With Ali G asking the questions, things get a little ridiculous

Maybe it's the way Ali G, the alter ego of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, asks his questions with the straightest face imaginable. Maybe it's that people are suckers for good causes; he apparently tells his prey that his show teaches civics to British teens. However it happens, he commands respect -- "respek," he would put it -- as he returns to the air tomorrow night for the second season of "Da Ali G Show."

This season brings flashier graphics, a slightly more political bent, and a star with a newfound public profile. Already a cult figure in Britain, Ali G ranked hot enough to be this year's Class Day speaker at Harvard, where he praised "the most cleverest students in America," then scandalized their grandparents with sex jokes.

But thankfully, whatever buzz he's gotten in the States, a fair number of people missed it all. Because the show's chief requirement -- that its subjects take the whole thing seriously -- hasn't been compromised. And his experiment in human nature still turns out the same: The more absurd or oversimplified an interviewer sounds, the more his subject seems, with uncanny patience, to want to set him right.

Last season, Ali G got basic lessons from a string of usually-media-savvy dignitary types, from Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who carefully spelled out a curse word in French, to James Baker, who tried to explain that in diplomacy-speak, "carrots and sticks" aren't taken literally. (Baker swore he'd never give a country actual carrots, so Ali G shot back, "But wot about in famine?")

In this year's first two episodes, he takes on Buchanan, Sam Donaldson, and former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates, in addition to a cop, a veterinarian, and an ATF trainer of bomb-sniffing dogs, who launches into a more serious answer when asked, "Why don't you choose a more intelligent animal, like a dolphin?"

Baron Cohen's other stock characters take a more topical turn this season, which works out well for Bruno, his Austrian fashionista. Bruno had it a bit too easy last year in his quest to get fashion industry types to sound like dolts. One LA stylist agreed, with no hint of hesitation, when told that "Hitler had style, he had a message, a bit like Christina Aguilera."