‘Curb,”Sunny’ getting last laugh among comedies

Every year around this time, media outlets trip all over themselves to trumpet the death of the sitcom.

Once you see ABC's new lineup, you'll understand why.

But like most of the cast of a George Romero flick -- that's a zombie reference for you whippersnappers -- comedies aren't exactly dead, you just might not recognize them anymore. At least not the best ones.

Of the five series competing for best comedy Sunday at the Emmys -- "The Office," "30 Rock," "Entourage," "Ugly Betty" and "Two and a Half Men" -- only "Men" looks and feels like a traditional, filmed-before-a-live-studio-audience sitcom, and it's the least enjoyable of the bunch.

The networks are so at a loss as to how to make viewers laugh, they're barely even trying. Only six new comedies will debut this fall, down from 16 as recently as four years ago. NBC, which has had as many as eight new sitcoms on its fall schedule, has none for the first time since 1980.

Thankfully, cable's two funniest comedies -- "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" -- are here to fill that void.

"Curb" (10 p.m. Sundays, HBO) returned for its sixth season last night, and the "Sopranos"-style 21-month absence seems to have done it some good.

This past season, in which series creator and star Larry David contemplated his own mortality, couldn't hold a candle to the previous one that saw Larry rehearsing for his Broadway debut in "The Producers." The end result was more fun than the actual play.

But with new episodes incorporating the Blacks -- a family of hurricane victims Larry's wife, Cheryl (Cheryl Hines), forces him to adopt -- "Curb" and its cast seem reinvigorated. Larry now has children to play off of, and, more importantly, another woman of the house (Vivica A. Fox) to annoy.

Not that the show's focus has changed. Larry still is obsessed with the important things in life: whether he's paying a painter for bathroom breaks, why a grieving friend hasn't thanked him for leaving a condolence message and what to do when your wife's best girlfriend is Ted Danson.

And he's still a horrible excuse for a human being. "On the days I want sex, I'm a lot nicer," Larry says. "I'll be nice the whole day. And then we'll have sex, and I'll just go back to being the way I am. It's fascinating."

This puts him in unpleasant company with the sad, miserable losers from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (back-to-back episodes debut at 10 p.m. Thursday, FX). Together they are the six worst people on TV not named Glenn Beck.

The most refreshing series you've likely never heard of focuses on four friends -- Mac (Rob McElhenney), Dennis (Glenn Howerton), his sister Dee (Kaitlin Olson) and Charlie (Charlie Day), who comes across like the love child of Bobcat Goldthwait and Animal from the Muppets -- and the seedy Irish bar they run. Or are supposed to be running. They barely even show up there anymore.

That's because they've been busy pretending to be crippled, going to abortion rallies to pick up women and getting addicted to crack so they can go on welfare. They've done everything short of killing a drifter, but then there's still plenty of season left. (Come to think of it, maybe there's a reason "Sunny," now in its third season, is still just a cult hit.)

Danny DeVito joined the cast last season as Dennis and Dee's estranged father. And while the casting stunt kept the series on the air, it always felt forced.

But this season, DeVito clearly is having the time of his life, whether he's crawling through heating ducts in his undershirt during a hostage crisis a la Bruce Willis or tripping on acid in a high school parking lot during NFL tryouts inspired by the Mark Wahlberg movie "Invincible" -- or, as it's (mis)identified on the show, "the one where the guy from the New Kids on the Block makes it onto the Eagles."

If you can't wait until Thursday's premiere, there's a special online episode (www.myspace.com/sunnyfx) that serves as a pretty good example of "Sunny's" humor. There are spoofs of horror movies, "Law & Order" and "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" alongside jokes about Drakkar Noir and a "Fraggle Rock"-loving pimp named Pepper Jack. And everybody thinks Mac is a serial killer, but he's really just sneaking around because he's embarrassed to be dating a transsexual. Again.

So maybe "Curb" and "Sunny" aren't for everybody. (Neither is "Two and a Half Men," for that matter.)

But as Larry David himself would say, they're pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Mondays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.