TV

You got the feeling the whole thing was built around a product endorsement, in this case “Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour,” which was mentioned twice and just happens to open in the U.S. right around the time next week’s “Glee” rolls around.

Part of the problem was the lily-white cast. This might be central Ohio, but can we believe there are no African-American males at William McKinley High School? Even when the singing group from the competing private school is on-screen, the only black male face is in the background.

New Directions has the big voice of Amber Riley, the only African-American with a speaking role until NeNe Leakes was recently added to the cast as the swim coach. But even Riley’s big voice seemed underused on a duet with Chord Overstreet on “Human Nature.” Leave it to Naya Rivera to bring the most soul to the proceedings, but her duel with Grant Gustin on “Smooth Criminal” seemed oddly staged (though it was backed by dual cellos, in the episode’s one notable arrangement).

When it comes to Jackson, apparently all anyone remembers are the dancing duels, so there was another one in a parking lot to “Bad” against the Warblers.

Either way, it’s a cheap way to impress drama on a pop song, just as it was in the original “Bad” video. (They’re going to dance their way out of this? Sure they are.)

And who said “Glee” was a drama anyway? Although all the minor crises of high school are explored over and over (to the sound of that annoying bell at the start of every scene), the show presents itself as a comedy, though there was just about one joke this week, when Mark Salling’s brooding Puck told Darren Criss’ character, Blaine, that he was a turncoat. “You’re a modern day Eggs Benedict,” he said, though he swallowed the line in such a way that most probably never heard him.

It was the kind of malapropism that was a natural for Heather Morris’ delightfully dim Brittany, but she hasn’t had anything much funny to say this season. And despite winning Emmys for her role as the ruthless cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, Jane Lynch hasn’t had anything interesting to do on the show for more than a season (and this was another one of those episodes that she wholly sits out).

The one kid who relates best to Jacko, it turns out, is the nerdy one, played by Kevin McHale (or at least he puts on the impression that he does, since he emits Michael’s trademark “whoo!” at various points in the show).

He also turns out the most heartfelt speech of the show, which amazingly turns the whole “It gets better” public service campaign on its head. When Blaine gets hit with yet another Slushee (the weapon of choice in Lima, Ohio) and is actually injured, McHale’s Artie suddenly blurts to Michael Morrison’s increasingly ineffectual teacher, Will Schuester, “Don’t give me any of that ‘It gets better’ crap because I’m not interested in it getting any better. I want it to be better!”

The eruption is immediately followed by Artie ditching his wheelchair for only the second time in show history in order to join Harry Shum Jr.’s Mike Chang on an excruciatingly exact replication of Jackson’s worst video – the tuneless, black-and-white “Scream” he did with sister Janet Jackson.

When it comes to picking up exact video images, though, the highlight must have been the morphing scene of character face into character face during the climactic “Black or White.” Except in this case, of course, it was much more “White or White.”

But they tell the exact same joke about it in the first two episodes (though it’s a fine observation): White moms can’t strike their black children in public.

Still, who’s better equipped to tackle comedy in the Obama era than these two, each able to fully exaggerate white or black characterizations as needed. Both have excelled at President Obama impersonations (at a time when the leading impersonation of our 44thpresident is by a “Saturday Night Live” cast member of Venezuelan/German/Japanese heritage). You might remember Key from his terrific Obama impression from the final season of “Mad TV.” “Mad TV,” which lasted 14 seasons on Fox, was in some ways hipper than “SNL” and certainly better versed in black culture and better able to turn out smart rap parodies than the stodgier NBC mainstay.

Plus, “Mad TV” didn’t just have a lone African-American in the cast; it had Aires Spears, Debra Wilson and, as a featured player, Key’s future partner Jordan Peele.

On “Key & Peele,” Peele handles all the Obama sketches now, despite the height deficit (he’s much shorter than the president). But his voice and cadence perfectly reflects Obama’s and it is used to devastating effect in plenty of sketches. In one, Obama rolls up on a bragging rapper only to declare he is, in fact, leader of the free world (and he drops the mic dramatically). Another mimics “SNL’s” early News for the Hard of Hearing with Garrett Morris. Obama’s hidden anger is translated by a demonstrative assistant played by Key; it looks like a sketch that will become a standby move.

It appears as if they’re in a hurry to get in as much Obama as possible – either because they fear they’ll be canceled early (as David Alan Grier’s show was) or that Obama’s presidency will.

But there are a lot of well-done sketches in between, and they’re produced more like slick viral videos than studio bits.

With their biracial backgrounds, they can easily explore some common dilemmas, such as not wanting to be the whitest-sounding black guy in the room. But their heritage also gives them a wide berth to masterfully play black or white as needed; to impersonate uptight businessmen in one scene or Lil’ Wayne in another.

Best of all, they can go off on sketches that have nothing to do with race — about husbands who are afraid of talking about their wives within earshot, or reality-show chefs you can never really understand.

Delivered in the manner of “Chappelle’s Show” (because that is the law on Comedy Central), “Key & Peele” moves from sketches to rather odd stand-up bits before an audience you can’t quite believe has been assembled to watch clips. But there’s great energy and real laughs, and with any support at all from the network, this could mint as many new catchphrases as Chappelle.

With “Luck,” which begins Sunday on HBO, he’s got a better shot at longevity, while still creating groups of scruffy underdogs in seedy motels and grandiose, malevolent businessmen all buzzing around the same goal. In “Deadwood,” it was gold; in “John,” spiritual enlightenment. In “Luck,” it’s the hard-won riches and redemption captured through the majesty of horse racing.

Creating these various worlds means creating their own language and jargon, something Milch is especially adept at doing (or perhaps he’s so subsumed in the world of the track after his own years hanging out there, it’s second nature). All of these terms and vocal shorthand can be off-putting to audiences at first – especially when they’re mostly mumbled by the characters.

That makes “Luck” more difficult to penetrate for the uninitiated than his other work. To speed things along, HBO is making the second episode available online immediately after Sunday’s first. But it may have already fumbled its initial rollout; that hard-to-follow first episode, introducing nearly all of its mumbling, jargon-spewing characters, ran as a “sneak preview” with the “Boardwalk Empire” season finale in December, possibly managing to quickly turn off those who would have otherwise given it a chance. Call it getting tangled at the gate.

“Luck” shows a fairly insular world of desperate, middle-aged men with thinning hair, willing to throw it all on a last dream. Women are far on the periphery, even more than they were in “Deadwood.” And the Peruvian trainer at the center of two different story lines, played by John Ortiz, is as close to racial diversity as it gets (other than a casino foe drawn as if he were the Yellow Peril).

Still, “Luck” plays out like a last-ditch shot at the American dream in a dire economic time. One problem gambler recites “O beautiful for spacious skies” when his horse finally comes in; a limousine driver turned horse-owning front for a just-sprung felon keeps saying things like, “I love this country!”

And what better place than the racetrack to attract these slightly intersecting groups of characters. The comic heart of the series is a quartet of hardcore gamblers played by Kevin Dunn, Ian Hart, Ritchie Coster and Jason Gedrick, who throw in together to buy a horse and live in adjoining rooms of a motel like they’re the Four Stooges.

The marquee name for the series, of course, is Dustin Hoffman — in his first television role — as a man of some means just sprung from prison and looking to find his way back to the track and to casino-owning. He’s aided by a loyal driver, played by the solid Dennis Farina. A lot of the story is banter between these two guys, usually before they turn in for the night in a swankier hotel than the Stooges. But Hoffman gets to go deep with his role, especially as the season plays on.

Nick Nolte plays a much more familiar character – the grizzled, horse-loving Kentuckian, a gruff-voiced man of few words who tries to find his own redemption in a fine new horse. Much of his acting comes in grunts and breaths as he mutters and swats himself with the racing form as the horses circle the track.

The jockeys, played by Kerry Condon, the most prominent woman in the cast, and Tom Payne, have their own stories – they’re competing for mounts when they aren’t tangling with one another. Milch tries to add some authenticity by including a real-life jockey, Hall of Famer Gary Stevens, to the proceedings.

Among the hangers-on in this world is an agent, played by Richard Kind, with a speech impediment that’s as distracting to the audience as it is to his would-be clients. (But, again: colorful.) Still to come in upcoming episodes are Joan Allen as a horsey romantic interest, Sir Michael Gambon as a malevolent foe, and Mercedes Ruehl, in the finale, as one of the gamblers’ moms.

What keeps these threads tight and advances the action is the input of Michael Mann, who directed the pilot and set the tone for the rest of the nine-episode first season – with alluring neon-tinged looks at the photogenic Santa Anita track, the clouds of frigid air exhumed by horses in the early morning, and especially the killer footage of the racetrack action itself.

Nowhere in Hollywood’s long history of horse films has action on the track looked so thundering, so close and so thoroughly involving. The action is so jarring that novices may suddenly — finally — understand the appeal of the races to generations.