchell: So here. (Handing him the baby.)

Cameron: What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Cameron: (In a voice-over) Yes, I’ve gained a few extra pounds while we were expecting the baby. Which has been very difficult, but apparently your body does a nesting, very maternal, primal thing, where it retains nutrients, some sort of molecular physiology thing. But that’s science, you can’t fight it.

Along with Stonestreet and Ferguson, “Modern Family” has plenty of comedic talent behind it, from Ed O’Neill as the family patriarch to Sofia Vergara as his hot, much-younger Latina wife, Gloria, to Julie Bowen as Phil’s wife, Claire. Between the snappy writing, great comedic directing, and remarkable timing of all of the actors involved, “Modern Family” is one of those rare comedies that never feels awkward or corny as it’s winding up to a punch line.

Yes, of course the mockumentary style is everywhere right now. But isn’t it about time that family comedies started ripping off something a little more current than “According to Jim”? Instead of the usual family sitcom curse of clichés and bad “Full House” jokes, “Modern Family” captures the absurdities, quirks and freakish flaws of today’s extended family in ways that feel lively, unique and just dark and mean-spirited enough to be … well, accurate.

Fighting and families go together like boxed wine and Ho Hos, after all. But laughter and families? Those two haven’t come together on TV in a long, long time.

But once they do? It’s like science: You can’t fight it. 

It’s hard to fathom why Fox waited until last week to introduce “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” into its lineup. “Midseason replacement” doesn’t exactly have the clang of a ringing endorsement to it. Then again, it’s hard to fathom why most sitcoms aren’t even remotely funny by comparison. Maybe the sitcom universe is actually some kind of opposite land, where the jokes are meant to be predictable and the very special moments are a laugh riot. Maybe all the programming executives have been replaced by remote-controlled robots. Maybe tests have shown that people don’t want to laugh out loud during prime time and risk dislodging little bits of Stouffer’s frozen dinner from their mouths and send them flying across the room.

If you ask me, “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” is the only office comedy ever that really gets office humor; office humor being that giddy, loopy, unabashedly stupid humor that comes from a place of exhaustion, boredom and bottomless despair. Offices are rarely conveniently staffed with a Whitman’s Sampler of dysfunctional personalities — the narcissist, the bimbo, the buffoon. And even if they are, nobody stands around their workplace wittily putting each other down; they stand around their workplace with insincere smiles plastered across their faces dreaming up creative ways to smite each other.

Nobody who has ever sat through a three-hour meeting has done so without a well-developed coping strategy. For example, meetings go by a lot faster if you imagine the person sitting next to you suddenly ripped off their clothes, jumped on the conference table and belted out “Over the Rainbow.” That’s the beauty of having a job. Your body is trapped, but your mind is free to soar.

In the season’s first episode, Andy’s boss Jessica (the marvelously deadpan Paget Brewster) tells him and his colleagues that the company is offering a finder’s fee of $3,000 to anyone who helps recruit a nonwhite technical writer to the firm. “A few days later we met in Jessica’s office to help a nonwhite person, who, traditionally, we wouldn’t have cared about,” Andy explains.

Andy’s co-workers, Keith (James Patrick Stuart), Wendy (Irene Molloy) and Byron (Jonathan Slavin), each make the case for their candidate. “Ted has five years experience,” Andy says, “and he’s been black his whole life, which has not been easy in this racist society.”

“Well,” says Wendy, “my candidate is a woman from Saudi Arabia. She watched as her mother was stoned to death for driving a car — a bumper car.”

After listening to everybody’s pitch, Jessica decides to go with Wendy’s candidate over Byron’s blind white guy and Keith’s “gay, one-armed, Native American little person” who, unfortunately, is not a technical writer. Then she takes the opportunity to add, “Guys, I just want to say that race is a very uncomfortable subject, but only by talking about it like we’ve been doing, have we proven — just how uncomfortable it really is.”

Andy’s candidate, Ted, winds up getting the job after the Saudi Arabian woman visits Saudi Arabia and is “stoned to death for having luggage with wheels,” and Andy is free to fulfill his dream of buying a second TV for his bedroom — one for when he is lying on his back and one for when he is lying on his side. (“I know, it’s crazy,” Jessica tells the disappointed Wendy. “But I bet in 10 years we’re all doing it.”)

The experience turns sour when Andy makes a few cracks about the Irish in front of Ted, who is black but proud of his Gaelic heritage. Ted complains to Jessica, who defends Andy against accusations of racism, then fails to see the problem when she realizes he wasn’t talking about African-Americans. A black human resources person has a similar reaction, and soon Andy, Jessica and the human resources manager wind up in sensitivity training, where a man standing at the front of the room greets them with the following: “Jews are cheap. Blacks are lazy. Asians can’t drive. Puerto Ricans steal.”

“Wow,” Andy thinks. “It was a powerful way to get our attention. Pointing out all the horrible, hurtful, stupid stereotypes. This guy was good.”

He does seem good, until another man walks in and says, “Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Mr. Stevens, your instructor.” He turns to the man at the front of the room. “Who are you?”

“Hey, Duane Farley. My guinea boss told me I have to take this seminar.”

In this week’s episode, Andy figured out that the perfect man he has found for Jessica is actually a set of identical twins (whom she later describes as “Talky” and “Humpy”) that are sharing her behind her back. Byron hires a prostitute to change the dressing on his wound because private nurses are too expensive. But that’s not really all that happens.

Actually, it doesn’t really matter much what happens. “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” understands how secondary plot is in sitcoms, and takes full advantage of the loophole. The show could never be accused of being realistic, but it is oddly true to life. Nothing ever really happens in the big picture, but it’s the awkward moments, the dark ironies and the little, imaginary things that keep life interesting.

And unlike most sitcoms, “Andy Richter” knows how to deliver a message in a way that doesn’t make you want to spray the set with bullets. Here’s one: “All I know is, I hate racists,” the glum Byron tells Andy after he returns from sensitivity training feeling a little too sensitive about race. “I hate everything about them; their music, their food, their so-called religion. The way their men are so skinny and their wives are so fat. But mostly, I hate the way they judge people based on tired stereotypes.”

At center stage of the show is actress
Amy Sedaris, who plays the rumpled
chum-pot Jerri Blank. Blank is a former
teen runaway who, after a lifetime of
prostitution and drug abuse, has
returned to high school as a freshman at
age 46. With the possible exception of a
special trailer park edition of “Cops,”
“Strangers” is the only place one is
likely to encounter someone like Jerri
Blank.

The character represents an amalgam of
the fringe dwellers and human ruin that
have held the imagination of Sedaris
over the years. “The more serious they
are and the more tragic they are, the
more I’m drawn to them,” she admits.
“I’m usually the only person who’ll ever
talk to them and they tell me
everything.”

First, there was Bobbie. “I lived over
this woman in Chicago and she was just
trouble,” relates Sedaris. “I mean, she
had tattoos that she had tried to take
off herself. She also always thought she
was smelling formaldehyde. She’d call up
and say, ‘Hey, this is Bobbie downstairs
… Do I smell formaldehyde?’

“And she’d always drink too much and
fall down. I’d constantly see her with a
broken leg or a broken arm.” While
Bobbie proved an undeniably rich source
for any performer to draw from, Sedaris
also found inspiration from a late-’60s
drug prevention film. “We found this
documentary of this woman in the ’60s
who was a drug addict and a prostitute
and she’d go to high schools and talk to
students. The woman’s name is Flurrie.”
Sedaris adds, “She looks like Michael
Dukakis. She’s horrific looking.”

The final touch came when Sedaris
approached the wardrobe people at Comedy
Central during pre-production of the
series and told them, “I just want to
dress like someone who owns snakes.”
They responded with an assortment of
outfits that overpoweringly evoked
slutty ’70s sleaze. Jerri Blank was
born.

Sans the saddlebag thighs and prison
tattoos that help define her TV
character, Sedaris herself is pretty and
diminutive. She is also considerably
more laid-back, several RPMs slower than
her TV persona, which comes off as a
sort of manic, perverse Lucille Ball. Of
her recent appearance on Conan O’Brien
she groaned, “God, with all that
fidgeting and unfocused energy I had, I
looked like a damn monkey. So annoying.”

Some call it quality entertainment.

Sedaris’ Greenwich Village apartment is
tidy, nearly sizable by Manhattan
standards and distinguished by several
personal decorative touches. Choice cuts
of plastic meat are placed throughout
the living room. The TV is adorned with
a large plastic turkey. “I covered it
with foil for Thanksgiving and the
people who came over were extremely
disappointed when they found out it
wasn’t real.” There is also a stuffed
squirrel featured prominently on a
coffee table. “I really like squirrels.
My whole family does. We all like small
woodland creatures.”

Hard to say why it comes as a surprise
that Sedaris and her family hail from
North Carolina. But it is her home state
nonetheless. When asked what her life
might have been like if she had remained
there instead of defecting to the North,
Sedaris quickly responds, “If I had
stayed in North Carolina, I’d be wearing
ruffles or a uniform. You know,
waitressing and taking care of a stroke
victim … I probably would have been
dating him, too, by now.”

Not surprisingly, Sedaris grew up in an
open, permissive household where
creative expression was never
discouraged. “We all did our little
plays in our house,” she says. “For a
long time I had an imaginary classroom.
I’d come home from school, put on my
mom’s high heels and go right to the
back bedroom where I had a wall that was
one big chalkboard and I would teach my
imaginary students. This went on for
years and years. Then I realized I was
too old to do this, so then I just kind
of did it to myself in my head. I still
do that — like if I’m making an omelet
I pretend it’s a cooking show and I’m
teaching someone.”

Sedaris’ lifelong fascination with
costumes and wigs has also been lovingly
nurtured. “In the first grade I got my
first wig. It was a fall and I still
have it,” she says, gesturing to her
closet. “Since then I get two wigs for
Christmas usually. When I was a kid I’d
go shopping with my dad every Friday
night and I wore a different wig every
time I went,” she adds.

True to her craft, Sedaris would remain
in character the entire time she and her
father were at the grocery store. “It
was mostly neighbors that I would
imitate. I think most kids probably did
that stuff, I just stuck with it,”
Sedaris says with a shrug.

The subject of wigs has Sedaris bounding
off to another room. She returns with a
photo she had done with the help of a
makeup artist friend. It is a large
color print of Sedaris as Angie
Dickinson at the peak of her “Police
Woman” period. The likeness is
staggering. Sedaris is a convincing
blond, and with a gold turtleneck and
pistol poised, the transformation is
utter and complete.

It’s not merely an act of cosmetological
genius; Sedaris herself is totally
committed to her dream role. “I want to
play Angie Dickinson … I want to do
‘Police Woman,’” she says wistfully. “I
want to be so beautiful that I’m ugly.”

For Sedaris, the urge to transform
herself in front of a camera seems too
great to overcome. “If someone wanted me
to pose in a bikini for the cover of
Vanity Fair, I’d make sure I’d have some
scars or grow a hairline. To look in the
camera and act like you’re beautiful is
too hard for me.” She continues:
“Photographers always seem to appreciate
when you come in with ideas. I mean,
I’ll do what they want, but half the
time they don’t know what they want. So
I come and say, ‘OK, I got this
prosthetic leg, what can we do with
it?’”

Sedaris did in fact pose with a
prosthetic leg for Index magazine with
remarkable results. “That fake leg fit
me perfect,” she says. “It must have
been for a little boy.”

With her TV series in summer reruns,
Sedaris can return to her other
passions: stage work and baking. After a
two-year hiatus, she has agreed to write
and perform a play once again with her
brother, David, the author of popular
short story and essay collections such
as “Barrel Fever” and href="/march97/sneaks/sneak970305.html">“Naked,” and a frequently featured
commentator on the nationally syndicated
radio show href="/people/lunch/1999/07/16/glass/index.html">“This American Life.”

Exactly what their upcoming
collaboration will entail is a mystery.
“We have no idea what the play’s going
to be about, what sort of characters
it’ll feature. Nothing,” Sedaris says.
The only certainty at this point is that
it will be opening in six months.

Judging from their previous stage
collaborations, it does promise to be
engaging. Earlier Sedaris and Sedaris
works, such as “Stitches,” centered
around the story of a young woman who
had her face disfigured by a boat
propeller only to eventually star in her
own sitcom.

Then there was “One Woman Shoe,” where
welfare moms had to perform onstage in
order to qualify for their benefits.
Sedaris adds the following to her
risumi: “I’ve done my
little brother before as a donkey in a
play at Lincoln Center. I had overalls
and had a hat on. It involved animals in
the forest and had witches in it.”

One constant in each of these
productions has been the recurring
character best known as Piglet. Like
some knocked-up malcontent working the
Wendy’s drive-through, Piglet is the
embodiment of the foulmouthed hardened
teen everybody knows and loves. “She’s
in every play my brother and I do
together; we just change her name for
each play,” Sedaris explains. “You know,
you can’t do a character like that on TV
cause every word is fuckin’, fuckers,
fuckin’, fuck. Every word is a cuss
word. Audiences just go nuts over her.”

At most of the theater productions she
appears in, Sedaris also performs double
duty: acting on stage and selling
cupcakes in the lobby after the show.
She also specializes in cheese balls. “I
always sell out of whatever I bring.”

Why is she compelled to peddle baked
goods after a show? “I just love making
money. Cash, you know? It’s such a great
feeling.” Besides, Sedaris adds,
“baking is something to do at 3 in the
morning. If you’re bored, bake.”

But the growing popularity of “Strangers
With Candy” might just cut into Sedaris’
cupcake production. Several notables
have expressed interest in doing the
show. “ href="/people/feature/2000/01/26/janeane/index.html">Janeane Garofalo wants
to do the show again and Winona Ryder
has expressed an interest. I’ve heard
that href="/people/bc/2000/02/22/cher/index.html">Cher and href="/ent/music/feature/1999/04/27/waits/index.html">Tom Waits are big fans
of the show, too.”

Asked about performers she admires,
Sedaris says, “Clint Howard and that guy
from href="/ent/movies/1997/10/17boogie.html">‘Boogie Nights’ with the big
forehead that looks like an ax went
through it [John C. Reilly]. They both
kinda look like cave dwellers –
Cro-Magnons with big ol’ hearts.”

Despite its growing cachet among
celebrities, the double-barrel bizarre
nature of “Strangers With Candy” may
never play in the Midwest, but cult
status is OK with Sedaris. “It’s not a
show for everyone,” she says.

As for what to expect on “Strangers”
next season, it’s anyone’s guess. Except
for one thing. “I want to do a Ben
Franklin episode,” announces Sedaris.
“You know, bring him back from the past.
I turned on the TV and saw an episode of
‘Bewitched’ where they did that. Darren
was having some company over and there
was Ben Franklin standing in the living
room and messing with a lamp. I want Ben
Franklin on my show!”

I know what he means. And you will too, when you watch “Homicide: The Movie,” which airs Feb. 13 on NBC, and “Mary and Rhoda” (no last names necessary), running Monday on ABC. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” closed up shop almost 23 years ago and “Homicide: Life on the Street” was canceled by NBC in May. But the characters of both series have apparently been very busy carrying on their pretend lives somewhere in the ether, out of our view, all this time. And now they’re back in our living rooms with tales of near-death miracles and being called to the light by Joe Friday and Lucy and Granny Clampett.

OK, I made that part up. But this practice of bringing defunct shows back for “closure” (always, conveniently, during sweeps period) gives me the creeps. I mean, you’ve got the reruns, what more can you ask for? When a successful, long-running series flatlines, let it go with dignity, I say. Or else you’ll end up with something freakish and unnatural. Something like “Mary and Rhoda.”

“Mary Tyler Moore,” which ran on CBS from 1970 to 1977, was one of the least preachy sitcoms in history, which was remarkable because it dealt with some of the most serious themes in sitcom history, including female independence, sexism in the workplace, divorce, alcoholism, racism, infidelity, the social stigma of “spinsterhood” and, of course, death itself. (Chuckles, we hardly knew ye.)

This was a sophisticated comedy for sophisticated adults, but watching it in rerun now, it’s amazing to see how light and unforced it is, how delightfully airy, almost ethereal, the jokes are — even broadly drawn characters like Ted Baxter and Sue Ann Nivens float their punch lines on wisps of mischief. “Mary Tyler Moore” never hit you over the head with its own importance, never played up or referred to Mary Richards’ career-woman role-model status outside the tube. You can’t say the same for the thuddingly self-congratulatory “Murphy Brown” (regarded by some as “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” of the ’80s) or the jarringly self-aware “Ally McBeal” (aka “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” of the ’90s).

But “Mary and Rhoda” is as wrongheaded as it could be. The movie is a plodding, preachy mess of feel-good Oprah-meets-Lifetime platitudes about being strong and wise and following your bliss. Oh, yeah, and Mary and Rhoda are moms now — they each have one college-age daughter whom they’re driving crazy with their overprotectiveness and career coaching. Clearly, the character credited with putting a friendly sitcom face on ’70s feminism has been through some heavy changes. Explaining why she quit her post-WJM job as a high-ranking producer at ABC News to raise her daughter, Mary declares, “I’d had it with having it all … Born-again mother here!” Somewhere, Phyllis Lindstrom is purring, “I told you so.”

“Mary and Rhoda” was originally intended to launch a comeback series, but Moore and the producers couldn’t agree on a concept. And it shows. The movie has none of the graceful grown-up comedy that distinguished the old series. But it has lots of predictable, hoary generation-gap jokes as Mary and Rhoda try to make it (after all) in New York City.

Mary, who is a congressman’s widow, and Rhoda, who has divorced husband No. 2, land reentry-level jobs where they’re the oldest people in a sea of callow youth. Mary is a producer on a tabloid TV newscast, trying valiantly to educate her smarmy young boss about journalistic ethics and values; there’s a clunky dramatic subplot about her compassionate handling of a news story about a teenage murderer that seems to have wandered in from a “Lou Grant” reunion movie. Former window dresser Rhoda, who’s trying to launch a new career as a photographer, finds herself in the humiliating position of gofer for a trendy fashion photographer. (Naturally, on her first day at work, Rhoda tries to force-feed a twig-thin model a muffin.)

Moore never really looks relaxed here, never really recaptures the essence of Mary — maybe because writer Katie Ford has turned Mary’s old “spunk” into a less charming pigheadedness and her klutziness into mere ineptitude. And the scene where Mary expresses scary, purse-lipped displeasure at her daughter Rose’s (Joie Lenz) career decision is truly hair-raising; I, for one, don’t want to believe that motherhood turned our warm, reasonable Mary into Moore’s ice matriarch from “Ordinary People.”

Valerie Harper’s Rhoda Morgenstern Gerard Rousseau is, however, exactly as she’s always been. Swathed in long flowing cover-ups and layers of scarves, Rhoda continues cracking wise as the pre-Monica Lewinsky Jewish single gal with food issues: “After Jean-Pierre left me, I went back to my first love — but you can only eat for so long.” Ba-doom. In the Great Sitcom Beyond, mores, attitudes and priorities may change with the decades, but shtick is forever.

As for “Homicide: The Movie,” it plays like a two-hour curtain call, with all the cast members from the show’s six-year run returning to give their characters — even the ones who were killed off years ago — a final bow. Not that they don’t deserve one — NBC denied the show a proper send-off when it axed the series before a tidy finale could be written.

In the episode that did air in May 1999, Detective Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), soul-sick since a vicious serial killer he’d captured had been freed on a technicality, takes a sudden sabbatical and secretly tracks down and executes the guy. Despite a mind-blowing, speed-of-light highlight reel of the series’ history that streaked by as Bayliss prepared to take his leave, the episode felt too abrupt and left too many loose ends hanging to stand as the last will and testament of this unforgettably tough-minded and literate cop show.

Written by series stalwarts Tom Fontana, James Yoshimura and Eric Overmyer and directed by Jean de Segonzac, “Homicide: The Movie” (if this one does well, there are rumors of more “Homicide” movies to come) doesn’t do a bad job of devising a reason for bringing 20 of the show’s characters together. Lt. Al Giardello (Yaphet Kotto), who’s the front-runner in the Baltimore mayoral election, has been shot and critically wounded by a would-be assassin at a campaign rally. And, as fans of the show know, any cop who ever worked for the gruff yet beloved “G” would put his life on the line to find the scumbag who shot him.

But, soon after that, the premise gets unwieldy, unbelievable and even faintly ridiculous, as the core characters of the series’ peerless first couple of seasons — Bayliss; Frank Pembleton (Andri Braugher), who’s now a lecturer in ethics at a Jesuit college; Stan Bolander (Ned Beatty), who’s retired and on the bottle; Detective John Munch (Richard Belzer), who quit the force to become a sex crimes detective in New York (Belzer went to “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” after “Homicide” was canceled); Sgt. Kay Howard (Melissa Leo), now working the fugitive squad; and Detective Meldrick Lewis (Clark Johnson), who never left the homicide unit — rush to the station house like aging superheroes pulling on their tights for one last round-up. I’m no expert on police procedure, but I seriously doubt that two retirees, a former employee of the department and a flake on sabbatical would be given the kind of investigative leeway Pembleton, Bolander, Munch and Bayliss get here.

Having said that, I admit that it is pretty great to see the original cast members (many of whom had earlier left the show) falling so easily into sync again; the movie defers to them, giving only token screen time to latter-day cast members like Michael Michele, Callie Thorne and Jon Seda. The meat of the story is divided between the most intriguing of the newbies, Giancarlo Esposito’s Mike Giardello, who stands watch at G’s bedside trying to convince himself that his inscrutable dad has been proud of him, and Pembleton and Bayliss, who pair up again to work the case as if no time has gone by.

The Pembleton and Bayliss scenes, filled with exquisitely conveyed unfinished emotional business, are a logical — and inevitable — climax to their relationship and to the “Homicide” saga itself. In the movie, it becomes clear that Bayliss, with his moral confusion (he never got over his first case, the unsolved murder of a little girl named Adena Watson, because he never got over the desire for revenge it stirred in him), and Pembleton, with his unwavering moral certainty, were put in each other’s path for a reason. Their final scene together, when the guilt-riddled Bayliss pleads for Pembleton’s forgiveness, is intense and heartbreaking; it’s not pretty, but it’s right. It’s almost ruined, though, a couple of moments later, by the movie’s jaw-droppingly derivative and hokey ending. I won’t give anything away, except to say, Move over Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Granny Clampett and Joe Friday — you’ve got company.

Barks Dragon, reluctantly removing the cell phone from his
ear as he strides across the lot to confront the poor
nobody, “While you’ve admirably restrained yourself from
peeing in the Cobb salad over the years, I’ve made 10 motion
pictures that have earned this studio a billion dollars.
Unfortunately for you, I am the employee of the
[bleeping] century!”

You could really hate Peter Dragon, with his hipster suits
and his arrogant strut and his bully-boy eyes, if Mohr
(“Go,” “Jerry Maguire”)
wasn’t such a thoroughly likable bastard. And if Mohr didn’t betray a glimmer of insecurity
in those bully’s eyes. And if the torrents of sarcastic
abuse that Dragon spews at everyone weren’t so viciously
funny. And if Dragon wasn’t surrounded by big shots and
hustlers even more poisonously cynical and ethically
bankrupt than he is. “Nice guys finish last,” goes the
show’s Green Day theme song, and at first you think, sure,
that’s gotta be Dragon’s motto. But by the end of the first
episode, after Dragon reveals a tiny possibility of
humanity, you realize that Dragon really may not be rotten
enough to finish first. He’s only a brat, not Satan.

“Action” was created in the paranoia-soaked, entertainment
biz image of “The Larry Sanders Show” (Thompson and Silver
originally took this show to HBO, but negotiations fell
apart), and it’s a little disorienting to see its bawdy
humor and niche-y premise on a non-cable network. “Action”
still has a few bugs to work out, judging from the first
episode — the cute musical commentary has to go, and Dragon
and his muse, hooker Wendy Ward (Illeana Douglas), meet in
disappointingly farcical sitcom fashion. But “Action” is
still the most original new sitcom of the season. Nasty, fun
and pop-culturally incisive, it’s Fox’s best live-action
comedy in way too many years.

And, yes, I realize that “incisive” may not have been the
word that sprang to mind when you read the aforementioned
descriptions of dirty dialogue and pee jokes. But
“Action” is broadcast TV’s first satire in a long time that
contains, you know, actual satire. Take Thompson’s
“Naked Truth,” about a National Enquirer-type tabloid, for
instance. It never went after tabloid culture or celebrity
vanity as hard as it should have, and when Thompson left
after one season and the show moved from ABC to NBC, the
thing collapsed into a cookie-cutter workplace comedy. And
Al Franken’s recent NBC flop, “Lateline,” attempted a TV
news parody, but was merely a toothless embarrassment.

But “Action” (the pilot, anyway) takes its shots at Hollywood
without fear and without obvious network interference (well,
except for the bleeps). Dragon’s projects are deliriously
awful; they’re parodies of the type of action movies Silver
makes (and the type the clean-up-Hollywood brigade decries). Dragon
buys scripts with titles like “Beverly Hills Gun Club,” and
his big Christmas release is a “Die Hard” stand-in called
“Slow Torture,” which he describes this way: “I have Harvey
Keitel pummeling Winona Ryder’s face with a tire iron –
it’s not exactly a women’s picture.”

There are references (none of them flattering) to big stars;
Keanu Reeves
(fresh from the Silver-produced “The Matrix”)
shows up in a cameo, getting a hand job from Wendy at a
movie premiere. There’s a bald, intimidating power player
who bears a strong resemblance from the neck up to former
Fox chairman Barry Diller (from the waist down, this
character is known as “Anaconda” — in “Action,” big penises
equal big power). In the pilot’s most memorable scene,
Dragon listens incredulously while a squirrelly talent agent
pitches him the services of O.J. Simpson, making the
argument that “little children in Calcutta know his face …
the name is more recognizable than ‘Tom Hanks.’” Replies
Dragon, “OK, but to be fair, Tom Hanks refuses to go that
extra mile and hack his wife to death!”

The O.J. scene, borderline tasteless but gaspingly funny,
could serve as new Fox Entertainment president — and former
“South Park”-touting Comedy Central chief — Doug Herzog’s
calling card. But that scene, in which Dragon turns Simpson’s agent
down, also suggests that the producer has a drop of a conscience –
and in Hollywood, that makes him the equivalent of Jimmy
Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” It also makes him
dangerously vulnerable and, maybe, worth caring about.
Dragon definitely is a soft touch; he employs his bleary
Uncle Lonnie (Buddy Hackett, of course) as his security
guard and chauffeur, and you can almost see the top layer of
his tough-guy armor melt away when he learns that Wendy is a
former hugely popular child star who lost everything to
cocaine and booze. Now clean, she considers being a
prostitute to the stars something of a comeback.

Because Wendy makes like a good sport to help avert a public
relations disaster at the Hollywood premiere of “Slow
Torture,” and because she’s not afraid to confirm Dragon’s
suspicion that the movie stinks, he makes her his unofficial
script reader and advisor. There’s a sparky chemistry
between Mohr’s Peter Dragon and Douglas’ Wendy; she’s just the
sort of clear-eyed, maternal protector this self-absorbed
lost boy needs to help him find his way through Neverland.
He doesn’t want to grow up. But he will.