Ellen Gray: Subcultures get the Saget treatment in 'Strange Days'

STRANGE DAYS WITH BOB SAGET.

10 tonight, A&E.

ANYONE WHO still confuses Abington's Bob Saget with "Full House's" Danny Tanner probably needs to check out the comedian's cameos on HBO's "Entourage," during which he plays a version of himself more in line with his standup act than "TGIF."

Whether that's the "real" Saget is anyone's guess. Mine, based on sightings from "Entourage" to "America's Funniest Home Videos," with stops off for a couple of best-forgotten sitcoms, is that Saget's a performer, and that like most of us, he prefers to stay employed.

Starting tonight, that means A&E's "Strange Days with Bob Saget," a meant-to-be-quirky documentary series in which Saget attempts to ingratiate himself with a variety of close-knit groups - "subcultures," to use A&E's high-falutin' terminology - in hopes of finding funny things to say about them.

Given that the first of his two back-to-back outings tonight is with the Iron Order Motorcycle Club, it's probably just as well that he tends to save most of his wisecracks for the voiceover.

But then, given that what little I know about motorcycle clubs I learned from FX's "Sons of Anarchy" - whose Season 3 finale is also scheduled for 10 tonight - I may be underestimating the sense of humor of people who did, after all, agree to travel hundreds of miles with a standup comic in a sidecar.

Yes, a sidecar.

Because while Saget would have us believe that he really does want to join a motorcycle club, he's apparently neglected one of the more basic requirements: to have a bike and be able to ride it.

That could be the first hint of the disconnect between A&E's sociology-speak about investigating "some of America's most fascinating subcultures" and the guy doing the investigating.

Oh, like any good probationary member, he fetches coffee - who knew bikers liked Frappuccinos? - but it's hard to imagine these guys, however good-natured, wasting 10 minutes, much less a week, in the company of someone who behaved like Saget but wasn't famous.

"Will you slow down if I start crying openly?" he asks as they head off on a leg of a trip that will take him from Kentucky to Florida, stopping along the way for a wedding between bikers "Blaze" and "Summertime" and a memorial service for an Iron Order member who'd died after being struck by a drunken driver.

There's not a lot to make fun of there, and Saget, who's been treated with more intimacy than he may have anticipated, appears more comfortable in tonight's second installment, which has him spending time with people who spend their free time hunting for Bigfoot, or as he describes his first meeting with them, "it kind of looked like 20 years had gone by and the Scooby-Doo gang had escaped from prison."

Of a member's attempt to attract Bigfoot's attention: "I haven't heard a woman scream like that since I left the toilet seat up at my mother's condo."

"The Sasquatch," he notes, "only come out at night. They're the hookers of the forest."

Heading into Olympia National Park in Washington state, supposedly a Bigfoot-rich environment, he was already trying out his material.

"He's called Bigfoot. That puts a lot of pressure on a creature," Saget tells his crew. "If I was called 'Bigfoot,' you would go, 'Well, big feet, big hands - it means that it matches, the teacup and the saucer are the same. You know, stay with me here - what if his foot's like that [he widens his arms] and the rest . . . ?"

The rest? Not exactly history. *

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