It’s mid-December in Brooklyn, and Gervais is hard at work on the final day of shooting for “Ghost Town,” a romantic comedy due in theaters this September. Alongside actors Greg Kinnear and Téa Leoni, Gervais stars as a misanthropic dentist whose near-death experience leaves him with special powers of perception and caught in a wacky love triangle reaching beyond the grave. This is rather a departure from the kind of material with which the comedy whiz made his mark — two acclaimed TV series, “The Office” and “Extras,” which sent up workplace and celebrity inanity by way of brutally funny satire.

Although it’s been two months and a rare long stint away from his home in England, Gervais says he loves spending time in New York City, the world’s primo fondue pot for pop culture. He is characteristically jovial about his first lead role in a Hollywood film. But this production is a different pile of string than the TV projects that brought him international fame. The scene at hand will require several more takes and a little postproduction magic to coax the hound’s compliance.

Gervais looks anxious as he steps over to view the footage on a nearby monitor and begins suggesting how the different takes might be cobbled together. He catches himself: “Look at me. I’m such a control freak!” He seems at once excited and agitated with this attempted transition from cult phenom to movie star. His TV success has already led to side roles in several Hollywood productions, but the forthcoming movie promises to plaster his mug on full-page ads across America.

Even so, maybe it’s the pampered pooch who’s acting the prima donna here.

“Yeah, it’s tough,” Gervais muses. “He was never going to bark and I knew it. He just wasn’t going to do it.”

A bit more on this point, before we get to chatting at length about his improbable TV career and emerging Hollywood trajectory.

“Have you worked with animals much before?”

“Only in porn,” he quips. His deadpan look cracks open with that signature thousand-watt grin, the one punctuated by the pointy incisors and the high, impish guffaw.

It’s an apt moment. Gervais has long frolicked at the edges of taste, heckling what he calls “broad comedy” and insisting that he does creative work only on his own terms. He says flat out that he doesn’t want any dummies in his audience. (The misery of selling out to a mainstream audience was a central theme of “Extras.”) Yet he loves American pop culture and admits to indulging regularly in watching “reality TV.” And he is eager to make a bigger splash across the pond — here he is, wrapping work on what by all appearances is an archetypal Hollywood tale.

Indeed, as he stands at the Hollywood crossroads, Ricky Gervais also stands as something of a paradox. Shortish and rotund, he makes up in comedic charisma what he lacks in leading-man looks. He’s a genial and witty conversationalist, zinging one-liners like ammo fired from a toy gun and then giggling along with you as you duck and dodge. But can the unlikely middle-aged maverick — who favors uncomfortable humor but only jumped into comedy in his late 30s — really make the leap to Hollywood movie star? And why, exactly, does he care to try?

If it’s not so much about seeing his “big fat face” on the screen, as Gervais goes out of his way to put it, the answer may lie in his zeal for collaboration. It starts with the writing and spills into all manner of revising and tinkering, a hallmark of his carefully sculpted TV creations. Even when peppering a comedy with blatant gags, he says, “It’s not the jokes that keep you hooked. It’s the story that keeps you hooked.”

After television success delivered Hollywood scripts to his doorstep, Gervais resisted for a while. “A project really has to offer so much potential and possibility,” he says. He found the script for “Ghost Town” distinctively funny. Additionally, director David Koepp, who also co-wrote the movie, offered the kind of access Gervais craved. “We fiddled with the script together for a couple of days and then I knew I was definitely in,” Gervais says. “I feel like I was part of it from the beginning.”

The Brit’s approach impressed Koepp, who has written scripts for several Hollywood blockbusters. “You want input from your actors; they’re not really doing their job if they’re not actively involved,” Koepp says. “For someone who has written so much himself, Ricky was an interesting combination of wanting to play the part as written on the page but also paraphrasing and going off on riffs.”

As the day sprawls forward inside the cavernous Brooklyn studio, Gervais looks a little weary. It’s been 12-hour days, here and around the city, for eight weeks straight. But the gleam stays in his eye. “I love the hard work,” he says. “Winston Churchill said, ‘If you find a job you love, you’ll never work again in your life’ — and it’s true.” Gervais ponders this for a second. “He also said, ‘Give me some more brandy.’”

The laugh that bubbles up when he delivers such lines is familiar to actor Aasif Mandvi, who has a supporting role in “Ghost Town.” “We’ve had a hard time getting through the scenes because we kept cracking up,” says Mandvi, who gained notice as a correspondent on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” the popular fake newscast on Comedy Central. “Ricky is a great person to bounce stuff off of because he likes to play. I love to work with people who just want to explore the possibilities like that. Sometimes you come up with crap, but sometimes you come up with gold. It makes it very alive.”

“I get very excited about creating stuff just from scratch,” Gervais says. “You’ve got to be in this work for the right reasons — being rich and famous ultimately doesn’t mean anything.”

It would be hard to overstate Gervais’ fortune and fame, both due primarily to “The Office,” which he wrote and directed with his longtime creative partner Stephen Merchant. Although the series didn’t get much attention when it first aired in the U.K. in 2001, it soon became one of the most successful television comedies in British history, winning prestigious awards, selling more than 4 million DVDs and catching fire with audiences beyond U.K. shores.

Set in the dreary town of Slough, England, the meticulous portrait of workplace tedium, insecurity and latent depravity starred Gervais as David Brent, a pitifully self-inflated middle manager of a paper company. He was a transfixing spectacle of awkward bravado and inappropriate conduct — a royal putz of a guy who, acutely aware of the faux-documentary’s camera, was desperate to impress more than just his employees with his off-color jokes and bungled truisms. The ensemble cast was equally vivid, both in their aversion to David Brent and their own moronic and degenerate behavior.

Reaching across the Atlantic, the series won two Golden Globe awards and rare critical reverence. It’s not often that you see a top TV critic gushing like this: “Nobody who has seen the BBC series ‘The Office’ has anything bad to say about it, and there’s a reason for that: It’s perfect,” wrote the New Yorker’s Nancy Franklin in October 2004. “It’s a comedy that doesn’t make you laugh, and at times it is close to unbearable; some people like it so much that they can’t watch it. That’s how good it is.”

Yet, although the show found a strong cult following here, Gervais is hardly a household name in America. Survey the pop-culturally savvy in, say, New York or San Francisco, and you’ll find devotees. But mention “The Office” to most American TV viewers and you’re likely to hear only about NBC’s hit spinoff of the same name, set in Scranton, Penn., and starring funnyman Steve Carrell. Ricky Gervais? Who the hell is he?

The man who inadvertently put Scranton on the map (he’s an executive producer of the NBC version) followed a circuitous path to stardom. Gervais, now 47, grew up in a suburb of Reading, in southern England. In the early 1980s he attended University College London, where he studied biology and philosophy and met his longtime girlfriend, TV producer Jane Fallon. He played in a pop group that blipped briefly on the U.K. charts, worked various odd jobs (including in an office, of course) and got into music and entertainment management.

By the mid-1990s Gervais landed a job at London radio station Xfm, where he and Stephen Merchant first met. The two began writing sketches together, incubating what would become the demo for “The Office.”

Gervais describes a rare creative partnership with Merchant. “Stephen and I trust each other so much. We never put anything in unless we both want it,” he says. “There’s no compromise, really. It feels like I’m always getting my own way, and maybe he feels the same.” To anyone who has ever collaborated on creating anything, this sounds far-fetched — until you rewatch “The Office,” a series so well crafted that every detail, from an actor’s glance to the grace note of a clacking copy machine, counts.

“We wanted every word and nuance to be real and to mean something,” says Gervais. “I’ve seen so much stuff that’s been ruined by writers’ getting carried away with getting a good joke in. We threw jokes on the floor if they made someone look too clever or undermined the story.”

The success of the series uncorked things for the comedy duo. Subsequent work included a weekly podcast that was downloaded by millions, and their next TV series, “Extras,” the wickedly funny torching of celebrity culture. That series, also starring Gervais, featured A-list cameos from the likes of Kate Winslet, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro and David Bowie, who delivered a particularly astonishing moment of musical degradation. Gervais also wrote and appeared in an episode of “The Simpsons,” and he delved into stand-up comedy, touring with shows across the U.K. — although in this realm he has drawn more mixed reviews. In May 2007 he did his first U.S. show, at Madison Square Garden, as part of David Bowie’s High Line Festival. He’s bringing his latest show to Los Angeles and New York for several nights starting July 11, a string of performances also to be filmed for an HBO special.

“I like the romance of doing stand-up,” he says. “It’s the last bastion of self-censorship outside the novel, and that excites me. I can go onstage and say anything I want.” He laughs at the notion. “Well, I pretty much do that on the telly as well. I guess I can get away with it because I put forward a good argument.”

Gervais admits that taking a shot at stand-up was also about feeling like he needed to earn his spurs. “I suppose I felt guilty about walking into a great job like ‘The Office,’ you know? Most comedians slog around for 20 years before they get a part in a sitcom or a chance to write something.”

Although his second effort, “Extras,” gained only a modest U.S. audience, it too raked in the accolades, including Emmys in 2006 and 2007 and a Golden Globe in early 2008, shortly after the series finale aired. In that feature-length special, Gervais’ main character (the self-absorbed actor Andy Millman) had a surprisingly dramatic turn, leading one American TV critic to suggest that an evolving Gervais could be the next Bill Murray or Jim Carrey.

Still, it’s unclear whether Gervais can carve out artistic autonomy in Hollywood. He’s been criticized for a couple of side roles that, by his own admission, he took primarily for the chance to work with some of his film heroes. The big-budget “Stardust,” for example, put him in a scene opposite Robert De Niro but implicated him in a schlocky fantasy-adventure that came off like a bad Terry Gilliam imitation for the Disney Channel.

Gervais greatly admires American film and television. “All of my favorite comedies and dramas are coming out of America,” he says. “The ‘British film industry’ is nearly an oxymoron.” As for the reality TV zeitgeist, he says, “Yeah, we’ve got too much of it in Britain as well. But I do watch a lot of the shows coming back over from here — ‘Top Chef,’ ‘Fit Club,’ ‘The Apprentice,’ ‘American Idol.’

“I think American TV has even been beating film over the past few years,” he adds, citing “The Sopranos” as a favorite. “I love the way that TV can relax now. It’s audacious to plan for an audience to get into a show after the third episode.”

His own audacity has led some in the media to treat him like an animal — a variety of them, actually. He has been compared to a hyena (his laugh), a tiger (his grin), a walrus (his shape) and a puppy dog (his disposition), among others. Sometimes it has been done in admiration, sometimes not. And some critics have accused him of being a one-trick pony, playing essentially the same character in everything he does.

Gervais appears to take it in stride. For him there is the legitimate press (“There are some wonderful journalists in Britain and America”) and there is the gutter press (“I don’t care whether Britney Spears is a good mother or not — it’s just cheap speculation”). He has made use of the latter: One memorable segment in “Extras” mocked tabloid reporters who set off fact-free frenzies across the media.

“No doubt about it: American press is nowhere near as bad as the British press with this,” Gervais laughs. “You’re amateurs. You have bitchy Internet people here … Well, they get jobs on big papers in England!”

But never mind the paparazzi and the pundits; after two months of toil in New York, what interests Gervais is tweaking the taste of American audiences. Will his sensibility come off smooth like Velveeta or pungent like so much Stilton?

Aasif Mandvi, who also grew up in England, thinks Gervais can appeal more widely here. “Just as a fan, I’m excited he’s making this leap to Hollywood comedic leading man,” Mandvi says. “He’s just so funny.”

Forecasting the next turn in Gervais’ career, however, may be no easier than deciphering his contradictions. He’s jolly and generous — no, he’s raw and uncompromising. He doles out pop culture barbs but lounges at home (mostly in his pajamas, he says) binging on reality TV. He pronounces judgment on “broad comedy” — then trades on his hard-earned renown to do a mainstream Hollywood movie.

But watch Gervais labor for a day and it’s evident he means it when he says the satisfaction of the work itself trumps all else. Like other wayward entertainers, he is driven in part by the way his chosen medium once riveted him.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says, kicking back after the final shoot of the day has wrapped. “I’ve always wanted to get this one moment back: I wish I’d never seen ‘The Godfather’ before, because I remember how good it felt the first time I watched it. I’d say the same about ‘The Sopranos.’ I want that experience again.”

It’s clear this motivates him not only as a fan. He’s got fame and fortune to spare, and has rubbed creative elbows with some of his artistic demigods. But even though he has conjured some pretty serious comedy, Ricky Gervais would probably like nothing more than to move audiences with that same kind of magic.

This article was first published in Arrive Magazine and is reprinted with permission.

Blame those plus-size episodes. The season’s several hour-long installments were too much of a good thing. They felt watered down, the same number of jokes spread over double the time. We saw less of the side characters: Oscar (Oscar Nunez) was gone for a while; Meredith (Kate Flannery) disappeared for a time after Michael (Steve Carell), in one of those big, loud moments, hit her with his car. Yet the larger character arcs, the season-long narratives, never really picked up speed. The long mid-season break brought on by the strike didn’t help: By the time the dinner party episode — in which Jan and Michael publicly played out their issues — aired, right after the strike, Jan’s (Melora Hardin) suit against Dunder Mifflin and Ryan’s Web 2.0 visions for the company were hard to recall. And the show’s timing never really recovered. It became a guessing game for critics and fans — when would “The Office” start being “The Office” again?

One thing “The Office” has always been good for, though, is big endings. The last two seasons delivered a satisfying show that wrapped up some of the season’s plotlines while making us curse that it would be months until we got to see the next one. Going into Thursday’s season finale, expectations were high. This episode would finally bring it all together! Jim’s (John Krasinski) proposal to Pam (Jenna Fischer) was probably going to be the centerpiece, but other plotlines waited in the wings: the renewed frisson between Angela (Angela Martin) and Dwight (Rainn Wilson), Michael’s unresolved relationship with Jan, Toby’s (episode co-writer Paul Lieberstein) move to Costa Rica, the battle of passive aggressiveness between Ryan and Jim. Despite the season’s disappointments, last week’s lead-in hinted that a lot would go down, and to quote from the voice-over promo cliché handbook, “The Office” “would never be the same again.”

The show’s theme was Toby’s last day — he’s moving to Costa Rica. Versatile Oscar nominee Amy Ryan, also familiar to fans of “The Wire,” arrives as Holly Flax, the new face of H.R. A mixture of gullible, cute and theatrical, she’s less an obvious comic character than the rest of the cast. When Michael explains that she’s filling the void as his logical opposite — he calls human resources a “breeding ground for monsters” — she parries with a joke about how boring Toby’s tour of the office files was. Of course, Michael instantly falls in love with her.

Other shenanigans play out on the side: Ryan is arrested for his fraudulent practice of having employees enter all sales twice, once on the old system, once on the Web. Dwight begins hazing Holly, as though being hired to work in Scranton were like rushing a state school frat. “Hazing is a fun way to show a new employee she is not welcome or liked,” he tells us. His tricks fall mostly by the wayside, except for the way he convinces Holly that Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) is the office’s “special” employee.

Meanwhile, the party planning committee is arranging Toby’s last hurrah. They end up with a miniature fair in the parking lot, complete with bouncy air castle and Ferris wheel. Jim offers to pay for fireworks. The stage is set! When will Jim pop the question? We know he will, because he tells the camera “I’m going to propose tonight” — goofy grin — “holy crap.”

When the big moment comes, just as Jim begins fumbling in his pocket for the ring, Andy (Ed Helms) grabs the microphone and asks for everyone’s attention. “I was waiting for the right time to do this, and I can’t think of a better time than right now,” he says. It’s like he planned the whole thing — he even has his parents there! — and of course he awkwardly asks for Angela’s tiny hand in marriage (her reply: “I said OK“). Cut to Dwight, looking pained. Pam’s mouth drops open; Jim tucks the ring back into his pocket.

We were meant to feel sad about this, but the moment fizzled. The lack of emotional payoff here gets at why this season of “The Office” felt like it was missing something. For all its sitcom high jinks, the show has always had a sweet undercurrent of drama. We wanted Pam to dump her lame fiancé and be with Jim. We cheered silently for Michael getting together with hot, crazy Jan. Dwight and Angela’s secret affair wasn’t just played off for laughs.

But Michael provides the episode’s only moving moments. After discovering Jan has decided to get pregnant without him — she went to a sperm bank — his pain is visible and real, and when he returns to the parking lot party he blows off Holly, who somehow has also clearly become smitten with him. By the end, we see him in his office on the phone, making the inevitable mistake of assuring Jan’s voice mail he’ll be at her Lamaze class, even though he has no idea what that is.

As a grace note, we’re given a shocking final scene: Phyllis goes into the office after the party and catches Dwight and Angela all sweaty and naked. It’s the scene that will likely be most discussed around the water cooler today, but it seemed too calculated. Sure, we never thought things would ultimately work out for Andy, but do we really care? He’s always been a poor stand-in for Dwight.

I miss the sweetness of the Jim and Pam’s romance — it always stood apart from the rest of the office’s gray shallowness, but this season, in part because of Jim’s need to propose, it’s been infected by it. For the show’s first three seasons, we identified with Jim, the ironic presence who often literally winked at the camera. It seemed (or did we hope) that he might, at any moment, grab Pam and find a way out of the Dunder Mifflin cul de sac. Instead, Pam has become the character with a future that might not revolve entirely around paper — will her three months at the Pratt Institute studying art be the basis for the rumored spin-off show? As the season progressed, Jim’s mugging for the camera began to seem rote, his punking Dwight perfunctory, and we slowly began to realize that, as much as he might talk down Dunder Mifflin, he wasn’t going anywhere soon. (Michael at one point says, “I look at somebody like Jim Halpert, and I think that guy could do anything that he wants to do. He could do anything. And he chooses to work here, selling paper. Just like me.”) In some ways this finale was perhaps the closest the show has come yet to its British original: No one is getting out of here alive. * * * *

For more coverage of the season finales of your favorite TV shows, click here.

“It could be poisoned,” my mom said, and she wasn’t joking. Forty years of motherhood have taught her to sniff out danger in the most seemingly benign places.

“‘Please watch this show, then die?’ They wouldn’t get much publicity that way.”

“I’m just saying I wouldn’t eat something that came in the mail from a total stranger.”

I found myself eyeing the marshmallows suspiciously. Publicists have always struck me as a nefarious bunch, so flawlessly dressed and coifed, clutching their BlackBerries, smiling manically and insisting that I give them my honest opinion of a very bad show they’re promoting that month.

“People used to send anthrax in the mail,” my mom added, as if it were once a widespread trend. “It just doesn’t seem safe.”

Insane in the membrane
I laughed at my mom and repeated the story over and over to my husband and my brother and my sister-in-law, the perfect illustration of how unhinged she is these days. Then I took the marshmallows and the graham crackers and the chocolate bar and threw them in the trash.

Because insanity, like good comedy, always has a grain of truth to it. Even paranoid schizophrenics can be very convincing, under the right circumstances.

My mom would make a great sitcom character, particularly today, when TV comedies are less focused on jokes and more focused on characters and situations that have a heavy current of truth running through them. The “Full House” template of comedy, in which characters didn’t need to be realistic or relatable, but just needed to spout punch lines with lots of googly-eyed enthusiasm, has officially expired. Comedy today centers on odd yet familiar characters, people you’ve met before, who remind you of your sister or your friend or even yourself. Michael Scott from “The Office,” Celia Hodes from “Weeds,” Jack Donaghy from “30 Rock” — these are characters who, however bizarre, bear a closer relation to real people, in all of their neurotic, quirky glory, than do the relatively heroic and noble characters that populate most TV dramas.

Whether they’re bored office workers, bickering anchormen, lustful nerds or suburban pot dealers, whether they’re arrogant blowhards, mumbling introverts, scattered, self-involved moms or hedonistic writers, the characters on today’s best comedies are as strange and bumbling and deluded as you and I. Those poor, poor people.

The paper chase
NBC’s “The Office” (9 p.m. Thursdays) has always trafficked in characters and stories awkward enough to be real, and the fourth season has so far matched the nasty delights of the first three. The running joke of the series is that, for all of our bluster, American workers don’t get much done. Instead, we plan office parties and try desperately to get through the day without thinking about (let alone doing) any work at all.

One recent episode opened with the troops at Dunder Mifflin assembled for a meeting in the conference room. Strangely enough, everyone seems to be listening closely to the bossman, Michael (Steve Carell). Then we cut away to Jim (John Krasinski), who explains that they’re all watching the “DVD Video” logo bounce around on the screen next to Michael:

“This cube on the screen, it bounces around all day, and sometimes it looks like it’s heading right into the corner of the screen, and at the last minute it hits a wall and bounces away. We’re all just dying to see it go right into the corner.”

When the cube finally goes into the corner, everyone smiles and claps and says “That was so awesome!” Mistaking the applause as a response to his great idea, Michael tells the camera, “Some days I am just on fire.”

After loving the original BBC series starring Ricky Gervais, it was tough for most of us to imagine that an American version could ever compare to it. But the writers of this series have done a great job of creating a show that quickly developed a life of its own.

This season, Ryan’s (B.J. Novak) rapid conversion from temp worker to slick executive is a transformation that should be hauntingly familiar to anyone who spent the mid-’90s at a dot-com company, surrounded by recent graduates marching around in brand-new Prada loafers, playing make-believe at wheeling and dealing. Ah, those were halcyon days indeed, alternately basking in the limitless potential of expanding global markets and sweating over the very real possibility of sudden bankruptcy.

Ryan has perfected the executive jackass routine, striding into the office, and then instructing Pam (Jenna Fischer) to wait until he’s done texting before he can greet her. Later, he rallies the workers around his vision for the company by cobbling together the most grandiose business babble. “This is a massive overhaul!” he gushes. “We’re getting younger, sleeker and more agile with the way that we adapt to the marketplace.” Then he informs them that they’ll all be getting BlackBerries.

Dwight (Rainn Wilson) promptly asks, “What if we don’t want to use a BlackBerry because they are stupid and pointless?” “Next question,” grumbles Ryan, grimacing behind his neatly groomed, Don Johnson-style five o’clock shadow.

In the next episode, Ryan speaks to the cameras entirely in clichés: “This is a paper company, and I don’t want us to get lost in the weeds or into a beauty contest. Convergence, viral marketing, we’re going guerrilla, we’re taking it to the streets while keeping an eye on the street — Wall Street! I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here. In other words, it is what it is. Buying paper just became fun!” His words would sound downright ridiculous, if they weren’t so eerily familiar.

It’s the quiet cheer and spirit of the employees of Dunder Mifflin that keep this comedy ship from sinking — which is strange, because the BBC version always dabbled dangerously in depressing territory. Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) was just so desperate and sad, David (Ricky Gervais) was hideously unlikable, and the awkward moments were throw-yourself-off-a-cliff awkward, instead of just uncomfortable — all of which had its own special appeal, mind you, but NBC’s version is a little less unnerving. Even when Michael hit Meredith (Kate Flannery) with his car, then made a big show of visiting her in the hospital just so everyone wouldn’t hate him (“I hate hospitals. In my mind, they are associated with sickness”), or Dwight killed his girlfriend’s sick cat, then gave her another one as if he could make up for it (“It’s a feral barn cat! I trapped him last night, and I’m giving him to you as a replacement cat for the one I destroyed!”), it was less awful than funny. Or maybe it was funny because it was so awful.

Either way, “The Office” is consistently weird and hilarious, which is really the only fitting tribute to the deeply disturbed freaks and lunatics most of us work with day in and day out.

I think I might be sinking
Meanwhile, not only hasn’t “Californication” (10:30 p.m. Mondays on Showtime) made me laugh in a long, long time, but it seems to get darker yet more precious every week. This is a comedy, remember? I’d rather not spend an entire half-hour sighing heavily.

How did this show go from looking fun and promising to repeating its party tricks over and over like a precocious but ultimately tedious child? Our hero, Hank Moody (David Duchovny), stumbles through life, charming the pants off everyone he meets, reducing his ex-wife and daughter to giggles at every turn, but no one seems to mind that he’s a hollow shell of a man with no real drive and nothing substantive to say, beyond sweeping criticisms of everything and everyone around him. It’s not hard to understand why the guy has writer’s block.

It would be fine to make Hank a pathetic drunk, if the writers didn’t simultaneously have such a strong attachment to making us think he’s devilishly suave and clever, and that his kid is deliciously adorable. Becca (Madeleine Martin) plays the guitar and sings! Is that cool, or what? And naturally his ex-girlfriend, Karen (Natascha McElhone), is so unbearably gorgeous and patient and loving, the ultimate One Who Got Away. But does she have a discernible personality behind those cheekbones?

The big problem is that none of this is funny. Hopelessly cool people are never funny, in fact. The writers keep trying to convince us, week after week, that Hank is eminently cool just because he wrote a book called “God Hates Us All” — so edgy! — and because he spends most of his time informing other people of how unoriginal and lame they are. But we don’t sympathize with him, as he mopes around the set of the crappy romantic movie that someone paid him tons of money to make out of his book. Didn’t Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” prove once and for all that we’re not remotely interested in self-involved Hollywood writers who struggle with substance abuse because they’re too rich, too idle and too self-involved not to be depressed?

There is a way to make it funny, but the writers of “Californication” haven’t found it yet. The characters aren’t fully formed, and outside of the occasional snappy retort, there’s not a lot of reason to invest in what happens next. Why should we care in the least bit about Hank’s agent, Charlie (Evan Handler), and his marital troubles? A few scenes about S&M are amusing enough, but what’s the issue with Charlie and his wife, really, beyond boredom?

Scratch the surface of “Californication” and there’s nothing there. It is just a half-hour comedy, true, but look at a show like “Weeds,” which borders on farce week after week, yet we do know who Nancy Botwin and her family and friends are. Nancy is daringly unlikable, and her character really wouldn’t work if she weren’t. If every week we saw Nancy one-upping her foes with wit and flair instead of passively chewing on her frappuccino straw and mismanaging pretty much every aspect of her life while acting like a big asshole, “Weeds” would be hard to take. Instead, the writers dare to make her slightly hateful, and they make her sort-of friend Celia confused and mean, and all of the bad people on the show are basically tortured by their bad decisions every week. Most important, there are enough laughs that there can be some holes in the plot and we don’t mind.

Introducing us to Hank’s dad, who died in a recent episode, may have killed “Californication’s” golden goose. Daddy is just like Hank, to the 10th power. He walks around saying things like “OK, who do I have to fuck to get a cocktail around here?” and “Life’s too short to dance with fat chicks.” But most of us heard really hysterical lines like that at crappy frat parties 15 years ago, so all we can think is that life is too short to spend time with surly, cliché-spouting drunks.

After a while, it’s hard not to notice that Duchovny pretty much refuses to emote. Is he channeling Kevin Costner, or did he never, ever emote, and we were all too bewitched by his pretty face to notice?

You know how every episode of “Mad Men” is heavy with larger meaning, each scene hinting at the secrets and lies built into the American dream? Even though you could easily fold Hank Moody into the same conflict between the security of family life and the thrills of freedom and reckless hedonism, his struggle against his own worst impulses feels far less compelling than Don Draper’s.

He gets depressed, drinks, mumbles and makes a cheap pass at his ex, who’s engaged to someone else. And if he ever wins her back, will that be satisfying? No, because we don’t care about him or her or their happiness. Don Draper and Nancy Botwin are hapless, confused underdogs, so we can’t help cheering them on. Hank, on the other hand, is just a smug drunk who hates us all. Why bother?

Humble peacock pie
Contrast the pretensions of “Californication” with the supremely humble tone of “30 Rock” (8:30 p.m. Thursdays on NBC). The characters on “30 Rock” are writing a TV show, they work in entertainment, yet we’re supposed to recognize them for the abject losers that they are. When Liz (Tina Fey) buys a wedding dress and is discovered trying it on in her office or Jenna (Jane Krakowski) gains 30 pounds and then instructs the hot, young secretary not to stand next to her? Now that’s the kind of pathetic behavior we expect from comic characters.

On “30 Rock,” the egocentric vanities of the rich and famous are, without fail, treated as the side effects of severely delusional personalities. Take this exchange between Jerry Seinfeld (as himself) and network exec Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin):

Seinfeld: I was vacationing with my family in Europe in a country that only rich people know about …

Jack: Svenborgia?

Seinfeld: No, better. But I can’t tell you!

In another scene, the show’s star, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), worries that his marriage is falling apart, but only in strictly selfish, practical terms:

Tracy: Who’s gonna do my banking? Who’s gonna write my blogs? Who’s gonna do the cooking on Taco Wednesdays?

Liz: OK, well, Kenneth, you are now in charge of helping Tracy with any of the nonsexual things that Angie would do for him.

Tracy: So he’s, like, my office wife?

Liz: Sure, let’s go with that.

Tracy: Kenneth Parcell, will you take this ring … and sell it in the Jewish part of midtown and use the money to get us a Nintendo Wii?

Kenneth: (Big smile, tearfully) Yes, yes! A thousand times yes!

Notice how many funny throwaway lines are included in this one farcical, over-the-top exchange? In laughs per episode, “30 Rock” rivals Fox’s brilliant-but-canceled “Arrested Development” — it’s dense with great moments and spot-on parodies. One of my recent favorites has to be the promos Jack showed Seinfeld for a new reality show called “MILF Island,” into which Seinfeld would be digitally inserted in order to boost ratings: “25 sexy moms, 50 sweaty eighth-grade boys and one beloved American comedy star!”

From Jack Donaghy to Liz Lemon to Tracy Jordan, every character on “30 Rock” is a serious wreck, making bad decisions and behaving pathetically at every turn. The more successful they are, the crazier they are, but they continue to feed each other’s delusions. Or, as Jack puts it, “Lemon, don’t ever say you’re just you, because you’re better than you!”

Conclusiastical remarks
Sadly, you’re not better than you, and I’m not better than me, and that’s why we love to laugh at characters who fall far short of their own expectations. But worry not, my friend, because cleverness and coolness are overrated, and strokes to an already-overblown ego are like poisoned S’mores for the soul.

God doesn’t hate us all, he only hates the egocentric blowhards and the self-involved, pretentious pudwackers who think that drinking off-brand whiskey and penning mediocre romantic comedies are tantamount to suffering. In spite of our petty squabbles and bad shoes and inability to floss regularly, God likes you and me just fine, and he likes our crazy moms even better.

One happy consequence was that as the season progressed, we got to see the show morph into an ensemble production, showcasing the comic gifts of the actors in smaller roles. We learned that Kevin (Brian Baumgartner) is both a poker champion and a drummer in a Police cover band called Scrantonicity, that Oscar (Oscar Nunez) is gay, and that Dwight (Rainn Wilson) and super-uptight Angela (Angela Kinsey) are having a fling.

But “The Office” is really about Jim and Pam, and it always has been. Yes, Carell is great as the shallow, needy, cringe-inducing boss Michael Scott; yes, Dwight, with his gym teacher glasses, never ceases to annoy (Wilson was similarly wacko as Arthur on “Six Feet Under”). But the relationship between Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer) — their sweet inside jokes, loyalty and flirtatiousness, their shared devotion to distraction and mischief, and the obvious sexual frisson — provides the show’s main narrative arc. Dwight’s dalliance with Angela seems tacked on in comparison, and Michael’s relationship with his boss, Jan Levinson (Melora Hardin), is more confusing than compelling — what does she see in this guy? (It’s a question she asks herself during the finale, but can’t really bring herself to answer.) When it comes down to it, we all want to know what’s going to happen with Jim and Pam, even if any hope of outright romance seems to be doomed.

The season closer on Thursday night, written by Carell, really came through on the Pam and Jim front. In it, everyone gathers for the big Dunder Mifflin Casino Night charity fundraiser, though it’s ultimately never decided to which charity the money will actually go. (Michael wants it to go to the Boy Scouts — they need help because “they don’t have cookies like the Girl Scouts.”) The risk-taking theme is pretty obvious: Michael risks his pride by asking out his real-estate agent, Carol Stills (Nancy Walls, who’s married to Carell); Jan risks her self-esteem by driving two hours to attend the fundraiser and to hang out with Michael (who by then has another date); but the real risk is taken by Jim, who finally gathers the wherewithal — call it guts, selfishness or honesty — to tell Pam that he loves her.

There was plenty of buildup to the big ending in the 40-minute episode. With Pam’s help, Jim manages to convince Dwight that he has telekinetic powers, and there’s a great scene in which Jim and Pam watch the cheeseball audition tapes from wedding bands that Pam’s fiancé, Roy (James Denton), has neglected to look at. It underscores the whole weird dynamic of their romance. Pam still seems blissfully unaware of the impact of her own words when she tells the camera afterward, “Jim is great. Being with him just takes away all the stress of planning my wedding.” Pam’s total cluelessness about her true feelings for Jim is one of the major dramatic engines powering the show.

At the Casino Night (held in the company warehouse), Pam flirts through a few hands of poker with Jim before cleaning him out. Jim seems ready to give up on the night when a conversation with Jan about his plans to transfer out of the company’s Scranton office, a move obviously connected to Pam’s upcoming nuptials, catalyzes something within him. Finding himself alone with Pam, he decides to show her his hand, dropping his defenses so suddenly it comes as quite a shock — both to her and us:

“I’m in love with you.”

“What!?”

“I’m really sorry if that’s weird for you to hear, but I need you to hear it.”

Watching Jim’s face through the scene, you can’t help feeling sorry for the guy, and Pam almost makes you hate her when she says Jim just “misinterpreted things.” But then, just when you’re about ready to write her off, Pam is back in the office, talking to her mom on the phone about what has just happened. Suddenly, Jim saunters in — you have to admire his persistence here — and plants a big one on her. She tenses up at first, but then returns the kiss with a passion that says this is the moment she’s been waiting for, too. The show ends with the two of them looking at each other with a mixture of elation and confusion: Now what?

Here’s what concerns me the most about your current state: You seem rudderless. Meaning, if your life were a boat, that boat would have no rudder. The rudder is the part of the boat that points the boat in the right direction. You’re missing a rudder. Also, your skin looks ruddy. Ruddy skin is a sure sign of depression. You’re not eating anything green these days, are you? Yes, I can tell. You know you’re depressed when all you do is eat starch and cheese and watch “Law & Order” reruns.

Speaking of which, your viewing habits concern me greatly. It seems like you can’t get into any of the new shows, you’re too stuck in the past. In fact, a little bird told me that you actually cried when you found out that “The West Wing” was going off the air.

He also told me that you pee in the shower. You’re gross!

Come into my office
That sense of shame you’re feeling right now is totally healthy, so lean into it. Leeeean into it, chickens. Feel the burn of hot shame on your face. Remember, it’s all right to feel things, just as long as no one ever sees you doing it.

Once the shame subsides — don’t rush it! — let’s examine some of the reasons you aren’t watching NBC’s “The Office” (9:30 p.m. Thursdays), which was just renewed for another season. First, you were very attached to the BBC version of “The Office.” Hey, who wasn’t? I totally get it. Second, you spend Thursday nights watching “The OC.” That’s completely understandable, even though your hesitancy to get a second cable feed and a TiVo with two inputs and a high-definition TV with Surround Sound and a decent sound system completely stuns and confounds me, and leads me to believe you’re not only impractical, but a wee bit immature as well. Nevertheless, you love “The OC.” I get it.

Third, you’re suspicious of anything on NBC these days, since everyone says that NBC is the lamest network of all. You’re a follower, after all, and if everyone is kicking NBC while it’s down, well, you’re going to be right there kicking along with them. Fine.

Fourth, you caught the first few episodes of “The Office,” and they were almost exactly the same as the first few episodes of the BBC version of the show, only worse. Why would they do that? What is wrong with them?

Fifth, you don’t think Steven Carell can hold a candle to Ricky Gervais, even though you haven’t seen much of Carell in action, to be honest. You just love Ricky Gervais. Fair enough.

So you have your reasons, and let me make it crystal clear that I totally understand. Although I can’t really relate to being a pathetic follower type with an inadequate home entertainment system, I do feel for you, sort of, or I would if I got really drunk and then concentrated really, really hard on how sad and empty your life is. But here’s the thing: The NBC version of “The Office” is becoming damn good. Carell does a great job of embodying the charmless, aging dork who has no taste, no friends, no boundaries, no life outside of work, and no notion of what a loser he is. Michael is the guy who goes to Hooters for an office lunch with an underling, then flirts shamelessly with the waitress — who’s obviously disgusted, but of course Michael doesn’t notice. Then he pretends it’s Jim’s (John Krasinski) birthday so the Hooters waitresses have to do the bouncing booby birthday dance. (Have you ever seen this dance? It’ll make you feel damn proud to be an American and totally mortified to be an American, at the exact same time.)

I also loved the episode where Michael was attending an acting improv class. In every improvised scene, he would ignore whatever the other students were already doing, and would mime busting in the door, pointing a gun at the other students, and saying: “Boom! Detective Michael Scott! I’m with the FBI!”

And then there are Michael’s somewhat ruddy and rudderless underlings at the office, who fill up their days with mindless gossip and empty distractions, like pulling pranks on each other or creating the “office Olympics.” The dialogue always falls somewhere between oddly realistic and totally absurd, but it works. Take the scene where Pam (Jenna Fischer) suspects that creepy Dwight (Rainn Wilson) is seeing a co-worker Pam dislikes intensely. After spending her day trying to track down clues of the relationship, she tries out a hypothetical exercise on Dwight:

Pam: Hey, Dwight? Um, my friend is kinda into these two girls that he works with.

Dwight: Nice!

Pam: One of them is tall and brunet, and the other one is short and blond and perky and … kinda judgmental. Who do you think he should choose?

Dwight: Does he have access to their medical records?

Instead of following the BBC version of the show around like a lost child, the show’s creators (including Gervais, a producer on the show) sets out to capture the oddities and quirks of the most repressed, compromised sorts of American working stiffs. You get glimpses of their spirits — Jim and Pam are obviously sweet and funny — but it’s clear that they’ll censor themselves endlessly instead of rocking the boat, staying at the same dead-end jobs and choosing the path of least resistance until they’re old and full of regrets.

Hey, that kind of reminds me of you, now that I think about it! No, look, don’t get up from the couch. You have your reasons for being totally lame and not watching “The Office,” reasons I totally understand and empathize with. See how I’m repeating your feelings back to you? Don’t you feel validated, reflected, seen?

That’s good, because I do see you. I see that you’re a picky stick-in-the-mud who never wants to try anything new, including trying not to pee in the shower for once.

Nearly departed
That’s right, I see right through you. How does it feel to be utterly transparent? Does it make you feel vulnerable, naked, alone? Well, you should feel that way, since you’re helplessly floating on the tides of fate, with no more influence over your life than a wine cork floating on the high seas.

Ah, I see a glimmer! You’re feeling a little bit vulnerable, aren’t you? That’s good — leeeean into it, chickens. The more helpless and alone you feel, the more likely you are to keep paying me to listen to your sorry little problems.

What do you mean you’re not paying me and I’m not listening? See, this is one of your problems — you’re never satisfied. You have perfectly good new shows like “The Office” available for your viewing pleasure, and what do you do? You keep mourning the impending death of some of the older sitcoms left on the air, “Will & Grace” and “Malcolm in the Middle” and “That ’70s Show.”

OK, I agree, these are all quality shows, shows that were top of the heap in their prime. But is “Malcolm in the Middle” (7 p.m. Sundays on Fox) all that interesting for anyone other than 9-year-old boys and their parents? True, “Will & Grace” (8 p.m. Thursdays on NBC) is always good for a laugh or two, thanks to Karen (Megan Mullally) and Jack (Sean Hayes), but the show obviously devolved into fantastical foolishness a long time ago. Sometimes this lack of realism works, sometimes it’s just irritating, but either way it has the cumulative effect of diminishing our investment in the characters’ lives. Plus, haven’t Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing) sort of been grating on your nerves more and more every time you tune in for the show? OK, you’re shaking your head like you don’t agree, but I can tell by the way you’re clenching your jaw that you do agree, deep down inside.

The one sitcom that I’m sad to see leave the air is “That ’70s Show” (8 p.m. Wednesdays on Fox). I loved this show when it first came out, and it really hasn’t gone downhill over the years. It’s one of those sitcoms — “Everybody Loves Raymond” is another — that you can happily watch in syndication, because every episode is genuinely entertaining even when you don’t know a thing about what the bigger picture is, story-wise. Unlike “Will & Grace,” you don’t have to be invested in the characters’ lives to enjoy the ride.

It’s tough to put your finger on the charms of “That ’70s Show,” but it must be some combination of nostalgia, stoner humor, idiotic clothes, and the best depiction of the generation gap since “All in the Family.” The cast is amazing, good even without Topher Grace (who plays Eric) and Ashton Kutcher (who plays Kelso), both of whom left the show after last season. But the real unsung heroes are Eric’s parents, Red (Kurtwood Smith) and Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp). Both Smith and Rupp have a way of making every line funny. How many parents on a show about kids do that? Normally, when the parents enter, it’s a big, boring drag. Plus, what other show has done more for pot without actually admitting that it has anything to do with pot? The kids just go downstairs and sit around in a circle and act stoned, but you never see a joint. There’s smoke in the air, yes. They’re squinty and giggling and misunderstanding each other, sure. But where’s the weed?

It’s there, trust me.

I still remember a scene where Eric emerges from the basement and Red is angry at him, but all Eric can do is look at the wallpaper behind his head, which the art department somehow rigged so that the whole pattern was moving.

When you really think about it, the ’70s were pretty bizarre. There were all these really grumpy parents, most of whom were raised by “the greatest generation” (see also: the stoical yet temperamental alcoholic generation). Then you had a bunch of totally insane teenagers who did whatever the hell they wanted — rolled in the neighbor’s yard, bashed in windows at the school, smoked pot, drove around in their Scooby Do vans. Their grouchy parents would freak out and beat them up occasionally, and then just ignore them for another six or seven months.

What — why are you interrupting me? I’m really getting to the heart of something important here! See, this is one of your problems — you’re totally self-centered. You honestly expect me to put my personal growth on hold, just because you’re paying me? Wow. I feel really sorry for the people who aren’t paid to put up with your crap.

Red, white, black and blue

Another new show you might check out if you weren’t so fearful and neurotic about novelty is “My Name Is Earl” (9 p.m. Thursdays on NBC). Starring Jason Lee as a total loser and petty thug who wants to make up for the sins of his past, “My Name Is Earl” is a one-camera comedy that’s pretty well written and mildly amusing.

That said, I can’t get into it. Lots of my friends love this show, but to me, the nonstop white trash jokes get old fast. When Earl’s then-wife makes cola-flavored margaritas and Earl’s brother wipes his nose on his sleeve and drinks canned beers until he passes out and Earl’s friend gets paid to set a hot-dog stand on fire, it just isn’t that funny to me. It feels like a cute Hollywood take on rednecks. I grew up around rednecks and have a certain affection for them, so when precious little Scientologists like Giovanni Ribisi and Jason Lee act like rednecks, it rubs me the wrong way.

Is this my personal prejudice? I mean, look, I’m happy to laugh at the aristocratic idiots of “Arrested Development.” I enjoy poking fun at the middle-class sad sacks of “The Office.” So why can’t I laugh at guys who live in motel rooms and steal their friends’ cars and put ketchup on their spaghetti? I guess it bugs me to think of a roomful of Ivy League grads writing jokes about rednecks based on their extensive knowledge of “The Dukes of Hazzard.”

If you want to see a real redneck in action, order the “Dancing Outlaw,” a documentary by Jacob Young that originally appeared on West Virginia public television. Whether Jesco White is dancing on top of a doghouse, speaking earnestly of his love for Elvis, or sniffing airplane glue, the fun never ends. Take, for example, the scene where Jesco discusses his wife’s breakfast-making skills:

Jesco: I took the butcher knife and put it up to her neck. I said, “If you want to live to see tomorrow, you’d better start fryin’ them eggs a little bit better than what you’ve been fryin’ ‘em. I’m tired of eatin’ sloppy, slimey eggs.”

Norma Jean, Jesco’s wife: Jesco is the devil. He’s the devil in hisself. When he is in his mood he feels no pain, he doesn’t care about anybody, and the more people he can hurt, the happier he is.

Jesco: And man, I got a double, super dose. Here I was a-huffin’ that airplane glue in a sandwich bag, you know just all I could, breathin’ that into my lungs, gettin’ high. And then I’d take me a hit of that gas, right after I hit it. Man, you talk about a warped mind, I got one!

Now that’s comedy. What? You think that’s sick and totally disturbing? See, you’re having a negative reaction to stretching your boundaries and trying new things, that’s all. Still, I can see that some strong emotions are coming up. Let’s explore those emotions. Tell me exactly how you’re feeling right now. Go on, open up. Let go. Let it out! You can trust me.

Tick, tock
Oh, hey, look at the clock! It seems our time is up. Yes, I know, you didn’t really get to say anything this time, but look, it’s a process. You have to have faith that if you keep doing the work, you’re going to land in a new place eventually. A new place? You don’t know what that means? It means you’ll stop watching “ER” and you’ll try to get into “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Lost” like everyone else with any sense. It means you’ll check out “The Colbert Report” and “Battlestar Galactica” like I told you to. Eventually, after years and years of intensive therapy, you’ll be able to use your own feelings as a compass of what to do, but in the meantime, you’d really be better off doing exactly what I tell you to do. Got it? Look, I’ve got another client coming in, you really need to be going. Yes, yes, “The Shield,” I know — we’ll cover that next week, I promise.

Next week: Yes, great to see you, too. Hang in there! Yes, we’ll talk about “The Shield” next time, I swear. OK. Take care! Goodbye!