New Season: II

By Frank Rich

Vicious WEB, half-baked PIE

W.E.B. (Sept. 13, NBC, 10 p.m. E.D.T.). When the movie Network came out two years ago, rumors ran that the Faye Dunaway character was actually based on Lin Bolen, a onetime programming v.p. at NBC. This was nasty gossip, because Dunaway played a feral TV executive who might run over her grandmother in pursuit of higher ratings. Bolen survived all the talk and has now re-emerged as the executive producer of W.E.B. Set at a fictional TV network, the show is Bolen's rejoinder to the movie that savaged her. Or at least it is supposed to be. Curiously enough, the heroine of W.E.B. (Pamela Bellwood) is also a predatory TV executive, who, in the opening episode, sells out her lover in pursuit of higher ratings. With friends like herself, Lin Bolen does not need enemies.

Its tawdry roman `a clef aspects aside, W.E.B. is not without its amusingly smarmy moments. This show's view of the industry is even more vicious than Network 's. According to Bolen, TV is run by sex-crazed, alcoholic, pill-popping men whose contempt for the public is exceeded only by their contempt for each other. "Television is a monster that never stops eating," explains one of them. True enough, but W.E.B. gives viewers that rare opportunity to watch television throw up.

Apple Pie (Sept. 23, ABC, 8:30 p.m. E.D.T.). Other people have bad days, so why shouldn't Norman Lear? It must have been a dark afternoon in Beverly Hills when the producer dreamed up this sitcom. A dumb idea, indifferently executed, Apple Pie is easily the worst show ever from the Lear factory. It makes Hot I Baltimore look like Heartbreak House.

The charming Rue McClanahan, late of Lear's Maude, stars as a fey woman who, in the Depression, hires an entire family out of the want ads. Why? Never mind. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of F.D.R. and Anna May Wong jokes. Among the unruly supporting players, Dabney Coleman is refreshingly laid back as the heroine's hired fella, but the gifted Jack Gilford is squandered as a crochety blind grandpa. Someone should put Apple Pie back in the oven. -- Frank Rich

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