The futuristic comedy is set aboard the O.S.S. Oklahoma, where a crew of useless guys and flaky gals are journeying to the ends of the universe. Why? To fight evil, to celebrate “Margarita Mondays,’’ to invite aliens to their pizza parties - stuff like that. The jokes are all about how clueless and frat-house these astronauts are, over and over again.
Captain Bruce Ripley (show creator Russell Barrett) is a lazy, burping dude who has stumbled to the top of the ladder, and Commander Dick Amos (Adam Clinton) is the officious second-in-command who doesn’t quite save the day. The women on board are Lieutenant Sunny Hunkle (Stephanie Clinton), who is her first name - and annoyingly so - and Operations Officer Donna Kennedy (Dana Kirk), who never knows which button to push. Oh, and there’s Ka’ak (Jacey Margolis), a red alien. She looks like a human woman but is actually made of some kind of reptilian material.
These and the other characters are worth one or maybe two jokes per episode, not the six or seven they are given. Occasionally, Barrett will spoof TV conventions, such as the emo montage that inevitably appears at the peak of dramas such as “Grey’s Anatomy.’’ That kind of satirical flourish works, and a few more of them might help Barrett justify his half hour.
Barrett worked on the visual effects for the 2004 David O. Russell movie “I Heart Huckabees.’’ (Russell is one of the executive producers of “Outer Space Astronauts.’’) And he clearly knows how to milk humor simply from a visual approach. Next stop on his intergalactic journey: the writers’ room.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.
