A couple as odd as they are mod

With ratings for “Scrubs” and “Joey” refusing to budge beyond the mediocre, NBC is hoping viewers will answer their personals ad (“Desperately Seeking Comedy to Appeal to 18- to 35-Year-Olds”) with “Committed,” debuting tonight at 9:30.

It’s a hyped-up, overacted relationship comedy about two eccentrics (instead of “Mad About You,” think “Neurotic About Me”) who meet cute after an apartment lobby/blind-date mix-up. Marni (Jennifer Finnigan) is an occupational therapist; Nate (Josh Cooke) is a physics grad out of Yale who turned down fellowships at MIT and Harvard to run a used-record shop in Manhattan, apparently after taking “High Fidelity” too literally. At dinner, Marni talks about her online therapist, Buddha 88, and Nate has a freak-out about a guy blocking the emergency exit. Boom -- head cases in love.

Only they’re not really weird, they’re sitcom weird -- attractive, well-groomed, nutty, with available punch lines. The most unusual thing about “Committed” is the way it presents social phobias as a kind of urban accessory, like an iPod or an ankle tattoo. There’s truth in that argument, and for this “Committed” earns some points -- it at least advances the contemporary sitcom into newish social territory by positing that irrational fears or obsessive-compulsive tendencies are part of our overall package, our cuteness -- that little something extra, fellas, for the ladies. So when Nate tries to hide the depths of his neurosis from Marni, not wanting her to see his chaotic pack-rat apartment, she has a surprise. “I actually found it kind of sexy,” she tells him, describing the place as like “being inside your brain.”

Of course, if you’re going to be obsessive compulsive, it helps to be good-looking, with tight-fitting record-store clerk T-shirts that nicely show off your pecs. But I nitpick, because this is a sitcom, through and through. Creators/executive producers DeAnn Heline and Eileen Heisler have been around the block a few times on shows including “Roseanne” and “Ellen,” and they know how to set up a good punch line, but the show needs to simmer down. Finnigan is blond, cute, perky and all the rest, but Cooke is very Type A as well, and the combination is headachy. Nate’s got a friend at the record shop named Bowie (Darius McCrary, and Marni’s got Tess (Tammy Lynn Michaels), and both are there, like straw dogs, to inject sardonic asides and throw cold water on our kooky couple.

Comic relief comes more reliably from a wheelchair-bound friend of Marni’s (RonReaco Lee) and from Tom Poston as Clown. Clown is a sad old clown who lives in Marni’s closet because, well, I guess because it’s New York. Clown is a wacky idea for a side character, and Poston, wearing the same bemused expression he wore on “Newhart,” is good for at least one bit per episode. He’s like half a Kramer when he enters, or one-fourth, but in these lean times for comedy you take what you can get.

Meanwhile, NBC can’t help trying to fool us into thinking we’re watching some alternate-universe “Friends,” with the apartment building exteriors and between-scenes guitar riffs. Most curiously, given the way it undoubtedly wants to pick off the “Sex and the City” crowd, “Committed” cuts out Marni and Nate’s early period of dating, moving ahead in Episode 2 to months later in the relationship, the sex great, the chemistry great, the banter great.

“You know when you have your shoes for a while and they feel really comfortable, but then all of a sudden they just start bugging you?” Nate says.

Marni: “Do you want out of this relationship?”

It doesn’t mean anything, of course, beyond the nice twist of the line. One of the weekly pleasures of “Sex and the City” was the way the women kept sleeping with creative sickos, or people who simply needed help; the show’s comedy came from the horror that lurked around the date, the twisted fetish or highly awkward tic that was going to be revealed between dinner and the post-coital cigarette.

Either way, the gals, usually, weren’t about to keep dating those men. They were one-offs, so to speak. On “Committed,” that sense of possibility doesn’t exist, because a more shallow, generalized craziness is the show’s reference point. The kind of crazy that makes you look into your boyfriend’s eyes and moon: “I love the fact that you really need serious help,” without actually getting him help.

*

‘Committed’

Where: NBC

When: 9:30-10 tonight

Rating: TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children)

Jennifer Finnigan...Marni

Josh Cooke...Nate

Tammy Lynn Michaels...Tess

Darius McCrary...Bowie

Tom Poston...Clown

Creators/executive producers Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline.