Only the laugh track is laughing

MyNetworkTV chose not to send out any early screeners of its new Flavor Flav sitcom, “Under One Roof,” which is never a good sign. But I managed to see a rough cut of an episode anyway, though I quickly wished I hadn’t. “Under One Roof” loosely follows the template of the 1990s NBC hit “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”: A streetwise con man winds up living with his rich relations, dragging his gangsta cred and connections through their posh life to general hilarity.

But “hilarity” is not a word that comes to mind while watching “Under One Roof.” Because this is not the 1990s, MyNetworkTV is not NBC and Flavor Flav is no Will Smith. Instead he is Calvester Hill, a softhearted street thug who, after taking the rap on a car wreck for his younger brother Winston, expects to live with him because, in the words of the poet, “you owes me.”

Winston (Kelly Perine), now a shallow, materialistic real estate baron, lives in the requisite McMansion carefully appointed with just about every stereotype imaginable: the stringy, implanted white trophy wife named Ashley (Carrie Genzel); a wimpy (possibly gay) son (Jesse Reid), a princessy (possibly stupid) daughter (Marie Michel) and a staff that includes a gibbering Chinese cook in a Mao jacket and a drunken Mexican gardener called Pablo. Pablo has replaced the former gardener, Mario, who, for a time, lives in one room of the mansion with nine family members, a chicken and a goat.

Paraplegics, I believe, are passed over, but then this was only one episode.

If the writing were better, “Under One Roof” could conceivably pass for satire, a takedown of a genre that might be called “comedy of color.” And who knows? Maybe that’s what creators Gelila Asres and Danielle Quarles were shooting for. But I doubt it. Flavor Flav is not exactly Bill Murray, and when an episode opens with the line, “If your ears were as big as your booty, you would have heard me” -- as Calvester sneaks two hookers into the house through the window -- it is difficult to make the “guerrilla comedy” argument stick.

Indeed, it is difficult to do much except watch, wide-eyed with disbelief, as terrible jokes are made at the expense of just about every racial and socioeconomic group in America.

Winston: “Why should I give a key to someone with a prison record as long as those heroin tracks on her arm.”

Calvester: “These aren’t heroin tracks; she’s just hairy.”

Hooker No. 2: “Yeah, I’m part Persian, and I’m in between waxing.”

Winston is fat, dimwitted and desperate -- driving the plot is the fact that unless he sells a $2-million condo in three days, all is ruined. His son Winston Jr. wears a bow tie and what look like knee pants and steals his sister’s birth control pills because he feels “moody,” while his sister seems to be there to provide the dumb-blond-of-color jokes -- “Quick,” she says when her mother begins choking. “Someone grab a beer so we can do the Heineken maneuver.”

Not surprisingly, compared with these moneyed morons, Calvester is positioned to seem like the soul of common sense and integrity, despite his tendency to say things like, “I’ve got something sitting on my chest heavier than Monique riding bareback on an elephant” and drag Whoopi Goldberg’s armpits into the conversation (don’t ask). He also has very cool rap star friends.

Depending on a laugh track that could vibrate a flat screen right off the wall, “Under One Roof’s” Asres and Quarles seem to cynically believe that a mostly black cast gives them permission to be as racist and generally offensive as humanly possible, and that if viewers are bludgeoned with enough familiar cues, they will laugh in spite of themselves.

But Flavor Flav, his VH1 credits notwithstanding, is no actor, and whatever charm there is to be found in his street-spun wisdom and linguistic ignorance wears off very quickly. One can only hope the show follows suit.

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mary.mcnamara @latimes.com

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‘Under One Roof’

Where: MyNetworkTV

When: 10 tonight; moves to regular time 8 p.m. Wednesday

Rating: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)