We have a winner!

On “The Winner,” Rob Corddry plays Glen Abbott, a 32-year-old single white male in a state of severely arrested development. He lives at home with his parents. He watches TV all day. His best friend is the teenage geek who just moved in across the street, whose mom happens to be the girl Glen had the hots for in high school -- and still does.

  This unlikely premise for a sitcom is likely to divide the audience for “The Winner” (debuting 7:30 p.m. CT Sunday on Fox, with a second episode at its regular time of 8:30) into two camps. For those who don't know who Rob Corddry is, the show sounds like something that might air on the Disney Channel. But if you are a devoted viewer of cable's “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” you might have a different reaction.

  Of all the comedians to have graced “The Daily Show” over the years, Corddry stands out, and not just for his bald pate. After Stephen Colbert, nobody has been so aggressively clueless while reporting the fake news as Corddry. Following Hurricane Katrina, he boldly declared that he was “impressed” by FEMA director Michael Brown's “willingness to accept responsibility for how incompetent everyone else was.”

  And although Vice President Cheney delivered a gift to every comedian in the land a year ago, it was Corddry, posing as the show's “firearms mishap analyst,” who made the highlight reels when he effortlessly linked Cheney's PR debacle and international-relations fiasco. Had the vice president known the whereabouts of his friend Harry Whittington, Corddry blustered, “Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face.”

  Compared with priceless material like that, it seems inevitable that “The Winner” will strike many Corddry fans as a bit of a comedown. This is a standard-issue Fox live-action comedy -- family-based with relatable if slightly off-kilter characters and, needless to say, zero political humor.

  As for Corddry, whose belligerent Northeastern style once got him called a “Boston M---hole,” the edge has melted off and what's left is a goofy, eager-to-please fella named, of all things, Glen.

  Equally as jarring is the knowledge that “The Winner” comes from Seth McFarlane, creator of Fox cartoons “Family Guy” and “American Dad,” whose usual m.o. is to cheerfully pummel everything that is good and decent about our culture into a bloody mess.

  Nothing about “The Winner” strikes me as the slightest bit subversive. So Glen Abbott is well past 30 and hasn't lost his virginity. Didn't another “Daily Show” alumnus make a movie about that?

  And yet, the show works on its most basic level. It's a hoot.

  One reason, I think, is that “The Winner” has shed the skin of irony that has proven to be a straitjacket for too many sitcoms. The show is set in 1994, the not-too-distant past, a la “The Wonder Years,” the original nostalgia sitcom for the color-TV generation. And as each episode opens, we hear Corddry's voice announcing, “I'm Glen Abbott, and I'm the richest man in Buffalo,” so as we look at pictures of his present-day estate, we know in advance the story (at some point) has a happy ending.

  The shedding-skin analogy works in another way. If you think about it, Corddry is not unlike a professional wrestler cast as the arch-villain -- think Andre the Giant during the height of his “feud” with Hulk Hogan -- who drops the mask as soon as a serious acting role is offered. Corddry, then, has merely taken his character “Rob Corddry” and made him cuddlier.

  “I think a lot of people who are 'Daily Show' fans will be surprised,” said Ricky Blitt, who dreamed up “The Winner” and wrote the pilot. “There's a vulnerability behind the character that people get right away.”

  That's revealed in the show's unusual buddy relationship between Glen and Josh (Keir Gilchrist), the painfully awkward nerdy teenager who is currently reliving the nightmare of school that Glen once did. Because Glen is still looking for all the things Josh wants -- non-allowance money, freedom from parental control, instructions for unhooking a girl's bra -- they relate like two peas in a pod, even as they both conspire to maintain the ruse to Josh's conveniently single mom Alison (Erinn Hayes) that Glen's the dad he never had.

  A running gag on the show is Alison saying admiringly to Glen how well he and Josh seem to get along, and Glen not sure what to do with that information. You can see where that's heading.

  So tune in, Corddry fans. The four episodes of “The Winner” I saw were packed with well-executed gags and performances, including Linda Hart and the reliable Lenny Clarke as Glen's long-suffering parents, whose role is to wonder if their son is ever going to be more than a live-in loser. The title is your tipoff that there's more here than meets the eye.

Comments

[Cathy]

Aaron,

Is it necessary to pair "Northeastern" with "belligerent" in your description of Rod Corddry's style? Wouldn't "belligerent" have sufficed? Or was it just to make the point that he has been referred to as a "M---hole". Be mindful about making negative regional generalizations as you may unknowingly offend readers.

[mike]

Sounds familiar to "Get a Life" with Chris Elliot. Not that that's a bad thing. Each of them has perfected the arrogant clueless character; Corddry seems to have a little more anger in his character.

[Evil Cirigliano]

This is the funniest show I have seen in a long time. Rob Corddry could be the next drew carry.hahahaha just kidding he is the man.The kid Josh (Keir Gilchrist) is the bomb he almost steal the show. The both of them are on fire. keep it coming seth.

[Emma]

The premise seems stale, the laugh-track was beyond awful. There was a throw-away line early on about "Josh" being molested by his father. It seemed like an unnecessary attempt at Seth McFarlane's "shock" comedy, but to me it seemed forced and unfunny.

Unless the laugh-track is removed, I don't hold out much hope for this show.

[Mark Jeffries]

Although admittedly augmented, that's a studio audience. It's on the web site of Audiences Unlimited, the big studio audience wrangler firm in LA, but I can't put in a link since "The Winner" is not in production right now.

And in the clip I saw, the audience response did not have that "canned laughter" sound to it, at least to me.

Are multi-camera sitcom producers going to have start putting in audience reaction shots to stop people from kneejerkingly screaming "laugh track" when the shows are shot with studio audiences?

[Tom Tuttle]

I really noticed the Laugh Track. Way too much.
Other than that it was great, except for Glen's parents who seemed way too obnoxious to have raised such a mild mannered son

[Lynne Tiemeier]

The laugh track sucks so badly that we turned it off after 10 minutes. I wrote to the network as well. We do go for your recommendations but The Winner is a big Loser for us. We love Corddry but when half the time is fake laughing, it just doesn't work, the Winner is still a Loser for us. Lynne and Wayne