OK, who’s laughing now?

Spike Feresten’s new late-night talk show on Fox is nothing like Greg Behrendt’s new syndicated daytime relationship show, except for this: Both hosts are trying to be TV stars because they wrote for hit comedies.

Feresten’s a former “Seinfeld” writer credited with the famous “Soup Nazi” episode, and Behrendt is a former “Sex and the City” “story editor/consultant” and the co-author of the funny-best-friend-of-a-book “He’s Just Not That Into You.”

Credits can corrupt, and absolute credits can corrupt absolutely. Behrendt should probably no more be entrusted with the power of TV therapist than Feresten should be handed the power of a late-night host. They’ve jaywalked across careers to get here. It’s what gives their respective shows a certain edge of possibility: Both guys are impostors at what they’re doing.

Feresten is open if not exploitative of this; “Talkshow with Spike Feresten,” which airs Saturdays at midnight after “MADtv,” apes the straight-faced deadpan of a headline in the Onion. Fox, alone among the Big Four networks without a late-night franchise, is now developing a pilot called “This Just In,” from “24” executive producer Joel Surnow, that’s being described as a conservative answer to “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.”

Not surprisingly, Feresten has spent the initial weeks on the air calling attention to how rinky-dink his operation is. He’s as green as Conan in the early days, as un-telegenic, and even more of a latchkey host, because he doesn’t have a sidekick or a band.

“They’re applauding, and they have no idea who I am,” Feresten said of the studio audience on his debut broadcast Sept. 16. “Thank you for accidentally tuning in to my show,” he began another week. His musical guest that night was a barbershop quartet harmonizing gay sex jokes.

But Feresten’s ironic pose -- pretend you’re aren’t really doing a show so when you actually do one, people will be pleasantly surprised -- is kind of disingenuous in an age of the MySpace Leno and the YouTube bedroom host.

Irony Central

Feresten in comparison to Internet amateurs does have a real studio audience, a real set and a real Fox executive bothering him during the show (Feresten’s first real guest, former boss Jerry Seinfeld, drops in Oct. 21).

He has real viewers, whom Feresten keeps asserting are really stoned. The show’s real writers (including Feresten), turn out real bits, and some are funny in that old “Late Night With David Letterman” way -- such as “Idiot Paparazzi,” in which stalker-paparazzi mistake ordinary citizens for stars. The other night, Feresten introduced his parents in the audience, then his wife (not), his child (not), his snaggle-toothed brother, his personal demons -- cupcakes and booze -- and his ice-dancing partner.

Don’t tell anybody, but I think it was real comedy. Feresten was once a Letterman writer, too, and it shows: “Talkshow” plays at times like an excellent senior thesis project at the College of the Dave.

“You like the ‘American Idol?’ ” Feresten said to his studio audience two weeks ago.

The “American Idol” -- just how Dave would subtly dismiss it. Feresten then paired up in shared pencil-necked geek-i-tude with “American Idol” loser Kevin Covais. Feresten tried to find Covais a woman and mocked his desire to be a professional comedian. Covais was in on the joke, I suppose, but the whole thing had the creepy aspect of an elaborate pledge-week hazing.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I learned Feresten hadn’t gone to Harvard (or Yale or even a minor Ivy). I guess I just assumed he was a Harvard Lampoon guy or whatever -- it was either the glasses, the rep ties or that he skipped the part of his career where you go into comedy clubs, get beaten up and humiliated and come out a decade later as a more mature performer. The trouble with Feresten isn’t his comedy; it’s his difficulty creating any intimacy with the audience or the camera. He’s got the irony down cold but the empathy not so much.

And then there’s “Greg.” He’s all empathy. He rocks empathy hard. His dogs, meanwhile, they like to “rock it, pillow style.”

It means pets sleeping on his pillows, which Greg no like. “You know what I like?” he said. “Crisp sheets and just my lady. Yeah, yeah.”

I’ve been watching “Greg” off and on for a month now, and I believe I’m getting the lingo down. Say this: I never thought I would forget to feel like a slug while watching daytime TV. In other words, I kind of like the show.

The topics on “Greg,” which is distributed by Tribune Media and airs in the mornings on KTLA (both of which are owned by the Tribune Co., which also owns The Times), branch out into pack-rats and phobics, but the most entertaining self-help here is for date-deprived women and commitment-phobic men.

They’re the tropes in “He’s Just Not That Into You,” a book that is also now available in a handy, pocket-sized abridged version, alongside “It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken,” the follow-up riff about getting over a split that Behrendt co-wrote with his wife, Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt.

The Tao of Greg, now in TV form. The complexity of feeling can’t help but be corrupted when packaged like this, and “Greg,” the show, is just such a mix of mutual support and chicken-soup commercialization.

Working the crowd

To his credit, Behrendt brings in experts. Unlike Feresten, though, Behrendt is a stand-up, a longtime member of the self-confessional, L.A.-based alternative-comedy scene. He knows who he is in front of an audience and creates an instant rapport. He sprung into being as a fame-certified emotional life coach only after being adopted by Oprah. It’s kind of terrifying, what Oprah’s power can do, but Behrendt, no doubt to the ridicule of his comedian friends, has gone along with it. With his spiky hair and tattooed guns, he’s like Son of Dr. Phil, inflating the self-esteem of the lovelorn like the fast-talking guy doing balloon animals at a party (it could just be the vests he wears).

As Behrendt likes to tell women still pining for their exes, “There’s a dude out in the world right now that’s going, “Where is she?’ ”

Given that “Greg” is on at 10 a.m., the dude’s probably at work. People come on the show pre-screened for change and usually leave with parting gifts -- a new cellphone, say, so that the woman who’s “he-toxing” can call her “breakup buddy” instead of “Dude.”

Those are terms Behrendt coined in “It’s Called a Breakup.” Come to think of it, “Greg’s” the kind of show that actually might be better in late night (like, after “Sex and the City” reruns). Behrendt’s kind of playing a fantasy version of the late-night Pink Dot delivery guy anyway. He arrives with a bottle of Smart Water and risky disclosures of his own, tells you some funny dating story from his pre-enlightenment days, tells you you’re great, then leaves you with his signature signoff: “It’s your world, make it delicious, continue rocking.”

You continue rocking. This works for an hour.

paul.brownfield@latimes.com