For the half of the country that didn't vote for George W. Bush, his rise to the presidency did offer one source of consolation: At least he would inspire good comedy.
    But after a few months of the Bush administration, a dreary sameness has already crept into punch lines about the president.
    Whether it's sketch comedies or late-night talk shows, every joke alludes to either his drunken past or dim-witted nature, particularly his penchant for malapropisms (the most recent: "Hispanically owned").
    If anyone out there could buck this tired trend, it would be Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of Comedy Central's groundbreaking "South Park." 
   Their new presidential satire, "That's My Bush!" (Wednesdays,  10:30-11 p.m. ET, beginning this Wednesday) steers clear of Jay Leno territory and manages to be strikingly original.
    But sadly, "Bush!" is still a major disappointment because it's just not funny.
    On paper, "Bush!" seems conceptually brilliant: The White House is transformed into a sitcom complete with roaring laugh track and supporting cast members like the sassy maid and ne'er-do-well neighbor that have managed to be a fixture of every half-hour comedy since the Ice Age. 
   Like a live-action Homer Simpson, President Bush (Dubya look-alike Timothy Bottoms) bumbles his way through kooky situations, much to the consternation of his exasperated wife Laura (Carrie Quinn Dolin).
    In the premiere episode, George tries to keep two dinner appointments simultaneously, one with his attention-starved wife and the other with a summit of rabid leaders of the pro-choice and pro-life movements.
    As each party dines in separate White House rooms, George dashes back and forth between them until the charade is revealed. 
   The second episode has George entertaining his Yale fraternity brothers by staging an execution that goes horribly awry. With the prisoner strapped to the gurney for lethal injection, Bush threatens, "Maybe you'd prefer the gas chamber" and then farts on him.
    But despite the appearance of hot-button issues like abortion and the death penalty in the plots of the first two episodes, "Bush!" is actually an apolitical satire. The real target of the spoof is the utter inanity of the sitcom formula itself. Political footballs are intentionally deflated by being presented in the context of the dopey clichéd plots that are the stuff of sitcoms.
    Given how the average Comedy Central viewer has been weaned on decades of sitcoms that can still be viewed on Nick  at Nite, a satire of the genre should be a solid idea. But "Bush!" falls curiously flat. 
   Part of the problem may be how the show mimics sitcoms a bit too well. "Bush!" recaptures the slick rhythms and well-timed punch lines with an accuracy that will give you flashbacks to every dumb episode of "Benson" or "Three's Company" you want to forget.
    The target of the satire also feels a bit dated; today's top sitcoms are nowhere near as hokey as those of yesteryear, and the genre's obituary has been written too many times to start dancing on its grave now. 
    If Parker and Stone had set out to spoof reality series, they might have come up with something that felt fresher.
    Since "Bush!" is the product of the minds behind "South Park," there's some gross-out humor as well. The only strong joke of the first two episodes is its choice of a pro-life leader: a puppet of an aborted fetus that somehow survived. "He's bitter, he's angry and he hates to be  canceled on," Bush's adviser warns the president when he tries to reschedule their dinner. At the dinner table, the fetus sits on a pair of phone books, wearing a minuscule suit and denouncing the pro-choice representative in a squeaky voice. It's only the first episode, but "Bush!" already seems to have found its own version of Mr. Hankey.
    If only the rest of the show were filled with the same subversive humor. Of course, the Bush surname is subjected to vaginally-themed double entendres. 
   But for the most part the jokes are same lame put-downs sitcom characters have been trading for years. Parker and Stone aren't satirizing sitcoms as much as they are angrily dredging up their worst features and hitting viewers over the heads with them for committing the sin of having faithfully watched the genre.
    Just like the sitcoms of old, each episode ends with a coda in which the moral of the story is presented. On "Bush!" the First Couple lies in bed while George describes the lesson he's learned from his misbehavior. When his wife challenges him, he utters the show's "Honeymooners"-inspired, soon-to-be ubiquitous catchphrase: "One of these days, Laura, I'm going to punch you in the face!"
    While it's a clever commentary on how the threat of domestic violence was once inexplicably interpreted as humorous, it comes across as misplaced hostility here. With "Bush!", Parker and Stone seem bent on hurting the viewers by shoving their unsophisticated taste back in their faces.

April 2, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Andrew Wallenstein is the television critic for Media Life.

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