Fall TV Comedies: Nerds & Cavemen

If traditional network comedies are a dying species, it'll be up to an old warhorse (Back To You), some sub-humans (Cavemen) and an overflowing A-V room full of nerds (Aliens in America, Big Bang Theory, The IT Crowd, Chuck) to save them from a permanent spot on the cutting room floor.

And given the clips and previews that have been made available by the networks, the prognosis is cloudy. None of the new shows seems like a sure-fire hit, while some - like Cavemen and the Return of Jezebel James - are high-stakes dice-rolls that could succeed wildly or put the last nails in the TV comedy coffin if they go down in spectacular, unfunny flames.

Oh, the humanity.

1. Back To You (Fox, Wednesdays, 7 p.m.)
No big deal here. Just the fate of the entire traditional sitcom genre hanging in the balance, if we are to believe the hand-wringing industry types. Why do they always think it's "genres" that are suffering when it's really the unimaginative, unfunny crap they try to stuff into them?

I admit I've never been a huge fan of the traditional, multi-camera, laugh-track sitcom - even as a kid in the '70s I couldn't stand the "classic" likes of The Jeffersons or Laverne and Shirley. I always preferred comedy movies where the laughs came out of the storylines and characters rather than from non-stop, hit-and-(mostly)-miss gags, so nowadays I'm fully invested in hoping that last year's success of "single-camera" comedies like The Office and 30 Rock can forever drive a stake through the form. But it's not going down without a fight. With Back To You and The Return of Jezebel James (see below), the giants of the industry are assembling at Fox and giving multi-cam one last college try.

In Back To You, dependable comedy all-star producers Steven Levitan (Wings, The Larry Sanders Show, Just Shoot Me, Frasier) and Christopher Lloyd (you know him) are pulling out all the stops, and the show looks good enough to perhaps stave off the inevitable for a while longer. It's falling squarely on the shoulders of Kelsey Grammer to do what he can to put some life into the rattling bones of the trad sitcom, and I'm guessing he's up to it. He looks sharp in this show, where he does a variation of the Will Ferrell character Ron Burgundy from the hilarious movie Anchorman. He plays the "legendary" Chuck Darling, who unwillingly returns to his former station in Buffalo 10 years after he left it behind for a career in major markets. Now he's confronting some of his burned bridges, but has yet to re-adjust his haughty attitude to befit his humbling newfound status as an aging loser.

A lot of the comedy seems to come from his antagonistic relationship with co-anchor Patricia Heaton (from the way, way overrated Everybody Loves Raymond), who never left Buffalo and in the meantime carved out her own niche as the big anchor fish in the small pond. Let the sparks fly! The dialogue, which is everything in these laugh-trackfests, judging from several clips, seems pretty good. Grammer's Chuck Darling is a bit more crass than Frasier Crane. He's actually more like Grammer's Sideshow Bob character on The Simpsons - just a bit on the evil side but ultimately too screwed up to do any real damage. As for Heaton, well, will there ever be a good role for a woman in a male-dominated sitcom? She's the same character that Joely Fisher is playing in Til Death (a modestly successful Fox multi-cam), and the same character every female lead has played in every male-dominated comedy since Alice in The Honeymooners: the sarcastic, bitter, bitchy reactionary woman whose main job is to suffer under the thumb of the egocentric male star and give him occasional kicks in the balls (kinda like on Raymond). But under it all, she loves the guy, right? Gawd.

Ultimately, if Back To You represents anything, it's the belief that thousands of awful laugh-trackers over the years haven't completely soured the genre for all time. I respect the effort here to prove that isn't true. It seems Levitan, Lloyd and Grammer are really giving it their all, and that this show could be good enough to make a dent. But, really, not even a dozen such big successes will ultimately rescue the traditional form, and I, for one, will not be too sorry to see it go.

Life lessons learned? Hopefully Chuck Darling will be too full of himself to learn anything meaningful. I really didn't much like the way Frasier Crane came to some kind of cloying conclusion about trust, tolerance, or whatever every week.

Cute kids? None in sight.

Annoyingly wacky family? Not immediately apparent.

Nerd factor? Medium. It looks like the TV station manager is a nerd, much like Kenny, the radio station manager on Frasier.

*

2. The Return of Jezebel James (Fox, midseason)
It's got Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose. It's the brainchild of the Gilmore Girl herself, Amy Sherman-Palladino. It's slated for mid-season on Fox. How can it possibly go wrong?

Oh, let me count the ways.

First off, the idea that Parker Posey, whom I have fallen in love with so many times in so many great, great indie movies (The House of Yes, Dazed and Confused, The Daytrippers, Suburbia, all those Christopher Guest mockumentaries) would do a sitcom, for Christ's sake... with a laugh track! Well, it just makes me sad. Just kind of resigned and sad. Sort of like when I hear Wilco's music in a car commercial. Oh, Parker. We're getting impatient, aren't we? What else can it be? Although she has made some guest-starring forays into TV before (The Simpsons and Futurama on the cool side and Will and Grace on the dark side), this is something else again.

I will give her props, though, because she says she had never even seen The Gilmore Girls when she read the script for The Return of Jezebel James. I mean, how deep into the indie world are you when you've never even seen one of the most popular TV shows of your generation? I love that. She's either too smart or too wrapped up in her ultra-cool career to be bothered with TV. Mmmmm, Parker. And yet, here she is, playing Amy S-P's brand new quick-bantering, supposedly self-sufficient heroine, who's approaching a mid-life infertility crisis and reacts by turning into a quivering mass of female insecurity. She needs to be a mom, dammit, and she needs someone to help her. She targets her estranged, slacker sister (Ambrose), whom she relentlessly recruits to be a surrogate mother.

It's not quite clear from the clips I've seen if Parker's a calculating harpy or merely shallow. One clip shows her shocking a gynecologist by glibly comparing her inability to get pregnant with trying to learn to do cartwheels as a high schooler . . . you know, no big deal - try, try again. Then she tells the doctor she can't adopt because she doesn't like strangers using her bathroom. Wow, you can tell she's going to be spending a whole lot of time learning hard but valuable life lessons. I want to know how someone so clueless can be portrayed as a successful children's book editor (get it?) with a fancy office. Anyone that dumb would be lucky to be working at Burger King cleaning the grease drain.

Yes, you say it's a sitcom where the main character gets laughs because she's so outrageously self-centered and career-obsessed. And I say it's Parker Posey doing an imitation of Tea Leoni in The Naked Truth. Not Megan Mulally. Parker friggin' Posey. My, oh my.

Then there's Lauren Ambrose. I think it's pretty obvious she's falling into typecasting hell at the hands of Amy Sherman-Machiavelli. Of course I loved her in Six Feet Under, where she set fire to the loins of millions of male masochists (like me) who like their women rebellious, whipsmart, emotionally deep yet flawed and usually addled by some kind of illicit substance. As the kid sister on that show, she killed. And, uh-oh, here she is again, playing a cynical, childish-yet-wise-yet-sexy kid sister. Umm, Lauren, honey, I know Amy S-P is the queen of all she surveys, but she's leading you down a primrose path here. Try doing something different on TV, okay? I know you've got a bigger range in you. This is crucial, listen to me! You're too young to take the easy money.

The main reason this show will flop is that Amy is showing hubris. By forcing her trademark idea of, as she calls it, "chicks talking to each other" into what will be a traditional, multi-camera sitcom format, she's betting she can succeed where so many others have failed miserably in a genre that's undoubtedly dying a mostly-deserved death. She's even filming it in the same studio where they made The Cosby Show all those years. And by casting two indie-cred heartthrobs as the leads, she's upping the stakes even more. Her downfall may be spectacular. I just hope Parker and Lauren don't get hurt and lose their coolness in the process. I'd be crushed if that happened. Remember ladies, there's always a place for you at Beachwood Video.

Life lessons learned? Since this is all about a relationship between two screwed-up sisters, the life lessons are going to be relentless.

Cute kids? Doesn't seem to be, unless you count Parker's unborn baby.

Annoyingly wacky family? Nothing but.

Nerd factor? Looks to be nil. But you never know. One will show up.

*

3. The IT Crowd (NBC. midseason)
Hey, Office fans! Wouldn't it be great if there were yet another workplace comedy that started off as a British sitcom, become a hit there, was transferred over to NBC along with its original producer, and this time - with its original star as well? The biggest reservation I think all fans of the British Office had was, how well would it translate without Ricky Gervais playing David Brent (renamed Michael Scott)? Steve Carell's job was to win us over. He did - with Gervais' help, mind you - but it was distressing at first.

No need to worry about that with The IT Crowd. The ubergeek from the British series, Richard Ayoade, has made the leap across the pond, along with executive producer Graham Linehan. And no doubt about it, Ayoade is a comic gem. With his unkempt Afro, thick glasses, short-sleeve shirts with wide ties, "Ross" is the epitome of the first of TV's two types of techies - the guileless, slightly autistic ones who are brilliant at their jobs, mean well but are easily distracted by bright shiny objects and completely befuddled by office and sexual politics. The other type - played in the U.S. show by Joel McHale (whose only experience seems to be as the host of Talk Soup) - are the mean, lazy, sexually frustrated ones who take out their troubles on the girls in the office.

I'm not finding any clips from the upcoming NBC show - perhaps because it's not due to break until midseason. But from watching the British show I can say that the big difference between The IT Crowd and The Office is that the latter was a much more solid show all-round. Yes, Gervais was a revelation, but it was so much more, much of which has made it into the U.S. version. The Office was almost more interesting as an examination of human nature and power relationships as it was a hilarious pushing of the outer extremes of humiliation and embarrassment. We love David Brent's antics, but each of the office players has their own fascinating and richly evolved backstories as well. With The IT Crowd, however, you've got Ayoade's endearing mannerisms and phobias and not too much else, except perhaps some amusing tics contributed the psychotic office boss, played in the British show by Christopher Morris and in the NBC version by Rocky Carroll (who played a doc on Chicago Hope, and I don't see a lot of comedy on his resume).

So I'm thinking the question is, is Ayoade alone enough to carry the show, at least at first? I'm encouraged about his chances because of this summer's success of a very similar character - Jemaine Clement from HBO's Flight of the Conchords. They've got a lot in common and I think it might bode well in the coveted geek demographic. Let's see if it works out that way for The IT Crowd.

Life lessons learned? The British show didn't dwell much on them. So we'll see.

Cute kids? None in sight.

Annoyingly wacky family? It's a workplace comedy, so I think the potential is low.

Nerd factor? Off the charts.

*

4. Cavemen (ABC, Tuesdays, 7 p.m.)

While Back To You is the big-budget attempt to save TV comedy's family farm, Cavemen has got to be the biggest, weirdest attempt ever to plow it under. I loved the Geico caveman commercials, but I also loved a lot of Saturday Night Live sketches that turned out to be big ol' messes when they tried to make them into movies, so the curiosity factor here is huge. This has the potential to be the 2007 equivalent of That '80s Show - but if it's any good at all, it'll have tons of built-in word-of-mouth and could be a smash. Which, oh which, will it be?

ABC, sensing a possible phenomenon, isn't releasing any clips of this baby at all. They want to keep the suspense high (and perhaps prevent viral Internet bad-mouthing). But some clues as to where this thing is going are emerging. First off, it's created by the directing team of Will Speck and Josh Gordon, who gave us the hit-and-miss Will Farrell figure skating satire Blades of Glory. That film, while getting some pretty mixed reviews, showed one thing for certain: those guys could attract the best movie and TV comedy talents around (Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Jenna Fischer, etc). That augurs well.

Also, I suspect Cavemen will be much like Blades of Glory in its scripting, which would mean it will be a sophomoric but occasionally insightful satire of pop culture in which ridiculous-on-their-faces scenarios will be played "faux straight" with the laughs coming from the incongruity. Instead of the straight-faced Farrell playing an overweight Quiet Riot fan figure skater who chooses to perform with another dude, you've got a caveman who's working on his dissertation about the oppression of his species by Homo sapiens, played (by Nick Kroll) without a hint of irony. My guess is that Speck and Gordon will be a pretty good choice for this show because they've done on a large scale essentially what the Geico commercials did in 30-second pieces.

Another clue comes in the obligatory ABC.com sit-down interviews the three cavemen (who also include Bill English as Joel, the most "assimilated" and mature of the group, and Sam Huntington as Andy, the youngest and most guileless caveman) did as part of the network's new show promos. They never break character during the chat, which reveals that a big part of the show's premise will be that the cavemen are treated as racial minorities in their newfound lives in San Diego, and their reactions to the prejudice, ignorance and discomfort they produce in people is going to form a lot of the comedy. Joel, for instance, is engaged to a Homo sapien girl - but her family disapproves.

Here's some of the dialogue from the interview promo:

Interviewer: Now that you're part of Hollywood, what's your reaction to the younger Hollywood, the Britneys, the Lindsays . . . ?

Andy: I love them all. I really think they have such a wonderful place in this world.

Nick: I think they're underrated as actors.

Joel: First and foremost. I mean, I'm an avid reader of all kinds of entertainment publications . . .

Nick: The important stuff.

Joel: . . . just the important stuff, because what's happening in the club scene is important.

Andy: We live in the town, we live in Hollywood.

Joel: Yes, we live here, so . . .

Nick: (angrily) What's happening in Darfur is important! What's happening around the world is important.

Joel: Yes, but I'm just saying . . .

Nick: What's happening among the oppression of cavemen in modern media is important.

Joel: Of course. Thus he's going to segue right now into the . . .

Nick: I'm working on my dissertation.

Andy (exasperated): Every single time. Every time.

Joel: It's fine, though. He's taking the right steps, it's just that it's taking him quite awhile to move forward, because he's been working on it for about seven years.

Nick: I want to get it right! Did Alexander Graham Bell stop when he was inventing the car? No.

Andy: That's actually an extremely valid point.

Life lessons learned? I think this could be the exception where "yes" would be good. The world probably needs to learn a lot about the lives of cavemen, and vice versa.

Cute kids? Doesn't seem to be. I wonder if the caveman-modern woman offspring would be "cute?"

Annoyingly wacky family? John Heard will be playing Caveman Joel's prospective father-in-law. He's good, not annoying.

Nerd factor? Low. Caveman Nick is more a whiny intellectual than a nerd.

*

5. Carpoolers (ABC, Tuesdays, 7:30 p.m.)
The fate of Carpoolers will depend a lot on its lead-in, Cavemen. So I wouldn't want to be former Kids in the Hall Bruce McCullough and Kevin McDonald right now. They're the producers, and it's got to be a pretty queasy feeling for them, knowing that their baby will probably live or die with the fortunes of a high-concept experiment based on the dubious success of some TV commercials. Good luck on that, guys!

The thing that jumps out at me right away about Carpoolers is the presence of Fred Goss, whose criminally ignored and short-lived ABC show Sons and Daughters was, hands-down, the best comedy of the 2005-06 TV season. He wrote and produced that show as well, which he's not doing here, so his contributions will, at least at the start, be confined to acting. But his style veers crazily from middle-aged, mild-mannered, wry everyman to physical comedy in the blink of an eye. It's pretty unique.

The premise here is that culturally conservative businessman Goss spends his morning commutes bonding with his playboy dentist buddy Laird (Jerry O'Connell, who played a detective in Crossing Jordan) and two other guys from his neighborhood: annoying newlywed Dougie (soap opera hunk Tim Peper) and put-upon family man Aubrey (former SNL cast member Jerry Minor). They are very different people who probably wouldn't be seen near each other if weren't for their car pool, so as they interact and reveal their lives to each other, it's a comedic process of discovery, as they say.

The one clip ABC has made available shows the four of them arguing in the car about marriage, the cost of toasters and other such topics, while there also seems to be some passive aggressive maneuvering for parking spaces. It doesn't all take place in the car. That's apparent because there are more cast members, including at least two wives. There's also a scene where three of them break into Goss' home to steal the expensive toaster. I'm sure they have a perfectly valid reason.

I have to say I'm a little concerned because I'm not detecting a lot of sparkling dialog here. But then again, in the realm of the single-camera, no-laugh-track comedy, it's not rat-a-tat Amy S-P-style that's as important as the character development, so it's really tough to judge that with only one clip. But no less a personage than Goss himself assures us on ABC.com that the provided clip isn't indicative: Don't pay attention to it, he says, adding, "It's really a funny show."

We quality-starved comedy fans, and bunch of cavemen, be probably be the final arbiters of that.

Life lessons learned? This has the potential for learned lessons. I hope not. I want the carpoolers to get dumber as the show progresses.

Cute kids? Well, one carpooler seems to have a nagging family. They may not be cute as much annoying.

Annoyingly wacky family? Hard to tell.

Nerd factor? Low. The annoying family guy could be a nerd, though. We'll see.

*

6. Samantha Who? (ABC, Mondays 8:30 p.m.)
Samantha whaaa?

This Christina Applegate single-cam vehicle holds the distinction of being the only show in the history of TV to be slapped around by...ulp... Dr. Seuss, whose estate was so upset about this show they gave Disney's famously litigious lawyers a run for their money. Up until a short while ago, it was going to be called Sam I Am, which was a clever and pretty apt title since it's about a woman named Samantha who wakes up with amnesia and spends most of the show finding out what a jerk she used to be. But then Disney heard a... who? Oh yeah, a legal eagle from a children's book publisher (maybe Parker Posey sent him).

So it was renamed Samantha Be Good, because, see, she used to be mean. And now? Like I said... whaaa?

Another thing that this show demonstrates is how thoroughly Will Farrell has become the king of comedy. This is the third new comedy by my count that some kind of Farrell-related DNA. Cavemen is created by the guys who directed his movie Blades of Glory, and Kelsey Grammer's character in Back To You is a rip-off of Farrell's Anchorman. And who was his co-star in that movie? Yep. Christina Applegate. She was truly funny in Anchorman - it was a role that revitalized her movie comedy career, and I think Samantha Who? is a direct result of that triumph. But I wish she could have gotten something better than this, which looks to be unsalvageable even for a top-of-form Applegate.

The premise is hackneyed. I mean, amnesia? Even soap operas think twice before pulling that chestnut out of the hat. The clips show Christina waking up from an eight-day coma, apparently an entirely changed person from the handful she used to be. And as everyone knows, comas will do that to you. Oh, yeah, she's way different now - she's turned into a goo-goo fuddy-duddy totally unlike the hellion she was only a week or so ago. The conceit is it's a chance for someone with a lot of baggage to start over again clean. I suppose it shows us we should look at life as something new and exciting every day, right? I'm learning a lesson here - and I hate that.

Sam I'm Not takes not one, not two, but three age-old TV show plot devices and combines them for a triple threat: It's the fish-out-of-water (cliche No. 1) combined with the convenient amnesia (cliche No. 2), and since the lead character doesn't know who she is, she's going to be spending most of the time "discovering herself" (cliche no. 3). There to help and/or hinder her is what looks like the latest collection in a long, long line of "eccentric" TV friends a family members, including the harridan mom (Jean Smart), the party-animal best buddy (Jennifer Esposito), the long-suffering nice-guy boyfriend (Barry Watson), etc., etc. They're all going to be dealing with having their negative preconceptions of Samantha no longer apply, and while that could be funny, it's all been done so many times before. And, really, how long can it last before the device runs its course? It usually only a takes a few months on the soaps.

Applegate says she has "a lot of input" into the show and its direction. Here's hoping she can rise to the occasion, take a loser of premise and turn it into something resembling a smart comedy.

Life lessons learned? Oh God. Nothing but. That's why I'm very afraid.

Cute kids? Not that I can see. One saving grace.

Annoyingly wacky family? Yes, yes, yes. In fact, it seems to be all about how annoyingly wacky her family is. Yawn.

Nerd factor? Moderate. I think the boyfriend is kind of a "nice guy" rather than a D&D-playing brainiac.

*

7. Big Bang Theory (CBS, Mondays, 7:30 p.m.)

Nerds. Geez, they're everywhere these days. In the movies, on NBC, on the CW, on CBS, every-damn-where you look. You get the feeling that may be because the percentage of comedy writers who at one time may have gotten an atomic wedgie is pretty high. Perhaps far, far higher than the population at large. Really, how else can you explain the uncanny ability of so many TV shows and movies to precisely nail every pathetic detail of the nerd's really-not-so-funny struggle to avoid becoming roadkill on the superhighway of love? It was funny about a million movies ago when Anthony Edwards rode his pocket protector to immortality, but c'mon, after all these years, can't we give the poindexters a break?

Apparently not. CBS, as usual jumping right on top of a breaking trend, trots out Big Bang Theory, where in the first episode, a dumb, buxom blonde moves in next door to an apartment full of brainiacs and, as they say, turns their world topsy-turvy! She's oblivious to their nerdliness (something I call "male writers' fantasy") while they compete for the chick's attention in various hilarious ways, such as a) offering her a juice box; b) showing off their whiteboards chock o'block with math calculations; and c) (woo-hoo!) offering to let her - wait for it, now - use their shower! See, hers is broken. (A broken shower. I don't think I've ever actually seen one of those). That brings the comment from No. 2 nerd Sheldon: "It has been some time since we've had a woman take her clothes off in our apartment." No. 1 nerd Leonard answers: "That's not true. Remember at Thanksgiving my grandmother with Alzheimer's had that episode . . . ?" (Sheldon and Leonard. Like in the legendary TV comedy producer, Sheldon Leonard? You know, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show? No, the creators of Big Bang aren't modest whosoever).

Well, now the nerds are really in for it because they, like all book-smart but life-dumb young Aspergers' Syndrome sufferers, they're blind to social cues and mistake the kindness of bimbos for something else entirely. It's not long before they have a run-in with the blonde's boyfriend and somehow lose their pants. Hi-yuk! I love it when nerds are pantsed.

In nerd humor, success is entirely a function of the humiliation quotient (don't mean to sound too, um, nerdy here). That is, the more blithely the nerd wanders onto dangerous ground, and the more the painful his comeuppance, the better. So, with that in mind, it seems like the biggest laugh-getting geek here is neither Sheldon nor Leonard, but their friend, would-be ladies' nerd Wolowitz (pictured), played by Simon Helberg, a refugee from Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip where he played the cast member who impersonated Nicolas Cage. Wolowitz is a Cal Tech scientist who seems proud to be "out" as nerd. I predict he will be just a little too funny, and thus will be severely beaten by a jock.

In the end, though, this one looks pretty bad, along the lines of the tiresome Van Wilder movies. Where is Freaks & Geeks when you need it? Oh, yeah. On DVD.

Life lessons learned? What is a nerd if not a life lesson waiting to happen?

Cute kids? Doesn't seem to be.

Annoyingly wacky family? Again, it doesn't seem likely, at least at the outset.

Nerd factor? CBS goes for broke that this alone is enough. I doubt it.

*

8. Aliens In America (CW, Mondays, 7:30 pm)
Yet another journey into nerd territory, but Aliens in America takes it in more of a Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle direction - that is, one of them is a minority nerd (the second one of the new season, The IT Crowd's "Ross" being the other). The "minority nerd as laff-riot" gambit, which quickly seems to be turning into a sitcom staple, was established by Fez from That 70's Show, and is mined further here by Adhir Kalyan, a South African lad of Indian descent who plays, ironically considering relations between India and Pakistan, a Pakistani Muslim.

Through some wacky mix-up, he ends up as a foreign exchange high-schooler assigned to live with the Tolchucks of Medora, Wisconsin - and, since as everyone knows Wisconsinites are pretty much clueless bigots, the Tolchucks were expecting a blonde Swedish dude and are deeply disappointed when "Raja" shows up at the Chippewa Falls airport. (Also, I'm wondering, given the standard set by That 70's Show, is Wisconsin just inherently funny, or what? Is it the polkas?)

So Raja is one of the aliens of the title, the foreign national kind. The other is Justin Tolchuck (played by Dan Byrd). He's more of the outer-space kind of alien because he's a nerd - he was voted by the senior bullies as the eighth-prettiest girl in school. In an effort to save him from feeling so alone, mom Amy Pietz (about the eighteenth pushy older woman character of the new season) hatched the idea of the foreign exchange student so Justin could have a buddy. Raja isn't what she had in mind, however. And she wants to know why she can't return him like when she orders a coffee maker and gets a toaster. So now the two losers are together - aliens in America. The homeboy nerd and the foreign nerd - kinda like Eric Forman and Fez. Only we know where Raja comes from.

So does the rest of the school. In one clip provided the CW, it looks like bigotry of both young and old Wisconsinites will come in for a thorough comedic airing. The nasty teacher, on the first day of class, says, "For one year we will be in the presence of a real, live Pakistani . . . who practices Muslimism. How does everyone feel about Raja and his differences?"

Oh, and of course, there's a tasty sister Tolchuck, who, like mom, seems to be mindlessly self-centered. Naturally Raja falls in love with her. And what devout Muslim wouldn't want an arrogant, value-free bimbo, as long as she's hot? Judging from the clips, Raja will spend many a guffaw-filled half-hour overcoming the family's and townfolks' prejudices and showing them what a cool, non-terrorist nerd he really is.

Actually, I have to say, this multi-cam laffer (I'm really working on my Variety lingo) has the makings of a pretty funny show. And to be sure, it's refreshing to see issues of race and religion dealt with at all on network TV. But it'll be geek vs. geek on Mondays, as this is scheduled opposite The Big Bang Theory on CBS. My money's on Raja, though, whom I think could become this year's Harold , , , or is it Kumar?

Life lessons learned? I foresee nothing but life lessons, but I think these, instead of the usual kind of smarm like 'being true to yourself", "seeing the good in others," etc., etc., we'll get lessons that maybe we really should know, like, just because you pray towards Mecca three times a day, you shouldn't be called "Fudge-Pakistani."

Cute kids? The teens are cute. No acting-challenged l'il kids that I can see.

Annoyingly wacky family? Yep.

Nerd factor? High. Raised to a new TV level.