This show, dare we say, needs help

BY VERNE GAY | Newsday Staff Writer

September 26, 2006

Ted Danson, left, Jane Caczmarek and Tom Wilson may need therapy to recover from this show (ABC Photo)

Those clever rascals at ABC will use a special 90-minute edition of "Dancing With the Stars" to launch a show tonight that is so hopeless, hapless and helpless that those unsuspecting viewers who don't grab the remote at exactly 9:30 will be left gasping for air at 9:35. So keep the gas masks handy.

In TV terms, "Help Me Help You" is utterly mystifying. Stack up the stars here - Ted Danson, Jane Kaczmarek, Jere Burns - and you've got a cornucopia of some of the tube's best comic actors. Just by putting a camera on any one of them you should be able to generate laughs. But "Help Me" is a Gobi Desert of laughs, a Sargasso Sea of laughs, a dark-side-of-the-moon of laughs, a ...

Sorry ... I'm getting carried away, but you too will be flummoxed. The failure of "Help Me Help You" does not compute. Foremost, there is Danson, essentially reprising Dr. John Becker - the sourpuss misanthrope of the moderately successful CBS sitcom "Becker" that ended its run a couple of years ago. For "Help Me," he's a vainglorious, narcissistic heel of a shrink - Dr. Bill Hoffman - who convenes group therapy sessions but clearly has "issues" as great or greater than any of his patients. His wife, Anne ("Malcolm in the Middle's" Kaczmarek, billed here as a "guest star"), has dumped him for another man.

As for the group? There's Dave (Charlie Finn) - a workplace slacker who tries to commit suicide but lands on his boss instead; Jonathan (Jim Rash), a not-at-all-ambiguously gay guy who nonetheless refuses to emerge from the closet; Inger (Suzy Nakamura), who invented a piece of software, made millions and now has nothing left to do - other than figure out why guys can't stand her; Darlene (Darlene Hunt), who's obsessed with Hoffman; and Michael (Burns), a lawyer plagued with serious anger-management issues and forced into "mandatory group therapy."

Hoffman has anger-management issues, too: He tries to patch up things with Anne by having (what he calls) makeup sex (and which she calls breakup sex). He blames his personal problems on his "subconscious," to which she replies: "Your subconscious is a jackass. That's why I'm divorcing your subconscious." Hoffman sends his patients out to establish relationships, with predictably miserable results. Meanwhile, he tries to patch up things with his daughter by handing her the keys to his $80,000 car - his midlife crisis toy - but reneges on the gift.

And so on. There's a strong odor of desperation on-screen, as if the competent and seasoned actors here know they're in this for a short ride. Indeed, they are.

HELP ME HELP YOU. Featuring Ted Danson playing a shrink who thinks very highly of himself. A complete misfire. Sitcom premieres tonight at 9:30 on ABC/7.