This is Associated Press TV writer Frazier Moore Watching Television and pondering that great divide: People who are getting it ... and people who aren't. That's what TV's all about.
Look no further than HBO Sunday nights, where at 10pm the hit comedy Entourage is in its third season. Then, right after that at 10:30, but across a vast gulf, you find a funny new sitcom called Lucky Louie.
Entourage cruises with young Hollywood sensation Vince Chase (played by Adrian Grenier) and his three pals. They all hail from New York, but thanks to Vince's mega-movie-success, they now jointly revel in everything Tinseltown has to offer.
By contrast, the ironically titled Lucky Louie stars stand-up comic Louis C.K. as a muffler repairman married to a nurse. They share a lively 4 year-old, a cramped apartment and an overdrawn bank account.
Entourage, which is shot on location in sleek single-camera cinematic style, celebrates youth, fame and creature comforts. Lucky Louie, staged before a studio audience on a barebones apartment set, wallows in just squeaking by.
According to the Entourage storyline, Vince's new action film Aquaman is soaring at the box office. Meanwhile, Louie and his wife Kim would be hard-pressed to wangle the cost of two tickets.
But here's the big difference:
On Entourage, gorgeous heart-throb Vince is getting it -- all he wants. His trio of trusted handlers and hangers-on are getting it too.
Louie, as a rule, doesn't get it. When Lucky Louie premiered a couple of weeks ago, months had passed since he last got it. What he's got instead is a wife working double shifts who rarely gets around to it.
But luckily, Louie's also got an imagination. On one episode his wife discovered him in the kitchen closet, er, self-addressed his needs. Once she was done being startled, she asked him if, while he's at it, he ever pictures her in his mind.
"What, are you high?" Louie replied, landing plenty of laughter from the studio audience. "Honey, that's magic time. I can think about anybody!"
Chances are, Louie is thinking about the sort of women a guy like Vince can get without an even thinking.
Of course, getting it isn't just an act between a man and a woman. This can also be a state of entitlement, exempt from whether or not it's acted upon. And it bonds the men who share that enviable state.
So Entourage is really about male friendship. Women are certainly a hot topic among the guys. But the season's first sexual encounter only airs next Sunday, the third episode, and it's a comic interlude between someone else and a hooker.
By contrast, Lucky Louie has already made good on its vow to bring the old-fashioned family sitcom into modern-day gritty real life, by showing Louie and Kim in the sack.
A balding guy with a gut, Louie got it, by golly, in the first episode -- although it turned out that what Kim really wanted to get was pregnant with another child.
And the truth is, their love-making isn't exactly a many-splendored thing. Last week, when Louie took a little too long, poor overworked, overtired Kim pleaded with him, "Honey, seriously, release the doves!"
Two comedies, back to back, and galaxies apart! I can't decide if this pairing is an insurmountable scheduling blunder, or a must-see mini-survey of the male condition.
And among those viewers who cross the great divide to enjoy both shows, I wonder how many identify with one... or the other. And how many are satisfied, somewhere in between.
Watching Television for KCRW, this is Associated Press TV writer Frazier Moore.