Keeping funny out of ‘The Loop’

Somewhere on Hillhurst there’s a guy -- 23, retro T-shirt, hair tousled into disarray with product. It’s Wednesday, 11:30 in the morning and he’s multi-tasking, talking on his cell while parallel parking his leased Scion. It’s that low-to-mid-20s guy -- cleaned up a bit, airbrushed of whatever tattoos and made a little nebbishy -- who’s hot right now, at least sitcom-wise; the latest incarnation of him is Sam (Bret Harrison), on the Fox comedy “The Loop.”

It a single-camera show from Fox’s Comedy Needs to Be Louder division; you know, lots of soundtrack and scatology and cute narrative signage, where everybody is also skilled in the ancient sitcom art of sardonic aside-making.

It’s satirical all right, paced roughly like “Arrested Development,” but not very funny or believable. “The Loop” is set in Chicago (by way of Los Feliz) and has it that Sam is a promising executive at an airline (he apparently wrote this amazing senior thesis, full of ideas) who dances between commitment to job and commitment to his inner T-shirt-wearer. His roommates are his rowdy older brother, Sully (Eric Christian Olsen), and two young women who, you might be surprised to learn, are tremendously attractive.

Lizzy (Sarah Mason), “who tends bar at their local hangout, is oblivious to the fact that everything always goes her way because she’s so smoking hot.” (I quote from the press materials because I don’t want to get the character nuances wrong.)

The other roommate is Piper (Amanda Loncar), a med student and Sam’s longtime crush. In the pilot episode, these feelings are put to the test when for Piper’s birthday Sam agrees to procure a free airline voucher for her long-distance boyfriend. Meanwhile, at work, Sam’s juggling the craven bullishness of his boss, Russ (Philip Baker Hall), and the craven advances of his colleague Meryl, played by Mimi Rogers.

They’re stock, somewhat hollow roles, particularly for Rogers, whose sexual harassment is meant to be cute, like a granny talking dirty. Hall, a veteran character actor, plays a terrorizing CEO who strides into a scene blustering.

“Where’s your compassion?” he’s asked.

“I have a gay son. He took it all.”

It’s fun to hear Hall nail a line like that, but only passing fun. To that end, the clever joke writing on “The Loop” screams past at 70 mph, around long enough for you only to smell the fumes of somebody’s well-written line.

“The Loop” is a much worse, and much more cynical, version of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” the surprising comedy on FX about four friends and a bar, returning for a second season. That one has a heart; “The Loop,” by contrast, is aiming for the sweet spots at the multiplex -- the groin and the wallet areas.

*

‘The Loop’

Where: Fox

When: 9:30 tonight

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