NORMAL, Ohio - This place looks familiar. Too familiar. If it weren't for the title - Normal, Ohio - you'd never know that John Goodman's new Fox comedy was set in a fictional town just outside Cincinnati.

        One glimpse of the middle-class living room and kitchen in the premiere (8:30 p.m. Wendesday, Channels 19, 45), and you'll think the house was next door to Roseanne, Mr. Goodman's previous sitcom.

        There's the big comfy couch in the center of the living room. The front door on the left. Kitchen to the right. Stairs behind the couch.

        Conversations not held on the sofa in front of the TV are conducted around the 1960s style linoleum table in the middle of the kitchen. The fridge is to the left. The back door to the right. The parallels are everywhere.

        In walks big John Goodman, a building contractor in a flannel shirt and jeans, just like on Roseanne.

        Except now he's William “Butch” Gamble Jr., a divorced father returning home from Los Angeles four years after declaring that he's gay.

        He's living with Pamela (Joely Fisher, Ellen, Grosse Pointe), his white trash sister who dresses like Erin Brockovich, and her two Roseanne-like kids, the smart-mouth teen-age daughter (Julia McIlvaine) and the naive younger brother (Cody Kasch), who worries that homosexuality is hereditary.

        When TV's former Dan Conner opens his mouth, he sounds a lot like TV's Roseanne Conner:

        • “If you're having trouble with your homework, you ought to copy it off one of your friends,” Butch tells his nephew.

        • When niece Kimberly asks if he's had therapy, he replies: “No, but I've had a therapist!”

        • When Pam's date pulls into the driveway and honks his horn, Butch says, “Cool! Going out with a guy who honks. Classy! Does he have a brother?”

        Even Butch's parents seem familiar. It's like producers have taken Roseanne's ditzy mother and split her into two people. There's Joan (Anita Gillette), who thinks her son's sexual orientation is just a phase, and bitter Bill (Orson Bean), who continuously insults his “gay homosexual” son.

        In the Roseanne scheme of things, Butch's ex-wife, Elizabeth (Mo Gaffney), functions as the Jackie character, the sane one of the bunch. She and Butch have a son (Greg Pitts), who hasn't forgiven his father for walking out of the closet on them.

        Rounding out the cast is Elizabeth's new husband (Charles Rocket, fired from Saturday Night Live in 1981 for saying one of the seven words you still can't say on broadcast TV).

        All of this adds up to something that looks like Roseanne's low-class Lanford, Ill.

        If only it were as funny.

        There's no trace of Ohio in the first two episodes provided by creators Bonnie Turner (a Toledo native) and her husband, Terry. Not one Reds hat or Griffey Jr. poster. No talk of Bengals, Bearcats, Buckeyes or Browns. This is Nowhere, Ohio.

        Clearly the Ohio in Normal, Ohio, is simply a state of mind. A simple mind, at that.

        Gays, according to Butch's Archie Bunker-like dad, are “fruit loops,” “fluffy,” “piccolo players,” “a trapeze artist” or “a big showgirl.”

        After Robbie asks if being gay could be hereditary, Butch rubs his face and says, “No, it's contagious.”

        According to the opening credits, shot like a grainy old home movie, little boys in Normal, Ohio play with dolls, wear mom's high heels and have their toenails painted.

        As Ms. Turner explained in a July interview, Ohio “is a simple place — not simple as in stupid, but uncomplicated. My God, they test soap there.”

        The Turners have produced many shows in the Midwest: 3rd Rock from the Sun and David Spade's Tommy Boy (Ohio); That '70s Show (Wisconsin); and Wayne's World (Illinois).

        “The thing I like about the Midwest is it is a very average place, and I don't mean that as an insulting thing” Mr. Turner says. “One of the first things when I first visited Bonnie's home (in Toledo) was to say, "Good. Wow. This looks like TV. This looks like the land you see in the advertisement. These houses, everything is really a normal American background.' ”

        As TV sitcoms go, Mr. Goodman's gay-bashing show isn't anywhere close to average or normal. It ranks in Fox history somewhere between Costello and Pauly Shore. On second thought, it's just rank.

        E-mail: Jkiesewetter@yahoo.com.
       

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