Success skews ‘Osbournes’ equation

The Ozzman cometh bleeping back tonight, and in the words of his song “Mama, I’m Coming Home”: “Times have changed and times are strange / Here I come, but I ain’t the same.”

That’s what happens when you have a hit as big as “The Osbournes,” which drew record audiences on MTV and has begotten a wave of merchandise ranging from a line of underwear to an upcoming DVD package of the first season.

It’s also what makes the opening of the second season tonight at 10:30 a bit risky, for the Osbournes have moved from semi-obscurity to overexposed celebrity, traveling in the circles of the president of the United States, the queen of England and Greta Van Susteren.

Make no mistake: “The Osbournes” still rocks. But, like Ozzy, it doesn’t rock quite as hard.

Part of that is because (a) we already know the basics of what has happened to the family, thanks to media saturation, and (b) the first episode doesn’t concentrate as much on relatively simple domestic life as last season’s escapades did.

A major key to the show’s success was how mundane problems were reflected in the fun-house mirror of the Osbourne household. Ozzy, wife Sharon, daughter Kelly and son Jack used to deal mainly with cleaning up after the dogs, getting the neighbors to turn down their music at 2 a.m. and other situations that tested the coping skills of a guy who once bit a bat on stage and urinated on the Alamo.

Now Ozzy and Sharon seem more preoccupied with what to wear to the White House and how to deal with Kelly’s singing career. It’s still weirdly funny to see the leader of the free world acknowledge the Prince of Darkness, and Jack displays some wonderful sibling rivalry when Kelly appears on the MTV Movie Awards. But such situations aren’t as grounded in viewers’ lives as before, and they smack of the shopworn formula of putting sitcom characters in new settings just to spice things up.

Next week’s episode provides a different dilemma, when Sharon’s colon cancer hits home. Despite some bittersweet and outright hilarious moments, there’s a pronounced somberness as Sharon goes through chemo, and Ozzy is stuck on tour and plunging into despair.

Although MTV says that the second episode doesn’t represent a permanent shift in tone, you have to wonder how “The Osbournes,” as a series, will adapt. And maybe that, more than anything, will keep viewers on this crazy train.