Fox’s ‘Rake’: 7 reasons you wouldn’t want to know Greg Kinnear’s character

Perhaps they were concerned that viewers were suffering from antihero fatigue.

Or maybe they finally realized they weren’t writing a cable series.

But whatever the reasons, the producers of “Rake” (9 p.m. Thursday, KVVU-TV, Channel 5) created a new pilot episode (the original is scheduled to air at a later date) that softened many of the drama’s rougher edges. Now, the hijinks of lawyer Keegan Deane (Greg Kinnear) are less seedy and more wacky.

There are still plenty of ways, though, to tell he’s someone you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with in the real world. Here are seven of them:

1) He’s beaten in a bathroom for owing a bookie $59,000.

2) He wins a high-profile client in an all-night poker game.

3) He accepts a fish as payment for his services.

4) He doesn’t care about his clients, and he’d surely be an ambulance chaser if only his car hadn’t been impounded.

5) He still sees his psychologist ex-wife (Miranda Otto) and the mother of his son, but mostly just to use their talks as free therapy sessions.

6) He’s even given the cold shoulder and scolded by the prostitute (Bojana Novakovic) with whom he has a weekly standing “date.”

7) While crashing with old friends (John Ortiz, Necar Zadegan), he manages to get passed-out, pants-on-the-piano-and-a-strange-woman-in-their-kid’s-bed drunk.