Take My Bush, please!

When South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced their intention to develop a weekly sitcom based on the home life of the winner of the Gore-Bush election, the duo seemed on the threshold of creating yet another cultural phenomenon. The startlingly simple yet revolutionary idea of chronicling the daily exploits of the real first family against the backdrop of current national and world events held infinite comic possibilities, and presumably, countless indignities for the winner (if the fates of Isaac Hayes and Jesus Christ on South Park were any indication). At the very least, we were going to get the anti-West Wing. When George W. Bush won (sparing us all a Small Wonder remake with Gore in the revised title role), well, it seemed as if liberals everywhere were about to get a tart little treat to follow their Wednesday helping of The West Wing. And Comedy Central's That's My Bush was born.

Perhaps stillborn is a better word. Unfortunately, That's My Bush is about as misguided, uninspiring and sophomoric as the real Bush is to his detractors. That's because the show intentionally (and inexplicably) devotes all of its creative energy toward satirizing one of the few targets in our culture that is more bloated and defenseless than Dubya himself-early-1980s sitcoms. Ovations for major characters when they first enter. Farce-style plots driven by simple misunderstandings and carried out with garden-variety slapstick. And trite moral lessons delivered with kind words and music ripped right off the soundtrack of a Perfect Strangers episode. TMB has it all, right down to the wisecracking maid who puts her superiors in their places more often than she does household objects. While the actors who portray Dubya, First Lady Laura Bush and Karl Rove present reasonable physical likenesses, they are much more intent on affecting the one-dimensional mannerisms of the casts of Benson and Diff'rent Strokes than of their true-life inspirations. This compromise undermines the comedy by placing the actors' portrayals in a no-man's-land somewhere between Rich Little (dead-on and thus, funny) and Chevy Chase (not even trying, and thus, funny).

TMB lacks the social sting of South Park and the political bite of The Daily Show-Comedy Central's two shining stars. The political satire, when it does surface, has an accidental quality and is always in service of hitting the broader sitcom target. This slavish devotion to satirizing sitcoms renders the show so innocuous, in fact, that the real Dubya might even find it humorous and entertaining – especially since the show offers very little to offend his politics. In a recent episode, for example, Bush's old fraternity buddies show up at the White House to hold him to a promise he made during a college drinking binge that they were all invited to move into the White House if he were to be elected president. Again, a brilliant premise rife with comic potential. But instead of taking aim at the relentless snobbery of fraternities, the social, political and economic privileges they afford their members and their preference for pedigree and appearances over merit (all factors that Dubya rode to electoral glory), TMB sticks to its dopey, ham-handed approach. Bush's frat buddies, who are presented as caricatures of the age-old Animal House stereotype, disrupt White House life by lounging around in the "First Living Room," scattering pizza boxes and beer cans about and heckling national security briefings. When they are finally asked to leave by Laura Bush (who is referred to as a "bitch" by the faux Bush in a radical departure from the tone of the format), the boys plan a grand finale of drinking and carousing that just happens to coincide with an execution Bush is attending. Worried that the guys will think he has become soft if he cancels, he invites them to the execution. When informed that the media will be attending, and that they will question why Bush has invited his buddies to watch, Bush and Rove decide to hire an improv troupe (for whom the show's real venom is reserved) to help stage a fake execution for the benefit of the boys, right before the real one. I probably don't have to tell you that a mix-up ensues, resulting in Bush performing the actual execution himself with over-the-top macho posturing in front of the media and the family of the condemned. When informed that he has killed the real inmate, Bush reacts with a pratfall. Har-har.

The episode ends with Laura trying to coax George from under the covers of their bed so that she can deliver the evening's message. When asked what he had learned from this debacle, Bush answers, "That killing people is wrong," only to be corrected by Laura, who informs him that the true lesson is that he should never try to be something he's not (all together now: awww). Of course, the real irony is that Dubya learned the very opposite lesson when he won the election by running as a political moderate with a compassionate streak while simultaneously pimping himself to the religious right. But whether this depth of irony is intended or coincidental is unclear, given the insipid fodder that precedes it.

Although mentioned before, it must be reiterated for the sake of fairness that all of TMB's vapidity is intentional. Parker and Stone are going after sitcoms, no doubt about it. But what they plan to accomplish in this endeavor that Seinfeld (the definitive anti-sitcom) hasn't already is unclear. And without the socio-political edge of its Comedy Central siblings, TMB falls into the all-too-familiar Saturday Night Live trap of being so dead-on in the re-creation of its target that the result is just as annoying as the real thing. But the bigger question, perhaps, is why the sharp-witted Parker and Stone seem so content with shooting ducks in a barrel when more elephantine prey is lumbering about within the confines of their very premise.