“Breaking In” 9:30 tonight, Fox

Television executives are nothing if not boldly decisive.

Just kidding. Case in point: The gently amusing caper comedy “Breaking In,” which launched last April, got canceled in May by Fox, which then turned around and ordered a second season of 13 episodes. The show relaunches tonight, with Emmy winner Megan Mullally joining the cast as the new owner of Contra Security.

Since it’s been 10 months since the so-called first season ended, viewers may need a bit of TV tutoring to remember who’s who and what they do.

Contra is a security firm owned by “Oz” Osbourne (Christian Slater), the biggest and richest misfit in a team of misfits whose job is to break into places to test their security. The rest of the gang includes techno geek Cameron Price (Bret Harrison, “Grounded for Life”), expert lock picker Melanie Garcia (Odette Annable), prank-loving Cassius “Cash” Sparks (Alphonso McAuley) and “Creepy Carol” (Jennifer Irwin), the head of human resources. Cam and Melanie almost had a thing but didn’t and the first season was all about clever, “Mission Impossible”-like adventures, enhanced by cleverly hip dialogue. The show was funny in places, but as far as having much that would stick with viewers, it was so much TV Teflon.

Created by Adam Goldberg (“Fanboy”) and Seth Gordon (“Horrible Bosses”) under the aegis of Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison production company, “Breaking In” deserved another shot despite middling ratings. There was always a lot of potential, some of it only partially tapped, in the characters, the attractive cast and, most of all, in the writers’ love of deadpan dialogue peppered with sly pop culture references (look for a nifty “Ferris Bueller” nod in next week’s episode).

Since we need that tutorial to remind us of what “Breaking In” is all about, and to introduce Mullally’s character, Veronica Mann, it takes a while for tonight’s episode to begin to demonstrate what will be different this season from last … year. Veronica, masquerading as an airhead temp worker, needs to know who does what on the Contra team, which gives the writers a chance to tell us about each character’s specialty. Soon enough, Veronica is revealed to be much more than a temp, prompting a complete change in how she’s treated by the rest of the team. By next week’s episode, the new order at Contra Security is in place, with Veronica and her brittle but clueless British assistant, Molly (Erin Richards), trying to remind Oz and the team that they are in charge now. More to the point, since the tutorial is over, writers Chris Bishop and Goldberg are free to have fun with the dialogue.

Mullally is certainly another reason to watch the show, but her presence also works to solve another problem: cast dynamic. Last year, the show seemed to have a kind of schizophrenic indecisiveness about whether the star was Slater or Harrison. Ironically, adding a strong presence like Mullally begins to solve that problem by making it much more of an ensemble piece.