'BUSH' WACKY NEW COMEDY CENTRAL OFFERING SPOOFS SITCOMS ... WITH THE PRESIDENT'S HELP.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

Whatever your politics, if you're a sitcom connoisseur, you'll probably agree that it was best for Trey Parker and Matt Stone that George W. Bush won - or, at least, was declared the winner of - the presidential election.

It's not that Parker and Stone are blatantly parodying W.'s perceived intellectual shortcomings in their sitcom parody ``That's My Bush!'' For one thing, half the country doesn't see the guy that way, and besides, ``Saturday Night Live's'' Will Ferrell, not to mention Jay Leno, David Letterman, ad nauseam, have already run that joke into the ground.

It's just that the vaguely genial George makes a better sitcom protagonist than his competitor. Had Al Gore won, he probably would have been posited more as a know-it-all father who always gets the last (boringly pedantic) word, like Danny Thomas or Hugh Beaumont's Ward Cleaver. George fits easily into a more time-honored sitcom template - the regular guy in over his head against the mundane exigencies of our time.

There's no real political agenda running ``That's My Bush!'' - you won't, thankfully, hear yet another joke about butterfly ballots or dangling chads. Timothy Bottoms looks so much like Bush in most shots that it's a little scary - given W.'s slack schedule as Texas governor, one almost figures he could probably find the time to shoehorn in a weekly performance in a sitcom. Moreover, given his cheeky performance at the recent annual Washington press luncheon, he certainly seems like he'd be game.

Bottoms' Bush is cut of the same cloth as Dick Van Dyke's Rob Petrie or Ray Romano's Ray Barone - well-meaning doofuses who are just genetically predisposed to stumble into awkward situations and do well just to keep their heads above the goofy mayhem surrounding them.

What's funny about ``That's My Bush!'' is its meta-fiction conceit - the fact that it's using the fate of our nation as a springboard to parody something as lowly as the situation comedy. Often, the punch line is not the joke, which can be pretty weak - the joke is that the (obviously canned) laugh track is guffawing at such a stupid gag (it also hoots wolfishly at the bimbo secretary and repeats Bush's Jackie Gleason-esque catch phrase). What's doubly funny about the ersatz sitcom is that it tackles ``issues'' in the same manner that situation comedies would often foist ``very special episodes'' upon an unsuspecting viewing public.

In tonight's episode, George W. Bush - who, recent real-world evidence aside, here insists, ``I'm a uniter'' - tries to arrange a meeting of the minds between leaders of the anti-abortion and abortion-rights movements. (The leader of the anti-abortion coalition is an embittered fetus who survived his abortion and wheezes his cranky lines like ``South Park's'' Cartman). But - oops! - George also arranged some quality time with wife Laura (Carrie Quinn Dolin) that same night, and therefore spends the evening running back and forth between his intimate dinner with his easily flummoxed wife and rabidly minded national spokesmen. (He even has to switch his coat and tie, which, in another meta-fictional gag, look exactly alike.)

As stupid as the setup is - and you've seen it both on ``The Brady Bunch'' and ``Mrs. Doubtfire'' - you probably wouldn't see any more cogent debate on the abortion issue on MSNBC or the Fox News Channel.

In a future episode, George is visited by a gaggle of former frat buddies - they burst into the Oval Office dressed as Arab terrorists and, unlike George, have clearly not grown up to make anything of themselves; they're still pony-keg-guzzling buffoons.

George is torn between his allegiance to them and his duty to his country - when they want to sit in on an execution, he decides to stage one for them, employing an equally brain-dead comedy-improv group. This episode's lesson has precious little to do with the death penalty - George learns that tiresome old sitcom saw that it's best not to try to be someone you're not.

The cast understands Parker and Stone's apolitical but nonetheless savage conceit and responds accordingly. Carrie Quinn Dolin sagely plays both Laura and an actress playing Laura, an insanely grinning, quipping comedian who's winking at the audience and dying inside, knowing she's above the material she's performing. Likewise, Marcia Wallace (who played Bob's receptionist on the classic ``Bob Newhart Show'') expertly assumes the role of the ``sassy maid'' Maggie like Ann B. Davis in ``The Brady Bunch.'' Wallace both is (and is playing) an elder-statescomic - Dolin in 20 years, say - who has this show's elementary moves down with such icy precision she could do them in her sleep but, hey, it's a paycheck.

Sure, it posits our nation's leader - in prime time, no less - as a bit of a dolt, but what did ``The West Wing'' do, but show liberals the kind of leader they dreamed of but were denied when Clinton was in office? And certainly, it reduces the issues of our day to their idiotic black-and-white extremes. Still, ``That's My Bush!'' hardly represents the end of Western Civilization, unless you measure Western Civilization in terms of its sitcoms.

``THAT'S MY BUSH!''

What: Parody of sitcom formulae set in the current Bush White House.

The stars: Timothy Bottoms, Carrie Quinn Dolin, Kurt Fuller, Marcia Wallace, Kristen Miller, John D'Aquino.

Where: Comedy Central

When: 10:30 p.m. Wednesdays.

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Photo:

Timothy Bottoms stars as President George W. Bush, with Carrie Quinn as first lady Laura Bush, in Comedy Central's, ``That's My Bush!''