“The Loop”
Tonight at 9:30 on Ch. 5
½ star (one half star)
AFTER watching two excrutiating episodes of Fox’s new “comedy,” “The Loop,” I can only pray that I’m never in that particular loop.
The show focuses on hard-partying 23-year-old Sam (Brett Harrison) who, for reasons I hope never to understand, is a big executive at an airline based in Chicago – hence, “The Loop.”
Even though Sam is a big shot, he apparently isn’t so big a shot that he doesn’t have to still share an apartment with three incredibly good-looking people – Piper (Amanda Loncar), Lizzy (Sarah Mason) and Sully (Eric Christian Olsen), Sam’s older, even harder-partying, slacker brother.
Sam’s life is divided between shooting to the top every day at work – and drinking until he becomes unconscious every night.
Sam’s days revolve around the airline’s owner, Russ (Phillip Baker Hall), inexplicably praising him to the, er, skies, while the older, female exec, Meryl (aka “the Predator,” played by Mimi Rogers) hits on him in seriously unfunny and vulgar ways while rubbing his butt. Yes.
When Sam returns home each night to his “Friends”-type set-up, he hooks up with his roomates and trundles off to the bar where Piper works. There, they all proceed to get incredibly drunk, scream a huge amount, nearly have sex on the bar and then scream some more.
In episode two, Sam hooks up with Piper’s drunken friend and ends up in Mexico – after blacking out.
Remembering he has an important meeting, Sam flies home, but gets arrested on the plane when other passengers and flight attendants think he’s masturbating under his jacket. Yuck.
This airplane arrest, oddly, has no impact on his career. When he gets out of airport security’s clutches, he pitches a new idea to his boss – an all-partying airline to the major hot spots around the globe.
And Russ gives him his own airline to run!
The only bright spot is Joy Osmanski as Darcy, Sam’s assistant, a resentful MIT grad who is the same age as Sam, but has to work as his lacky.
As you may have guessed by now, the jokes are dismally unpleasant and vaguely depressing.
But there is good news. Katie Couric is mentioned prominently, as in: ” . . . Katie Couric, that bitch can drink!”
Let’s all scream now!
linda.stasi@nypost.com