`$TREET' SIGNS ALL POINT DOWNHILL.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

If TNT's Wall Street drama is titled ``Bull,'' then ``The $treet,'' Fox's sudsy yarn about stock traders and their very busy genitalia, should be called ``Bare.''

Not five minutes can pass in tonight's premiere without one of these young, strapping fiscal cowboys propositioning, being propositioned by or closing the deal with some sweet young thing. The show opens with our earnest hero Jack (Tom Everett Scott) sexing it up with fiancee Alexandra (Nina Garbiras), then complaining that they're too busy to spend much time together; it soon becomes apparent that they're too busy because they're trolling for upscale parties and closing every bar in town.

Darren Star, who has ``Sex and the City'' and ``Grosse Pointe'' on his resume, has decidedly cast ``The $treet'' more in the vein of his more willfully stupid shows like ``Beverly Hills, 90210'' and ``Central Park West.'' ``90210'' and ``Melrose Place'' proved that people don't really care if a show is moronic as long as the good-looking youngsters have sex or talk dirty often enough. Still, in the waning days of this rah-rah economy, it might be asking a bit much for viewers to root for the good fortunes of these shallow pretty boys who play with money like it came out of a Monopoly game.

Tonight's episode has the Brooks Brothers-clad hip-hop crew of Balmont Stevens Inc. making sure that the Initial Public Offering of Ivygene.com, a eugenics company marketing Ivy League reproductive cells over the Internet, is a success. And although A), it's a breathtakingly dumb idea and B), Internet stocks have taken a hit since the show was shot, neither has anything to do with the fact that C), the montage in which the stock sputters, then spurts, to rapturous success is a stiff, despite swirling cameras, hypercaffeinated editing and driving music. It just seems patently impossible to jolt an adrenaline rush into viewers by showing stock speculators driving up the price of a stock, for the same reason that all those movies about computers were duds - there's no inherent drama in watching people type on a keyboard. If this sort of thing is what each episode's dramatic impact will hinge on, then Star better make sure his sex scenes are real attention grabbers.

Star also hasn't helped his cause much with the characterizations. Outside of soulful, decent and competent Jack - who's clearly odd man out in this bunch - there are an ineffectual nerd (Adam Goldberg), an unjustifiably arrogant jerk (Rick Hoffman), a whole bunch of interchangeable guys, a minority character (Melissa De Sousa) who hopes to advance despite the company's racist/sexist/class-conscious policy and a tough yet soft gal (Jennifer Connelly). No doubt they'll all trade plenty of saliva and stock tips in the weeks ahead until the market - or the public's appetite for schlock (see ``Titans' '' declining fortunes) - crashes.

``THE $TREET''

What: Prime-time soap opera about young, attractive stock brokers and their sex lives.

The stars: Tom Everett Scott, Jennifer Connelly, Giancarlo Esposito, Adam Goldberg, Nina Garbiras.

Where: Fox.

When: 9 p.m. Wednesdays.

Our rating: Two stars

John Goodman's 'Normal' still way below average

``Normal, Ohio,'' the sitcom starring John Goodman as a man returning to his hometown for the first time since announcing he was gay, has suffered through a difficult, high-profile birthing process. Originally titled ``Don't Ask'' and featuring a completely different coterie of characters, this most recent incarnation boasts the talented Joely Fisher playing Goodman's sister and sitcom veterans Orson Bean and Anita Gillette as his parents.

So how is it? Don't ask.

It's a crass, stupid, standard-issue sitcom filled with lame punch lines, arbitrary plotting and mediocre performances. Goodman stars as Butch, who returns to his hometown to celebrate his son's acceptance into medical school. About the only person happy to see him is his sister Pamela; watching Fisher put genuine effort into playing a cliched, blowsy, desperate single mom is almost more depressing than watching everyone else simply go through the motions.

Butch's dad says things like, ``If I turned gazoomy and ran off to La-La Land to shack up with cute boys, I wouldn't show my face,'' and ``It's not bad enough that our son dances with wolves, our daughter's a pop tart.'' His ex-wife (Mo Gaffney) tells Butch that their son ``thought it would be nice if he had his father to send him on his way, or, in your case, his merry way.'' The audience guffaws so uproariously at all this trash that morphine drips must be attached to every seat in the studio. Even those canned laughs seem more shriveled in next week's episode, when Butch takes his pop to a gay bar after he discovers he had an affair during the Korean War.

Interstitial material includes ``home movies'' of Butch as a child, in which he delighted in playing dress-up in women's clothing and having tea parties and looks depressed otherwise (let's hope there's money in the budget to provide future therapy for the young actor playing that role). This suggests that Butch should have figured out he was gay a long time ago and that it wouldn't still be such a novelty for his family. But then we wouldn't get all the delightful homophobic one-liners that the audience is encouraged to laugh at even while shaking its collective head in mild disapproval. That schizophrenia in ``Normal, Ohio'' might be forgivable if there was a modicum of cleverness in the material; instead, this is vying for the worst new show of the season.

``NORMAL, OHIO''

What: Sitcom about a gay man returning to his hometown.

The stars: John Goodman, Joely Fisher, Orson Bean, Anita Gillette, Julia McIlvaine.

Where: Fox.

When: 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays.

Our rating: One star

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) An attractive cast and lots of sex are the hallmarks of the new Fox show ``The $treet.''

(2) Orson Bean, left, and John Goodman star as father and gay adult son in Fox's new sitcom ``Normal, Ohio.