'Sit Down, Shut Up' debuts Sunday on Fox
  • We pay close attention to “Sit Down, Shut Up,” an occasionally quite funny but largely anodyne animated comedy beginning Sunday on Fox, because it comes from the pen of Mitchell Hurwitz, creator of “Arrested Development” — a show that must be considered among the greatest television comedies of all time or at least among the best shows of the new millennium or at least really awesome.

    [However, in] addition to Mr. Hurwitz the two other chief writers on “Sit Down, Shut Up” are alumni of “Two and a Half Men”....

    The show is set within the ranks of the supremely lame faculty of a small-town Florida high school, losing funds because of its poor performance on No Child Left Behind. At Knob Haven High every child is left behind, presumably because everyone on staff is bored and horny. The drama teacher is a sex-crazed bisexual; the German teacher is a porn addict (he calls his magazines “filthies” and wonders when he is spotted by students buying them, “Why didn’t I sign up for the Internet when I had the chance?”); the English teacher is a jock womanizer who speaks in intentionally idiotic double-entendres. A sign in the hallway reads: “Don’t Tempt a Teacher. It Could Cost Them Their Job.” The unlikable and not sexy librarian does Kegel exercises and talks about them.

    Various male teachers are hot for Miracle Grohe, the one character in whom the show’s entire effort at commentary is compacted. Kristen Chenoweth provides her fantastically ditzy voice as if she were imagining herself doing Sarah Palin impersonating Marilyn Monroe. Miracle is the science teacher as creationist. When she wants to make the point that human beings didn’t descend from monkeys, she takes her clothes off. She is also obsessed with everything New Age, picking what she believes are spiritual flowers for her colleagues during spring break that turn out to be hemlock. When cuts have to be made to the budget, Miracle, a reactionary wing nut in every respect, suggests: “Science class should be the first to go. Everyone knows it’s a bunch of voodoo the Jews came up with so they could charge us for medicine and stuff.”

    “Sit Down, Shut Up” is not like “Freaks and Geeks,” examining the ecology of high school life. It is about the monotony and petty rewards of low-end public service work; the students are virtually nonexistent. The show is part of Fox’s Sunday night animation lineup, where “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” do an entirely more imaginative, irrepressible job of ferreting out the drudgeries and provincialism of middle-class life.


So it's an animated sitcom from, on one hand, the creator of "Arrested Development" and, on the other the writers of "Two and a Half Men." Sounds like a crap shoot at best.