Prime-time cartoons just ain't what they used to be

The golden age of TV animation is over, and for proof just turn on the television Sunday night.

First Fox returns its "Animation Domination" lineup of four cartoon comedies, with even "The Simpsons" looking exhausted as it begins its 20th season. Then HBO debuts a new cartoon that's as crudely written and acted as it is drawn.

It's not going to make anyone forget Squigglevision series like "Dr. Katz" or "Home Movies," much less "Beavis and Butt-head," "Futurama" or "The Simpsons" in its prime.

Up to now, I've resisted the urge to pile on "The Simpsons." Yet I'm afraid Sunday's season premiere, airing at 7 p.m. on WFLD Channel 32, confirms the worst. The jokes have a rote feel to them, as when Springfield's St. Patrick's Day Parade turns into a donnybrook between Catholics and Protestants (with even the Marvel universe dragged in, represented by the green Hulk and the orange Thing), and Lisa says, "Ah, it always comes down to transubstantiation versus consubstantiation."

Homer gets arrested in the melee, and in meeting up with a bail bondsman given voice by Robert Forster (see Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown") he decides he wants to become a bounty hunter, teaming up, of course, with the unlikely Ned Flanders. They get off the show's one new classic exchange.

"You have to promise, no diddleys or doodleys," Homer demands.

"My friend," Flanders replies, "you have a dealorooni."

Cue the "D'oh!"

There's a nonsensical lampoon of the car chase in "The French Connection," and at one point Homer tumbles through a limo and comes out clutching an Emmy, but otherwise there's nothing to compare with the show's creative peak, not even Marge working at an erotic bakery.

I suppose I'm glad it's back relatively early, instead of debuting with a belated "Treehouse of Horror" after Halloween, but the St. Patty's angle doesn't exactly find the show remastering the calendar. That only goes to show time is no longer on the side of this decaying classic. "The Simpsons" has earned the right to stick around as long as Matt Groening wants to keep making it, but at this point it's a barely respectable TV comedy.

"King of the Hill" follows at 7:30, but its 13th season premiere finds Mike Judge's cartoon settling ever more into its accepted role as the updated, animated version of "The Andy Griffith Show" - and not in a good way. The creaky story has Bill suffering from diabetes and prematurely adopting a wheelchair. (It's not hard to imagine Otis the drunk or the old biddy Clara in the same basic plot.) Judge has beaten the edge of "Beavis and Butt-head" into plowshares, and he's now plodding toward "King of the Hill, R.F.D."

In my opinion, the DVD-powered revival of Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy" three years ago, just when it seemed to have been put out of its (and our) misery, was the single event that signaled the end of TV's golden age of cartoons. So what can one say when the undeniable if often misguided energy and relentless bad taste of "Family Guy" at 8 and "American Dad" at 8:30 provides the most animated hour of the night? Still, even these shows come off creatively bereft, with Stewie and Brian the dog prattling on about the pronunciation of the word "ruined," and "Dad" tracing the flight of a secondary hair as it wafts around like the plastic grocery bag in "American Beauty" - a comparison this show is hardly worthy of.

HBO tries to get in on the cartoon act with the debut of "The Life & Times of Tim," a primitive new late-night animated series created by Steve Dildarian. It has the look of "South Park" done with Flat Stanley puppets, and the comedy is just as simple, concerning the misadventures of a young guy in New York. In the first part of Sunday's premiere, at 10 p.m. on the premium-cable channel, his live-in girlfriend and her parents return from a cruise to find him entertaining a prostitute, and in the second part he gets in trouble when some stories made up to disguise an embarrassingly lame bachelor party make the rounds at his workplace. It has a deadpan delivery reminiscent of those aforementioned Squigglevision series, but not much else to recommend it.

It follows the premiere of "Little Britain USA," a live-action sketch comedy bringing the Brits Matt Lucas and David Williams to America, at 9:30 on HBO. "How are we alike?" It asks of U.S. and British viewers, and answers in a weakness for gross-out scatological humor and comedians dressing in drag. I'd suggest they consider turning this into an animated series, but these days, given the state of prime-time cartoons, it probably wouldn't help.