Web Therapy

Lisa Kudrow is hilarious as online shrink Fiona Wallice, but her true talent is making those around her even funnier.

The show is ultimately, and enjoyably, hijacked by Megan Mullally, as a writer of Broadway musicals whose latest work turns out to be a vicious character assassination of our antiheroine.

Season three provides a frequently amusing but cursorily developed spectrum of characters for Fiona to rebound off of, as she sorts through the detritus created by various implosions at the end of the second season.

It's a static look that makes these half-hour shows a bit tough to endure visually (don't try watching two episodes back-to-back). This format lends itself better to web shorts but it is fun to see Dr. Wallice's world expanded, especially for fans of comedy that doesn't telegraph a joke well in advance.

While Web Therapy is certainly clever and occasionally funny, it lacks both the nerve and verve of "The Comeback."

Ambiently amusing but generally inert, the show is badly in need of a hard-edged producer to tell the series' creators that they cannot get by on charm, no matter how much of that precious quality is imported by such guest stars as Lily Tomlin, Rashida Jones, and Bob Balaban.

It's not just that Kudrow has failed to find a vehicle for her comedic talents since Friends; it's that the two-dimensional, often insufferable characters she's created are largely to blame for the failure of those projects in the first place.