Forced humor dulls the edge of `Whoopi'

By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003

When a child misbehaves in public, using potty language and poking strangers in the legs, sometimes he or she is just looking for attention. But we haven't been ignoring comedian Whoopi Goldberg, have we, so she really has no excuse for her egregious new sitcom, "Whoopi."

After a half-hour of the show's self-consciously provocative zingers, you certainly won't want to give this baby a warm, consoling hug. You'll want to give it an eternal "timeout," and you'll be hoping that NBC will agree with you, sooner rather than later.

"Whoopi," which premieres tonight at 8 on WHDH-TV (Channel 7), is basically a vehicle for knee-jerk political incorrectness. It exists solely to push the viewer's buttons -- the American-fear-of-Middle-Easterners button, the whites-who-act-black button, the smoking-ban button. Ultimately, though, the script is so crammed with forced taboo-breaking jokes that they become yawningly expected and impotent. When a group of Asians appears in the second episode, you can't blink before the familiar SARS jokes start spreading.

The show is named "Whoopi," but Goldberg's character is named Mavis Rae. But really, Mavis is just Whoopi doing Whoopi stand-up routines. "He can say Condoleezza," she yells at a TV set early in tonight's episode. "Why the hell can't he say nuclear?" That's the kind of material Goldberg could easily transpose to the podium at an awards show, or sling at Jay or Dave from the promotional couch of a talk show. It's not really dialogue. Producing a good sitcom means more than just filling a half-hour with stand-up fragments and building a stage set.

The premise of the show has Mavis, a former pop star and chain smoker, operating a rundown New York hotel. The most prominent member of her small circle is her high-strung Iranian handyman, Nasim (Omid Djalili), who is given to outbursts when he's mistaken as an Arab. When Mavis's conservative brother moves into the hotel, Nasim feels the pressure: "I haven't felt so oppressed since the Ayatollah blew up my beach house." Every line spoken by Nasim has something to do with his Middle Eastern origins, and he can't even look at a broken TV without saying, "It's more dead than Saddam's first defense minister." Cue the laugh track. Djalili, known in Britain for his stand-up work, delivers his lines with great energy, but they are merely the same line over and over again.

Meanwhile, Mavis's brother, Courtney (Wren T. Brown), is dating a white woman, Rita (Elizabeth Regen), which gives Whoopi -- I mean Mavis -- the chance to riff on "What's with the brothers dating white girls?" Also, Mavis finds punchline setups aplenty when she encounters Rita's ridiculous attempt to be hip-hop.

The mission of the series, as explained in the media by Goldberg and her producers, is to usher in a new age of Norman Lear-styled comedy, to present characters who talk about what people are thinking but afraid to say. But Lear also knew how to build a rich, believable ensemble and re-create a slice of life in which current issues arise naturally. The characters in "Whoopi" aren't really characters; they're mouthpieces. And Mavis isn't really Archie Bunker; she's full of bunk.

If "Whoopi" fails NBC, which is hoping the show will lead its Tuesday sitcom lineup to glory, it won't be because audiences in 2003 can't handle 9/11 jokes or socially provocative humor. It'll be because they expect their 9/11 jokes and socially provocative humor to have at least a little wit and complexity.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.