You don’t have to go to New Orleans to see the drama-comedy masks. You can find that poignant combo Tuesday night on Fox in the form of a funny show that is a tragedy in the making.
The comedy is “Undeclared” (7:30 p.m., WFLD-Ch. 32), the deceptively low-key look at college life that seems to draw deeper laughs in direct relation to how underplayed a scene is. It also has the great indicator of a comedy that’s working through its characters rather than isolated cleverness: The jokes work much better in context than they would excerpted in, say, a TV highlights column.
For instance: “Did you see that? I just got to call her baby to her face this time.” On the show, very funny. Here, perplexing.
The tragedy is that “Undeclared” may be doomed. Ratings have not been great, creator-executive producer Judd Apatow is better at writing and running a TV show than he is at playing network politics, and Fox cut the number of episodes for the second half of the season down to seven from the standard nine.
This mean’s the last “Undeclared” of this season and perhaps forever is set to run March 12. Unless.
Unless hell turns into a hockey rink. Unless monkeys take wing from my nether regions.
Unless people watch Tuesday’s best episode yet of a terrific freshman year, realize what a travesty it would be to lose this show, tell all their friends who tell all their friends and cause a dramatic change in the Nielsen ratings. Against the Olympics, that might be tough to do.
Too bad. The subject Tuesday is the power struggle in male-female relationships. The show’s every-geek, the very young freshman Steven, is on the verge of becoming an official couple with down-the-hall girlfriend Lizzie, who’s just as sweet.
“Man, this is perfect,” says Steven, played with note-perfection by Jay Baruchel, as he surveys his morning-after room. “The sheets are all messed up, like in `Basic Instinct.'”
But studly roommate Lloyd tries to persuade him to sow more wild oats, to be more of a “man” in the relationship. Watching the boyish Baruchel try to pull this off is, alone, worth the half hour.
Meanwhile, Lizzie’s friends are telling her the same thing, and the writers wrap it all up in a perfectly ironic little bow, but one that would not be as ironic as this show dying and, say, “Three Sisters” surviving.
