There is one really nice thing about the new NBC sitcom "Imagine That" — it's not "Emeril."
No, this new show — formerly known as "The Hank Azaria Show" — isn't as bad as the one it's replacing. But that is faint praise indeed.
"Imagine That" is almost unimaginably bad. If there was a laugh in the premiere, I missed it. (KSL is pre-empting tonight's premiere for an Olympics special. Ch. 5 will air "Imagine That" on Saturday at 11:30 p.m.)
Azaria stars as Josh Miller, a comedy writer whose life is tough both at home and at work. At work, he gets stepped on by his idea-stealing boss, Barb (Katey Sagal of "Married . . . With Children"); at home, he gets stepped on by his wife, Wendy (Jane Brook of "Chicago Hope" and "The District").
(Apparently, he writes for some sort of "Saturday Night Live"-esque TV show, but that's never made clear.)
When the going gets tough for Josh, he goes into fantasy mode. And his fantasies are played out for the audience.
It's a clever idea — at least it was back when Danny Kaye was playing Walter Mitty. But to call this show "Walter Mitty"-esque — as NBC insists on doing — is the comedy equivalent of blasphemy. Sorry, but Josh imagining his marriage counselor (a character also played by Azaria) as a misogynist jerk just doesn't cut it.
Neither does Josh turning that imaginary therapist into a sketch for his TV show. (How dumb is this guy? His marriage is in trouble and he's planning to mock the therapy process on national TV?)
NBC is calling "Imagine That" a "high-concept comedy." Apparently, in NBC's vocabulary high-concept is synonymous with low-brow.
A lot of what passes for humor in the first half-hour involves Josh whining and moaning about the fact that he and Wendy haven't had sex in several weeks. And a lot more has to do with Josh and his womanizing writing partner, Kenny (a woefully miscast Josh Malina of "Sports Night") leering at their sexy new female assistant (Julia Schultz of "Tomcats").
At least Brook and Azaria work well as a couple in trouble; they have no onscreen chemistry whatsoever.
All of this would be more discouraging if it didn't seem so temporary. NBC, which had ordered 13 episodes of "Imagine That," shut down production after only five were produced.
(Apparently, Azaria, who is one of the show's executive producers, had creative differences with executive producer Seth Kurland, leading to a parting of the ways — amicable, we're assured — that left the show without a show-runner. At one point, the network was looking for a new executive producer, but it has apparently given up on the search and plans to air the five completed episodes until the Winter Olympics start next month, at which point the show disappears from the schedule.
And, in all probability, disappears permanently. Oh, it's possible that "Imagine That" will get great ratings and NBC execs will trip over themselves ordering new episodes. But that's about as likely as the network agreeing to spend tens of millions of dollars to revamp "Emeril."
Not gonna happen.
I don't know about you, but I think it's darn nice of NBC to cancel their crummy sitcoms even before they put them on the air. Prevents everyone but TV critics from having to waste time looking at them.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com