Thanks to Paula Abdul, the bar for speaking coherently as a judge has been set remarkably low. Paula was one of the original judges when “American Idol” began 10 years ago, and she made the jump with Cowell to “X Factor” last year, where she continued to vend her particular brand of addled kindness, never saying anything mean or insightful, and often saying it in spacey and strange ways. Spears is, of course, way more famous than Paula Abdul, and if she sits on the panel and says nice, meaningless things to the contestants each and every show, she will have earned her money. (It’s basically what the booted Nicole Scherzinger did all last season of “X Factor,” and just by virtue of being Britney Spears, Britney will be better at it.)

“X Factor” doesn’t need a hyper-articulate ballbuster to do this job and do it well. The time of sharp, critical insight on the singing shows — which initially seemed so crucial to “Idol’s” massive success — has passed. If viewers regularly lament how dull and plodding the judging rounds are now that even Cowell has tempered his honesty, “Idol” remains the biggest show on television with a judging panel that consists of Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson, a group as likely to insult a singer as call a newborn baby ugly.

But even if all that’s required of Spears is a season’s worth of banal compliments, that will add up to more sustained speaking than Spears has ever publicly done before. Rarely, if ever, has there been a person as famous as Britney Spears who talks so infrequently. Her most famous moments are all gestural — dancing in music videos, performing on the stage at some MTV awards show, shaving her head, bashing a window. Long before her breakdown, she displayed an uncanny tendency to speak in linguistic white noise, to say sentences that contained almost no content, just lots of y’alls and “you knows” and “oh my goshes” and a basic mood of sweetness, excitement, gratitude, eventually disconnect, and more recently, in her conservatorship years, anxiety and discomfort.

If this doesn’t make Spears a perfect judge for “X Factor” it should make her a perfect character for “X Factor.” The drama of Britney — how she will be, what she will say, and how she will hold up — is a story line at least as compelling as the one that will play out with the performers, if not far more so. We’ve been watching her for 13 years, not merely half a TV season. It’s possible “X Factor” will be as good for her career as “Idol” has been for Jennifer Lopez’s, but it’s more likely it will be uncomfortable and upsetting, a full season of watching a zonked-out Spears nervously navigate a live TV show. But we Americans owe Britney Spears a pension and worker’s comp for pain and suffering risked for our entertainment, and I’m happy a major corporation is paying it out (to the tune of $15 million). However “X-Factor” goes for Britney, I can’t wait to see what she says.

The Dayenu I’ve been humming this week has the same tune, but slightly different lyrics. They go like this: If NBC had aired just one season of “Community,” Dayenu. If NBC had aired the missing pen bottle episode, Dayenu. And the Christmas claymation episode, the my dinner with Abed episode, the Dungeons & Dragons episode, and the paintball sequel, Dayenu. If Inspector Spacetime, day-day-enu, day-day-enu, day-day-enu, dayenu dayenu.

The “Dayenu” sentiment, the knowledge that something really would have been enough while simultaneously not being enough at all, is all around this week as the major networks decide what series they’re keeping and canceling in preparation for next week’s upfronts, the yearly presentations they make to advertisers in which they unveil their new shows and schedules. To make room for all the new shows, the networks have to ax some old ones, decision-making that can be painless — as when, earlier this week, Fox decided not to renew “Alcatraz” or “The Finder” — or infuriating and nerve-wracking — as when NBC took its time picking up “Parenthood,” “30 Rock” “Parks and Recreation” and “Community.”

If it seems ridiculous to compare the parting of the Red Sea to getting a fourth season of “Community,” well, yes, it is ridiculous. As disappointing as it would be not to see new episodes of  “Parks” or “Community,” or ABC’s “Happy Endings” (which is still in limbo) ever again, these series have already aired more episodes than “Freaks & Geeks” or “Arrested Development” did, truncated TV series that are still perfectly satisfying, hugely influential, and really fun to watch, over and over again, on DVD. There has been enough.

But if there’s nothing logical or reasonable about the Dayenu mentality when it comes to TV, there is something emotionally intuitive about it and the “sure, there have already been enough episodes to make for a really sick DVD box set of this series, but there needs to be more” feeling. And it’s that you can have enough TV, but you can’t have enough of some people, even if they happen to be stuck in TV shows. Underlying all the gruff, screechy bluster about how idiotic NBC or ABC would be to cancel beloved series isn’t anger, but attachment. We audience members don’t know what next year’s episodes will be like, but we do know they’ll have certain characters in them, characters who have never, ever asked us how we’re doing, but who we have invested lots of time and caring into nonetheless.

On last night’s episode of “Parks and Recreation,” Leslie Knope achieved her lifelong dream of getting elected to public office. It would have been a great ending to the series, until one starts to imagine all the things Leslie would do with her new job. Then the ending, good as it was, didn’t seem like enough anymore.

The 10 aforementioned murder series can be divided into two general categories, crime-solving shows and the corpse-studying shows. Both activities take place in both, but with a different emphasis. Programs in the first category, like “The Mentalist,” “Castle,” “NCIS” and “Criminal Minds,” have forensic scientists in the cast who can and do deliver helpful deductions about any cadaver, but the main characters mostly interview living people. On programs in the second category, like “Bones,” “Body of Proof” and the “CSIs,” the main characters mostly examine dead ones. The bodies in the crime-solving shows tend to be significantly less gruesome and graphic than the ones in the corpse-studying shows: The corpses may be a major plot point in both, but they’re only a major prop in the latter, where they have to look the part.

“The Mentalist” and “NCIS” begin with a corpse, but rather than some goopy, dripping horror show, it tends to resemble a not too mutilated human being. (“Bones,” as I’ll get into later, usually leads with a corpse more likely to resemble hamburger meat than a person.) These bodies serve a relatively staid Pavlovian function: You see one, and you know what’s coming next, 40 minutes of case cracking. Since the originality of the caper does not stem directly from the originality of the cadaver, standard murder — guns, stabbings and fights, as opposed to death by sky diving, motorboat or giant chocolate bar — tends to suffice. (This is not always the case: “NCIS” has done episodes about, for example, a murderer who cuts off and collects his victims’ feet, but it still tends to be more straightforward about cause of death than shows like “CSI” and “Bones.”)

This year “Castle” began to hew to this formula as well. In the past, “Castle,” which is a more jokey, lighthearted show than the “NCISes” and “The Mentalist,” had gone the over-the-top murder route — a burned-up guy found in a pizza oven; lumps of flesh stuck in the spin cycle. This year, episodes revolved around the death of a contestant on a show much like “Dancing With the Stars,” a victim who had teeth marks all over his body, and a third encased in concrete, but none of them looked particularly gnarly.

Dead bodies often look horrifying on “Criminal Minds,” which is about a group of law enforcement officials who track down serial killers. These serial killers, psychopaths and perverts with dark and creepy pathologies are a much more twisted bunch than the kind of kicky, oddball murderers who populate a series like “Castle,” and “Criminal Minds” is a much more twisted show. On it, a number of lifeguards show up dead … with their genitals cut off. Women show up murdered … with their lips removed. A man in a wheelchair murders prostitutes … with the help of his parents.

If all murder shows let the audience have its cake and eat it too, to identify with the good guy, but get the kicks of seeing the work of the bad one (or, to watch a group do-gooders help bring a victim, often young and attractive, to justice, but also to get to see her laid out half-naked in a morgue), “Criminal Minds” comes closest to tripping over this dichotomy. It regularly tangles with plots so creepy and horrible, it almost ruptures the real sanctity of the procedural watching experience: the feeling that, whatever is happening on-screen, you are safe at home.

This sensation is never a risk while watching the “CSIs,” shows so fizzy about murder they are, in their way, more disturbing than “Criminal Minds,” despite being much, much easier to watch. On the “CSIs” the murders are outlandish, zany and enjoyably gross: Three guys die in a car crash, and a fourth very pink brain is found with them; a woman drained of blood  is hung upside down in a haunted house; a guy gets run over by a motorboat, and the audience is treated to his ground-up throat; someone tosses body parts around Hell’s Kitchen. And those are just plots from this season. In recent years the “CSIs” have done episodes about patty sniffers, food orgies and death by alligator and dinosaur. One just has to compare “CSI” to the far less successful “Body of Proof” to see how effective its jocular attitude is. “Body of Proof” is much more serious, the plots are less crazy, it doesn’t revel in its victims’ wounds, and it is hardly any fun at all, and not nearly as successful.

But when it comes to taking the death out of murder, there is no show on TV as successful as “Bones.” The light, jokey “Bones” is about a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Brennan, who studies, yes, bones, and who is only brought in on a case when a body is in disgusting shape. This year Dr. Brennan has dealt with a head and melted body found in plastic wrap; a postal service-ready box of red goop, packing Styrofoam and a skull; an eyeball in a toilet; a body in a terrarium full of white rats; a guy pancaked so totally to the road, he had to be spatulaed off. “Bones” has an antic, enthusiastic approach to gore — more is always better — and seems to be crafted by a horror movie and Halloween enthusiast who treats each episode as an excuse to show off his or her impressive skills with awesome and icky make-believe. Of course, to have the intended good time effect, a key change has been made: None of the bodies on “Bones” much resemble people, making it much easier to forget the box of goop in the lab was ever a person. But, as all the murder shows ably demonstrate, that’s not such a hard trick to pull off.

Now, I like to loathe people. It just feels so good. I particularly like to loathe the sorts of people described above, and when I see them on TV or read their blogs I sigh contentedly and say, ahhh, it is now morally permissible for me to loathe this person. So imagine how irksome it was to have to deal with persons like that on a constant basis and discover that those persons, in person, generally weren’t loathsome persons after all. In fact, to my great consternation and disappointment, I often liked them.

I think it really hit home for me with Rapture Man. This was in 2005. Rapture Man had set up a service that would automatically send out an email in the event of the Event, an email explaining the sudden absence of the exalted Saved (e.g., him) to the despised Unsaved (e.g., New York Jewish media professionals). I feel morally superior to people who feel morally superior to me, especially when they’re certain their name is on the heavenly guest list and mine isn’t. Folks like him. What I expected was Angry Seething Evangelical Crackpot. What I got instead was a man who was devastatingly guileless and vulnerable and innocent, a man genuinely distressed by the pain and confusion the Rapture would instigate. He was the type you reflexively want to protect, to shield from the cruel realities of modern life.

In this case, the cruel realities of modern life included him and his delusions being ridiculed in a “Daily Show” piece. If I had somehow been eligible for the Rapture before producing that segment, I doubt I was afterward. I felt a bit dirty. One the other hand, it was a very funny piece. You should see it. There’s Samantha Bee disappearing in a flash of light, Ed Helms running through a post-apocalyptic landscape, Stephen Colbert wandering around with bleeding nipples and apparently snacking on parts of Rob Corddry – a veritable “Daily Show” all-star apocalypse. Great fun. Also, I don’t think Rapture Man owned a TV, so I figured I was good.

But he was just one of many others in this I-Should-Hate-These-People-But-Somehow-I-Don’t phenomenon. There was the state representative in Maine who introduced a gay marriage bill just so he could vote against it. He turned out to be just sort of sad and lonely. Wanted to hate him. Couldn’t. There was the Canadian lady who despised her homeland because it wasn’t conservative enough and too kind to immigrants and the poor. She was raucous and funny and pretty good company. I felt awful when it dawned on her mid-shoot that we weren’t actually her pals (really – there was a moment in the middle of the sit-down interview when you could see her finally catch on and sort of crumble. I wanted to leap forward and say, “Wait, it’s not you we find risible and absurd! Just your entire worldview!”). There was the Arizona state rep who introduced a bill to let people bring guns into bars. He had supported other daft legislation, was supremely confident that his background as a golf pro qualified him to interpret the Constitution, and had really, really awful Republican hair. Hated him. Until I met him. Imagine an amiable and none-too-bright Golden Retriever that breaks everything – a bit annoying, maybe, but hard to hate. Who else? There was the well-known conservative strategist, a man famed for his Orwellian genius at manipulating language. He is single-handedly responsible for several of the most insidious and effective locutions in modern political history, terms that make me want to hammer nails in my forehead. And of course he was friendly and funny and smart and could laugh at himself, and there was a strange integrity to his lack of integrity. Hate fail.

And it wasn’t just individuals who would confound me. I would often contact extremely right-wing organizations and ask if they might perhaps be interested in participating in a segment. The response was generally no – probably the wisest choice – but on more than one occasion the person on the other end would enthusiastically inform me that they all loved the show and they watch it every day and what is that wonderful Jon Stewart really like?

By the way, the converse also held true: I’d occasionally meet people who were on the right side (that is, my side) of the issues, and they’d turn out to be insufferable jerks. You know – assholes. (A quick word to the wise: If someone shows up with a time machine and offers you a chance to attend a vegan potluck fund-raiser for Dennis Kucinich, politely decline. [Just to clarify: the congressman himself, delightful. His supporters ... yeesh.])

I recently discussed the topic with another former “Daily Show” producer, and her experience matched mine. She described spending a long day with Shirley Phelps-Roper, the spokesperson for the Westboro Baptist Church – the ones who spread light and joy in the world by doing things like picketing military funerals because, you know, the gays. You’d be hard put to find a group of people with more hateful convictions. And what was it like dealing with Shirley? She was warm and affable and lovely. She lent my friend a wool cap because it was so chilly out.

OK, yes, that’s an extreme example. Being a friendly person doesn’t excuse heinous beliefs or deeds – I’m sure there were plenty of pleasant Klan members, and Hitler loved dogs and so on. But surely there’s a middle ground. We can disagree over the best way to provide healthcare, or what optimal tax rates are, without assuming that the person on the other side of the argument emerged steaming from Satan’s fundament. I might, for example, find Rick Santorum’s views and rhetoric repugnant, but I bet if I spent time with him or his supporters, they’d turn out to be honest citizens and good company.

I don’t think that the lesson is that we’re all basically the same and everyone is wonderful and let’s hug. I will admit that the lesson might be that I’m easily gulled or just morally promiscuous, willing to drop my analytical knickers at the hint of a smile or a charming Southern accent. What I’m hoping the lesson is: People are complex and can hold different views and still be moral actors — essentially the message that Jon Stewart talked about during his Rally for Sanity.

Maybe you already grasp that concept, because you have good friends or loving relatives with beliefs that are wildly divergent from your own. But I tend to think my experience is more typical: I lived in a little bubble surrounded by people who think more or less like me. And when I considered people with opposing viewpoints I would turn into a fabulist, concocting an entire narrative of who they were and what they were like — and what they were like was yucko. Because I was not really interacting with them. I just thought I was, because, hey, look, there they are on the TV, or there’s that guy’s post in the comments section. But that stuff doesn’t count. Meeting people counts. Talking counts.

So yes, I love to loathe people, but my “Daily Show” experience complicated all that and sort of spoiled my fun. When I’m exposed to views that I dislike, I try to remind myself of the human being behind those views and to cut that person some slack. I hope that they would do the same. I think we should all fight hard for what we believe in, but I’d like to put in a request for some general slack cutting – especially as we move deeper into what is sure to be a very heated campaign season.

No, of course I was kidding about Rick Santorum. I’m sure in person he’s an obnoxious cretin.

The most Jerry Springer-ready character on “Shameless” is Frank. As played by Macy, Frank is a very fully realized pathological manic dirtbag. There is no drug or drink he won’t consume, no scam he won’t pursue, no subject he won’t pontificate on, no ethical boundary he won’t cross. Frank takes up all the air in the room. He brags and boasts and schemes, before collapsing into a pool of his own vomit. If he loves his children it’s a very notional kind of love: He’d steal from them and sell them — he has, in fact, stolen from them and sold them — before he’d hug them, and say it’s all part of a strategy of making them self-reliant. And despite being a drain on his family, the state and the world’s supply of alcohol, Frank imagines himself, perpetually, as the victim, of his mother, of his children, of the responsibilities he always ignores. Worst of all, it’s not that Frank isn’t capable of a certain sweetness; it’s just that this sweetness is exclusively directed at his ex-wife, Monica, the only person more self-involved than him. He is exhausting.

Frank is insufferable in the sort of showy, grandiose way that would be riveting to watch if his children weren’t so much more grounded and sympathetic. As is perhaps realistic of growing up with a father like Frank, the Gallagher siblings are not a performative bunch. They are not prone to speeches, complaining or whining, and when they get in fistfights, they do so quietly. Compared to his kids, Frank is a cartoonish, next-level dirtbag. Next-level dirtbags and antiheroes may be currently en vogue on TV, but the appeal of “Shameless” is all the straight-up good guys — nuanced and complicated and mistake making, sure —  who clean up after him. Despite Macy’s billing and screen time, Frank is ultimately the supporting jerk, not the main character of this show.

The real protagonist of “Shameless” is Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossum), a TV heroine of such sheer likability she is, to my mind, the heir to “Friday Night Lights’” Tami Taylor. Fiona, the eldest, hugely self-sacrificing sister, has the misfortune to have the innate sense of responsibility both of her parents lack. Bright and tough, potty-mouthed and occasionally promiscuous, responsible beyond measure, she dropped out of high school to raise her siblings. Week in and week out, she does what she can to make sure they have more stability than she did. Early this season, when Fiona found out that her genius brother Lip (Jeremy Allen White: Imagine if Dustin Hoffman in his seedy roles were extremely sexy) had possibly gotten a girl pregnant, she initially refused to get mad. “I’m not your mother,” she said, waited a few seconds, and then smacked him upside the head for being such an idiot. Fiona isn’t his mother, but in the Gallagher world, what does being a mother count for anyway? Being Fiona counts for a whole lot more.

What makes Fiona such a heartbreakingly sympathetic character, and not just a saintly one, is the ways in which she is constantly struggling and bridling against her own selflessness. Taking care of her siblings is how Fiona defines herself. She takes pride in how much they need her. And yet, at 22, she hasn’t entirely given up on her own life. When her bipolar mother, Monica, even more negligent than Frank, showed up late this season in seemingly decent mental health, Fiona’s skepticism about letting her care for the kids didn’t last long. Fiona wanted to finish school, get a better job and take time to herself. She relented and let Monica in, only to have it all explode in her face when Monica and Frank spent the thousands of dollars the kids had been saving up for the winter, and then Monica, having slipped into a depression, slit her wrist on the kitchen floor during Thanksgiving dinner. Fiona does imagine that everyone needs her, but she doesn’t just imagine it: They really do need her, and she’s trapped by that need. In last night’s finale, the family returned from the hospital after Monica’s suicide attempt to find blood still all over the kitchen floor. Fiona started to sob while cleaning it up. Thinking about her little brothers and sister, she cried, “These poor kids,” to her boyfriend Jimmy (he used to go by Steve, but see the “My boyfriend has a secret identity!” episode mentioned earlier for clarity on the name change). But all I was thinking was, “Poor Fiona,” the one left to get the blood off the floor — and who later that night would let her two younger siblings, the too sweet and open Debbie and the soon-to-be psychopath Carl, climb into her bed and cry it out. Those poor kids have her. Who does she have?

Last night’s episode almost ended on the perfect note: The family throwing Frank out into the snow where he belongs and Lip — who left home in a snit a few episodes — finally coming back. Instead, there were two unnecessary scenes that followed Lip’s homecoming, one of Fiona and Jimmy finally having sex (he came back mid-season married: It’s taken them some time to work it out), and Lip starting something with Jimmy’s very beautiful Brazilian bride. That’s “Shameless” and the Gallaghers: A little sloppy, lascivious and unbalanced, never able to quit when they’re ahead, and endlessly imperfect. But in between all that, so much goodness.