As the curtain rises on his new sitcom tonight, Tom Arnold is standing in a big hole, shovel in hand, digging.
If this were purely symbolism, it would come darn close to representing Arnold's acting career right at the moment.While he's had considerable success as the executive producer of his wife's sitcom, "Roseanne," Arnold is still trying to dig his way out of the hole he dug last year with "The Jackie Thomas Show," an ABC sitcom that left him buried underneath a really bad show.
"Tom," which debuts tonight at 7:30 on Ch. 5, is an attempt to change both his luck and his image. Whereas Jackie Thomas was an obnoxious buffoon, the new character - Tom Graham - is a lovable buffoon.
"It's not necessarily softening Jackie," Arnold insisted in a recent interview. "I mean, he's a different guy. Jackie Thomas was the boss, you know. And when the boss is nasty or buffoonish, it's a little bit different.
"This guy loves his family. He truly wants the best thing for his family. And he's truly doing the best he can. And he's a hard worker."
The lead character in "Tom" does share one characteristic with "Jackie Thomas" - they're both pretty much idiots.
But whereas Jackie was a big TV star, Tom is a struggling everyman. A husband and father of five, Tom Graham works as a welder and has recently bought his parents' old farm, which is located next to the town dump.
Having accidentally burned down the old farmhouse ("Well, it's a good thing I did because that place was a firetrap"), Tom has moved the family into a borrowed construction trailer while he's working on a dream house - and digging the foundation by hand.
Tom Graham is a dope, but he's a lovable dope. Even when he's being about as ignorant as any human can be, it is indeed obvious that he has the best of intentions.
Arnold and CBS were so determined to make his new character likable that tonight's pilot was reshot after making major changes in the script. There's a lot less fightin' and hollerin', and a lot more of Tom being supportive of his wife.
And that wife, Dorothy, is played by the talented Alison LaPlaca, who also co-starred in Arnold's last show.
"I loved working with her on `The Jackie Thomas Show.' We did have good chemistry," Arnold said. "And when Jackie Thomas was with her - it was the best stuff of the whole show."
He originally cast another actress in the part, but during early rehearsals called LaPlaca and begged her to come aboard to play Dorothy, "the glue of the show."
Dorothy is indeed the smart, sane one. But an early conflict is set up when Dorothy is accepted to law school, a move Tom opposes.
When Dorothy tells Tom she's going to be a lawyer, he quickly replies, "That's super, honey. I'm going to be an astronaut." But, predictably, all this soon gives him his big chance to prove what a nice guy he is.
Arnold is quick to point out the parallels between his life and that of the fictional Tom. Whereas Tom Graham works in a welding plant in Kansas, Tom Arnold once worked in a meat-packing plant in Iowa.
"When I worked at the meat-packing plant, I was making $13 an hour 10 years ago," Arnold said. "And they guys there, they got rid of the union. They're making the same hams, doing the same stuff, and they're making $7.50 or $8 an hour."
It's the same situation Tom Graham finds himself in.
And like Tom Graham, Tom Arnold is in the process of building a dream house on a farm, only the real one is in Iowa, not Kansas. And Arnold's real-life wife, Roseanne, isn't overly thrilled with what's going on.
"For the last three years we've lived in a trailer next to this huge hole in the ground," he said. "And Rosie calls it a pit or a hole. She just can't see that that's actually the dream house.
"I show her a model of it, and then we look at the hole in the ground . . . and it's really hard to sell her on it."
Tom and Roseanne are both executive producers and writers of "Tom." And, in comparison to "Jackie Thomas" - which was just awful - it's not a bad show.
It's not very good, though. It's very much a stock sitcom, full of gags and punch lines and very little reality.
The kids spout smart-aleck sitcom lines. So do the parents.
As Tom watches his children leave for school, he says, "Boy, it gives you kind of a warm feeling inside seeing 'em get on the bus in the morning, doesn't it?"
To which Dorothy responds, "Used to. But now I know they always come back."
When ordered to do some work, the oldest son protests.
"You can't just treat us like slaves," he cries.
"That's where you're wrong, buddy," Tom responds.
If not surprising, it's disappointing because "Roseanne" is the antithesis of the predictable family sitcom.
As for Arnold himself, he's never going to be Olivier, but he pulls off the role of a buffoon well enough. LaPlaca is more than up to the task, and there's some hope that the kids could turn out to be an asset.
In the realm of TV sitcoms, "Tom" isn't any worse than "Family Matters" or "Step By Step" or "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper." It's actually somewhat better than lots of inane junk that's on network television.
But it's certainly no "Seinfeld" or "Murphy Brown." Or even "Roseanne."