“Dilbert”Tonight at 8 on WWOR/Ch.9
IF you like “Dilbert” the comic strip, you’ll like “Dilbert” the TV show.
If you love the comic strip, you’ll still only like the TV show.
It’s mildly amusing, in a comfort-food, macaroni-and-American-cheese sort of way.
But it’s behind the inspired curve charted by ABC’s “Drew Carey Show,” which is well into its third season of breathing life, unexpected dimension and laughs into the absurdities and soul-numbing realities of life in a world of cubicle offices inhabited by cubicle people.
After previewing the first two episodes of “Dilbert,” we have to note that, whether the action is in Dilbert’s office or at home, even “The Simpsons” has been there and done that more vividly and demonically.
OK, so maybe “The Simpsons” hasn’t done sketchily full male frontal nudity, which “Dilbert” does with curious regularity.
But “Drew Carey,” who appropriated Dilbert’s rimmed eyewear, has. And the men in his “Full Monty” spoof clearly had more than bellybuttons.
The most notable anatomic specificity in “Dilbert” is the addition of a mouth at least a partial set of teeth, but only in scenes in which the character, mouthless, lo these 10 years in newspaper strips, has dialogue.
Daniel Stern supplies the voice of Dilbert, the lump-headed, spud-bodied Every Employee who knows there’s gotta be a better way to spend his days and nights but doesn’t know how to get there – or whether he wants to.
In the first episode, Dilbert is stuck with an impossible task – engineer a product to go with the name already selected and pray that he does not come to the same sad end suffered by the last man who dreamed he was just another chicken on the egg production line.
Dogbert (Chris Elliott) will, of course, make this burden as onerous as possible by toying with Dilbert until he tires of the sport, which is shared by the blithely vicious Dilmom (Jackie Hoffman).
Dogbert is the breakout character. A real scenery chewer.
“Fame is more important than competence,” says Dogbert, who could balloon into the David Caruso of this midseason, quickly becoming too big to be part of an ensemble and demanding to be let out of his contract to chase down a movie deal bigger than Benjy’s.