‘The Wanda Sykes Show,’ not funny

Starting out mediocre, the first episode of The Wanda Sykes Show went downhill from there.

Premiering Saturday at 11 p.m. on Fox, the comedian and actress’s talk show mostly relied on the old premise that being offensive–whether by attacking people’s politics or violating their standards of taste–is inherently funny.

The opening monologue, which focused on politics, was the best part of the hour. Sykes had a few good lines in defense of President Obama, like When you say, ˜We’re going to vote that fascist out of office,’ you sound dumb. Addressing people who say that Obama is trying to do too much, she said, That’s the kind of thing you hear from your supervisor on a union job.

Biting the hand that feeds her, Sykes ran some clips from Fox News that refused to give the president credit for the resurgent stock market. I hereby appoint myself the president’s tell-people-where-to-go-and-what-to-kiss czar, she said. Fox News, if you want an exclusive, pucker up.

But a long rant listing the mistakes of Obama’s predecessor was preaching to the choir, if you assume that the choir doesn’t mind when the preacher goes on for a long time without making them laugh.

It’s not new to see political satire on TV that’s slanted toward the left-liberal-Democrat side, but it is sort of refreshing to see an outlet that doesn’t pretend it’s fair and balanced.

For the rest of the show, however, Sykes largely dropped current affairs, and the quality of the comedy plummeted from an already not-so-high level.

Her announcer, the comedian Keith Robinson, seemed on the verge of making an impolite observation about racial differences: He told Sykes that he had a Peter Parker moment on a plane when he realized he could tell the ethnicity of a crying baby. But the joke went nowhere.

A segment called Wandarama, which was more or less the show’s equivalent of Weekend Update, suffered from underwritten lines about celebrities like Adam Lambert, Carrie Prejean and Nicolas Cage.

A long bit about Sykes’ attempts to recycle her sex toys was disgusting, and not in a funny way. Sykes will probably regret that in it she wasted a cameo by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, her costar on The New Adventures of Old Christine.

But the show hit bottom with a segment called The Wandabar. Three mismatched celebrities ” Mary Lynn Rajskub of 24, Phil Keoghan of The Amazing Race and Daryl Chill Mitchell, who probably would prefer that no one mention that he’s on Fox’s Brothers ” addressed View-style issues (e.g., for parents, is screaming the new spanking?) while sipping what looked like real alcoholic beverages.

Mitchell got off a few funny lines, Keoghan floundered, and Rajskub, who seems to be one of those people who get quiet when they drink, looked like she wished she could disappear.

A person whom Sykes had introduced as my favorite drag queen, Portia, emceed the next segment, called The Inappropriate Games. Sykes’ three panelists were asked to guess the ethnicity of various Asian celebrities. At this point, sympathetic viewers probably wished all three of the guests could disappear.

After an earlier commercial break, Sykes had pointed out that the show hasn’t been canceled yet.

Like too much of this hour, that wasn’t funny, just sad.