2) TV keeps us from focusing on our spouse’s shortcomings. Marriage isn’t easy. You choose someone, someone who looks good to you, sounds good to you, smells good to you — you know, someone you might not mind sharing a bed, table, couch and toilet with for the balance of your days on earth. You know how it works: Every morning, you roll over and smell that person, and maybe they don’t stink, so you don’t file for divorce that day. Now, if you didn’t have that box of televised entertainments in the living room, you would probably expect the person who shares your bed at night to entertain you. And that’s just crazy! That person may not smell all that bad, but that doesn’t mean that he or she can do what a table full of professional comedians and dramatists are paid millions of dollars each year to do! Remember, your spouse is just a mortal, someone whose existence you can almost tolerate if you squint your eyes and plug your ears and hum to yourself most of the time. You need TV to make your marriage work. If it weren’t for “America’s Next Top Model,” you two would have nothing to talk about, and you’d probably be meeting with your lawyer right now instead of reading this.

3) TV keeps us from spoiling our children with too much attention. Children think that they’re the center of the universe already. You give them some attention, and that little myopia problem is only going to get worse. Trust me, the more you talk to your children, the more they think it’s all about them. The more they think it’s all about them, the less likely they are to do their chores without whining about going to see “King Kong.” The more they whine about wanting to see “King Kong,” the more likely you are to yell at them, which will make them cry, since it’s all about them. Then you’ll feel all guilty and you’ll spend the next few days thinking about what a crappy parent you are. Paying attention to your kids always ends up being really traumatic for you and them. Don’t your kids deserve better? Instead of disappointing them constantly, you should really let someone far more capable like Dr. Phil or Oprah or SpongeBob parent them for you. Just turn on the TV and hand them a bag of those delicious little powdered doughnuts. They’ll love you much more this way, I guarantee it.

4) TV keeps us from wanting more from our lives. You know how this fall was going to be a big time of growth and renewal for you? You were going to start going to Pilates classes and writing poetry and rethinking your priorities, and then the new season of “Veronica Mars” started and it was clear that her quest to solve the school bus mystery was far more important than the strength of your core muscles. If “Veronica Mars” hadn’t bailed you out, you might be on a path to aggressive self-improvement right now, instead of half-assing everything like you’ve always done. There’s a reason you half-ass everything, though, don’t you see? Because if you turned the lens of your obsessive, unsatisfied personality onto your life, not only would you be utterly disgusted with yourself, but you’d never get a minute’s rest. You’d get all toned and spiritually centered and organized, and your friends and family wouldn’t even recognize you. Everyone would say, “Wow, you’ve really gotten your shit together!” but you wouldn’t have time to chat, because you’d have an organic berry pie in the oven, two loads of laundry to fold in the bedroom, and a yoga class in 10 minutes. Come on! That isn’t you! That kind of person doesn’t even order a chocolate shake with her hamburger and fries. What kind of a life is that?

5. TV makes our lives seem relatively happy. Sad, stressful, upsetting stuff happens on TV all the time. People get murdered or sent to jail or eaten by sharks. People get divorced and cheat on their wives and lose their jobs. Even on reality TV, everyone loses except for one person, and that one person is usually pretty unlikable. When your life is lame in a bunch of small ways — your wife is bossy, your credit card debt is piling up, your dog has a farting problem — it feels pretty soothing to watch lives that are falling apart in lots of big ways. Sure, you’re not sleeping well and your car needs new brakes, but at least you’re not an undercover agent infiltrating a terrorist sleeper cell!

In short, TV is the superglue that’s holding our fractured lives together. There, now, don’t you feel a lot better about all the TV you watch?

Reality wrap-up
I know, I know. You don’t even watch TV. Just keep playing along nice like I taught you, and I’ll buy you something soft and pretty.

You want to know a secret? I’ll tell you this, because you’re my “friend”: No matter how much I look forward to them, reality TV finales almost always leave me cold. For some reason, the second the winner is announced, I don’t care anymore. I don’t care who won. I don’t care who lost. I don’t care about any of the other contestants or about any other aspect of any of it. All I can think is: Why did this matter to me a week ago? I look back on the days when I speculated energetically about who would win, and I think: God, I was so young and naive back then! So full of curiosity and joie de vivre! And yet, now, it all seems like a big waste of time.

Take the “America’s Next Top Model” finale. By the time Nicole won it all, all I could think about was what a big dork she was. Suddenly, I didn’t care that Lisa was one of the best “ANTM” contestants yet; I didn’t care what would happen to Kim or Bre or any of them. By the time Tyra Banks’ “ANTM” reunion show rolled around, the whole thing made me cringe. Why does Tyra always seem like she’s doing a manic impression of Oprah? Why is she so bossy and defensive every time any of the girls tries to tell the world how crazy-making and unbearable being on the show was? Remember a year ago, when it seemed like Tyra’s ego had reached its natural bloated maximum weight? God, we were so young and naive back then!

Then there was the finale of “The Amazing Race: Family Edition,” which turned out to be a bigger disappointment than anyone thought possible, even the naysayers who hated it from the first episode. Can you believe the teams never even left the continent? If it’s not going to be a race around the world at all, if it’s only going to be a race around America in an R.V., you’d think someone could clue us in at the start of the season. Not only that, but the challenges were so incredibly boring and easy. They weren’t all that bad at first — the rowboat across the river was hard; so was the Amish carriage — but they went downhill fast. Ride a bicycle, build a teepee, log on to AOL? Please. And then it all boils down to a big puzzle of North America, basically a third-grader’s homework assignment. Naturally, the Linzes, who are operating at about a third-grade level, won the million dollars.

Ooo, those Linzes, with their bad jokes and their constant high-fiving! Has a more repellent team ever won “The Amazing Race”? Those awful brothers, three of them indistinguishable from each other, beyond the fact that the medium-size one never shuts up. Meredith, that pathetic sad-sack sister who was always lagging behind and begging for approval from the three oafs. And what were the words of wisdom they imparted when they won? Some kind of a chant in which they refer to themselves as “dem Linzes”? Who let these charmless miscreants onto our television screens in the first place?

Let’s move on to the “Survivor” finale so I can push those Linz monsters out of my mind. “Survivor” wasn’t so bad this season, really — at least some worthy players made it to the end. Country boys Jamie and Bobby Jon provided plenty of entertainment, and when you throw in crazy dumb lunk Judd, you’ve got yourself a nice three-ring circus of unfocused testosterone. In the end, though, the women (plus Rafe) found a way to get rid of all three of them, and that was satisfying.

The big disappointment for me was that Rafe didn’t win. Rafe was the mastermind behind the game this time — without him, Stephenie and Danni really didn’t stand a chance. So why did he tell Danni that she didn’t have to honor her promise to take him to the final two? He basically did it because he cared about Stephenie and felt bad when she was clearly going to be eliminated after screwing up the final immunity challenge. Bad, bad Rafe! Forget Stephenie — think of yourself for a second!

Naturally, that was all Danni needed to do the wrong thing. Forget that she was dragged to the end by Rafe — she repaid him by voting him off. As idiotic as it is to expect anything but selfishness on these shows, I still hate it when players don’t do the honorable thing, and they still win in the end. It doesn’t matter along the way if people screw each other over — that’s just part of the game. But at the end, when the last person takes someone unlikable to the final two instead of bringing the person who got them there? It seems wrong.

But then, as evidenced by the finale of “The Apprentice,” as a viewer, you really only care about whether someone does the “right thing” if you agree with the outcome. Soon after the eminently likable yet vaguely absent-minded Randal was hired by Trump, Trump asked him if he thought Trump should hire Rebecca as well. Randal’s response? “Hell, no! Tonight is my night to shine, motherf—ers!” Just seeing the stiff smile on Rebecca’s robot face made it all worthwhile.

But that’s because I didn’t want anything to steal Randal’s thunder. Of course Trump should hire Rebecca (although, as far as I can tell, she’s some kind of management robot manufactured in Japan that Trump is insidiously promoting for some serious under-the-table payola), but he shouldn’t do it on prime-time television just because it makes him look like a good guy, and attracts attention to the finale.

Actually, you have to hand it to Trump. Even when his show is quickly fading from the spotlight, he knows how to pump up his press with an unexpected twist. And really, the survival of all of these shows depends on their ability to add new twists — the next season of “Survivor” now includes some kind of solitary banishment to a scary island for each player. Hopefully, they won’t learn the hard way, “Amazing Race”-style, that their new twist sucks rotten eggs.

“O.C.” = Love x friendship + great hair
You know how to avoid the pitfalls of untested new twists? By never trying anything new. To see how well this works, swing on over to Fox for a heaping helping of “The O.C.” (8 p.m. Thursdays).

Watching “The O.C.” is sort of like listening to a pop song or reading Jane Austen: You know what’s coming next, and that’s what makes it so relaxing. Will Jeri Ryan, the woman trying to mess with Kirsten, succeed in toppling her world, or at least ripping off a big chunk of her cash? Will Ryan sail away on a fishing boat? Will Seth and Summer end up 3,000 miles apart in college next year? Will Marissa skip college to hang out with the dull surfer boys she met at public school?

The answers are no, no, no and no. Because if anything really big and ugly happened, then we couldn’t begin the episode with Sandy, Kirsten, Seth and Ryan engaging in witty banter in the kitchen as they eat cereal and bagels and prepare for the day. If bad things really stuck, then Seth and Summer couldn’t sip coffee in the high school cafe, and Marissa, Ryan, Summer and Seth couldn’t sum everything up, Scooby-style, at the local diner. No, everything will work out just fine, and Death Cab for Cutie will be playing when it does.

In fact, it’s easy to break “The O.C.” down into a limited number of types of scenes.

A: Sandy, Kirsten, Seth, Ryan banter wittily while spreading shmear on bagels in Cohen kitchen

B: Seth, Summer sit in coffee joint at high school, exchanging snotty remarks

C: Seth, Summer, Ryan and Marissa discuss big troubles at local diner

D: Sandy and Kirsten have a tense talk in the bedroom about Ryan, Seth or the Newport Group

E: Marissa swigs from bottle, throws something to the floor, breaks down crying, wakes up from a terrible dream, etc.

F: Outsider or thug-type charms/threatens Ryan or Marissa

G: Ryan punches someone out on the beach, at the school carnival, at that club where Seth used to work or at the big charity ball, while Marissa stands by, horrified

Put the letters together, and you can make an episode of your very own! How about ABDBAEG? That’s a good one! Or why not one of my favorites, AFBFDEFG. That third F scene really chilled me to the bone, how about you?

Based on current and former prime-time soaps, it’s clear that it’s really hard to write a soap that’s unpredictable, clever and fun to watch. As absurd and as fun as “Melrose Place” was, it wasn’t surprising very often, “Dynasty” doesn’t exactly stand the test of time, and have you tried to sit through an episode of “Dallas” lately? Except for those scenes where Charlene is grabbing for the prescription pills in her handbag, “Dallas” is essentially unwatchable. “Desperate Housewives” is going nowhere, slowly, and watching “Nip/Tuck” is like swallowing broken glass.

The producers of “The O.C.” are obviously focused on making sure that in most scenes 1) the dialogue is clever and lively, and 2) the hair and makeup and outfits look great. Plot? Not so important.

Take Seven of Nine — er, Jeri Ryan. She comes into Kirsten’s life at rehab, and is obviously up to no good, which we know because every time Kirsten turns away or leaves, we see Jeri’s sneaky, evil face, plotting away. That alien lady is up to no good, I tell ya! Then we see her at the local shitty motel, discussing her evil non-plans with her nondescript boyfriend. “Kirsten has money, and I’m going to figure out a way to get some of it!” Next, she gets Julie Cooper a condo — Huh? How? — and forces Julie to help her throw a fake charity event so they can keep all the money for themselves. So now Jeri’s story has been building for half a season, right? So how does it end? Julie changes her mind, tells the people at the charity event to make their checks out to a real charity, has a brief confrontation with Jeri in which she scares her out of town, comes clean to Kirsten, and by the next episode Kirsten is over it.

The twist on “The O.C.” is actually a deeply embedded part of the formula. Someone menacing or a little pathetic or both enters the picture — Oliver, surfer boy, Ryan’s pregnant ex, Julie’s sleazy ex, Ryan’s idiot brother, Seven of Nine — they hang out for a while, making everyone nervous, and then they leave. The end.

And yet … “The O.C.” is still mildly relaxing and enjoyable. Is it the shiny hair, or the strummy indie soft rock?

Summarizing…
Why ask why? TV is good for you, whether it’s a shitty reality show or an empty teen drama with no redeeming qualities beyond some witty banter set to a relaxing soundtrack. TV doesn’t just distract you from your pathetic life, as experts once thought; TV makes your pathetic life better. Whether TV is raising your kids or keeping your marriage alive, you have a lot to thank it for this holiday season. And remember, like heavy drinking, long naps and the occasional swig of DayQuil, hearty doses of TV will make your holiday visits with family go a lot more smoothly. So Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, joyous whatever the hell else, chickens. Here’s wishing you and yours lots of warm hours swigging spiked nog and gazing at the boob tube.

Next week: Look for our mid-season report card, which will help you rearrange your messy TiVo’s priorities for the new year!

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.