MATT LEBLANC’S EX-WIFE: You were arrest­ed for dri­ving drunk with our kids in the car!

LEBLANC: Yeah, well, when you say it that way, it sounds terrible.

Scene from Sea­son 3 of “Episodes”

The fourth sea­son of “Episodes” pre­mieres tonight on Show­time, promis­ing anoth­er sump­tu­ous feast of Hol­ly­wood send-ups. David Crane’s (“Friends,” “Joey”) hand­i­work has it all: self-obsessed actors, self-impor­tant exec­u­tives, mawk­ish phoni­ness and blood­less betray­als, all set among ubiq­ui­tous lies and decep­tions.  Crane’s satire is pitch-per­fect: over­drawn enough to be fun­ny, but real enough to be (almost) true.

The show tells the sto­ry of a British hus­band-and-wife writ­ing team (Sean and Bev­er­ly Lin­coln, played by Stephen Man­gan and Tam­sin Greig), whose hit BBC com­e­dy (“Lyman’s Boys”) attracts the atten­tion of cloy­ing and mild­ly creepy net­work exec­u­tive Merc Lapidus (John Pankow).  Merc flies to Lon­don to attend the British ver­sion of the Emmy Awards, of which Sean and Bev­er­ly have won a clutch.  Merc approach­es them at the after-party.

“I LOVE your show,” Merc tells them.  “I want to have sex with your show.”

Sean is intrigued, Bev­er­ly repulsed.  Both suc­cumb to Merc’s flat­ter­ies and move to Hol­ly­wood, where the net­work hous­es them in a man­sion that most recent­ly had been used as the set for the network’s knock-off of “The Bach­e­lor.”  Its sty­ro­foam Greek columns are a fit­ting metaphor for a world where every­thing looks real but noth­ing is.

The wit­ty and world­ly Lon­don­ers are ingenues in that world.  It soon emerges that Merc has nev­er seen their show, though he does ful­fill his wish of hav­ing sex with it: he screws it.  He orders that Matt LeBlanc be cast as the pro­tag­o­nist.  LeBlanc and Merc con­spire to trans­form “Lyman’s Boys” from a sto­ry about a stodgy head­mas­ter of an exclu­sive British boys school with an unre­quit­ed obses­sion for the school’s doughty les­bian librar­i­an to one about a hock­ey coach’s (LeBlanc) pur­suit of a school librar­i­an bet­ter suit­ed to LeBlanc’s appetites — a lit­tle old­er and sur­gi­cal­ly enhanced, but still hot and decid­ed­ly het­ero­sex­u­al (played by Mircea Mon­roe).  Thus does “Lyman’s Boys” mutate into “Pucks!”.

Sean and Bev­er­ly are hor­ri­fied at the dis­as­trous muta­tion, but it is noth­ing com­pared with the dis­as­ters that await them away from the set.  LeBlanc is the epi­cen­ter of their mis­for­tune. In his cheer­ful self-absorp­tion, LeBlanc is thor­ough­ly amoral, inca­pable of remorse and obliv­i­ous to the con­se­quences of his actions – the mar­riages he wrecks, the careers he ruins, the per­pet­u­al may­hem his every word and ges­ture seem to inflict.

By the end of the first sea­son, he’d bed­ded Bev­er­ly.  By the end of the sec­ond sea­son, he’d bed­ded Merc’s wife (played by Genevieve O’Reilly).  Not that Merc didn’t deserve it.  His wife Jamie recent­ly lost her sight and is Hollywood’s notion of a saint, brave­ly per­se­ver­ing through her dis­abil­i­ty and pour­ing her­self into every styl­ish cause, from rape pre­ven­tion to sav­ing an obscure species of bees.

Merc has been cheat­ing on Jamie for years with his perky lieu­tenant, Car­ol (Kath­leen Rose Perkins), who uses her girl­ish and slight­ly goofy charm to mas­sage egos and coax writ­ers and actors into yield­ing to Merc’s loopy demands, all the while yield­ing to Merc’s equal­ly loopy sex­u­al demands.

But it is LeBlanc’s comedic skills that make the show.  Play­ing a hyper­bol­ic ver­sion of him­self, LeBlanc takes nar­cis­sism to anoth­er dimen­sion.  He is a black hole of neu­roses, van­i­ty and com­pul­sive behav­iors — sex addict, alco­holic, prob­lem gam­bler – inex­orably draw­ing oth­ers into his force field of patholo­gies.  In mid­dle age, Joey has mor­phed into Lucifer and a wicked­ly fun­ny one at that.

And while Merc, too, is an exag­ger­at­ed char­ac­ter, one could imag­ine him very much at home with Sony Pic­tures execs as they went into cri­sis mode last month.  Their com­put­ers had been hacked, in appar­ent retal­i­a­tion for the impend­ing release of “The Inter­view,” a medi­oc­rity notable only for its provo­ca­tion of North Kore­a’s “Dear Leader,” Kim Jong-un.  But what sent Sony’s C‑suite into DEFCON 1 mode was the leak of racial­ly tinged emails between net­work suits.

“Should I ask him if he liked ‘Djan­go’?” Sony Pic­tures Enter­tain­ment Co-Chair­man Amy Pas­cal emailed one of her col­leagues before a fundrais­ing break­fast at which Pres­i­dent Oba­ma spoke.  In case her col­league didn’t get the joke, she sug­gest­ed that per­haps the Pres­i­dent may also have enjoyed “The But­ler” or “Think Like A Man.”

Pas­cal was quick to repent her trans­gres­sion, once the emails were made pub­lic.  “The con­tent of my emails,” she wrote, “were insen­si­tive and inap­pro­pri­ate but are not an accu­rate reflec­tion of who I am,” employ­ing a phrase that has become the canon­i­cal post-mod­ern mea cul­pa.  Beat your wife?  Dri­ve drunk?  Make a remark to which an inter­est group takes offense?  Repeat after me: “That’s not who I am.”

But for­mu­la­ic apolo­gies wouldn’t do for Rev. Al Sharp­ton, for whom indul­gences are nev­er free.  Pas­cal was forced to make a pil­grim­age to New York to beg the Rev­erend for the remis­sion of her sins.  She came bear­ing the sin­cer­est token of her pen­i­tence: the will­ing­ness to estab­lish a “work­ing group” that would, of course, include His Emi­nence, Rev­erend Al.

Nine­ty min­utes lat­er, Sharp­ton emerged from the pri­vate audi­ence and pro­nounced it a good start.  His work­ing group, he said, “will see if we can come up with a plan to deal with” Sony’s sins and those of all of Hollywood.

But he did not grant the wretched Amy Pas­cal abso­lu­tion.  “So the jury is still out on where we go with Amy,” Sharp­ton declared.

Pas­cal is still hostage to the Rev­erend Al’s demands.  Her soul may yet be sprung from pur­ga­to­ry, but only if her com­pa­ny finds a way to meet those demands.  Per­haps future Sony pro­duc­tions will be required to bear Sharpton’s impri­matur, the eccle­si­as­ti­cal seal assur­ing the faith­ful that a work is cer­ti­fi­ably ortho­dox and with­out heresy.

The fourth sea­son of “Episodes” wrapped up its shoot­ing in Octo­ber, near­ly two months before the Sony flap broke.  Too bad.  In David Crane’s hands, this brew of North Kore­an mega­lo­ma­ni­acs, craven exec­u­tives, leaked emails and race-bait­ing char­la­tans would have become mor­bid­ly funny.

Maybe in sea­son five.