A Truly Unsentimental Cad

Buffalo Bill wins laughs as the most outrageous man on TV

He is a hypocrite, a braggart, a coward and a misogynist. He is sycophantic, grasping, rude and vain. He is also hilarious, the most outrageous character on television. He is Bill Bittinger, a Buffalo talk-show host, brilliantly played by Dabney Coleman, on NBC's new comedy series Buffalo Bill. The character is that rarity on television, a star who is a truly unsentimental cad. His lone redeeming feature is his unredeemability. To Buffalo Bill, all women are "bimbos" to be seduced, all men rivals to be traduced. If American viewers had not lost their innocence about unscrupulous TV characters, Bill would snatch it from them.

Buffalo Bill is one of a handful of new series launched by the networks during the normally fallow summer season. The ratings for the half-hour show (Wednesdays, 9:30 p.m. E.D.T.) have been encouraging (it finished in the Nielsen top 30 shows in each of its first three weeks), the critical reaction has been appreciative, and it is a strong candidate for renewal in the fall.

Bill makes a practice of abusing his guests; they become victims, not visitors. To one, he says, "I don't care what the jury said, you look like a rapist to me." He calls a minister a "scuzzbag," a Congressman "a pimp in a business suit," an Italian chef "an immigrant with a Crock Pot." "Me," "my" and "I" are his favorite words. He is forever complaining to his wan, shell-shocked station manager, played by Max Wright, that guests are dull: "Get me ax murderers, a rapist, Freddie Silverman." When he wants to get rid of a possible cohost, he appeals to the Lord--man to man, of course: "I don't know if the concept 'You owe me one' means anything to you up there, but..."

The concept of the show originated over a year ago with Executive Producers Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses, both of whom held the same title on the Bob Newhart Show. They wanted to mold a sitcom around Dabney Coleman, who had played lecherous male chauvinists in the films Nine to Five and Tootsie. ("We loved to watch Dabney slither," says Tarses.) Along with NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff, they devised a smalltown TV personality who would sell his first-born to make it to the big time. Tartikoff calls the character "a total sleaze-bag," comparing him to Archie Bunker but without Archie's tinge of lovableness. Says Producer Dennis Klein: "The only thing civilized about Bill is that he has learned how civilization works and he can fake it."

With his darting eyes and dark mustache, Dabney Coleman, 51, seems to have cornered the market on obnoxious scapegraces. He got his first break as the sanctimonious Rev. Merle Jeeter on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and is currently appearing as a harried computer scientist in the movie WarGames. "I happen to think I do villains well," says Coleman. "I do them differently. I'm realistic." Indeed, unlike the sneering, comic-book persona of Larry Hagman's J.R., Coleman's Buffalo Bill is an unsettlingly familiar figure, not a caricature. "Everybody knows a Buffalo Bill," notes Tartikoff. "I know several, a couple at NBC."

Buffalo Bill is a departure. Although the character is a descendant of Ted Baxter, the buffoonish newscaster of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bill is the main and vain attraction while Baxter was only a foil. According to Tartikoff, "We were trying to do something different and dangerous. Dangerous meaning the possibly lousy ratings you could get by putting on a character as despicable as Bill." Like NBC's other sophisticated comedy, Cheers, Buffalo Bill will need time to find a following.

In a recent episode, after a wearying day at the studio in which he has brutalized his assistant and refused to apologize, Bill goes home alone, unrepentant. He dons top hat and tails and proceeds to do a self-adoring imitation of Fred Astaire singing "I'll go my way by myself." It defines him precisely: Buffalo Bill going his own venal way by his own egotistical self. Television often has a way of softening its most venomous characters. Don't let Buffalo Bill become an endangered species. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.