Cribbing from “Home Improvement” and pop sociologists like John Gray and Deborah Tannen, two new big-ticket network shows are doing the gender-based comedy thing. NBC’s Third Rock From the Sun (starting Jan. 9) is ostensibly about a family of aliens from beyond Mars and Venus doing research on our planet. Actually, they’re here to chase lewdly after the local humans and make cheap breast jokes. John Lithgow, whose movie career fell mysteriously to earth a while ago, is the “high commander” of this dysfunction-al landing party. Their heads aren’t long and pointy, but, co-incidentally, former “Saturday Night Live” Conehead Jane Curtin also shows up in “Third Rock.” She’s a professor at the Midwestern college where Lithgow’s Dr. Solomon teaches physics. “These people are so complex!” he sputters, spelling out the feel-good point of the show.
Even though most of the show’s “insights” are just bad double-entendres, it’s not totally stupid. Its creators are savvy pop satirists Bonnie and Terry Turner (“Wayne’s World,” “The Brady Bunch Movie”). And Lithgow’s over-the-top goofi-ness grows on you. He’s a middle-aged Mork: you believe he’d freak out the first time he sees Jell-O. But the show, allegedly about what fascinating creatures we are, spends most of its time giggling over how much male humans like female humans with big “yobbos.”
Champs, ABC’s midseason entry in the gender genre (also Jan. 9), is more soft-core. In fact, the debut product from the Dream-Works assembly line of Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen is downright mushy. The show’s creator and executive producer, Gary David Goldberg, has always mined his own life for material. He was the hippie turned dad who fathered “Family Ties,” the nostalgic boomer behind “Brooklyn Bridge.” These days he must be playing a lot of driveway basketball with his high-school team buddies and wondering why half of them are divorced. Star Timothy Busfield (who used to shoot Nerf hoops on “thirtysomething”) gamely dribbles Goldberg’s big round metaphor. Unfortunately, he’s passing to Kevin Nealon and Ed Marinaro–not quite comedy all-stars.
Goldberg’s guys are still replaying their varsity games in more ways than one. They’re so emotionally challenged they don’t even know when one of their marriages is disintegrating. When they finally find out, they don’t even know how to give a consoling hug. “Not every problem in life can be solved with a story about basketball,” Busfield’s daughter tells her clueless dad. Two points for the kid.
