"Children's Hospital:" My, this is in bad taste. Then why am I laughing so hard while watching it?

Here's a definition for the word "hospital" you won't find in the dictionary, and we're more the poorer for it: "a place for smart people who take care of people who aren't smart enough to keep themselves healthy."

It's also, according to "Children's Hospital," a place where doctors go at it like ferrets, even in front of their youthful patients, and where every manner of TV cliché is lived out to its fullest, to hilarious results.

"Children's Hospital," a new online series from former "Daily Show" correspondent Rob Corddry - who eviscerates "Patch Adams" and then some in playing a doctor in clown makeup and bloody hospital blues - debuted Monday on TheWB.com.

Jokes come from every direction - they're downright tasteless (infants receive breast enhancements and minority groups and midgets are insulted with impunity); they're meta-TV gags (crap treacle like "Grey's Anatomy" is violated in violently intimate ways, and Very Special Episodes and Series Finales are skewered in inspired fashion); and, occasionally, there's just a really funny one-liner or surreal non-sequitur (one doctor fears a broken arm might be hiding AIDS; another defends his cavalier attitude because he has "really good malpractice insurance").

In short, "Children's Hospital" is probably the first online series that merits your attention from start-to-back since SuperDeluxe's hilarious "Maria Bamford Show."

Even the first episode begins with a montage introduced with the sonorous preface, "Previously on 'Children's Hospital.'" It features Dr. Cat Black (Lake Bell) ruminating so imbecilically on the nature of love and life ("I wish there was another word for life when it's over," and, also, "Sometimes we make it our jobs to find meaning in our lives," then, impressing herself with her callow blather, adding, "I should do my own podcast") that Shonda Rhimes will no doubt want to hire Corddry as a writer for "Grey's Anatomy" when she sees this.

Doctors hump crazedly in front of their young patients, but also behind them (they have some measure of decorum).

Cat rooms (because, you know, doctors can't afford their own places) with Dr. Lola Spratt (Erinn Hays). They make breaking up with their boyfriends a hot trend (one episode is consumed with nothing but Cat breaking up with people, some repeatedly, once in the middle of giving a hand-job), leading, almost, to some lethargic girl-on-girl action broken up by a head cold (later, Spratt will blithely wipe her snot off on a kid patient).

Megan Mullally, Ed Helms, Nathan Corddry and even Eva Longoria Parker turn up in bit- or larger-than-bit-parts. 9/11 is a running joke. The PA announcements from the film "M*A*S*H" are also an inspiration. "Children's Hospital" grabs jokes from every source within reach, and makes most of them funny.

Had this actually been a sitcom relying upon 22-minute episodes, it quite likely would've fallen flat. But it isn't - the 10 episodes currently online run between 4 and 6 minutes - so it's nearly perfect, and perfectly offensive. (Corddry does, for the record, spare child actors from the most offensive material. Mostly, at least.) A caveat: The show downloads really slowly (it can take you 10 or more minutes to watch a 5-minute episode), though I watched the episodes on Monday, when they launched, so maybe viewer traffic was higher then. But just be warned.