No, I haven’t seen “Stacked,” but do I really have to? Fox didn’t make it available to critics (ostensibly because of a last-minute cast change), but I’m writing about it anyway, and not just because this gives my editors an opportunity to run a large photo of Pamela Anderson alongside my column. I have this fantasy that it will turn out to be a trash classic – one of those great guilty pleasures that television delivers in unique fashion once in a while to distinguish itself from the rest of highbrow culture. Unfortunately, though, the odds are a whole lot better that it’ll be incredibly stupid, nothing but a string of sex jokes, and get cancelled by May.

The fact that we don’t actually pay for television by the show allows us to indulge in fare that we tend to skip when it shows up at the gigaplex. Millions of Americans who would never allow themselves to be seen buying a ticket to a Pamela Anderson movie would be willing (and possibly even eager) to tune in to Fox tomorrow night at 8:30 p.m. for her network television debut. If it’s not horrible – and if Fox allows “Stacked” to be more than just another stale sex comedy with wall-to-wall double entendres- then it may find an audience among Americans other than those who devote their days to typing Ms. Anderson’s name into Internet search engines to see what turns up.

Once, several years ago, I caught the better part of an E! documentary about Ms. Anderson and learned enough of her life story to think she’d make a great sitcom star. She had a natural conversational warmth and an endearing humility. Apparently she’d been discovered at a stadium in Canada by a roving television camera that liked the way she looked in a local beer company’s T-shirt. Somehow that led to a contract with Playboy. The rest is titstory. She maintains, as I recall, close relationships with her family and childhood friends, and manages to raise children with some sense of normalcy despite her seeming addiction to parading herself in front of cameras and marrying rock stars.

All this would seem to make Ms. Anderson a natural for the comedy end of a medium that uses titillation to sell its programming the way Quentin Tarantino uses blood. Ever since the 1970s and the introduction of TV’s first bimbo blonde – Chrissy on “Three’s Company,” a great trash classic – network programmers have freely handed over choice comedy roles to women for reasons other than their comic timing.

Oddly enough, Ms. Anderson has had to wait on the comedy sidelines while her less talented colleague, Jenny McCarthy, has gotten numerous sitcom opportunities. Meanwhile, Ms. Anderson has been forced to content herself with sitcom guest shots and devoting most her television time to so-called “dramatic” efforts like “Baywatch” (not nearly the trash classic it should have been) and “V.I.P.,” a “Charlie’s Angels” wannabe with Ms. Anderson at its center. Both shows were syndication successes, suggesting that network executives weren’t quite so comfortable with her slightly raunchy appeal.

But then Fox came along, with a producer – Steve Levitan – whose pedigree included the lame office comedy, “Just Shoot Me,” which exploited sex for humor as a recurring theme. The network’s notion sounded painfully obvious: Put Ms. Anderson into a small independent bookstore, where the incongruous sight of her body would deliver some automatic laughs. (Between “Stacked” and “Committed,” where the main character works in a used record store, this has been a great year on television for the small, independent retailer.) It seems especially worrisome that Ms. Anderson would be played according to type, instead of against it. Mr. Levitan has described his concept as a “Cheers” in reverse, and that sounds way too sophisticated for a show with a ditzy blonde at its heart. This will be no “Cheers,” mark my words – and any attempt to mimic that classic will fail. Why would Pamela Anderson want to switch gears and follow that model, anyway? Just try to find a Shelley Long Web site on the Internet.

Let’s hope the forces behind “Stacked” allow it to be everything it should be: an ensemble comedy with Ms. Anderson as its warm emotional center, and not just an endless repetition of sex jokes. That has been the traditional death knell of most series that seek to repeat the unique success of “Three’s Company.” It will be an enormous challenge for Mr. Levitan, whose previous work suggests an addiction to juvenile jokes. But having admired Ms. Anderson’s talents for years, I’m hoping she can do what she always has so well – let her body speak for itself and find comedy in the unspoken.

***

I was sorry to learn, from the news crawl that ran underneath “Good Morning America” last Wednesday morning, of the death of Nobel laureate Sam Bellow. Coming on the heels of the death of Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, the coincidence was too great to be believed. But I kept watching. It continued across the screen, over and over again: “Nobel laureate Sam Bellow is dead.” This, my friends, is why you should always watch “Good Morning America” on ABC, because it is only there that you will learn these unusual facts unavailable from any other morning program. Condolences to Sam Bellow’s family and friends, who must have felt far overshadowed by the coverage of Saul Bellow’s death on the other networks.