Is it possible for a unicorn to get real?

Nervous chatter. What would sitcoms do without it? After all, it’s hard to fill a half-hour comedy with meaningful dialogue. Or thoughtful silence.

That’s the gist of tonight’s episode of “The Unicorn” (9:30 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) as it attempts to make a serious statement using its character’s brainless blather. The trouble starts at a birthday party for Noah (Devin Bright), the son of Ben (Omar Miller) and Michelle (Maya Lynne Robinson). In his never-ending quest to seem like one of their dad’s “cool” friends, Forrest (Rob Corddry) comes bearing gifts for all of the children. It turns out that most of the trinkets are worthless corporate freebies from his office. But when he gives Noah a water pistol, he touches a nerve. Ben has long denied his son that very toy, because while a squirt gun might seem innocent to a white child or parent, the sight of a young black man carrying what looks like a weapon might bring trouble, arrest or worse.

While this puts Ben in the situation of taking back his son’s toy, it sends Forrest into a tailspin of white guilt, an affliction that infects his chatty wife, Delia (Michaela Watkins).

Credit the writers of “The Unicorn” for turning a potentially heavy situation into a fairly amusing, if instructive, riff on how self-described “enlightened” people appropriate other people’s problems by endlessly talking about them and inserting themselves at the center of the conversation. In the end, the “lesson” here is to shut up and listen. But where’s the “funny” in that?

This episode was directed by Matthew A. Cherry, who received an Academy Award for the animated short “Hair Love.”

In some ways, “The Unicorn” can take thematic excursions because Wade (Walton Goggins), by settling on a girlfriend, is technically no longer a unicorn.

› Best known as Anna, the emotional center of “Downton Abbey,” Joanne Froggatt stars in the dystopian Australian drama “The Commons,” streaming tonight on Sundance Now. Set in the near future, a time of biotechnological leaps and environmental collapse, she portrays a woman desperately trying to get pregnant using all of the gadgetry at her disposal, while navigating harrowing dreams and the real possibility that drinking water may soon run out while the stuff falling from the sky is filled with acid. A visually dazzling meditation on a grim possible future.

› Speaking of runaway technology, “Rocket Around the XMas Tree” (10 p.m., Discovery) showcases amateur rocket builders competing to see who can build, launch and explode the best Christmas-themed missile.

Science buff and YouTube star Nick Uhas presides over contests including building the best Christmas tree rocket, launching letters to Santa and sending candy canes skyward. One delicate feat involves the delivery of 50 ornaments without breaking any. I’m not sure if Christmas and rocketry have ever been combined for a TV series quite like this. And there may be a good reason for that.

“Rocket” follows the debut of a new season of “BattleBots” (8 p.m., Discovery).