A lesson in why the television networks are heading toward the endangered-businesses list can be found in three new comedies debuting Wednesday.
Two are on ABC, and they feature big stars (including Norm MacDonald), fine pedigrees (“Seinfeld”) and, from the vigorous laugh tracks to the exaggerated character reactions, a numbingly familiar look and feel.
The third is on HBO, and it showcases the slacker escapades of two portly, guitar-playing losers. If it has any ancestor on television, it is “Beavis and Butt-head.”
It is not that the HBO show, “Tenacious D,” is necessarily better than the pair on ABC, “It’s like, you know . . .” and “The Norm Show.” But both its flaws and its strengths are more interesting.
First, the network fare. “It’s like, you know . . .” (7:30 p.m., WLS-Ch. 7) is the determinedly “Seinfeld”-esque look at a die-hard New Yorker come to live with a friend as he researches a book on Los Angeles.
The title phrase, spoken by a different character each episode, is meant to convey the bubbleheadedness of L.A. life compared to that in the Big Apple.
Executive producer Peter Mehlman, a veteran of “Seinfeld,” crams the three episodes offered for preview with most every stereotype of the City of Cosmetically Enhanced Angels: ubiquitous bottled water, a freeway car chase, shameless celebrity-mongering, a pastrami sandwich with raisins, a Kato Kaelin cameo, and, yes, cosmetic enhancement.
There is a lot of sitting around on couches, or driving in cars, and asking arcane questions that you could easily imagine appearing in the stand-up act of Jerry Seinfeld or, even more easily, an imitator: “Shouldn’t the letter Q come later in the alphabet?” “Isn’t it amazing Germany didn’t change its name after World War II?”
Mehlman’s lead characters are nicely crafted as two independently wealthy guys, Robbie (Steven Eckholdt) and Shrug (Evan Handler), who have the time to sit around all day pondering minutiae.
Mehlman’s one truly original idea is to use the actress Jennifer Grey (“Dirty Dancing”) as Robbie’s neighbor, the actress Jennifer Grey. Grey does a brave spoof of herself, especially in talking about the post-“Dirty Dancing” nose job she seems to regret.
But a new, hookless nose is not enough to hang a series on.
The scripts have moments of cleverness (new name for Germany: Aspen), but just as many moments where they swing at an easy pitch and miss badly. The title of Arthur’s book? “Living in Los Angeles: How Can You Stomach It?” Worse, there is little sense of rhythm or pacing to this chop shop of a comedy.
Not much better is “The Norm Show,” which follows a traditional network formula in building a comedy around a name performer, in this case ex-“Saturday Night Live” attitude-dispenser Norm MacDonald.
The first episode of this series, positing MacDonald as an ex-pro hockey player forced by a gambling problem to do community service as a social worker, has some surprisingly funny flashes amid the familiar trappings.
Blessed with the gifted comic’s talent for making material more amusing than it seems on the page, MacDonald carries the premiere (8:30 p.m., WLS-Ch. 7). He remains a master of getting to the essence of practices that are taken for granted.
“I gotta get a dog of my own,” he says. “I love the idea of having a friend that I can lock up when I’m not using him.”
But by the second episode, the show has gone flat, a precipitous quality decline that bodes ill for the future. MacDonald is less front and center, and “The Norm Show” turns toward a typical workplace slog. There’s an evil boss and there’s a whole lot of Laurie Metcalf (Steppenwolf, “Roseanne”) playing the do-good co-worker.
But MacDonald doesn’t need a conscience, just more room to play so that he can deliver lines like this one, turning away a man who insists they cannot take his dog: “We’re social workers, pal. We can take children.”
He’s not likely to find that freedom in network television.
Compare these trips down familiar paths to “Tenacious D” (10 p.m.), the new, three-episode HBO show spun off of the pay channel’s great “Mr. Show” sketch comedy series.
The title is the name of a two-man “heavy acoustic” band convinced they are the greatest rock act ever.
Each half-hour episode contains happenings so slight they don’t really qualify as adventures, along with a song or two dedicated to the imagined greatness of Tenacious D.
They find Sasquatch and form a power trio with him, for instance, but Sasquatch turns out to be a horrid drummer and is sent back into the wilderness. Or they turn the tables on the head of their fan club, becoming obsessive fans of the fan.
This is the kind of humor that is supposed to be funny because it isn’t trying to be. And there would be, if it were less earnestly done, a smugness to it: We’re so cool that we don’t have to entertain. We’ll just impress you with our ability to get this stuff on TV.
But it is redeemed by the deadpan earnestness of the leads, Jack Black and Kyle Gass, and by the show itself never breaking character to invite laughs at the duo.
