And so, the U.S. dollar falls on its face. This makes us Americans — freedom lovers, inventors of Sizzlin’ Steak and Shrimp Fajitas and Mango Citrus Rug and Room Deodorizers — feel bad about ourselves. It makes us feel like the star quarterback who graduated and got old and fat, but still keeps going back to high school football games to gorge on hot dogs and bellow menacingly at the referees from the sidelines.

Is the golden age behind us? Have we grown spoiled and lazy after a 50-year winning streak? Are we, the citizens of what was once the Greatest Nation on the Planet, destined to shout at the world’s referees from the sidelines? It’s enough to make you shiver in your boots — just like the Pilgrims once did when they stumbled on this great land of ours! — as you cross several acres of parked cars on a cold and chilly winter’s evening, in search of curly fries.

Alien nation
OK, fine. We’ll go ahead and admit it: We thought we were destined to rule the universe forever and ever, Amen. Wasn’t Jesus on our side, way back when? Didn’t we have the right stuff — the independent, devil-may-care spirit, the sunny disposition and the natural urge to kick the little guys when they were down? We were once the handsome stars of the world’s stage. How did we become a bunch of washed-up, ignorant, financially and emotionally unstable bullies overnight?

This rapid descent is not lost on the creators of CW’s “Aliens in America” (8:30 p.m. Mondays), a show that champions the outsider and the underdog while pointing and jeering at the countless flaws of mainstream Americans. When Raja (Adhir Kalyan), a foreign exchange student from Pakistan, comes to live with an average family in a small town in Wisconsin, he upsets the balance of ignorance and conformity that keeps the community’s delicate ecosystem from imploding from within. The family and the town’s shocked residents prove to be well-meaning but pathetic and easily foiled. They’re current-day Americans, in other words, thoroughly modern Millies who mill about, accustomed to winning without fail — to the extent that they don’t even notice when they’re losing. As nerdy Justin (Dan Byrd) chases popularity and girls like any typical high school boy might, Raja is perplexed by the immorality and shallowness of Justin’s pursuits at every turn. Now, we’ve seen this unfrozen Caveman act before, which only makes Adhir Kalyan’s performance as Raja all the more impressive. Kalyan not only makes us believe that Raja is truly, deeply confused at the sorts of ethical lapses that most American kids take for granted as the dog-eat-dog flavor of high school life, he actually has us empathizing with him. How can he navigate this strange and confusing world that he’s landed in?

Kalyan is fantastic as Raja and makes me laugh out loud at least once per episode. In my favorite episode yet, “Rocket Club,” Justin admits that he’s been lying about the existence of a rocket club in order to sneak off to R-rated movies with his friends. Raja, who’s terrible at lying, attempts to brief Justin’s parents on that night’s rocket club meeting, and ends up rambling on about the joys of building enormous rockets. (Go ahead, watch the scene and see if Kalyan doesn’t make you chuckle; the episode is available online here.)

Unlike NBC’s “Chuck” or CW’s “Reaper,” two shows about conflicted young slackers caught up in situations that are beyond their control, “Aliens in America” doesn’t just thrust a few charming smartasses front and center, expecting audiences to roll on the floor because they have dorky jobs and/or their friends are losers. “Aliens in America” is packed with actual jokes and the story lines are tight and funny. When Justin’s parents start asking tough questions about their rocket club, for example, Justin and Raja are forced to start an actual rocket club, which sends Raja to the local hardware store looking for what appears to the owner to be bomb-making materials.

Meanwhile, the school’s popular kids are over-the-top jerks, bullies pulled straight from a John Hughes film, but with a modern twist. At one cool-kid gathering, the brutish guys wrestle and the popular girls compare notes.

Popular Girl No. 1: And Kelly Grashow? She’s ano, too. All she had for lunch was a packet of sweetener!

Popular Girl No. 2: I know, she looks great.

Justin’s younger sister, Claire (Lindsey Shaw), is very popular and refuses to be seen with either Justin or Raja, but she’ll occasionally admit that her friends are pretty sad and “may be retarded.”

Unfortunately, after a strong start, the last two episodes of “Aliens in America” haven’t quite matched the cleverness of the first few. Hopefully the writers will get back on track … Well, once they’re back at work, that is.

Strike that
Uh-oh. Don’t start me down that path. Let’s worry about the writers’ strike once it’s been dragging on and on for weeks — not now, when I have three or four more shows I want to discuss before they all devolve into reruns. As much as it breaks my heart to think of those poor, starving Hollywood millionaires out there on the street right now, I must push them from my mind, lest my ability to write this column be compromised and my overlords cast me out onto the street with them.

Yes, of course I support the strike and believe that writers should share in Internet and DVD profits. Since America is slipping and those well-nigh-hilarious Norwegians are poised and ready to take over the global comedy market, American comedy writers deserve to make a reasonable slice of their corporate overlords’ profits while there are still profits to enjoy.

In particular, I think the writers of “30 Rock” deserve to make some extra cash … You know, to put with the rest of their cash.

You have been watching “30 Rock” lately, haven’t you? I hope you didn’t miss the episode with Carrie Fisher, which featured my favorite single punch line of the fall ’07 TV season, delivered by Jack (Alec Baldwin) when he learns that Liz (Tina Fey) went to a washed-up former comedy writer’s (played by Fisher) creepy apartment: “Never go with a hippie to a second location.”

And did you catch Baldwin’s spot-on imitation of Tracy Morgan two weeks ago? Yes, you do need to catch up. Go watch those episodes online, and for the love of the sweet Lord Jesus, please start tuning in for this show before I’m forced to knock your teeth in.

I shudder to think that I might have to watch “30 Rock” reruns through the blistery depths of winter. See what happens when greedy, mega-billion-dollar corporations don’t give their highly paid creatives a fair share of the action? Regular people like you and me have to watch reruns! The outrage!

Imaginary friends
Americans are disenfranchised, and that doesn’t mean that they don’t own any franchises. It means that they’re powerless, technically because they can’t vote, but more loosely because the American dream never came true for them. Or it came true, but then they owed it back to the bank at 9 percent interest.

“Everything is gone. Everything that was once noble and good in this world is just gone, and it’s replaced with just … Wal-Mart.”

“Everybody has rage, whether it’s in your car, whether it’s at work, at your boss, at your spouse. I think that a lot of people use Darkon to get rid of those darker impulses.”

Thus spake the denizens of “Darkon” (premieres at 9 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 12, on IFC), a documentary that explores the odd undertakings of a war-gaming club in Baltimore. Like a live-action version of Dungeons and Dragons, club members dress up like knights and ladies and peasants and elves and ogres, and they talk and flirt and fight mock battles over hexagons of land on a map. It’s not always clear how they determine who wins their mock battles or what the overall goal of the game is, but it’s pretty obvious that speaking like characters in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel makes them feel more alive.

Just thinking about it makes me want to listen to old Genesis albums, the ones with the talk of monsters and dark woods and magical powers, the kind of stuff that Tenacious D used to parody before Jack Black transformed from outsider/underdog to bland romantic comedy lead. If they ever made a comedy based on this documentary, though, Jack Black should be in it. Can’t you see him delivering lines about “the realm” and “destiny” with total conviction?

“Yes, we’re an imperialistic power! Yes, we conquer other nations, we expand our landholdings … and we’re fucking honest about it!” That’s the leader of Mordom, justifying his hunger for new territories. When the leader of Laconia confronted him about his relentless warring ways, he bristled, and his arrogance was apparent. Even so, Laconia’s leader was realistic about the chances for victory. “It will be a great challenge if we choose to oppose the Mordomian alliance.”

If club members seem to have trouble separating their real lives from their role-playing lives in Darkon, it’s because, for many of them, Darkon makes them feel far more powerful and effectual than they do when they’re at work or at home with their families.

While gawking and rolling your eyes is certainly a natural response to this tale, “Darkon” challenges viewers to look past their prejudices and see the value of these games and the relationships they involve, not all of which are entirely imaginary.

“These experiences that I share with the people around me are very real,” says one club member. “When we dedicate this much time in our lives to a game, it becomes our reality.”

Dumb, da dumb dumb
That’s not the sort of comment someone who watches way too much bad TV wants to hear. So I try to soothe myself by keeping in mind that we’re living in an interesting era in history, one that’s reflected on our TV screens. Losers are the new winners. As the rest of the globe thumbs its nose at us, the same thing is happening domestically: Freaks and geeks are celebrated while the popular kids take a serious beating.

Just look at “America’s Most Smartest Model” (9 p.m. Sundays on VH1). Following in the footsteps of “America’s Next Top Model,” which made a name for itself primarily by torturing pretty people, “America’s Most Smartest Model” skips the self-important, self-righteous noise from Tyra Banks, and goes straight to the good parts: Making dumb, hot people look dumb … and hot.

Instead of having the hot dummies and the dumb hotties pose for legitimate photo shoots, the producers give them torturous modeling challenges (calling to mind the big fish tanks and hanging trapezes of early “ANTM” fame) as well as humiliating academic challenges.

And who doesn’t enjoy seeing hot people being humiliated, whether they’re dissecting fetal pigs or trying to film a commercial while they’re standing in an icy cold shower? As a bonus, Ben Stein is on hand (with co-host Mary Alice Stephenson, who has also mastered the deadpan delivery) to ask such idiot-baiting questions as, “Which weighs more, Oprah on the moon, or Oprah on Jupiter?”

This show isn’t rocket science, but you do have to give the producers some credit for digging up a combination of reasonably smart and entertainingly clueless hotties, many of whom are even dumb enough to throw out really bad guesses when they don’t know the answers to the questions they’re asked. Blond Rachel (there’s also an Aussie Rachel) should get some extra points for delivering her bad guesses with a straight face and a tone of total conviction.

Ben Stein: Who shot John F. Kennedy?

Rachel: Um … Brad.

Stein: Yes! It was Brad!

Better yet, in a “Smart-Off” last week, models Lisa and Blond Rachel demonstrated that they didn’t know who ran against Bush in the 2004 election, and they didn’t know what Darfur was. Blond Rachel at least knew bad stuff was happening there, somewhere in “Arabia,” while Lisa thought Darfur was a cologne for men. But Lisa insisted that, while she had no use for random bits of trivial information, she had tons of “street smarts.” “Oh really?” replied Stein without skipping a beat. “What’s Mary Alice’s last name?” “Alice!” replied Lisa. Um, wrong. Back to the streets, genius!

In another episode, the models were grouped in teams of two and asked to create a self-tanning lotion out of random items (cocoa, Tang, etc.). Then they had to use it to make a very pale, very nerdy man or woman look tan. (Is it just me, or does every single reality show on TV have an episode that involves giving nerds makeovers? Nerds are the live-action pet rocks of the new millennium.)

The nerds had to participate with the model contestants in a photo shoot in bathing suits, with their newly “tanned” skin. In most cases, early confidence was replaced by panic when half of the nerds look like burn victims. “She looks like she has some kind of disease that’s not good,” said one of the models.

But the best moment came when Aussie Rachel — who, to be fair, seems very nice — referred to her team’s nerd as if he was an inanimate object. After the photo shoot, she said, “I didn’t expect to be as close to the nerd’s crotch as I ended up being.”

Well, we’ve all felt that way at one point or another.

Digging their graves
The cool kids also took a dive on “Survivor: China” (8 p.m. Thursdays on CBS) last week, when Jaime’s move to throw the challenge for the sake of her original tribe came back to haunt her. In one of the most satisfying “Survivor” episodes ever, Jaime found what she thought was an immunity idol, bragged about it, and then tried to save herself with it, only to discover that it wasn’t the idol.

Meanwhile, the show’s hero has emerged: James the Gravedigger, a hunky black man with a wicked sense of humor and a body that belongs in an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. James is that rare find: a regular, down-to-earth guy trapped in the body of a Polo model. He hasn’t shown much interest in the little hotties on the show, preferring to spend his time with Denise, the burly lunch lady, with her galumphing gait and her extraordinary mullet. Not only that, but James said he likes women like Denise who work really hard. Come again? Does he mean he’s attracted to her? Well, James explained, if he were a little older and Denise were a little younger, then maybe…

Now, granted, this shouldn’t come as any shock: Some people love each other for what’s on the inside, not what’s on the outside. But most of them aren’t hot.

So James is our new hero, and pretty blond Jaime became our enemy when she turned against him, throwing a challenge to get him on the chopping block. It didn’t work: A few weeks later, James not only secured both immunity idols, but he had the last laugh when Jaime was voted out of glorious China.

Naturally, James’ obvious superiority at challenges is going to make him a target, but he’s my current favorite, and “Survivor: China” has a lively enough mix of personalities and uncertain alliances that it’s a pretty fun ride right now.

Kicked to the curb
But losers always have their day. Just look at perennial loser Larry David. The finale of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” airs tonight (10 p.m. on HBO), and even though Mr. Grumpy and his wife will probably find some way to stay together on the show, we know how this story really turns out: Larry and Laurie David get a divorce.

But what’s with this notion that viewers might be uncomfortable with David mining his personal troubles on his show? The man has made a living out of turning his personality defects into comedic gold, so why stop now? I’ve found Larry’s exploits alternately enjoyable and grating for a few seasons now, but I loved the scene where Cheryl called from a plane in the middle of the storm, and Larry was busy with the TiVo guy and told her to call back later. If all of the scenes on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” were like that one, absurd but not remotely outside the realm of possibility, I’d be hooked on the show. Instead, we get the usual assortment of easily offended but outspoken Hollywood types, deaf women and minorities with annoying little dogs and bad children and rules about making phone calls during dinner. How many times can characters scream to Larry “That was rude!” while Larry stares at them and mumbles defensively?

The show’s puzzle pieces of broken toasters and unwanted gifts and missed phone calls are more than a little repetitive: It’s all imaginary and unrealistic, yet we can still predict exactly how it’s all going to come together. Cheryl’s sudden departure provided a rare rush of unpredictability: I say mine those emotional nuggets for all they’re worth!

Like a prayer
Spoken like a true American, commodifying even the most sacred of human connections! Oh, how we Americans miss the days when we didn’t see our own flaws quite so clearly. Once we were unself-conscious warriors, but now we’re the world’s sheepish has-beens, huddling together in the winter cold, saying a silent prayer for freedom! We thought we’d always be in the driver’s seat. We thought we’d always be hopelessly rich and popular. We didn’t expect to be as close to the world’s crotch as we ended up being. But here we are, so we might as well make the best of it.

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.