In other words, ideally, July is a cross between a Nestea plunge commercial and a spread in the summer issue of the Pottery Barn catalog. Sadly, though, that kind of art-directed July remains limited to magazines, fluffy summer TV shows and calendar photography, because the fact is — and this is the part you forget when you’re daydreaming about July in the middle of some particularly shivery, dreary day in January — July is very, very hot. July is hot enough that no one has the energy to shower or comb their hair or even speak, let alone assemble delightful fruit garnishes. All anyone really does is slump on the couch in their underwear, sweating buckets.

Maybe in New England, in some small Norman Rockwell-style town, they achieve the sorts of idyllic July days that the rest of us dream about while we’re tossing and turning at night, soaking the sheets. Maybe while we plant ourselves in front of the one, tiny air-conditioning unit in the house and refuse to budge, those adorable folks up in Maine are pickling beets and attending quaint little small-town parades. While the rest of us are driving to a crappy mall just to get out of the heat, those assholes are playing croquet while sampling a fresh batch of prosciutto-and-melon skewers.

But July is almost over, which is a big relief, since the month of August is clearly meant to be spent slumping on the couch in your underwear, sweating buckets. See, I imagine that I love the overachieving months the best, but really, I prefer the months with the lowest expectations attached to them: rainy February, sullen November, and soiled, stanky August.

Couch-free potatoes
In fact, overachievers in general, those Norman Rockwell types with their carefully restored California bungalows and their heirloom tomatoes and their ironed white linen shirts, really screw things up for the rest of us. We’d all be fine with big, lukewarm pitchers of lime Kool-Aid and a grass-covered Slippery Slide in the backyard, if not for all of their impeccable taste, which naturally trickles down to the shiny catalogs that arrive at our doors, catalogs we make the mistake of flipping through, impatiently, from the damp discomfort of our sweat-soaked couches.

This suspicion with the overachiever lifestyle is at the heart of HBO’s summer sitcom “Lucky Louie” (10:30 p.m. Sundays on HBO), an alarmingly spare and brutal affair starring the comedian Louis C.K. and a gaggle of cranky types you don’t normally see on TV.

Imagine if you were to take the Pottery Barn catalog and strip it of everything fake and impractical — the enormous margarita glasses without a single spot on them, the hot pink napkins folded just so, the crystal-blue pool without leaves or dead bees floating in it, the slivers of watermelon so finely sliced that only a deeply troubled obsessive-compulsive could be responsible for them — you’d be left with something resembling your actual life, except with shiny, new furniture where the old, beat-up furniture should go. “Lucky Louie” does the same thing for the modern sitcom. Not only did the creators of this show take out the average sitcom’s bright purple walls and the bright orange couch with its rainbow of throw pillows, not only did they get rid of all adorable knickknacks and cool prints and subtract the cheerful open-plan kitchen and the big windows and the staircase that leads to the many bedrooms upstairs, but they had the audacity to stuff the main characters into a shabby-looking one-bedroom apartment.

And get this: There’s no couch at all! The couch, that sitcom staple since “I Love Lucy,” is gone. All Louie and his curmudgeonly wife and bratty 4-year-old daughter have is a small kitchen table, and a bed covered in the kind of tacky coverlet your grandmother used to knit for you out of lime green, sale-priced polyester-blend yarn.

The mood and tone of “Lucky Louie” also constitutes a notable departure from the manic gaiety of the mainstream sitcom. Instead of chiding each other adorably, overreacting cutely, shouting at each other in a stagey way, and then chuckling good-naturedly at the whole mess, Louie and his wife, Kim (Pamela Adlon), get into fights over stupid stuff, pout, call each other terrible names, and then make up, but just barely. In a recent episode, Louie brings home red roses for Kim to kick off a romantic weekend at home together. Kim politely tells Louie that she doesn’t really like red roses. Louie cautiously mentions that this rubs him the wrong way, that she should say “Thank you” first. Kim responds, with studied calmness, that she would thank him, only she told him before that she doesn’t really like red roses, but he didn’t remember. His purchase of red roses, therefore, indicates to her that when she talks, he’s just barely listening and doesn’t care what the hell she’s saying. This makes Louie defensive, which makes Kim angry, which makes Louie even angrier, which is why he calls her the C-word. And there you go. The whole weekend is ruined.

Which is sort of enjoyable, somehow, because one of the traits common among most families is their uncanny knack for Ruining Everything. Truly talented families don’t need really important, heavy problems to Ruin Everything, either. No. A person need not be in debt or cheating on his wife in order to cause a stupid fight and wreak havoc on a long-awaited vacation or a family holiday. All he really needs is to buy dark chocolate for his wife when she, in fact, specifically told him several times that she likes milk chocolate, and cannot stand dark chocolate under any circumstances.

In fact, Louie and Kim’s fight reminds me of the golden days of “All in the Family,” when Archie and Meathead would rip each other to tiny pieces and cause total chaos in the house, all over the tiniest squabble, like whether a person typically gets dressed by putting on both socks and then both shoes, or whether it’s far more normal and acceptable to go “sock, shoe, sock, shoe.” Instead of recognizing the idiotic nature of their debate, Archie would scream “Don’t you know the whole world puts on a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe?” while Meathead would grumble, “I like to take care of one foot at a time!” with all of the fervor and rage of two people clashing over the Vietnam War. (Click here to listen to Norman Lear and Rob Reiner reminisce on that classic scene.) Eventually, Gloria and Edith would throw their respective whiny, screechy voices into the din, and before you know it, Everything would be Ruined.

“Lucky Louie” combines this love of trivial squabbles, now linked most commonly to “Seinfeld,” with the dark side of marriage and child rearing. In one episode, Louie concludes that his daughter Lucy is a “total fucking asshole” after she refuses to clean up her toys, opens a friend’s birthday present when he specifically tells her not to and acts like a huge brat at a neighbor’s birthday party. At first, Kim is shocked at Louie’s harsh words, but by the end of the episode, she agrees that maybe the two of them somehow got stuck with “a shitty kid.”

“At least she’ll do all right,” Louie says. “I mean, assholes rule the world. She’ll probably grow up rich.”

“She’d better buy us a big fucking house,” Kim responds.

Whether or not any of this is mildly amusing to you depends, as usual, on your upbringing. If your family game nights tended to end with someone upturning the Monopoly board, then running to their room in tears, and your family trips hit their low point at a national monument in the middle of nowhere when someone abruptly got out of the car and refused to get back in, you’re likely to find “Lucky Louie” fairly entertaining. On the other hand, if you spent the morning cutting watermelon into tiny slivers for your elaborate cookout this afternoon, I’m guessing you won’t be amused by this show at all.

My only major beef with “Lucky Louie” is that the frank sexual talk between Kim and Louie is a little bit off-putting. Call me a prude, but when Louie asks Kim why she stuck her finger up his ass during sex? It makes me cringe, not chuckle — and that’s the joke that starts off the whole episode. No matter how bold or groundbreaking it might be that the characters get to use the word “fuck” and talk about “fucking” all the time, when on the network sitcoms, we’re left with “Three’s Company”-style double takes and Kelly Ripa getting frosting on her cute little button nose, there are still some conversations that you don’t really want to see on TV.

Naked lunch
There are also some conversations you don’t want to have about TV, which I learned at yet another week of the Television Critics Association press tour. But even after a never-ending flow of trivial information about shows that aren’t likely to last beyond a couple of episodes this fall, the week had its share of highlights, including a “Hell’s Kitchen”-themed lunch (Yes!) and the live via-satellite appearance, from northern Israel, of Fox News anchor Shep Smith, whose macho-military demeanor felt extremely out of place after a day of listening to sitcom actors crack wise. “I think part of the challenge is that you just never know when calm is going to turn to hell on Earth,” he told us, glaring unflinchingly into the camera. “But the truth is, to cover this story, you have to occasionally put yourself in danger. We knew that when we signed up for this job, and that’s a risk we’re willing to take.” Cue the trumpets, boys!

The cast of “So You Think You Can Dance” (9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays on Fox) showed a similar steely-jawed courage in the face of adversity when they took the stage to answer questions about their hit show. After Heidi and Benji performed their award-winning swing routine (which you can see here), the finalists and judges gathered to answer pressing and important questions such as “What exactly is krumping?” (The answer: Rent David LaChappelle’s “Rize”) and “How much time did you have to master the Cuban rumba?” (The answer: Two to three days).

As a big fan of the show since the beginning of its first season, I had to throw a similarly grave and meaningful question into the mix: Was anyone heartbroken over any of the departures? For example, the premature exit of the incredibly talented and unbelievably hot Musa? Did that affect anyone, like, say, just for example, his sultry girlfriend Natalie?

Natalie said she was sad but (gasp!) made it clear that there was nothing between her and Musa! What?! How could they waste all those fine God-given resources, right at their fingertips? If you can’t do it for yourselves, guys, do it for the crusty old folks back home!

At that point producer and judge Nigel Lythgoe looked over at Natalie and asked, “Dmitry?” as if Natalie and Dmitry had a romance going, but Natalie insisted they, too, were just friends. Zzzz.

“Are there other romances we don’t know about?”

Lythgoe nodded his head, but Ryan (who has made his crush on Natalie well known) cut in to ramble on about how everyone loved each other just like a family does. Snore. Why must these whippersnappers be so polite and safe? Why can’t they be reckless and stupid like the rest of us?

Luckily, Lythgoe was happy to get a little reckless to make up for those well-mannered kids, and went so far as to demean the show’s prizes: “This season we’re giving [away] an SUV, a hundred thousand dollars, and a year’s contract, should the dancer want it, with the Celine Dion show … We’re not sure if that’s a prize or a punishment.”

Even though dancing to Celine Dion’s music night after night is obviously a hellish fate of Sisyphean proportions, it was tragic to see Allison, arguably the best dancer on the show, eliminated on Thursday night, thanks to the consistently shitty taste of voters nationwide. You see, unfortunately enough, America is going to choose the ultimate winner, and not the judges, despite the fact that America clearly doesn’t know a thing about dancing and isn’t remotely qualified to vote for a president, let alone the best Cuban rumba. In fact, America is like the aggressive little brother who overturns the Risk board in a temperamental rage when he loses an important battle in Kamchatka, and then runs to his room in tears. America shouldn’t really be trusted with any big responsibilities at all, whether it’s negotiating a cease-fire in the Middle East or dictating which dancer on “So You Think You Can Dance” is cursed with gyrating to the strains of “My Heart Will Go On” for months on end.

Sunny day, everything’s A-OK!
I suppose I should’ve kept my expectations of my favorite summer show a little bit lower, since it would’ve cushioned the blow of Allison’s tragic departure Thursday night. At least that flat-ironing, mandanna-wearing asshole Jase got kicked off “Big Brother All Stars” last week. And how great was Will’s speech, telling the houseguests that he hated each and every one of them equally? Aww. Will and I have so much in common!

But if keeping your expectations low is a highly adaptive way of life, no one embodies that lifestyle better than the characters on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (10 p.m. Thursdays on FX). Like George on “Seinfeld,” these semi-lovable losers, who share ownership of a bar in Philly, have turned underachieving into an extreme sport, from relying on underage drinkers to keep their bar in business to developing an appreciation for the privileges afforded to the handicapped (remember when George pretended to be disabled so he could use an extra-large bathroom at work and ride around in a motorized cart all day?). In a recent episode, Dennis (Glenn Howerton) and his sister Dee (Kaitlin Olson) decide that they’re sick of working with their dad (Danny DeVito), who’s taken part ownership of the bar, so they go on unemployment. Once their unemployment runs out, they try to figure out a way to go on welfare, then set out to smoke crack in order to prove that they’re in need of public assistance. Instead, they get addicted to crack, and stumble around on the street looking like zombies and mumbling, “Crack! Crack!” — all the while insisting that they’ve been emancipated from the drudgery of a workaday existence.

During its first season, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” was lively but not all that easy to get into. The situations seemed a little bit arbitrary and forced, and even after a handful of episodes I couldn’t tell the characters apart. In its second season, even though the addition of Danny DeVito to the cast sometimes feels a little bit goofy and out of place, the writers have hit their stride, and the characters have become slightly more distinct from each other. Somehow the absurdity of each situation is clearer and played for more laughs than it was before.

What the show lacks, though, is some grounding in relatable material. Charlie (Charlie Kelly) likes the same girl at the coffee shop, episode after episode, even though she hates his guts. Dee is sometimes the only sensible one in the group, and at other times she’s a complete moron. Given the over-the-top, farcical nature of the show, this makes sense, but still, a complete lack of any trace of realism can diminish a viewer’s motivation to tune in. Even on a farce like “Arrested Development,” the characters remain somewhat consistent: Gob, Michael or Buster would react completely differently to any given situation. In contrast, it’s not always easy to separate the flatly selfish behavior of Dennis from the flatly selfish behavior of Mac (Rob McElhenney) or Charlie. And as cheesy as those “Will Ross and Rachel ever be together?” scenes were on “Friends,” without the slightest narrative thread to pull us in, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is liable to stagnate at the level of a sketch comedy show that recycles the same sketch repeatedly. The writers of this clever show definitely seem capable of biting off something a little meatier than that.

Partly funny skies ahead
The sad truth is, most TV comedies aren’t quite funny enough. Most shows require that you set your expectations very low just to milk what limited chuckles you can out of them. Obviously it’s incredibly tough to bring together all of the elements you need to make a show funny: Solid characters, situations that are bizarre and funny but still grounded in familiar territory, relationships between characters that remind viewers of their own flawed relationships, stories that don’t run over the same ground repeatedly. It’s amazing that any show could pull it all off, let alone offer up consistently funny material week after week like “Arrested Development” or “Seinfeld” or “All in the Family” once did.

But luckily for all of the mediocre comedy writers out there, America can hardly tell the difference, ensuring the continued popularity of pure crap while “Arrested Development” goes off the air. Still, as we set our sights lower and lower to make it through the doldrums of soiled, stanky August, at least we have lukewarm lime Kool-Aid, burned sausages and Will’s sociopathic antics to give us sustenance.

Next week: Showtime’s “Weeds” saves us from the late-summer slump. Plus: Which TV shows are the most enjoyable to watch in rapid succession on DVD? Send me your suggestions, pronto.

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.