This thin line between love, frustration and predatory pursuit is the subject of ABC’s upcoming one-hour romantic dramedy “Cupid” (premieres 10 p.m. on Tuesday, March 31). Psychiatrist Claire McCrae (Sarah Paulson) finds herself assigned to a patient named Trevor (Bobby Cannavale), a mysterious, half-crazy guy who claims to be Cupid. “I don’t get to go home — Mount Olympus — until I match up 100 couples!” he explains in his scratchy New York accent, while installing a giant add-a-bead necklace on his ceiling to keep track of his successful matches. While Trevor believes in true love wholeheartedly, McCrae takes a much more pragmatic approach to romance:

Claire: Love at first sight is a myth! Love is built on a sturdier foundation, Trevor. Shared interests, mutual respect, friendship. Things you can’t possibly establish in a couple of days, let alone twenty minutes.

Trevor: No, love is passion! Love is heat, chemistry, sex!

Claire: No, love is what’s left after the heat and the passion die — or fade away slowly.

Trevor: Wow. Who ripped your heart out?

We don’t learn who ripped Claire’s heart out in the pilot, but we do watch her coaching mortal souls on how to find love, even though she hasn’t found it for herself (cliché No. 1). She’s suspicious of Trevor and skeptical of his daring ways, but she still seems to have a soft spot for his bold wit and dark good looks (cliché No. 2). Through a series of flirtatious exchanges between these two, we’re meant to ponder whether love is smart or stupid, whether love is fated or accidental, whether true love lasts forever or the whole thing is just a myth and the most important thing is to invest in a really solid life insurance policy.

Instead, we find ourselves pondering different questions: Is Bobby Cannavale charming in an awkward sort of way, or is he hopelessly unappealing? Is Sarah Paulson lovable, or vaguely prudish and irritating? And why is Paulson playing the exact same character she played in “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” give or take a few wordy Sorkinesque monologues?

Of course “Cupid” includes the kinds of pop cultural references (Hall and Oates! Captain Kirk!) and quippy dialogue that you’d expect from “Veronica Mars” creator Rob Thomas, who actually brought the show to the air 11 years ago with Jeremy Piven as its title character. I haven’t seen the original 14 episodes that aired back in 1998 (whoever has should tell us about them), but Piven seems perfect for the role of Cupid: Sweet, manic and slightly slippery. Cannavale and Paulson, on the other hand, don’t come close to having Piven’s comic timing, and that’s a serious impediment. “Fifteen years of training has prepared me to help these people,” Claire tells Trevor in one scene from the pilot, to which he responds, “And being the Roman god of love since the dawn of time has prepared me for, what, celebrity judge on ‘Blind Date’?” Nice line, but without a truly funny comedic actor delivering it, it’s only mildly amusing.

Ultimately, “Cupid” proves that love might be endlessly fascinating for those who are in it, but everyone else just wants to fast-forward to the part where the entrails hit the pavement.

Rocking on

But then, maybe when you announce “This show is all about love!” you damn yourself to an overly trampled path from the start. Just look at “30 Rock” (9 p.m. Thursdays on NBC), a show that’s ostensibly about the entertainment industry (snore) but that regularly tackles corporate culture, elitism, celebrity egotism and –  yes! — love. I haven’t written that much about the show this season, mostly because proclaiming “30 Rock” the best comedy on TV is like declaring the sky blue. Not only have the show’s writers improved steadily since the pilot, but in its second season, “30 Rock” has reached a level of relatable but farcical comedy that’s practically unmatched in the history of television. As much as I loved “Seinfeld,” “Arrested Development,” “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” I think “30 Rock” makes me laugh out loud more often than any other TV comedy I’ve seen.

And look, Tina Fey’s and Alec Baldwin’s story lines often revolve around love and its endless perils. Can you imagine Liz or Jack stopping to pontificate on whether love is more like hot chocolate or cold ear wax? No. Instead, Liz goes on a date with her sexy neighbor (played by Jon Hamm), her boob falls out of her shirt (“It wasn’t even the good one” she mumbles), and the door swings open when she’s on the toilet. Show, people, don’t tell!

But “30 Rock” would never limit itself to romantic story lines. In a recent episode, Jenna is set to appear in a Janis Joplin movie that doesn’t have the rights to Janis Joplin’s lyrics (“A synonym’s just another word for the word you wanna use!” Jenna sings in one cut-away scene), but she’s exhausted from juggling her TV show and the movie, so she goes to see Dr. Spaceman (a recurring cameo by “SNL” veteran Chris Parnell).

Dr. Spaceman: Well, I can give you these pamphlets on stress and diet and doing a movie and a TV show at the same time …

(Close-up on a pamphlet that says, “So You’re Simultaneously Doing a Movie and a TV Show!”)

Dr. Spaceman: But they’re all going to tell you that you need to give something up, and they’re wrong. You can burn the candle at both ends!

Jenna: Go on!

Dr. Spaceman: We are currently working on a pill that keeps people awake under any circumstances. It’s being funded by the U.S. Military and the WNBA!

Jenna: But does it work?

Dr. Spaceman: It’s kept my lab rats awake for days! But we’re looking for human subjects.

Jenna: Where do I sign up?

Dr. Spaceman: Oh please, we don’t want a paper trail!

(Spaceman and Jenna laugh together.)

Dr. Spaceman: (Handing her a big bottle of pills) Take 25 of these a day for the rest of your life.

When you look at how many different aspects of modern life “30 Rock” takes on each week — the same episode featured Jack’s search for a good name for GE’s new miniature microwave and Liz’s attempt to change her life just by buying a bunch of plastic organizers from the “Compartment Store” — you have to wonder whether thematic comedies like “Cupid” or the upcoming harried-mom sitcom “In the Motherhood” make much sense. There’s just something predictable and inherently uninteresting about a full half-hour of jokes on the same topic each week.

Besides, if we want thoughtful pontificating on love, we’ll read “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” again. Or we’ll check in with Oprah. But if your name isn’t Shakespeare or Oprah, you’d better keep your mealy mouth shut.

 Love over gold

That said, if writing about love is tough, matchmaking is even tougher. As easy as it seems to pair two people with relatively similar looks, smarts, style and sensibility, the opposite is true: People don’t love what we expect them to love. People are turned on by things they shouldn’t be. People care about whether or not you have any marketable skills, or snore through the night. People would rather be taking a nap right now.

Maybe that’s why Patti Stanger of “Millionaire Matchmaker” (10 p.m. Thursdays on Bravo) is such an unbearably bossy, unlikable robot assassin. Asked to find true love for a handful of arrogant, self-obsessed millionaires, Stanger spends most of her time on camera griping about her jackhole clients or the unsavory herd of primped sea donkeys who want to date them. At least Patti recognizes the exhausted predator that lurks within each of us after trying and failing to find love for over a decade: “We are going to give you the love of your life,” she assures one client over the phone. “You will never, ever have to look for love again.”

“Mmm, that sounds relaxing,” you can almost hear the client tell Patti over the phone. “But can you guarantee that I’ll get quality blow jobs on a regular basis?” Yes, with one and a half seasons of “Millionaire Matchmaker” under our belts, we’ve come to understand that this is how most ultra-successful men think. For entrepreneurs and high capitalist wheeler-dealers, it seems there’s no shame in unabashedly bargaining for any product or service you might require in order to be happy.

Indeed, much to Patti’s chagrin, many of her clients seem to be looking for something a little more handy and convenient than a wife. They’re busy men, after all. They don’t have a lot of time and patience for talking about someone other than themselves. Instead, they’d prefer something akin to a high-priced escort, one who might be willing to, say, stick around, make some chili for dinner, clean the bathroom, watch the Lakers game, then pop out a few kids before she leaves in the morning.

Of course, the women Patty finds to date these men aren’t much better. One young woman tells the camera, “I can’t marry the average loser who drives a Honda and makes 60 grand a year and we have to save up and build a partnership. That’s just not for me.” I hear you, sister. Save up? Yuck. Build a partnership? Gross. It’s tough not to want to see a woman like that land in a miserable life of indentured servitude.

Considering the borderline-depraved nature of the desires in play here, it’s probably fitting that Patti finds love for her clients by sifting through a towering pile of Glamour Shots like the beleaguered casting director of “Big Jugs In Cabo II.” Of course, the real comedy kicks in when the women actually come into the office to meet with Patti, and she insists that all of the regular-looking women start dressing like hoochie mamas immediately:

“Hair does not look good. I need you to blow it straight.”

“I need you to rev up the sex appeal, otherwise he is not even going to look at you sideways.”

“I want you to Mystic [spray tan] yourself before you come tomorrow, otherwise, when you get to the door, I’m going to kick your ass out.”

Over and over again, Patti demonstrates how “the boobs” should be trussed up in a push-up bra by smashing her own double Ds (yes, she’s told us her chest size several times by now) up to her chin, or she leans over and says, “This is how a shoe should look,” pointing to her 9-inch clear stiletto hooker heels.

Masochistic sea donkeydom aside, no one bears the brunt of Patti’s disgust quite like her wealthy clients. “Every millionaire comes in and has sort of an illness,” she explains. “I diagnose it and then I develop a treatment for it. They can’t see what they’re doing wrong, and they need to be tweaked. I’m the tweaker!” Indeed, unlike most businesswomen, Patti seems to go into meetings with her new prospects determined to insult and disparage them as much as humanly possible. Just listen to the sympathetic and sensitive ways that Patti describes her customers:

“Oh my god, David is such a pervert, all he talks about is tits, sex and ass. I’m gonna vomit.”

“He’s got issues. Guys like Brett are problematic because they just can’t stay in one place. You can’t nurture a relationship if you’re always on the go.”

“I think Bill needs to date older because he needs to grow up.”

“I don’t like him. He thinks he’s hot but he’s not.”

But the real spectacle begins when the aspiring concubines circle the rich men at one of Patti’s mixers. After navigating quickly through a roomful of chatty, spray-tanned women in push-up bras and tall shoes, each man picks two women to talk to one-on-one. Next, Patti discusses the hoochies with her clients in the least delicate terms imaginable. “Did the penis get off the couch?” she asks her clients every single episode. Or she explains to the camera, “I’m here to spread the message of love, but remember, the penis does the picking!”

Not that she’s wrong or anything, we just wish she wouldn’t say so. But then, you’re destined to become something of a churlish rube when you barter in jackholes and sea donkeys all day long. On the other hand, maybe Patti just knows the truth all too well: The squirrel may twitch its fluffy tail provocatively, but once the chase is over, it’s just another self-involved, stinky animal with limited job prospects, an overbearing mother, and an unfortunate habit of snoring loudly through the night.

Next week: HBO’s “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” and ABC’s “The Unusuals” give the procedural drama a surprising makeover.

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.