'Development' kisses convention goodbye

The future of TV comedy is a sick one, my friends. A gloriously, brilliantly, deliriously sick one, where a desperate housewife wears a ''SLUT" T-shirt on a prison visit, a businessman sells prefab homes to Saddam Hussein, and a pudgy teen lusts after his first cousin. It's a ferociously Freudian future, replete with a pent-up mama's boy, a family-run banana stand, and a disbarred psychiatrist who wears cutoffs beneath his underwear because he's a ''Never-nude." That's a phobia about nakedness he's trying to make into a nationally recognized condition.

In short, it's ''Arrested Development," the Emmy-winning Fox comedy that deserves every critical tongue kiss it has gotten since it premiered last year. The show, which returns for a second season tonight at 8:30 p.m. on Channel 25, signals a potential future for a TV genre that's dying from a rampant case of thick hubbies with thin wives and threadbare Barcaloungers. It's a much-needed step forward from the retro family-sitcom pablum that has been putting the masses to sleep and putting millions into Jim Belushi's bank account in recent years. Next to shows such as ''Still Standing" and ''Quintuplets," which seem to be channeling dated ''Ozzie & Harriet" family roles, it's a lightning jolt of imagination and originality. It's a step into the 21st century.

Created by Mitchell Hurwitz, ''Arrested Development" is so refreshing because it refuses to be lazy and settle for what's already been done. While conventional sitcoms from ''My Wife and Kids" to ''Will & Grace" simply build a series of jokes to a conclusion and add a laugh track to the half-hour to give it an atmosphere of fun, ''Arrested Development" uses every contemporary tool at its disposal (except, thankfully, the laugh track). It employs voice-overs, quickie flashbacks, fantasies, nightmares, and fake coming attractions, all on top of clever writing. While there is something to be said for just actors on a stage with a script, that approach has been done to death for now. ''Arrested Development," and ''Scrubs" for that matter, celebrates the growing potential of the TV medium, rather than sticking to a model born out of the theater.

''Arrested Development" is so dense with crooked little jokes and momentary flashbacks that it rivals animation for frame-by-frame wit. Indeed, it does bear a certain resemblance to its animated Sunday-night neighbor, ''The Simpsons," as both are hyperactive family comedies that reflect the ills of American culture as much as they showcase the foibles of human nature.

While ''The Simpsons" has its Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, for instance, ''Arrested Development" has a corrupt mogul named George Bluth Sr. who has been sent to jail for Enron-like offenses and who has consorted with terrorists. These backdrops have jagged edges, even if the kinetic pace keeps you from taking them seriously.

But ''Arrested Development" is oh so much more twisted and out there than ''The Simpsons." A mockumentary chronicle of the Bluth family, it pushes a whole host of taboos about family relationships as far as it can without being childish or obscene. All the little pathologies that are just under the surface on a show like ''Everybody Loves Raymond" are right out there on ''Arrested Development." For example, the incestuous connection between the domineering Bluth matriarch, Lucille, and youngest son Buster, as well as teenager George Michael Bluth's attraction to his first cousin, Maeby, got lots of laughs during the first season of the show. It may sound ''South Park"-like and geared toward an edgy, younger audience. But the writing is so sophisticated, it's not sophomoric burlesque so much as a heightening of the unseemly feelings that play underneath the surface of everyday life.

That's why the Emmy voters were willing to give the show its outstanding comedy prize this year. ''Arrested Development" is clearly unconventional, and yet it doesn't make the mistake of equating vulgarity with newness. Often, a show will claim to be cutting edge simply because its writers are willing to cross boundaries of taste. It's made of the same old singles sex talk, or couples sex talk, but it has an in-your-face quality that is supposed to signify modern. ''Arrested Development" doesn't bother with that kind of brash; it's a character comedy whose modern qualities have more to do with formal innovation and psychological tweaks than genital jokes.

And, in a rare twist, Fox is to be commended, not just for renewing the low-rated show but for moving it next to ''The Simpsons." It's the kind of series that needs a solid entree, since it's not a familiar product for most TV viewers. It has its own comic language, and that language takes a few episodes to fully understand. The Bluths aren't easily recognizable; they're not another of TV's many clueless dysfunctional families in need of healing. They're bored by their awareness that they're dysfunctional, and they breeze amorally through their warped Orange County lives, dumping on the only ''normal" and outraged member of the family, Jason Bateman's Michael. They don't much care about happy endings and learning lessons, something sitcom viewers have come to expect. They're relentless.

That the series is narrated by Ron Howard, one of its executive producers, only highlights its departure from the ''normal" sitcom. Howard is a symbol of TV comedy wholesomeness, after years on two of America's beloved old-style sitcoms, ''The Andy Griffith Show" and ''Happy Days." His cheery voice-over is the perfect counterpoint to the comic darkness of the Bluths' universe, with its rampant greed, trickery, backstabbing, and narcissism. The Bluths look all the more outrageous and different when Raggedy Andy is telling you their story. The cast is excellent all around, as they've turned their unique caricatures into characters we can actually feel affection toward. But Howard's down-home vocal presence is the invisible glue that holds the show together, in all its giddy, new-fashioned insanity.