And though the production, directed by Tim Cummings, strains mightily for momentum, it sinks under the weight of dopey jokes and repetition.
The likable and skilled Kate Walsh tries hard to make this strained comedy work, but it keeps resorting to broad gags and dopey jokes, and, just to mix things up, every so often it lunges at sincerity.
They included two Academy Awards, an affair with Elizabeth Taylor and a stay at a rehabilitation center, battling dopey-joke addiction.
They adored that he could be so brainy and yet also indulge in dopey scatological jokes like "The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment".
But too much is simply witless or dopey, and the jokes are oddly juxtaposed with songs that are generally gag-free.
Along with dopey double-entendre jokes about bongos and timbales, the show's teleprompted speeches tried to offer at least a sound bite's worth of context and to drop a few historic names.
Sure, the jokes were dopey, but they perfectly suited the show's no-holds-barred comic style.
The circus of 2017 was a murky collection of hashtag jokes tethered to dopey musical numbers with zero melody and an undercooked space opera subplot, where the ringmaster rides a hunk of fiberglass through a light show in an attempt to rescue the performers, who have been kidnapped by a space witch.
Aside from an early joke about Nick's dopey-looking haircut, there's rarely any winking toward the audience, or much of a sense that the actors are getting a kick out of playing cops and robbers.
Like more than one of Cosby's sixties routines, this one may have been a drug joke in disguise: the child's voice is suspiciously dopey.
Many of the shows were like jokes that get told in the fifth grade: charming in their dopey innocence.
