Shock and ugh: Wayans show is low on laughs

And then there's the talking vagina . . . Yes, Damon Wayans has provided me with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of using that line to open a review. Because his new Showtime sketch series ``The Underground" is all about the sort of ``shock" humor that pushes the limits of social acceptability and panders to PC-phobic audiences. It's fixated on catching the viewer's attention with such ``forbidden" words and images.

The show, which premieres tonight at 10, isn't very funny, but that seems to be beside the point for Wayans. The ``In Living Color" alum has pulled together a bunch of skits primarily geared to make you look up -- not just at talking vaginas, but at extreme Middle Eastern parodies such as ``Iraq's Funniest Home Videos" hosted by Bomb Sagdat. But then the skits leave you flat, as they behave like seventh-graders repeating bad words over and over just to rile up the teacher.

In some ways, ``The Underground" suffers from serving as Wayans's personal catharsis after having spent five years as the star of ABC's ``My Wife and Kids." He played it safe in network sitcomland, and now he's playing it unsafe with a vengeance. It's not hard to understand why he might want to go for broke after stifling himself for so long, but he needs to take his catharsis into the writers' room first and give it some worth for the viewer.

Politically incorrect humor can be great -- to wit, ``Family Guy" -- but it has to be put together with some cleverness and laced with ironic truths. ``The Underground" doesn't flesh out its envelope-pushing concepts with writing or piquant characterization. The sketches, in which Wayans is joined by a troupe including his son Damon Wayans Jr., have no further goal beyond their starting point. We're not given anything to chew on, just a series of Beavis and Butt- Head-like moments where we can think, ``He said `talking vagina,' heh-heh, heh-heh."

What did the talking vagina say? In the world of ``The Underground," it doesn't much matter.

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