Sure, we love whimsical eccentrics and outspoken activists and nutty outsiders — in our romantic comedies and our suspense thrillers and our HBO comedy specials, not in our schools, churches and homes. Naturally you can be a total yo-yo if you’re a celebrity or you’re richer than God. Hell, you can even build a big playground and invite little boys to come play special, secret games with you. Otherwise? Keep it to yourself, freak.

Queer bait and switch
Of course, if you keep it to yourself too much, you might turn into one of those people of whom the neighbors say, “He keeps to himself,” meaning “He didn’t get my joke about the White Sox” or “Our dog seems afraid of him” or “The other day there was an odd smell, like burning hair, coming from his backyard…”

This highlights the essential lack of understanding we have of oddballs. Oddballs are threatening to us, because whenever they appear on TV, it always has something to do with lost little girls and teary-eyed parents tolerating Katie Couric’s thin-lipped smiles of faux sympathy. Yet plenty of the prominent figures in our culture spent years being labeled total freaks before they hit the big time. Somehow unusual traits and offbeat interests are seen as unsavory or even dangerous in the guy next door, but they’re portrayed as early signs of genius in, say, Brando or Hemingway.

Sundance’s “Iconoclasts” (premieres 10 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 17) celebrates eccentricity and offers a closer look at some of the stubbornly original individuals who found a way to bring the full force of their personalities and their selves into their work. The series pairs up a visionary cultural figure with a celebrity who might help to capture the essential nature and talents of the individual in question. This is how we’re privy to Samuel Jackson playing golf with basketball legend Bill Russell, or designer Tom Ford watching artist Jeff Koons instruct an army of assistants on how to craft his latest sculpture.

The pace of the Samuel Jackson-Bill Russell pairing is a little slow, but after you get used to it, if you’re interested enough in Russell, you sort of fall into the rhythm of this unusual format, and you slowly get a sense of what makes Russell such a formidable presence. In particular, I loved the ’60s footage of reporters asking questions about race, with Russell responding with self-possessed frankness. Russell had a way of looking reporters straight in the eye and answering sincerely and directly, but with an edge that tells you he couldn’t have cared less what anyone thought of him.

Although Russell today seems far less somber and far more interested in cracking jokes and teasing Jackson, his lack of concern for appearances is still obvious. Even more impressive is his nonchalant attitude about his trophies and accomplishments. He’s been retired for years, but he’s obviously far too active and satisfied with his life to waste it droning on about the glory days.

Jeff Koons doesn’t have quite the presence that Russell does, but his segment with Tom Ford really drove home the strengths of the “Iconoclast” series, mostly because Ford does such a great job exploring Koons’ work and his motivations. Those who assume the fashion industry is populated by fluffy, superficial lightweights will snap to attention in the company of Ford, who despite his stylish made-for-celebrity-mags appearance, is not only charming but very sharp and great at asking tough questions without angering Koons.

Koons is known for throwing together pop images in dizzying, sometimes awful-looking, sometimes frivolous-seeming collages and paintings and sculptures. Having once held a day job as a commodities trader so that he wouldn’t sully his art by getting paid for it, Koons now basically runs an art factory, manned by assistants and artisans who help to pull together his creations. This isn’t unusual for a well-known artist, but it’s fascinating to see the process taking place. When you see teams of people putting the final touches on a dog-shaped blow-up float, like a kid’s toy, you wonder exactly what Ford asks: How can we tell if this stuff is sincere, or if it’s just bullshit?

Koons answers with an artist’s mix of sincerity and obfuscation, but the pair spend most of the program batting around ideas in ways that reflect their respect for and interest in each other. While that might sound like celebrity back-slapping, the conversation is much more evolved than it would be if Koons were being interviewed by a journalist.

Sundance’s “Iconoclasts” is refreshing because it affords us a look at visionaries who are worth knowing regardless of whether they’re in the news at the moment. Instead of focusing on sensational aspects of their stories, the series intelligently explores exactly those inspired, unconventional aspects of their personalities and their work that make them such fascinating subjects. Upcoming shows feature actress Renée Zellweger interviewing Christine Amanpour, Robert Redford interviewing Paul Newman, and chef Mario Batali interviewing REM frontman Michael Stipe. You heard me right: Batali interviewing Stipe. Hats off to the weirdo who dreamt up this series!

When you’re strange
The rise of cable TV and the Internet has certainly done its part to threaten a world of cheery normals and professionally trained conformists with an unpredictable gaggle of freaks. And yet, the manicured professionals still dominate the airwaves. Most of the people on TV, even on strange little cable networks, have the same plastered TV hair and speak in the same irritating, sing-songy tones. Even on reality shows, yuppies, professional types and those who enunciate like newscasters are strongly preferred, set up as “regular” people, while anyone with an accent is edited down to his country boy or redneck asides. Meanwhile, the genuine oddballs are few and far between, and those who speak frankly are seen as impolite or even downright malevolent.

And then there’s “Project Runway” (second season premieres 8 p.m. Dec. 7 on Bravo). I’ve been anxious to see it and finally caught the reunion episode from the first season last week. Having heard so many raves about this show, I worried that my expectations were too high. Not so, chicken cutlets! Not only is the show entertaining and smart and strange straight off the bat, but it’s immediately obvious what makes it different from other reality shows. First of all, they cast a bunch of genuinely odd, talented designers. These aren’t people who murmur clichés on cue, they’re unique individuals with things to say. Furthermore, not only are the competitors encouraged to joke around, it appears from what little I’ve seen that the best moments aren’t edited out for the sake of keeping the drama storyline of the week afloat. Not that there’s no drama — with such a reckless group of wine-swilling goofballs involved, how couldn’t there be? But the footage we see of the designers feels natural, not staged, and the editing is really sly and fun. Best of all, the challenges aren’t those goony manufactured “Apprentice”-style sponsored events; they’re provocative design challenges that seem to have been created by thoughtful design teachers, not TV producers.

Of course, all that could change with season 2, which has lined up a handful of sponsors, thanks to the popularity of the first season. Hopefully, though, the essential spirit of “Project Runway,” with its clear love of imagination, creativity, talent and oddballs who behave strangely whether or not the camera is rolling, will shine through. Just two weeks until the fur (and the silk organza) starts to fly!

Disrespect intended
Speaking of fur flying, Aaron McGruder’s “The Boondocks” is finally airing on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” (premieres at 11 p.m. on Sunday), and Huey is about as pissed off to be living with a bunch of white folks in the Chicago suburbs as you might imagine. He’s also certain that Ronald Reagan is the devil, and that the government lied about 9/11.

Sounds like a reasonable enough kid to me — and, infuriatingly enough, the locals seem to agree. Instead of being appalled at his outspoken remarks and provocative antics, the white people around him coo and compliment him on how “articulate” he is. Of course, McGruder’s real-life antics didn’t go over nearly as well when he goaded the crowd at an anniversary gala for the Nation last year by mentioning that he voted for Nader, to which Nation columnist Eric Alterman famously heckled “Thanks for Bush!” McGruder told the New Yorker, “These are the big, rich white leftists who are going to carry the fight to George Bush, and the best they can do is blame Nader?”

McGruder is exactly the sort of angry outsider who’s custom-made to cause a stir among polite society’s rabble-rousers — you know, the sorts that prefer to effect change and engage in heated debates over roasted duck, smoothly sidestepping any hurt feelings or awkward silences. Getting angry and condescending to a crowd that paid good money to be there is just plain unseemly, forget that your main point — that back-slapping, self-congratulatory elites make your stomach turn — is well worth making, particularly to a crowd of back-slapping self-congratulatory elites.

You have to admire McGruder’s courage, particularly given the immense pressure to smile and act humble in such a setting. To honor McGruder for what he does, which is write a provocative cartoon about racism and one black kid’s anger at white people, and then balk when he makes provocative, angry remarks, is hilariously petty. But then, just as we love our nutty outsiders as long as they’re in romantic comedies and not in our living rooms, so too do we love our angry black men, as long as they don’t say anything that will make the vichyssoise go down the wrong way.

The first episode of “The Boondocks,” in which Huey, his little brother, and his grandfather are invited to an all-white garden party, seems to mirror McGruder’s memorable night on the podium. Of course, Huey’s angry outbursts to the guests would never even appear on TV, except that Huey is a kid and this is a cartoon and all of this is just for laughs, right? Except that there aren’t really a lot of jokes here, just characters with strong ideas and stubborn notions facing off against each other. In truth, the show feels like an odd fit for “Adult Swim,” which traffics in irony-laced goofiness and pop cultural non sequiturs and carefully avoids anything heavy or even slightly dramatic or remotely linear.

But what makes “The Boondocks” really odd and unusual to watch also makes it hard not to watch — you want to know what McGruder’s going to try to address, and how much leeway he’ll get from the powers that be at Cartoon Network. After two episodes, “The Boondocks” shows promise, defies categorization and, basically, could either evolve into a great show or become repetitive really fast. It’s way too soon to tell, but given the daunting topics McGruder wants to tackle, it’s tough not to cheer him on.

Dream on, white girls
And then there’s “Desperate Housewives,” a show that’s tough not to hate despite its strengths. The problem is that the essential theme of the show, the stultifying conformity of the upper-middle-class suburbs and the slow death afforded to the women in a traditional family structure, is undercut by skin-deep plots, giggling, gun play, and Danny Elfman’s endlessly plinking soundtrack. “See folks, it’s all a joke!” his tedious little twinkly keys remind us, like an ice cream truck that keeps circling the block over and over but never stops long enough for us to gorge ourselves on Nutty Buddies.

Felicity Huffman remains the highlight of the show — which isn’t saying much, given Teri Hatcher’s cornball tittering and stumbling, and Eva Longoria’s pouting. To be fair, Huffman and Marcia Cross are given more interesting stories because their circumstances are closer to the real problems of real women. Still, how many times can chaos erupt while Lynette is rushing out the door?

The trouble is that no matter how clearly we recognize the ills of the suburbs, they’re incredibly difficult to portray. The soccer moms and control freaks and neighborhood gossips are never captured accurately enough — they’re reduced to mean remarks and hard stares at some badly staged PTA meeting. Even on a really smart show like “Weeds,” the horrors of suburbanites’ passive-aggressive, cheery manipulations are painted in far too broad strokes to express their exquisitely awful subtleties. Even shows like “Veronica Mars,” “My So-Called Life,” “Freaks and Geeks,” and “Buffy” never quite nail the complexities and the deeply disturbing habits of middle-class Americans. You can get a laugh from the cleverness and the zombie-like moms and absent dads, but there’s something about the limiting structure of an hour-long drama that renders it all a little too neat and cute and superficial. We need something with depth that’s still scathing and funny, maybe a collaboration between Alan Ball, Winnie Holzman and Joss Whedon…

Weirdo is as weirdo does
Ah, but sadly, we can’t change the world, chickens. All we can do is program our TiVos and cut our lawns to match the length of our neighbors’ lawns. True originality and purity of self-expression are afforded only to those with the time and energy to make a clear, loud, unmistakable point in their words and deeds, plus it typically involves styling one’s hair in a manner that doesn’t complement the shape of one’s face. Who has the time and energy to be an outsider these days? Who has the constant drive to deliver a message about themselves and their views everywhere they go? Most of us can’t even work up the energy to put a “Our President Is A Moron” sticker on our luxury SUVs. I’m not saying we should feel satisfied just with voting, filling our journals with bad poetry, and wearing a really weird pair of shoes occasionally. I’m just saying most of us have to be satisfied with keeping our outsider status on the inside — not because we’re chicken, chickens, but because we’re friggin’ old.

You hear that, kids? Better fuck shit up while you can, because before you know it, you’re going to be far too tired and lame to even make a run for gasoline and matches at the local Wal-Mart. Anyway, I’d say more, but it’s already way past my naptime.

Next week: Like Caesar himself, HBO’s “Rome” rises triumphantly from its uncertain beginnings, buoyed by the cheering sight of outsiders’ heads on stakes.

What no one tells you, of course, is that the former inevitably turns into the latter. No sooner have you put the finishing touches on your masterpiece than a phalanx of professionally smooth humans gathers to discuss how to peddle your brand to the appropriate demographic. “Who is your demographic, do you think?” they’ll ask you.

I don’t know, you’ll answer. Crazy people? Angry people? People who just want to create something lasting but end up pissing away their prime in extended Twitter exchanges and tedious teleconferencing calls?

Desperately seeking status

Just don’t say so out loud. Too many sullen artists and brilliant recluses have made that mistake before you, and they have a laundry room filled with glorious unsold paintings or brilliant unsold manuscripts to show for it. Face it, you’re going to have to sell something, eventually. Even surgeons and priests and teachers and executives at charitable foundations (especially them) have to sell something. Don’t stay in denial about the need to sell forever, because, short of genius grants and the kindness of strangers, the creative life isn’t possible without sales.

That said, it’s hard not to get fatigued by the swirling, bullshit-polluted waters of the promotional universe, with its gluppity glup and shloppity shlop. Think too long and hard about selling yourself into a new life, and soon you won’t be able to separate your “brand” from your actual personality, or differentiate between your friends and your professional networks. Then you’ll need to seek professional help — whether that’s with a psychotherapist or a social media marketing consultant is anybody’s guess.

HBO’s “How to Make It in America” (premieres 10 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 14) dives straight into the eternal hellfire of a self-promoting universe without apology, and, bewilderingly enough, does so with a scruffy, scattered, early-30-something dude who can’t seem to decide if he’d rather pass out business cards or pass out from drinking too many vodka shots at a loft party in Williamsburg. Our hero Ben (Bryan Greenberg) faces that timeless dilemma: follow another pipe dream, or pass the pipe?

Befitting a man who’s half stuck in the past — drinking too much and waking up in unfamiliar apartments — and half stuck in some dingy present he never anticipated, Ben wears a haunted look of ambition and dread and hope and self-hatred. Even when he tells you his next big plan, there’s a wavering in his voice that asks, “Will I ever make anything of myself or am I just a big loser?”

This makes the half-hour dramedy “How to Make It in America” a little bit like “Entourage,” except without the money, the fame or the hot girls. (“Entourage” executive producers Mark Wahlberg and Rob Weiss are also producers on this show.) Well, no, there are hot girls here, too, but they won’t sleep with these guys, because they’re obviously not friends with a big-time movie star.

Yes, as annoying as it is to watch Drama and Turtle harvest lip-glossy sea donkeys with their flaccid pickup lines, it’s even more disturbing to watch guys not get the girls because they’re not well-connected. No one is rising above anything in this picture; the underlying ego-driven, self-promoting, screw-or-be-screwed backdrop is still there, it’s just that we’re hanging out with the have-nots this time instead of the haves. When Ben’s friend Gingy (Shannyn Sossamon) tells him she’s going to give him one of their friend Tim’s photographs as a gift, he replies, “That’s great, I mean these are like a framed reminder of what losers all my friends are.”

Ben is kind of a dick, but you can hardly blame him. He’s constantly confronted with the fact that he’s stuck in limbo, that he hasn’t actually achieved anything, that his dreams might never come true. Ben’s ex, Rachel (Lake Bell), has moved on to a guy who’s opening a bar in Manhattan. When Ben tries to hit on a girl at a party, she introduces him to her other suitor at the party, saying, “Marco is a painter. He just got back from a solo show in Mexico City.”

This is the third show on HBO’s roster (along with “Bored to Death” and, to a lesser extent, “Flight of the Conchords”) that dabbles in the hipster-manchild milieu of Brooklyn, displacing Carrie Bradshaw’s Manhattan as the place where strivers dream big and sleep around and fumble for a cigarette in gloves with the fingers cut off. 

Despite his comment about what losers his friends are, everyone around Ben seems to at least be pursuing some creative goal, whereas Ben works in retail, moons over his ex, and frets about being a nobody — that is, until he and his friend Cam (Victor Rasuk) dream up a scheme so crazy, it just might work!

Your own personal interest in “How to Make It in America” mostly relies on whether you can relate to Ben’s plight of drunken despair mixed with uneasy ambition (I certainly can) and whether you want to relive those years (I certainly don’t), let alone relive them against a backdrop of apparently soulless, skin-deep debauchery. 

That said, Ben and Cam have their share of unsophisticated, naive charms. They’re at least a little grittier and more imaginative than the first-year corporate lawyers of ABC’s “The Deep End” or the competitive doctors-in-training of “Grey’s Anatomy” and the other cute professional-class underlings that we’re supposed to feel sorry for because — oh dear! — they’re not big swinging dicks yet. On those shows, the stakes have to be artificially pumped up by cancer and alcoholic moms and married lovers because otherwise, would we really believe that whether or not “Grey’s” Christina Yang gets to practice cardiothoracic surgery techniques before she actually starts a cardiothoracic surgery residency is going to determine her fate as a doctor?

Ben, on the other hand, is reduced to hanging out at the end of a long table at a bar, hoping to get a few minutes of face time with fashion designer John Varvatos, because he needs some connections to start his designer jean business. When he asks the guy next to him, “You a friend of John’s?” the guy responds, “No! I’m a friend of his, and he’s a friend of a friend of John’s,” you can’t help but cringe. At least we’re provided with a reminder of the sorts of things most of us would never be willing to do for money, fame or even hot girls. Even after kissing ass with reckless abandon, Ben and Cam are only granted an informational interview with one of Varvatos’ associates, who immediately tells them that they’re kidding themselves.

Meanwhile, even Ben’s egocentric blowhard friends are reduced to hustling constantly, whether they’re successful or not. “I didn’t find photography, photography found me,” Ben’s friend Tim (Is that Billy Lush?) tells some strangers at his gallery opening. “I was living in a halfway house, I stole a camera from The Wiz, and I just started shooting. I mean, true art is all in the streets, everything else is bullshit. By the way, I’m having a very special deal on my 20 by 24 prints …” See also: Johnny Drama, take deux.

But the lowest moments of the show come when Ben and Cam bicker over whether or not they should dip into criminal territory to get the ball rolling.

Cam: Shady or not, at least I’m still going for it, not working for the man like you.

Ben: What are you, 12? How long are you going to keep saying “Fuck the man” for?

Cam: Until we are the man!

Hold on a minute. Was that Turtle talking?

So that’s what it all boils down to: Ben and Cam want to be the man. They’re not designing jeans because they’re passionate about fashion — not as far as we can tell, anyway. They just want to have more money and get laid more often.

If this were a show about creative passion, then maybe Ben and Cam would be a little more interesting than the glossy professional yuppies on every other channel, straining to make that promotion and bag that babe. Unfortunately, as Ben and Cam demonstrate, more often than not the desire to “make it” is exactly as vague and empty as those two words imply. 

“How to Make It in America” may have set out to create a humbler, more down-to-earth version of “Entourage,” but it mostly succeeds at reminding us that not having fame or money doesn’t necessarily make you more down to earth. From world-famous pop stars like John Mayer to that kid who made fun of your shoes in the fifth grade, douche bags are born, not made.

Sure, it starts out innocently enough. “Addy” (Addison, played by Kate Walsh) is dashing around the medical offices where she works, and she bumps into some snag: the practice’s budget is in the red or someone forgot to make more coffee in the break room or someone’s wife stopped by to call her a whore. Addy doesn’t take kindly to such stressors – you’ll recall that her character moved from Seattle Grace (on “Grey’s”) down to sunny L.A. for a change of scenery, and so Shonda Rhimes could build a whole new show around a manic, eye-rolling, sexually compulsive redhead who’s also – you guessed it – the best gynecological surgeon anywhere in the known universe.

Like most busy and important surgeons, Addy spends most of her time mooning over some man or blurting out long-winded tirades about how everything is all mixed up inside of her, sort of like the spunky heroine of a Beverly Cleary novel, except with shinier hair and eyebrows plucked into a skeptical, vaguely demonic arch that says, “I’m not buying it, mister!” and also, “Should I sleep with you now, or later, during the strummy indie pop ballad montage?”

Anyway, Addy and her ragtag assortment of new-age-cliché-spewing, middle-aged, oversexed colleagues get into a colorful bickering match, and then – and this is where you have to start watching your back – a doe-eyed little child is wheeled in or hobbles in on his own or is led in by an obviously screwed-up drug addict of a parent, and even though at first it just looks like a minor subplot, soon a gaping hole opens up in the sexy-single-doctors-argue-flirting universe and the entire show is swallowed up by a deep, black abyss of sniffling toddlers with terribly negligent or uncaring parents and dead moms and single dads who can’t hug their own children without giving them wretched diseases, and before you know it, you’re surrounded by snotty tissues.

You think I’m exaggerating. So let’s just review the imperiled-child subplot on the last few episodes of the show, shall we?

Subplot A: Adorable saucer-eyed blond boy answers door, insists his mom is “a really good mother” in heartbreakingly earnest tone, but then reveals that she’s a hoarder! He’s living in a puddle of his own filth! The cast on his arm is infected! Mommy, meanwhile, can’t explain any of it to the drippy therapist lady Violet (Amy Brenneman). Finally, Child Protective Services is on its way over to take the little darling honey lamb away from his Mommy! Oh nooo! At the last minute, Mommy breaks down crying and admits that three years earlier she dumped her husband for no good reason! One day her ex picked up their daughter for his weekend visit and … they both drove over a cliff and died! It was all Mommy’s fault for dumping her perfectly good man, and for not letting her daughter stay home (she wanted to stay home with her brother, who was sick, but Mommy wouldn’t let her!) and, well, that’s why she started hoarding, the poor, poor woman! But look, she’s ready to make a change! She just threw out that bag of junk! And that one! Sniff, sniff.

Subplot B: Dell, the plucky male midwife at the office, has a pretty little daughter, Betsy, with his wife, who’s a former drug addict. As he’s driving away from the house one night, it explodes into flames! His wife and child are seriously injured! It turns out his wife was cooking meth on the stove – and Dell had found a pipe earlier but still left his daughter alone with his wife, so it was all his fault the whole thing happened! Betsy wants to see her mommy to say goodbye before Mommy dies but Dell won’t let them see each other. Mommy dies! Betsy is furious and hates her daddy forever and ever!

Subplot C: Woman gives birth to baby, but won’t even hold him after he’s born, because all she wants is the cord blood, which she needs to save her twin daughters’ lives. But there’s a hitch; there’s only enough to save one daughter. Oh God, how will Mom and Dad ever choose between their two little girls? Mom flat-out refuses to choose, but Dad admits that he has a favorite, which prompts Mom to tell Dad that he’s going to hell. Mom and Dad cry, baby boy cries, twin daughters cry, Addy cries, etc. Finally one daughter gets sick and they give the cord blood to the other one, and of course the camera is there so we can watch the whole family tell her, “Sorry, honey, but we’re going to save your sister and let you die.” Naturally, instead of telling them all that she hates their guts, the girl says something crazy like “You must survive!” to her sister, and then valiantly prepares to die as we far less valiantly cry our eyes out.

Those stories are just the tip of the iceberg. I also remember an episode where two parents ditched their kid, then admitted, when questioned, that they did it because the kid was, like, a major incovenience. Then there was another couple trying to have a baby just to harvest the cord blood. There was the single dad who couldn’t be in the same room with his immunity-compromised older daughter because he would get sick and probably die if he did, but eventually he couldn’t stand to see her alone anymore, so he left his toddler son behind, even though that meant he’d die and leave the kid fatherless. (And yes, we watched as he reunited with his daughter while his heartbroken toddler cried outside the door.)

How do the writers even come up with these scenarios, anyway? Do they just sit around in the writers’ room saying, “Hmm … Would it be crazy to have a kid eaten alive by enormous rats while his parents looked on, helplessly? Could we do that? What about a flesh-eating virus, that could work, couldn’t it?”

The strange thing with “Private Practice” is that you think you’re watching this middle-aged, professional-class, not very funny, not very sexy version of “Sex and the City,” and then suddenly you’re surrounded by miserable, weeping children and bad, sick, confused, exhausted parents. Next time we’re looking for those kinds of kicks, we’ll skip the little shop of melodramatic horrors and hang out in the sick kids’ waiting room at the local children’s clinic instead.

“It’s the Others, dude,” Hurley answers. “They caught us … again.”

Oh dear. It’s the Others (again), and they caught us (again). And just in case the repetitive nature of this show is, ahem, lost on you, the entire episode seems to be made up of nothing but questions.

“Who are you? Why are you holding us here?”

“I just lied to him, didn’t I?”

“So did they tell you why they burnt me with a hot poker?”

“Who do you care about, Kate?”

“So, what happened to your handcuffs?”

“Why are they after you? What did you do?”

Of course, after the discovery of the hatch or Charles Widmore’s evil corporation or the Dharma Initiative’s disturbing experiment, things really had to get simpler. Blaming misguided scientific experiments or some corporation? Maybe in 2005, but these days that stuff is beyond played. It’s the bread and butter of “Fringe” and, Christ, “Eureka!” and probably five or six shows on Nickelodeon and ABC Family, for that matter. No, far better just to scrap all of that and go back to the one thing that everyone scoffed at in the very beginning: the smoke monster!

And by the smoke monster, of course, we mean a pure, simple force of evil, now embodied in the dead, eeeeevil Locke. So even as the questions fly about, we’re just biding time, because all of the various folds that made this show intriguing – character studies, well-scripted flashbacks, unpredictable power struggles, retro eeriness that conjured up the Milgram obedience experiment – all of these things are flattened out into Good vs. Evil. In fact, everything about the current course of events feels like a retread of a really bad Indiana Jones movie (“Indy, cover your heart!”).

So mystical guy/other Other Dogen tortures Sayid as a “test,” then admits to Jack that they were planning to poison Sayid:

Dogen: We believe he has been claimed.

Jack: Claimed? By what?

Dogen: There is a darkness growing in him, and once it reaches his heart, everything your friend once was will be gone.

Jack: How can you be sure of that?

Dogen: Because it happened to your sister.

Oh my god! Finally a truly shocking revelation: Locke is Jack’s sister!

No wonder they, like, totally never, ever got along at all, dude!

OK, sure, he’s probably talking about Jack’s half-sister, Claire. Another question answered with a question. Claire is evil now? And yes, it’s almost enough to keep you watching, if you didn’t suspect that, in the end, it will all boil down to explosions, fisticuffs and a few mediocre revelations trumped up to be shocking and weighty. But then, if there was one thing we knew when we started watching this show six years ago, it was that the ending would be a disappointment. That’s just the smoke-and-mirrors nature of the smoke monster.

Don’t tell that to the promo team at ABC, though. Immediately after the last scene of Tuesday night’s episode, we cut to a preview for the next episode with a voice-over that bellows, “This is it! The final episodes of television’s biggest phenomenon are here! The time for questions is over!“

Come on, guy. The time for questions is so not over. But you had to go and say that, didn’t you? Now we’ll tune in next week in spite of ourselves, hoping for some real answers for once, and at the end of another hour, we’ll say to ourselves, “Yep. They caught us … again.” 

The Puppy Bowl

Maybe the men in shiny white tights no longer seem like adequate visual eye candy to match your outsize libido, or maybe you’re so old that what really makes your heartbeat race uncontrollably at this point is the sight of a 4-month old Chihuahua-pug mix, clumsily chasing a squeaky football toy across the goal line while a 3-month-old Lab-collie mix pounces on her own tail. Does this mean you’re a sad shell of your former self, or does it simply mean that you’re finally mature enough to acknowledge that nothing can make you lose sight of your own mortality quite as quickly as the sight of baby animals cavorting?

This year the festivities (3-5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 7, on Animal Planet) include bunny cheerleaders, hamsters flying a blimp, and a kitten halftime show that’s guaranteed 100 percent clean and devoid of nipple flashing. And remember, your kids will enjoy the kittens a lot more than listening to Grandpa humming “Pinball Wizard” along with the Who, who are playing at halftime on the real Super Bowl.

The Puppy Bowl even features a human referee, who makes calls like “unnecessary ruffness.” Yes, sounds like you’d better watch with the sound off, or risk being so thoroughly polluted by Excessive Cuteness (also a personal foul) that you end up adorning your back dashboards with plush toys or take to wearing rainbow suspenders without irony for the rest of your days on earth, a style choice that’s at least as bad as singing along to “Won’t Get Fooled Again” for the 50,000,000th time in your life.

The Who?

Remember the old adage, “Those who never stop singing ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ are destined to get fooled more often than anyone else”? Still, nostalgia has a way of making fools of all of us. What else can explain why the network geniuses would turn back the clocks and break out another boomer indulgence for the halftime show this year? Let’s see, there was Springsteen, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney … Apparently in the wake of nipplegate, TV execs suspect that if anyone under 65 is involved in the show, it’ll immediately devolve into a debauched, orgiastic spectacle of biblical, traditional-family-toppling proportions.

Why is it, though, that when marketing and development and publicity people want to cater to “the mainstream,” they’re always torn between peppy preteens, country-pop sensations, and guitar-solo-wielding retirees? When you turn on your TV set for some big concert, why is it always a prepubescent hottie you’ve never seen before or the classic rock radio that was playing when your high school boyfriend drove you to Hardee’s in his yellow Pinto for the first time?

News flash! Pete Townshend has revealed a part of the Who’s set list! It seems they plan to play — wait for it — “Baba O’Riley,” “Who Are You,” “Pinball Wizard” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”! Man, I can’t wait to hear “Pinball Wizard” again, I haven’t heard that song in at least a week now. But speaking of being damned for all time, there’s always …

Faith Bowl III

It’s only natural that after several hours of watching various manly Christian hunks point toward the heavens and offer a big shout-out to the Man Upstairs in the wake of each particularly effective tackle or 5-yard gain, you’ll want to pay homage to the big boss-man in the sky yourself. Why not flip over to the Faith Bowl III on your local Catholic network, where “professional Catholic athletes” will “discuss how they live out their faith in the public arena of professional sports and what challenges to family life they face.” I can imagine a variety of challenges to family life that might come up for professional athletes, from locker room bare-ass bumps (or “moon landings” — thank you, “Modern Family”)  to the steady parade of bunny cheerleaders and assorted roving rodents in heat wandering around after every practice, anxious to snag a man with a million-dollar salary and glutes of steel.

Panelists will discuss “a sound Christian family life, and the important role of a husband and father in being a ‘true man.’” But unless the panelists are going to demonstrate their true manliness by disrobing and then killing gigantic roaches lurking in the shower or putting on some tight short-shorts and soaping up one of the luxury vehicles parked in their driveways, we’re not sure about the visual interest of this segment. The show’s producers might consider swapping out former baseball star Mike Piazza for someone who’ll look a little hotter loading up a washing machine wearing a French maid’s uniform, like, say… pretty much anyone else.

But speaking of offensive, there’s also …

The Ball Bowl

OK, fine. Comedy Central’s Super Bowl programming block is actually called “Tailgate Party 10,” but come on, it’s a ball-themed movie marathon that includes “Meatballs,” “Spaceballs,” “Balls of Fury” and “The Nutsacker.”

OK, I made that last one up. But speaking of far-fetched tie-ins, don’t forget…

The Toilet Bowl

Yes, the DIY Network just had to find the most fragile of threads to herd audiences from the big game to its third annual potty-centric festivities. Yes, thanks to the Broke But Aspirational Housewife Channel, while your resident ball-scratchers are fully engulfed in America’s yearly, fully sanctioned plunge into semi-violent homoerotica, you can sneak off to the bedroom TV set and escape into a world of dream bathrooms, bathroom makeovers and extravagant trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Fascinating, really, how one’s fixation on potties seems to correspond inversely to one’s fixation on potty humor. You’re either the sort of animal who repeats a fart joke from “Spaceballs” or you’re the kind who daydreams about having a bathroom the size of a kitchen (and a kitchen the size of a living room, and a living room the size of a basketball court).

And then there’s Matt Muenster, a darling little morsel of a home contractor who’s happy to fill the Nate Berkus role in the American housewives’ extreme makeover fantasy, bathroom remodeling edition. If Mike Piazza won’t put on a bunny costume and retile our half-bath, we’re pretty sure that this smiling sweetie will. Mmm, look how he can caulk and talk at the same time! We ladies love a truly adaptive male — particularly on a day when our own captive beasts appear incapable of doing much more than grinding potato chip crumbs into the rug every time one of their boyfriends on-screen crushes one of his boyfriends on the field.

So let’s see: Puppy lovers, nostalgic boomers, homoerotic beastmasters, Christians, the testicle-obsessed and the bathroom-fixture-fixated. That pretty much covers all of us, doesn’t it?

Congratulations, TV executives! You’ve reduced the American population down to six key demographics. Just recognize that Christians don’t buy stuff, puppy lovers get distracted easily and wander off, the bathroom-fixture-fixated are prone to start cleaning their own bathrooms during the commercial breaks, and nostalgic boomers fall asleep by 9 p.m. — presumably because they’re hoping that, with a little more sleep, they won’t get fooled again tomorrow.

Not bloody likely. Either way, enjoy the nacho-cheese-and-beer-induced paralysis and have a happy Super Bowl Sunday, America!

Oh yeah, and his back hurts like crazy when he’s on his feet all day. In other words, you’d have to have ice water flowing through your veins not to enjoy this elaborate P.R. experiment in spite of yourself. It’s pretty tough to resist the heartwarming tale of Larry O’Donnell, president of Waste Management, who gamely agrees to pretend to be a new hire named Randy Lawrence who’s training in several different low-level positions within his company. Larry is eager, he says, to get a closer look at how the business functions and what the experience of working its lower-level positions might be like.

And sure, Larry is likable enough in his role as a humbler, entry-level version of himself. He does seem to feel horribly guilty for the ways that his company’s policies have been misused or misinterpreted by supervisors, leading to humiliation, inconvenience or overall job dissatisfaction of the ranks. One low-level supervisor runs to clock in after lunch to avoid having her paycheck docked by her boss; a trash collector pees in a cup while she’s out collecting trash, because there’s no time to stop and use the bathroom; a female office worker holds down four different positions at the company at once even though she’s only paid for one job, and she’s about to foreclose on her dream house. (Imagine how the company’s publicists and the show’s producers drooled when they wandered across that very timely P.R. gold mine.)

The workers involved all seem very capable. Larry, meanwhile, can’t do much of anything right in his role as a regular working Joe. Delightfully enough, a supervisor named Walter fires Larry after watching him haplessly attempting to pick up trash on a littered hillside for just a couple of hours.

“Nice workin’ with you, but you just don’t have it,” Walter tells Larry.

“Walter is the only person who ever fired me in my whole career,” Larry says. Well, Larry, that’s because you haven’t technically been working all these years, nor have any of us who sit in front of our computers or talk on the phone or go to meetings all day long, not compared to what working-class people do all day. And when you see Larry in action, you sort of have to wonder how the man worked his way up the ladder in the first place. Meanwhile, Fred, a guy who cleans out Waste Management’s porta-potties swiftly and efficiently without ever complaining about the work, a guy who coaches Larry enthusiastically all day long, seems like natural management material.

“We’re like hunters, we see her prey, we creep up on it,” Fred tells Larry the day they work together, referring to a cluster of portable toilets.

Larry is truly impressed with Fred’s work. He really is. In fact, his experience doing these crappy jobs for his own company will forever change his management style — that’s what he tells a gathering of employees at the pep-rally-style conclusion of the show. And really, he does seem genuine when he says it. But short of seeing Fred promoted and watching as raises are awarded to every last one of the capable workers we met, should we care? Shouldn’t all CEOs be forced to do the really bad jobs at their companies, so they understand how their passing decisions and cost-cutting maneuvers affect real human beings?

It would be nice if this sort of thing might happen without the cameras running. It would be nice if businesses simply started to police themselves, to take on a commitment to fairness and justice instead of simply answering to the board and the stockholders and the bottom line.

That’s a little too much to expect — or at least that’s what the captains of industry and the Once-lers of all stripes tell us. So, instead, we’ll have to soothe ourselves with publicist-invented fairy tales.