Californication: Cock and Bull

That Ain’t Right merrily showcases Saget’s motor-mouth brand of clinically dirty joke-alizing, where a crude-sounding tangent — on, say, lighting farts or bestiality — is both a plea for decency from a guy with three daughters (“It’s wrong, stop it”) and an excuse to describe something taboo in awful detail. You’ll laugh or you won’t — and I thought the hour was moderately amusing — but Saget’s high-school-science-teacher vibe at least removes the potential for any of it to offend. His blue shtick inevitably looks more periwinkle than navy, and feels more like catharsis than anything else, which is certainly a kind of entertainment. As he jokes at the beginning, “I did so much family television, I have Tourette’s.”

But he doesn’t ignore his rerun icon-hood, whether baiting Dave Coulier from the microphone, or recalling how he and Stamos (still close friends) once freaked out a 17-year-old in a public restroom by conversing as their Full House characters at the urinals. For most comics who hit it big, this kind of fame self-referencing is usually an out-of-touch, worship-me move — “I did a little thing called [blank],” wait for applause — but Saget wisely uses it as a way to get inside the surreality of his profile. In another Stamos anecdote, Saget says the pair of them once rushed to the aid of a driver momentarily unconscious from a car accident. Saget memorably acts out the moment of her awakening, eyes widening further as she realizes it’s “Danny” and “Jesse” peering anxiously through her windshield. Saget jokes, “This poor lady thought she was dead and in sitcom hell.”

Sex and the city, this time for the single guy. Duchovny tastes the fruit of Californication. (Photo By Kirk Edwards)

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More About

• David Duchovny
• Californication (TV Show)
• Bob Saget
• Sexuality
• Relationships

CALIFORNICATION | Showtime | Mondays, 10:30 p.m.

THAT AIN’T RIGHT | HBO | Premieres Saturday, Aug. 25, 10 p.m.