A new (but not so fine) romance

BY DIANE WERTS | Newsday Staff Writer

September 12, 2006

Anne Hech stars in ABC's "Men in Trees," premiering Tuesday night. (ABC Photo)

Who decided that acting oblivious, inept and smug should equal adorable? Probably the same TV writers who think the way to portray modern relationships is to be aggressively shallow.

And so we have ABC's "Men in Trees," an hourlong "comedy" that aspires to be a sort of lovestruck "Northern Exposure" and lands instead somewhere south of insipid. It's another one of this fall season's smackdowns that seem designed to put the supposed know-it-all female in her place, and to do it "cute." They should just make everything pink and flowery and be done with it.

Anne Heche is the ditz victim this time, playing a relationship coach who, of course, knows nothing about love, or life, or even how to drive. (Cute!) Surrounded initially by New York City sophisticates, obsessed with nail salons and four-bar cell-phone signals, she travels for a book signing to the wilds of Alaska, where local yokel dudes need chick tips because the pickings are so slim. Here she will decide to "find" herself, having already stumbled upon her biggest guy fan on the planet, a classy hooker with a heart of gold and an outdoors he-man to warm her all night in his ice-fishing cabin after she drops through the surface while urgently smoking a cigarette. Did I forget to mention the inevitable inn-room raccoon assault? (Cute!)

While waiting for something - anything - to ring true in this pushy piece of piffle, you can also savor proferred native wisdom (gee, didn't we see that on "Northern Exposure"?), barroom philosophizing (gee ... ), outback plane piloting (by "Good Times" dad John Amos!) and, yes, even a sage local radio show. (Where's John Corbett when you need him?) As in too many current series, "meaningful" ballads play incessantly, trying to evoke a mood the happenings themselves cannot generate.

"Men in Trees" reeks with madcap desperation, both in its tonal attempt to be "screwball" amusing and in its furious busy-ness of incident, lest we take a second to recognize how none of these characters is wearing clothes. They're all prancing about naked in invisible cloaks of simulated emotion. Heche is the first to be called on her artifice, righteously taken down a few pegs like the classroom smartie who won't play the game of playing dumb.

That's too much of prime time now, condescending to some supposed youth yearning for superficial silliness, cramming shows with treacly pop songs and glossy mediocrity, lest anything challenge allegedly shallow minds. Starting from its cute title (a warning sign Heche sees upon alighting in hicktown), "Men in Trees" talks down to its viewers with suffocating vivacity.

Series creator Jenny Bicks was a writer on "Sex and the City," which had its own rarefied air - but also an authenticity of place and, most important, a soul. The sentiments beneath the stylishness came across heartfelt. While a few of her new show's supporting players radiate sincerity (Suleka Mathews, whose character itches to escape the "hospitality business"; sanguine Abraham Benrubi, moving from behind the "ER" desk to behind an Alaska bar), most embody tired cliches. Heche herself is such a shrill snob, she's hardly as endearing as the setup intends.

At least "Men in Trees" doesn't tax your brain. Just your patience, taste and intelligence.

MEN IN TREES. Haughty romance expert Anne Heche says "I don't need a man" and gets what's coming to her. If you watch, so do you. Series previews tonight at 10, thereafter airs Friday at 9 p.m. on ABC/7.