‘Grosse Pointe’: Satire in Search of Its Subject

Darren Star is obviously using “Grosse Pointe” to tap a younger, less cosmopolitan audience on the WB than with “Sex and the City,” the Emmy-deserving comedy he created for HBO. Even so, as for tonight’s klutz of a premiere, get outta here.

Somewhat funnier is the second episode, and the third is just hilarious.

No stranger to middlebrow commercial success, Star was also executive producer of Fox’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Melrose Place” before flopping badly with the short-lived “Central Park West” on CBS. And in “The $treet” he has another new series about to open on Fox.

The half-hour “Grosse Pointe” is said by the WB to be a satire, but what it’s mocking is not readily apparent tonight. A comedy with overlapping realities, it takes its title from the corny prime-time soap in which its fame-driven young protagonists star. But off camera, they are just about as overcooked as the characters they play on their TV melodrama. So what exactly is “Grosse Pointe” sending up as it struggles while initially delivering hardly a glint of humor? Other sendups? Itself? When actors playing caricatures are themselves caricatures, there’s no space for a higher intelligence. That’s the case tonight.

Over-vamping Hunter Fallow (Irene Molloy) is the WB show’s scheming vixen, who plays a sweet innocent in the soap. Tonight Hunter goes berserk when feeling threatened by dishy newcomer Courtney Scott (Bonnie Somerville), against whom she continues to plot in future episodes. Sweet, neurotic Marcy Sternfield (Lindsay Sloane) is another member of the soap cast, joining Hunter in being so far over the top tonight that the top is no longer discernible.

Nearly as broad are the TV soap’s male stars, dense Johnny Bishop (Al Santos) and Quentin King (Kohl Sudduth), whose follicle crises indicate that he is secretly older (probably in his late 20s) than everyone else.

In this crowd, hitting 30 gets you Medicare.

It’s unfortunate that “Grosse Pointe” begins so weakly, giving no hint of the smarter, wittier episodes that follow. Next week finds Hunter, Johnny and “the network” in a humorous tither over whether the soap characters played by Quentin and Courtney should kiss.

And Episode 3 has Hunter euphoric about being up for the role of Monica in Oliver Stone’s supposed new film, “Lewinsky,” even though her attempts to put on 40 pounds go against the soap’s anorexic instincts.

Hunter, honored about possibly playing Lewinsky: “She brought this whole country to its knees.”

Chirpy Marcy: “And still kept her dignity.”

Here’s hoping this, and not the premiere, represents the real “Grosse Pointe.”

* “Grosse Pointe” premieres tonight at 8:30 on the WB. The network has rated it TV-PG-DL (may be unsuitable for young children with special advisories for suggestive dialogue and coarse language).