New Shows: More Raunch Than Reality

While much of the television universe has been blinded by the sunburst of faux “reality,” one network this week began airing a raunchy new comedy that in a future episode has its goofy co-protagonist getting it on with a U.S. Supreme Court justice who could be, who may be, who appears to be . . . Sandra Day O’Connor.

Who’s the mole inside UPN these days, Howard Stern?

What’s most stunning about the animated “Gary & Mike” is not its unevenly funny adult humor about a pair of friends motoring cross-country--taste being in the eye of the beholder--but its surfacing at a kiddie-friendly hour when the entertainment industry again stands accused of caring nothing about its impact on the younger set. Talk about leading with your glass jaw.

“Gary & Mike” resumes tonight at 8 (7 in the Midwest) following its special 9:30 p.m. Thursday premiere that came after “WWF Smackdown!” The new show’s early regular time slot, preceding “Celebrity Deathmatch,” affirms that UPN will flash just about anyone, however young, to attract a crowd.

The new series is just a twisted little half-hour on the lowest of networks, of course, in contrast with this week’s other newcomers that carry the misleading stamp of “reality,” as if spontaneity were possible with a camera on your nose like a zit.

Tonight, for example, brings the premiere of the WB’s “Popstars,” Tuesday brought “The Mole” on ABC, and on Wednesday began the hotly discussed “Temptation Island,” a gathering of young groins changing partners for Fox cameras in a belabored attempt to be provocative. “Temptation Island” has many more hubba-hubbas than IQ points.

Ever forthright, Fox failed to inform viewers that one of the unmarried couples featured on the taped premiere of this mindless frolic was later thrown off for failing to disclose they had a child.

This indiscretion violated the show’s rules (its bozos and big-boobed boobs must be childless, presumably, because advancing their seed could lower humanity on the food chain). When it comes to minimum intelligence, though, it has no rules.

That especially crude “D.C.” episode of “Gary & Mike” hasn’t even an airdate, by the way. Yet UPN thought enough of it to send it out for scrutiny. And based on a sampling of it and three other “Gary & Mike” episodes--each carrying a deceptively mild TV-PG content rating--this dark comedy for adults from producers Fax Bahr and Adam Small is wickedly funny one moment, barf-worthy the next. It also seems easily the hottest to trot of the week’s new arrivals.

So show it to kiddies.

As for the two pals, Gary (voiced by Christopher Moynihan) is a sweet, naive, pliable asthmatic, while Mike (voiced by Harland Williams) is a loopy, dopey swinger. The “D.C.” episode finds them working for an idealistic senator in the nation’s capital, where Mike walks into the chambers of a gray-haired justice as she appears to be pleasuring herself after watching a porno film as part of a 1st Amendment case before the high court.

After displaying a wrinkled, thickly veined leg, she seduces him (“You are some stud”), and later there are fuzzy shots of her nude behind her frosted shower door guiltily trying to wash herself “clean.”

In the same episode, the idealistic senator is scandalized when his lesbian chief of staff is mistakenly thought to be giving him oral sex as she kneels before him in church. Earlier, there’s a snapshot of her and Mike’s mother kissing passionately in the raw.

The series opened Thursday with Mike in bed with some female the night before her scheduled wedding to someone else, launching her deranged motorcycle-cop father, Officer Dick, on a pursuit to kill Mike as he and Gary travel the road.

Although the show is tamer tonight as Gary falls for a Texas girl with a hideous growth on her cheek, we do get whiffs of flatulence and a double-entendre about Mike participating in a “hands on hot rod” endurance contest.

As for gags producing nausea, meanwhile, the “D.C.” episode opens with Mike playing a video game whose object is to blow away Internal Revenue Service workers, as a voice says: “Here is your audit. We are going to garnish your wages.” This comes after IRS wage garnishment was said to be a possible motive for last month’s slaughter of seven in Wakefield, Mass.

Tenaciously irreverent, “Gary & Mike” is no fan of old-time religion. Christians get the raspberry tonight, as observant Jews do when the travelers hit New York in a future episode. Parents are another target. In addition to the lunatic cop, Gary’s father himself is a militaristic tyrant and Mike’s ever-comatose parents are drunken druggies from the ‘60s.

Yet some of the material is inspired, as in a musicale juxtaposing Jews and street people in that New York episode, and Gary and Mike getting robbed in the premiere by hillbillies who were deeply wounded by being stereotyped in the movie “Deliverance.”

In fact, there is probably more reality in “Gary & Mike” then either “The Mole” or “Temptation Island,” each hoping to copy the epic ratings success of “Survivor,” a new version of which will arrive on CBS Jan. 28 after the Super Bowl.

“The Mole” is almost bad enough to be good. Almost. Tuesday’s premiere introduced the usual eclectic crowd, this time competing as a team for up to $1 million, except the venue is France (where occasionally you even get to see someone French) and with one of the group secretly working against everyone else.

As a pretty travelogue, “The Mole” is very watchable. Otherwise, how bad is it? Well, the voice-over in the second episode on two occasions pronounces Cannes with the s. And you know you’ve entered the great pantheon of camp when the mole’s masked “operatives” abduct one of the participants during the night, take him to a castle and fit him with an iron mask.

If only it were as easy to liberate myopic TV from its own iron mask as prime time is blanketed with these derivative “reality” shows, the most infantile of which to date, hands down, is “Temptation Island.”

It is neither satisfying nor even sexy, despite the presence of these gorgeous unmarried couples and the magnificent concubines--well, that’s what they look like--who’ve been brought in to tempt them.

Where was a laugh track Wednesday night when you really wanted one? First when host Mark Walberg announced ponderously that the singles will “mix, mingle and date in an attempt to answer a couple of most important questions: ‘Have I found the one, or is someone better out there?’ ” And next when one of the guys said that two weeks on this island “allows me to explore and really find out who I am.”

Stow it. All of them are here for one reason--the bucks and TV exposure. They go to bed each night with visions only of magazine covers, talk shows and three-picture deals in their beautiful heads. All those tears and meaningful looks when they separated under the gaze of the camera? Intimate relationships squarely in the lens? Hearing them whine about themselves is excruciating. If they don’t have graphic sex for us soon, nuke ‘em!

Even Fox’s viewers, who prove year after year that they will watch just about anything, can’t be buying this. The more of this kind of programming, the better “Gary & Mike” begins to look.

As for “Popstars,” which the WB promises is “real life, real tears, real talent?” Haven’t seen it. Some of us can handle only so much reality.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.