Peo­ple have often won­dered what would hap­pen if you gave 100 mon­keys a type­writer and an infi­nite amount of time. Well, now we know what you get if you give it to just the one, and tell it that it has less than ten min­utes to come up with some­thing funny.

Every­thing in Amer­i­ca seems to be one extreme or the oth­er. Either they have so lit­tle inter­est in explor­ing any­where else in the world that they don’t even own a pass­port. Or, they’re the most wide­ly trav­elled and rich­ly cul­tured indi­vid­u­als on the plan­et. There doesn’t ever seem to be any­thing in between. It’s either red state or blue. 

On the one hand you get South Park, The Simp­sons, Curb You Enthu­si­asm, Let­ter­man, Conan and the Lar­ry Sanders Show. But then on the oth­er, there’s The Nan­ny, Rosanne, Mar­ried With Chil­dren, Mike and Mol­ly, and now, Whit­ney.

It’s only when you see Rosanne and Ellen DeGeneres guest­ing on the Lar­ry Sanders Show that you’re remind­ed of quite how sharp and fun­ny they both are, and what won­der­ful com­ic tim­ing they both have. So how do you explain the sit­coms that the net­works cre­at­ed for them?

What a strange beast tele­vi­sion is. It hun­gri­ly grav­i­tates towards the bright­est and most charis­mat­ic indi­vid­u­als it can find. But before it allows those that it dis­cov­ers their 15 min­utes, it insists that they dilute every­thing it was that they were first attract­ed to about them. 

So that when the shows they build around them even­tu­al­ly air, they’ve been ren­dered entire­ly impo­tent. And they’re washed away in a tide of medi­oc­rity and dragged to the murky depths in a sea of platitudes. 

There’s no sit­u­a­tion in Whit­ney. Unlike say Mar­ried With Chil­dren, which is a show about a cou­ple, who are mar­ried, but, and here’s the catch; they have chil­dren!!! Or The Nan­ny, which is a show about a nan­ny, but she has a fun­ny voice!!! Whit­ney’s not about anything.

Nor could it in any way, and how­ev­er vague­ly, be con­sid­ered to be even remote­ly comedic. I await the episode in which they talk at length about whether their toi­let seat should remain up or down.

Yet I’ve no doubt that the come­di­enne that it’s con­struct­ed around, Whit­ney Cum­mings is both smart and fun­ny. She must be to have secured her own show. 

So I hope she’s not been reduced to drink­ing all the mon­ey that they’re pay­ing her in a fit of depres­sion. Because the show that bares her name is alas, about as fun­ny as watch­ing your youngest child being care­ful­ly eat­en by a par­tic­u­lar­ly vin­dic­tive polar bear who appears to be watch­ing you out of the cor­ner of its eye.

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