After the fifth or sixth time he told this story, though, I stopped getting it, and started wondering how such an anecdote could possibly be so important. Something about man-boy bonding, something about the joy of telling his tale in a warm, macho, fatherly tone. Charming but pretty empty, as far as I was concerned, but what did I know? I wasn’t a man, a boy or a dog.

Then one day I visited my boyfriend’s family home in suburban New York. We were sitting in the backyard, by the pool, when a mangy-looking mutt with a hump on its back and scraggly-looking hair wandered up. “Get that thing away from me!” my boyfriend yelled at his mom. “It’s disgusting!” His mom fretted about how she couldn’t let the dog inside anymore, because it smelled too bad, so it wandered around the neighborhood most of the day.

I asked and, yes, this was the same cherished, symbolic dog his dad got him on that wonderful day years ago. Oddly enough, while Dad maintained his hero status even after escaping to the city to raise his pretty young wife’s kids, Dog was treated like a leper. This discovery made me feel sick to my stomach. Why was Dog being blamed for Dad’s sins? Was Dog demonized so Dad could continue to be deified? Or was my boyfriend just an asshole?

When I pointed out that I found it strange that he would tell such a glowing tale about the day he got this dog, and then ignore the dog as it grew older, the boyfriend blinked at me, uncomprehendingly. “It stinks,” he repeated, emphatically. “It’s disgusting.”

Suddenly it seemed clear that marrying this guy would be a very bad idea, indeed.

His story repeats itself
As boring and exasperating as they can be, the stories people repeat over and over again end up telling us a lot about them as human beings. In my boyfriend’s case, his parents had separated right after he went away to college, and maybe he was haunted by the sense that something innocent and sweet from his childhood, some moment when he was the most important thing in the world to his father, was lost and gone forever.

This same sense of melancholy and loss is what has made Tony Soprano a compelling character over all these years. He was a sensitive boy, but his mother and father weren’t capable of giving him the love that he needed, so as an adult he’s fated to look back with anxiety and grief. He worked tirelessly for his mother’s approval, even as she treated him with disrespect, insulted him and plotted to kill him.

Still, like my college boyfriend, people who are caught up in golden moments from the past are likely to neglect people that are in their lives here and now. For Tony, mangy-looking, stinky mutts are wandering around every corner, but like the mom who shrugs and leaves the dog outside instead of giving it a bath and taking it to the vet, Tony tries gingerly to solve his problems by following his own instincts, but inevitably ends up shrugging his shoulders, cutting his losses, and shutting the dog outside in the rain. The question is whether or not, in the final season of “The Sopranos” (9 p.m. Sundays on HBO), Tony is going to continue to make the same brutal decisions that are necessary to fulfill his duties as mob boss, or whether he’s finally lost his stomach for the heartless requirements of mob life.

Each season, this is the repeating story of “The Sopranos”: There’s a bad little sheep in Tony’s flock, and Tony is forced to pull out his shotgun and eliminate the problem. From Big Pussy to Ralphie to Richie (whom Janice conveniently gunned down so Tony didn’t have to) to Tony Blundetto to Adriana, Tony has struggled, year after year, with the unsavory responsibilities of keeping his business up and running.

This season, it may be that Tony’s humanity and his loyalty as a friend are being tested more than ever before. After putting business first so many times before, Tony suddenly seems less able to make the same kinds of barbarous decisions he’s had to make in the past.

When Vito is discovered at a gay bar and forced to go on the run, it’s impossible not to feel sorry for him. This isn’t a guy who’s squealing to the feds or screwing up and challenging Tony like Ralphie did. Despite his sneakiness when Tony was in a coma, overall Vito is a loyal guy, a good earner who hasn’t caused trouble for Tony in the past. He’s obviously meant to be a fairly sympathetic character, particularly in the face of the anger and rejection of the macho mob guys, who think he has to go simply because he makes them all look like girly-men by association.

Our sympathy for Vito peaks when he discovers a quaint little town in New Hampshire that appears to be a sort of gay paradise. I love the scene where the hot guy with the handlebar mustache serves him Johnny Cakes and says something like, “Do you like what you see?” Or the other scene where he’s surveying a vase in an antique store, and the seemingly gay owner says to him, “You’re a natural!” For once, instead of taking out the long knives because the mad dogs in the pack can’t stand to let a perceived offense go unpunished, Tony urges the others not to rush to judgment. Even though he eventually seems intent on chasing down Vito, Tony is delaying the process in a way that makes it uncertain whether Vito will go down the way so many others have before him.

And then there’s Artie, who’s sometimes a sympathetic character, but whose overall demeanor is that of the prideful, irrational jackass. Artie has always inspired Tony’s loyalty, but he himself isn’t all that loyal, either to his wife with his relentless crushes on Adriana and now Martina, or to his staff, whom he treats with respect on good days, and then explodes and abuses at other times. Artie is stubborn, he refuses to listen to others, he makes really bad decisions, and he follows his own bloated ego in little circles.

Tony has been consistently loyal to Artie. Even the fire at Artie’s restaurant, which Tony felt so guilty about, yielded Artie enough insurance money for him to rebuild and start over. But every time Tony tries to reason with Artie and to steer him away from danger or ruin, he does so in vain. Artie can’t discuss anything reasonably — he’s massively insecure yet too enamored of himself to see the truth.

With Paulie going off the rails, Vito hiding out, Artie threatening to lose his mind, and Christopher falling off the wagon and acting like more of a self-serving jerk than ever, how will Tony keep it all together?

But more important, what’s new under the sun? We’ve seen most of these situations before. Do we really need more scenes with Christopher navigating Hollywood like a confused meathead? Do we care that Carmela is put off by her rude friend Angie? And don’t we know what happens to traitors eventually? They get taken out in one horrible way or another. Even if Paulie is discovered to be double-crossing Tony — and that’s likely, the way Paulie is acting lately — Tony will take him out. The End.

Unless Tony is going to put his foot down and take a very different course of action this season, I really wonder why we’re being treated to the same scenarios we have been since the very first season. Why would every single season’s narrative arc involve a traitor to the family? And why is this season shaping up to be just like all the others?

It bothers me that these characters aren’t changing or growing more, particularly in the final days of the show. I know that’s the nature of this show and the nature of its characters, but you’d think they could break from tradition at the 11th hour to liven things up a little. A.J. is still chumpy and annoying, Meadow is a somewhat ineffectual do-gooder, Carmela compromises and keeps the peace, Tony’s men are all self-interested, short-sighted assholes with no conscience who aren’t evolving past a violent, simian state, and Tony, despite his near-death experience, is just as beleaguered and angry as he ever was.

The show remains as imaginative and funny as it ever was, but it feels like we’ve seen it all a few times already. The Sacramoni wedding episode was heartbreaking and memorable, with its theme of weakness vs. strength in men; the casual Italian assassins were hilarious and odd; even Artie’s outbursts were thoroughly entertaining, as frustrating as Artie himself can be as a character. But most of the stories here feel like retreads, and that makes this season a little less exciting than seasons past. I no longer look forward to Sunday nights in the same way, and sometimes (gasp!) watch “Big Love” only, and catch up with “The Sopranos” the next day.

The only outcome that might explain the status quo of this season so far is that something big is in the cards, and the point of these episodes is to remind us of the usual state of affairs before the entire picture is turned upside down. Some possibilities: 1) Paulie or Christopher rat to the feds in exchange for immunity and take the whole family down in the process, 2) Tony joins the witness protection program and writes a book about his experiences (unlikely, since that’s pretty out of character, plus Tony would naturally be the main target of any investigation), or 3) Tony goes easy on Vito, Artie and a few others, ends up being seen as soft, and then gets displaced by one of his longtime loyal associates.

Those are my best guesses. How do you think the final season will end? Send your ideas my way and I’ll publish the best predictions in next week’s column.

I have to say, though, if something that big is going to happen, I’m anxious for it to start already. As harsh as it might be to see the family get ripped apart, it’s getting to the point where it’s hard to care about any of them. Aside from maybe Tony and Silvio, the characters on “The Sopranos” are frustratingly stagnant and self-concerned, and that dampens my interest in the show. It’s time for “The Sopranos” to stop telling the same old stories and start trying out a few new tricks on us. I’d love to see Christopher make a terrible decision and meet with a well-deserved horrible fate, while Vito grows old eating Johnny Cakes. Isn’t it about time Tony showed a little mercy and let the mangy old dog in from the rain?

President evil!
In contrast to “The Sopranos,” “24″ (9 p.m. Mondays on Fox) has wisely swerved off the expected path into new territory during the second half of its fifth season. But even though CTU is no longer concerned with an imminent terrorist catastrophe, the mood is more apocalyptic than ever, as Jack and his renegade agents focus on exposing President Logan for the creepy evildoer we always suspected he was. This recent shift from disaster to deceit has given “24″ a nice late-season shot in the arm. After all, we’ve already squeaked through more looming nightmares than we care to remember, from a nuclear bomb falling on Los Angeles to the spread of an Ebola-like virus that caused victims to bleed from their orifices. And that’s not to mention the now-unforgettable release of nerve gas at CTU headquarters, which left Edgar and Lynn dead and the rest of the staff reeling in its wake. As satisfying as it was to see such deliciously horrifying scenarios unfold before our voyeur eyes, we’re so conditioned to expect the annihilation of big, anonymous segments of the Los Angeles population after five seasons of “24″ that we can’t really get that worked up over it. When the Russian terrorist guy said something about 200,000 potential casualties a few weeks ago, I thought, “Is that all? Come on, guy! You can do better than that. Stop underachieving and set your sights a little higher already.”

But a coverup! That’s another story. We’ve seen thousands of real American lives lost in the past year, what we haven’t seen is a violent bitch-slapping of the Oval Office. Leave it to the geniuses at “24″ to find something even more satisfying than hysterical strangers, foaming at the mouth or bleeding out!

I mean, the notion that President Logan might actually have to answer for his sneaky plans and nefarious, covert actions! Sure, it’s a pretty unbelievable scenario, a real fantasy sequence. The writers must’ve been huffing on the funny pipe when they dreamt this one up. Ha! A president, having to face up to his lies and deceit! Who thought of this wacky story line? Give that nutty guy a raise!

Even that scene where the first lady (Jean Smart) told the president (Greg Itzin) that he disgusted her was a little far-fetched. She looked right into his eyes and said she hated him and while she would keep her mouth shut, she would never, ever see him the same way again! Most of us at home were like, “Hey, lady! Go easy on the guy. He’s the president. Don’t you get it? It’s his constitutional right to lie with impunity. Haven’t you listened to anything Scott McClellan has been telling us for the past year?”

And isn’t it widely recognized and accepted that our president is allowed to kill anyone he wants to? But hey, if Jack’s got his panties in a bunch over “corruption that leads all the way to the top,” and “egregious abuses of power,” well then, we do, too! Whatever you say, Jack!

I also love how Chloe is stepping up and playing the hero through it all. Edgar’s death really seems to have changed her, don’t you think? She went from whimpering and staring at her hands to blackmailing that nasty lunatic girl on the fly in order to sneak out of CTU and then seeking out Bill Buchanan (who was conveniently hanging out at home when she arrived, perhaps flipping through his CTU scrapbook and sniffling softly). Now she’s going to great lengths to continue to break the law from Buchanan’s pad, and she even refused to turn off the computers and hide when Buchanan got the word from the head of Homeland that a CTU task force was on its way over to arrest her. She knows how important it is to help Jack track down that tape that implicates Logan, that’s why! She recognizes the importance of “egregious abuses of power,” even if we don’t!

My, my, where do they find these heroes? I mean, Wayne, Jack, Audrey, Chloe, Bill — so many fine patriots out there, risking their necks in order to get to the truth. How many of us would put our asses on the line just to put an end to corruption that leads to the very top of the food chain? How many of us are even willing to consider what corruption is, or even vaguely grasp the structure of our government, the checks and balances in place in order to keep one of the branches of government from seizing too much power and leading our great nation to the brink of destruction and worldwide war?

But let’s not worry our pretty little heads about any of that. Nah, let’s just crawl into bed and pull the covers up to our chins, while that old mangy dog whines and claws at the door outside. Do you hear that? It’s starting to rain. It’s so cozy to stay in bed on a rainy day, especially when wars are waging far, far away and the whining of that sad old dog reminds you of just how warm and dry and safe you are, by comparison.

Luckily, we can tell the same old happy-go-lucky bedtime stories about American heroism and ingenuity, stories that make us feel OK about ourselves, that make us feel that everything is going to be all right. Instead of looking too hard at the facts, we can daydream about American flags waving and fathers giving their sons cute little puppy dogs. We can turn the TV up really loud, because we know that in the end, President Logan will get caught, and he’ll pull off his mask and reveal that he’s actually old Mr. McGregor from the mill! Gasp! And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids over at CTU!

So here’s to the meddling kids of the world. Let’s hope that the next generation of meddling kids is a little more informed and courageous and idealistic than we were.

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.