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You know Fox hates your new comedy series when …
A) Fox cuts the episode order.
B) Fox schedules your show for Friday night, a dead night for broadcast TV.
C) Fox promises to launch your show after “American Idol” before sending it to Friday night Siberia, then changes its mind on the post-”Idol” launch, sticking you with nothing but that Friday death slot.
D) All of the above.
Alas, for Amy Sherman-Palladino, the answer is D. “The Return of Jezebel James” (8 p.m. tomorrow, WPGH) was supposed to mark the triumphant return of Sherman-Palladino, creator of the beloved “Gilmore Girls,” who left that series a year before it reached its conclusion. Instead, the show will launch with a whimper. Sadly, it deserves no better.
Miscast and only intermittently funny, “Jezebel James” misfires on all cylinders.
Indie film actress Parker Posey plays Sarah, a childless, more selfish Lorelai Gilmore. Sarah is another Sherman-Palladino woman who speaks in rat-a-tat-tat zingers. She’s sophisticated but daffy and not always likable.
Sarah works as a children’s book editor, and one of her books shares its title with this comedy series. Viewers learn in the pilot that Jezebel James was the imaginary friend of Sarah’s estranged sister, Coco (Lauren Ambrose).
If there’s a good reason for naming the show after this throwaway bit of trivia, it’s not clear from two episodes sent for review. It’s certainly doesn’t play into the main plot of the show: Sarah can’t conceive a child and asks Coco to be her surrogate.
At first, Coco is appalled, fearing a scene out of “Alien.” (Because this is a Sherman-Palladino show, pop culture references abound.)
“Not exactly like ‘Alien,’ ” Sarah says. “It’ll have a different exit strategy.”
Posey is curiously flat. Scenes only come to life in the pilot once Ambrose enters with her patented, angry-young-woman routine. Honed over the years on “Six Feet Under,” Ambrose’s fiery reactions give the show some spark, even if I never quite believe any of the characters as real people.

post-gazette.com