Courtney Baron’s “A Very Common Procedure” is an easy experience. Slick and buffered, with no burred edges to catch at the mind, it passes as easily as an hour in front of the TV. Of course, this borders on the bizarre, because the “procedure” is an infant’s bungled heart operation, and for 80 minutes we must watch the bereaved parents grieve, lash out, and generally fall apart.

And yet, it’s a breeze. Since gawking at other people’s accidents defines our nightly entertainment, the greedy American sympathy gland has grown tough but insatiable. For a mind clogged with reality show confessions and “Law and Order” victim lists, Ms. Baron’s effort just seems like one of the clamoring, glossy pack.

We meet Carolyn Goldenhersch (Lynn Collins) several months after her loss. Bouncing to the lip of the stage, she flips her mahogany hair — which tastefully matches the set — to confide her recent tragic events. Her emotional state has seceded from reality, and, as a result, she has developed a romantic fixation on the very doctor, Anil (Amir Arison), who let her child die. He seems a charming, if diffident, fellow, a medical fellow still in training. This worry — that beginner doctors practice their surgeries on somebody — passes for the theme of the show. Stretching the fact into metaphor, Ms. Baron points out that in love, we entrust our lives to someone else’s hands, and then the clueless recipient usually bobbles it.

As Carolyn and Anil shuttle across New York (Shout-out to Jackson Heights! Hello, Lower EastSide!) on their dates, the three characters shuttle across time. Carolyn and husband Michael (Stephen Kunken) tell us about their first date, re-enact the delivery room scene, and then demonstrate the subsequent fights. The constant time- traveling and point-of-view changes never become confusing, because all three actors approach and address us directly. They ease us into scenes, announcing everything from the location to their states of mind. They are never wrong.

All this conscientious clarity prevents the audience from doing any of its own work. Characters preface statements with, “No, I’m actually saying … ” so we don’t even have to scrounge for subtext. The inevitable climactic blow-up consists entirely of Movie of the Week button-pushing clichés (and no, it doesn’t get you off the hook to have a line decrying them), with the characters weeping and screaming and — dare we hope? — healing. One expects Robin Williams will be on hand later to offer everyone his gentle embrace.

Much of the blandness can be laid atdirector Michael Greif’s feet. Ms. Baron manages to tuck some root vegetables with the pabulum — a few lines show Carolyn as dim and occasionally hateful (why do all these men love her?), and she does shove Anil aside as the most destructive force onstage. But Mr. Greif keeps the ravishing Ms. Collins sympathetic throughout, letting her speak every line on the brink of tears, refusing to ask us for anything more taxing than pity. All three actors work capably, even adorably, in the narrow confines of the production, but they can’t ever seem entirely human — flattened as they are by Mr. Greif’s glibness, their constant narrative duties, and Ms. Baron’s rather hasty grasp of psychology.

And still, much of the audience seemed content. Clearly, for every play, there is an audience. And it is possible to admire the cut of a suit, even if the fabric isn’t to one’s particular tastes. So in the interests of fairness, Ms. Baron does have a way with three-beat exchanges. Carolyn and Michael banter — “Through my whole pregnancy, I can’t eat eggs.” “And I can’t eat sperm.” “Charming!” — to demonstrate how the young and irreverent cope. When delivered at speed by Ms. Collins and Mr. Kunken, both landing delicately on their punchlines, the jokes move nicely. The ulcerous, deliciously elitist Howard Barker would have called the ensuing laughter “a gesture of solidarity, a gurgle of vanity.” Perfect, in other words, for television.

Until March 25 (311 W. 43rd St., between Eighth and Ninth avenues, 212-315-0231).