Flavor Flav's 'Under One Roof' a deceptively smart sitcom

Let's review, shall we, the distinction between stupid and stoopid. Stoopid is dumb with intent, with a purpose. It uses idiocy to make larger points in a way that belies its intelligence. Stupid, on the other hand, is just plain dumb.

With that in mind, allow me to say that the seemingly abysmal MyNetworkTV sitcom "Under One Roof," the star vehicle for Public Enemy rapper Flavor Flav, does indeed succeed in transcending its own idiocy to attain the stoopid. In fact, I'd go further than that to say "Under One Roof" is the best show to address race and class in America since "The Wire" ran its last episode earlier this year.

It's just that "Under One Roof" addresses race and class the way "The Beverly Hillbillies" addressed class and regionalism and "Green Acres" addressed the Vietnam War, that is, behind a façade of idiotic humor.

On the surface, "Under One Roof," airing at 7 p.m. Wednesday on WPWR Channel 50, is a very stupid sitcom. For one thing, it's an unabashed attempt to garner publicity by MyNetworkTV, the Fox subsidiary meant to fill the programming vacuum when many local Fox-owned stations were left high and dry after the United Paramount Network merged with Warner Bros. Since then, MyNetworkTV has specialized in lousy reality series and tawdry specials focusing on Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, but "Under One Roof" is one of its first forays into scripted series. If a borderline media celebrity like Flavor Flav is desperate enough to star in it, so much the better. Yet that doesn't make it any good.

Flavor Flav is best known to TV viewers as the star of the awful VH1 reality series "Flavor of Love," in which the once-proud Public Enemy rapper debases himself in a dating competition that is sort of "The Bachelor" for skanks. He ain't no sitcom star.

In "Under One Roof," Flav's Cali Cal is an ex-con who took the rap for his brother in a car crash and went to jail, allowing the brother to live a privileged life with his (white) wife and kids. Cali Cal is a playful idiot imp who frequently speaks the truth others can't now that he has moved in with the clan in Beverly Hills.

Get past the jokes about prison sex and masturbation and look at the way the show, stupid as it is, has been designed to set him apart. As the brother, Kelly Perine's Winston is a status-obsessed, ascot-sporting phony. Carrie Genzel is his rail-thin trophy wife, Ashley. Marie Michel's Heather and Jesse Reid's Winston Jr. (or J.R.) are their mixed-race kids, obsessed with wealth but also with their notion of blackness.

In last week's episode, which might just be the best this series ever gets, J.R. mulled becoming a "gangsta" rapper, while Heather got involved with a rich white kid whose Texas father had potential real-estate business with Winston. At one point, farce ran amok, as Ashley interviewed to join the local ladies club, while J.R. entered in his gangsta-rap outfit, soon joined by Winston in cowboy hat and chaps in order to appeal to his new partner.

Even cook and housekeeper Su Ho (Emily Kuroda, salvaged from "Gilmore Girls") entered clanging a ranch-style dinner bell and shouting, "It's vittles time, y'all."

Add to that "Frasier"-style irony, such as Winston telling J.R.: "You should be happy with who you are. You only look stupid when you try to be someone else" -- while still wearing his cowboy hat. Then there were lovely little touches such as J.R. getting picked up for writing "graffiti" on the wall: That is, he wrote the word "graffiti" on the wall, in chalk. How meta.

And if it all came to a silly simple conclusion, that only places it firmly in the sitcom tradition.

This week's episode features NFL star Terrell Owens in a guest appearance, so I would expect it to be more formulaic and probably not as good. But I suspect producers Claude Brooks and Darryl Quarles and writers Danielle Quarles and Gelila Asres will still find sly ways to show their intelligence and slip in new points about race and class. That puts this show, dumb as it undeniably is, miles ahead of the run-of-the-mill idiot sitcoms airing on the major broadcast networks. So in the immortal words of Flavor Flav's rapper colleague Humpty Hump of Digital Underground: "Let's get stoopid!"

In the air

Remotely interesting: WLS Channel 7 reporter Harry Porterfield is to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists in July. Best known for his "Someone You Should Know" reports and as the host of "People, Places & Things," Porterfield has been at Channel 7 since 1985, after working 21 years at WBBM Channel 2.

NBC has announced that Angela Bassett will join the cast of "ER" for its 15th and final season in the fall.

End of the dial: Condolences to Paul Harvey on the loss of his wife, Lynne "Angel" Harvey, to leukemia. She was his producer and collaborator and was credited with developing his "The Rest of the Story" feature among others and became the first producer inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997. Harvey's syndicated newscasts continue to be scheduled for 8:32 a.m. and 12:28 p.m. weekdays on WGN 720-AM, with "The Rest of the Story" at 6:50 p.m.

WDCB 90.9-FM raised $157,000 with its recent fundraiser, the second-best campaign in its history.