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Some actors are blessed with charm; Christopher McDonald is blessed, or cursed, with smarm. His is an an old-world smarm, pure of essence, two parts country club, one part used car salesman, one part Caesar's Palace -- as opposed, say, to new jack smarm, a much less refined strain, as exemplified in the person of Craig Kilborn (two parts frat boy, one part Wall Street, one part Harvard Lampoon "Poonie").

While charm is handy for leading men and politicians, smarm is a much more useful attribute for character actors. Buff the smarm to a high gloss and you can play, say, the TV weatherman in The Perfect Storm, the quiz-show host in Quiz Show. or baseball announcer Mel Allen in 61*. Add a little malevolence to the smarm, and you make a perfect snobby, villainous prick, such as Wilson Croft in Flubber or Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore. Take the malevolent smarm downmarket and you've got Darryl, the asshole husband in Thelma and Louise. Now strain the smarm and reduce over a low heat, stirring in banality, and presto! You've got Ward Cleaver in the 1997 Leave it to Beaver remake.

McDonald, to his credit, has on occasion ventured outside the realm of smarm, playing Jon Krakauer in the Into Thin Air TV movie and lending his estimable vocal talents to The Iron Giant and Superman: the Last Son of Krypton. But smarm has always been his go-to emotion, his back-pocket shtick -- always, that is, until he secured a leading role on Family Law, the TV courtroom drama that stars Kathleen Quinlan, Tony Danza, Julie Warner, and Dixie Carter.

The show is skimming along quite nicely below the cultural radar and may yet succeed despite its vaguely Elephant's Graveyard-esque cast. Which means that it will likely place an increasing demand on McDonald, which means less time for the kind of memorable character turns that have thus far defined his career. This might not seem like such a bad thing, given that Hollywood has never suffered from a dearth of smarm. But no one's ever been able to deliver the smarmy goods quite as well as Christopher McDonald. He is to smarm as FedEx is to package, as Clemens is to fastball, as FTD is to flowers in mugs.