Along with Burrell, Manny (Rico Rodriguez) -- that's Jay's (Ed O'Neill) kid -- is an unexpectedly hilarious character (loved the scene where he stroked his fake goatee when considering avenging the kids that drew it on his face), and every episode ends on just the right note. Yes, we saw it coming when Phil's teenage daughter's boyfriend, Dylan (Reid Ewing), sang a sweet love song that turned raunchy. But how great was that song? And then ending with the whole family, humming "I just wanna do you, do you" to themselves as they brushed their teeth or got ready for school? Brilliant. I love the dramatic choices by the excellent writers of this show, I love the little touches thrown in by this incredible cast (Eric Stonestreet as chubby, earnest Cameron makes me laugh out loud every single time he's on-screen), and really, I'm just in awe of "Modern Family." If you're not watching this show, you're nuts.

All of which stands in sharp contrast with another ABC show that I chose as one of the best new shows of the fall. If only I'd had a "FlashForward" to how mediocre this serial drama would become, I would've stopped watching weeks ago. From the lead character, Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), to his doctor wife Olivia (Sonja Walger) to his partner Demetri Noh (John Cho), this show is crowded with flat characters, and the story transformed from an eerie big bang of a pilot into a big sopping mess of nothingness in a few short (but seemingly endless) episodes.

It's astonishing to me that ABC could compare this show to "Lost" and then do so little to develop its characters over the first few weeks. What stands in for real character traits, back story and nuanced flaws on "FlashForward" (8 p.m. Thursdays) are cartoonish details like "He has a drinking problem" (Mark) and "She's a dedicated doctor, mother and wife" (Olivia). My favorite, though, is Demetri, who is somehow interesting because he's in love with his fiancée and he's going to die soon. He and his lady Zoey (Gabrielle Union) spend their time smiling sweetly at each other, which tells us zero about them, while Demetri tries not to harsh Zoey's premarital bliss with the nasty omens that he'll soon be dead.

Oh, and by the way? "He'll soon be dead!" isn't character development either, nor is it a hefty foreshadowing element when you don't know who Demetri is in the first place. Aaron (Brian F. O'Byrne) is still gloomily worrying about his daughter (whom we also know nothing about), Olivia's doctor friend Bryce (Zachary Knighton) has a new lease on life, but we don't completely understand why he was suicidal in the first place, and Nicole (Peyton List) is depressed about her vision of being drowned, but secretly, we can't wait until she's attacked because all she does now is wander around like a sullen model badly in need of a psychotropic intervention.

This is the trouble with pilots that have a powerfully creepy premise -- what if everyone on Earth blacked out at the same time, and had a vision of the future? -- along with lots of conflict and panic and exploding stuff in the first episode. All of the real drama is frontloaded, and then the rest of the series feels like slow-motion denouement. Unless the writers happen to have a really smart story to tell -- and, let's face it, writers who create an entire show around a premise this flashy aren't typically all that fond of subtlety or character development -- the whole thing is destined to fizzle before we come close to solving the central mystery.

I should've known better. The damage is done! "FlashForward" is the third most popular new show this fall, according to Nielsen, based on average ratings over the first four weeks on the air. In case you're wondering, CBS's "NCIS: LA" is first (personally, I'm indifferent to "NCIS" and its soon-to-be-countless spinoffs), CBS's "The Good Wife" is second (a great new drama, explored in more detail here, that richly deserves the attention), ABC's "Modern Family" is fourth (Hurray!) and ABC's "Cougar Town" is fifth (Oof). Not surprisingly, ABC has picked up all three of these shows for full seasons, along with the alternately amusing and tone-deaf Patricia Heaton sitcom "The Middle."

Aside from Courteney Cox and her chafing stampede of screeching harpies, you have to hand it to ABC. And it's great to know so early in the season that an excellent show like "Modern Family" and a promising show like "The Middle" will both be around for a while.

Which shows won't be around? All of the new medical dramas seemed to be on life support this fall, from NBC's flashy but blunt EMT dud "Trauma" to NBC's mercilessly self-righteous nurse drama "Mercy" to CBS's stomach-churningly bad organ-donor soap "Three Rivers." Nonetheless, "Mercy" unexpectedly won its time slot last week, so those tireless nurses are likely to keep wagging fingers at cartoonishly self-concerned doctors for a little longer.

Just in case you care (which seems unlikely), the CW's "The Beautiful Life" was the first pilot to be officially canceled, taken out at the knees after just two pretty but empty episodes.

As far as older shows go, Fox's "Dollhouse" has been getting horrible ratings, even with a bump from DVR viewing, which is disappointing because the series has been smart and transfixing lately despite consistently lukewarm performances by Eliza Dushku. (Can't someone just give Joss Whedon a blank check to create his own show without strings attached? What, the TV industry doesn't work that way? Why not?) In other confusing, "What were they thinking?" news, NBC's promising cop drama "Southland" was given the ax before even a single episode of its second season could air, presumably because Leno has razed the 10 p.m. time slot on that network with his slow, lumbering reign of terror. NBC is really suffering from its crappy decisions this fall.

But as long as NBC keeps its new comedy "Community" (8 p.m. Thursdays) around, I won't be complaining -- at least not for another few seconds. "Community" is still hilarious and has more than enough absurd moments per episode to keep me watching. Joel McHale's character isn't all that interesting, because he's too busy mooning over Britta (Gillian Jacobs), but the others are great, from Abed's (Danny Pudi) alien hoax to Chevy Chase's deadpan confused retiree to Senor Chang's (Ken Jeong) unraveling mental health, showcased in this clip:

Scenes like that one leave "Community" battling it out for the second-best new comedy of the fall against HBO's "Bored to Death" (9:30 p.m. Sundays) and Fox's "Glee" (9 p.m. Wednesdays). "Glee," which has been picked up for a full season, balances some recent lackluster music numbers with consistently great scenes featuring sadistic cheerleading coach Sue (Jane Lynch), while "Bored to Death," which is already lining up a second season, continues to amuse, mostly thanks to priceless moments featuring Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson.

So let's raise our glasses to the best fall season of TV in years! Keep the music blasting, the laughter roaring and the free drinks flowing as long as you can, network and cable overlords, because on TV, the good times can only last for so long. Here's to keeping the magic alive a little longer -- or at least as long as it takes for Dylan on "Modern Family" to pen another sleazy love song.

The question is, why not? It’s true that, as Hesse and McCarthy point out, it’s absurd when the media applies the term indiscriminately (what to do but laugh when a 27-year old Kirsten Dunst is called a “puma in training” for hooking up with a 22-year old guy?). And it’s annoying when men use it as putdown for any woman over 35 who dares display a bit of skin or sexual interest. If Hesse and McCarthy were asking men not to use “cougar” as an insult, I’d be inclined to agree with them. But to ask women not to call themselves cougars -- as though the proliferation of the term were some sort of emergency, linguistic or feminist or otherwise -- isn’t this a bit maternalistic? If a woman feels that identifying as a cougar is, for lack of a less hackneyed word, empowering, what’s the problem?

The problem, according to Hesse and McCarthy, is partly that “using a predatory animal to describe older women makes it sound like the men involved are vulnerable prey.” (Rebecca Traister made a similar argument in her excellent cri de coeur about the term last spring.) Of course, women have long been made prey by men, but never mind. There’s another issue, that the word was coined and foisted upon women “by a Canadian high school boys hockey team in the 1990s.” But this etymology is hazy, as the authors themselves readily admit. Even assuming "cougar" was originally a sexist slight, why not let women take back the term, as gays and blacks have done with certain unfortunate disparagements? “We were all about ‘reclaiming’ in Feminist Theory 201 -- about taking ownership of ‘queer’ and ‘fat,’” the authors write, as though anticipating this question, “but let’s not embrace ‘cougar’ just yet. Let’s at least try to squash it first.”

Good luck with that. The word “cougar” is everywhere, and if frequency of use is any indication, so are the “older” women to whom it applies. There’s not only Courtney Cox in "Cougar Town," but “cougar empowerment tomes on Amazon.com,” and an International Cougar Cruise on Carnival Cruise Line embarking in early December. (Don't come knocking when that ship's rocking.) The authors point to all of this as evidence that “cougar” is something of a marketing construction that repackages the existing and familiar in a clever, newfangled, exploitative way: “The biggest problem with the cougar craze is that it takes an age-old dating dynamic and pretends it's something new.”

This is true, and it isn’t. While there have always been older women who have paired up with younger men, the phenomenon was often viewed as a sad act of convenience rather than a positive act of desire -- the frustrated, divorced and aging woman hooking up with the opportunistic or inexperienced young pool boy. (Though Mrs. Robinson, Susan Sarandon and the 35-year-old consort of Henry II are all provided as encouraging examples, they were once the progressive exception rather than the mainstream rule.) These days, when women themselves use the term "cougar," it more often refers to a devil-may-care sexual freedom, or a re-arrangement of power in relationships, or even a novel recipe for life happiness. See, for instance, “The Real Cougar Woman,” a Web site for women who are “smart, sexy, independent ... and proud to be over 40” -- here, being a cougar does not mean prowling for younger men but rather refusing to accept the ageism of our society. “Imagine how different life is going to be when you stop worrying about what other people think and start living the life you have always dreamed of,” Linda Franklin, author of a bimonthly "ezine" for “Real Cougars,” writes. Calling yourself a cougar isn't necessarily some pathetic or self-hating stance.

So are Hesse and McCarthy correct, that cougars always existed, and we have just given a shiny new moniker to an age-old reality, the dating-world equivalent of calling shyness “social anxiety disorder”? Or are increasing numbers of women emboldened to act on their inner feline by the mere existence of the term? Either way, cougars are out there and unashamed about standing up as such. Executives at Carnival are no doubt steeped in market research and counting on enough cougars to fill a cruise liner. It’s an identity, a movement. Cougar pride is the new gay pride. Who knows? Maybe cougar travel will explode the way gay travel did -- and, once again, what began as a marketing scheme may have the very real effect of helping to normalize a once-alternative lifestyle.

This is why the prescription offered by Hesse and McCarthy -- to resist our impulse to label the cougar trend -- is unlikely to work. “The way to really embrace the concept of an older woman dating a younger man,” they write, “is not to give it a name that sounds like it was conjured up during a marketing meeting for cheap 1970s cologne. It's to not name it at all.” But maybe the best way to embrace the concept is to reappropriate it, in a lighthearted way. After all, it’s out there, and women can either claim it, or they can surrender it to the testosterone-infused masses. To own one’s identity, even if it was bestowed by another, is a form of power. (And it’s not as though sleeping with younger men, or remaining sexual into old age, are particularly negative qualities.) On an entirely practical level, it doesn’t make sense to expect that people won’t see the phenomenon and slap a word on it. The human mind has a linguistic instinct. Naming all the animals -- the turduckens and tofurkeys, the Brangelinas and Bennifers -- is fun. Older-woman-dating-a-younger-man doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Writing of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, the authors ask, “Should their relationship ever be categorized as anything but 'awesome'"? I suppose not. But people might like a way to talk about it.

“There's a corresponding name for single males who prefer to date younger females. They're called ‘men,’” write Hesse and McCarthy. Actually, they’re sometimes called cradle robbers and, when money is involved, sugar daddies. True, these aren’t exactly pleasant epithets, but maybe, if men were smart, they would reclaim these terms for themselves. 

I wonder if, so many decades ago, the robber barons of Los Angeles paused in their diligent and important work of bloodily oppressing various indigenous and imported brown peoples to gaze across this scrubby desert basin with a sense of awe at what it might one day become: an enormous maze of pavement, thirsty lawns and overvalued stucco. How proud they might be, to see that their selfless efforts to rape the land and disempower the laboring classes have paid off in acre upon acre of foreclosures, punctuated only by auto body shops and shitty Chinese restaurants! Los Angeles, glorious and vast, land of roof rats, home of the Whopper!

You don't know Jack(ie)

 Yes, I know that L.A. is a thriving metropolis filled with interesting people and good food and breathtaking vistas. But it's also, occasionally, a stinking, smoky hellhole. To be fair, the smog is nothing like it was back in the early '90s -- except when the hills are on fire. Then the skyscrapers are obscured by dense smoke, the kids and the dogs have to stay inside, and every hour of the day looks like sunset. Sadly, though, the news lady on TV has had so much Botox that she can barely move her mouth, let alone offer up a facial expression appropriate to the spectacle of million-dollar homes engulfed in flames.

This is the ultra-crabby, dystopic perspective I bring to the finale of "Nurse Jackie," which I cannot, in good faith, allow to pass without comment. Because like Los Angeles, which either looks green and charming or overheated, smoggy and plagued by its ill-considered, unsustainable nature, "Nurse Jackie" is alternately winning and pointless, witty and painful, spirited and wildly frustrating.

Sure, we could rave about how convincingly Edie Falco inhabits her role as a devil-may-care E.R. nurse with a drug habit and an unfortunate propensity for cheating on her perfectly wonderful husband with a nice-guy pharmacist. We could discuss Eve Best's delicious turn as the unrepentantly self-centered Dr. O'Hara, or Anna Deavere Smith's almost cartoonish take on unforgiving hospital bureaucrat Mrs. Akalitus.

Or, we could muse about the sociocultural ramifications of not one, not two, but three TV shows about nurses on the schedule this summer and fall, from Showtime's "Nurse Jackie" to TNT's "Hawthorne" to NBC's forthcoming "Mercy," all focused on these tireless heroines struggling to keep their patients alive and well. In the depths of the recession, the harried leisure classes of "Lipstick Jungle" and "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Privileged" have been elbowed out not by doctors or lawyers or Indian chiefs, but by common nurse ladies, fighting the good fight for the common man, armed only with the stubborn, righteous insistence that doctors are, more often than not, self-serving twats. Naturally I don't need to tell you that this us-against-them routine gets old faster than the mumbling zombie woman on the local news, struggling to emote as her city is overcome by hellfire and damnation. And I don't need to mention that "Nurse Jackie" should, by all rights, be the dark and somewhat jaunty antidote to the self-serious foolishness of "HawthoRNe" (oh God, that name alone!) and "Mercy."

 Ultimately, there's only one thing you need to know about the first season of "Nurse Jackie": When the first episode begins, it's tough to understand why Nurse Jackie would cheat on her perfectly dreamy husband, and when the last episode ends, we still don't get it. In other words, we spend 12 episodes watching Jackie act like an asshole without ever understanding why.

 OK, fine, she's an addict. She has a problem, and she's in denial. She still tries, sure. She wants her family to be happy. She really loves Eddie (Paul Schulze), the pharmacist. They have great sex. So do she and her husband. Both of these guys are just swell. But we knew all of this by the end of the first episode, and we never learned a single new thing since then.

 And also, how plausible is it that an exhausted nurse with a serious pill problem and two little kids at home is having wild and delicious sex with not one but two men? Not only that, but a dashing young doctor in the E.R. also decides that this frankly rather haggard, depraved-looking woman is his one true love?

 Just as Los Angeles pretends to be a suitable home for several million human beings, when it is, in truth, a horrible sprawling sham packed with overpriced stucco hovels on tiny tracts of land, a gigantic human mistake that demands resources pumped and trucked and shipped in from faraway places, so, too, does "Nurse Jackie" pretend to be a comedy (or a drama?) suitable for several million viewers, when it is, in truth, a disjointed, reckless sham packed with bewitching jokes, a wicked romp that ultimately goes nowhere. At the end of the season, Jackie is the same mysterious blank slate that she was at the beginning.

And when Eddie finds out that she has a husband and kids, what happens? Nothing. Eddie gets drunk and acts weird, apparently without blowing Jackie's cover, and Jackie is left freaking out and scarfing drugs, just like she was at the beginning.

That's not a cliffhanger. That's a flying leap off a cliff, landing with a Wile E. Coyote thud in the dust. We watch the dust cloud rise and then, the credits roll. Without any character development, there is no story. We feel about as confused as Eddie does when he sees that Jackie is living a double life. He never really knew Jackie at all, and neither did we.

 

Blowing in the wind

But while I'm feeling crabby and unforgiving, it's probably time to conquer the worst new show of the fall season, hands down: ABC's "Cougar Town" (premieres 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23), a comedy that's at once insipid, noxious, offensive, and just plain bad  -- hilariously bad, in fact. This is a show so utterly devoid of comedy that it'll make you laugh out loud.

Courteney Cox plays Jules, a desperate, jittery, outspoken, pathetic middle-aged woman with a son who's constantly embarrassed by her. Isn't that karmic retribution for having played the sort of hopelessly stylish, effortlessly wealthy, easily embarrassed young person on "Friends" that cringes at ever becoming pathetic and middle-aged? Just as Jules publicly humiliates her son, she also publicly humiliates Monica Gellar.

But most of all, Courtney Cox should really consider firing her agent and her manager and breaking up with every single friend who allowed her to sign on to this wretchedly, hideously awful sitcom. In fact, it boggles the mind that she's not smart enough to notice that this show is absolutely cringe-inducing and scary.

There are so many examples of creepiness here that it's hard to know where to start. In the first minute of the show, Jules examines her body flaws in the mirror and announces that she looks "like a farm animal." She summarizes by proclaiming, "Crap." And we're off to an enlightened and oh-so-amusing start!

But let's skip the ridiculous details and get right to Cox's best lines:

"Look at that cute guy right there. I'd like to lick his body!"

"You know how it goes, I was 19, I started thinking with my coochie-cooch and then bam, I had a kid!"

"Man, you are hot as balls!"

Yes, she did actually say "coochie-cooch." Jules isn't just an embarrassment to moms or to women in general, she's an embarrassment to humanity at large.

But the best part is when Jules announces to her younger lover, "OK, I'm going to do something that I have not done in years. I told my husband that I hated it, but I don't hate it, I love it." You can only assume that she's going to pull out a bag of cookies or some other misdirection. Instead, she starts unbuttoning the guy's pants. Get it? She's going to give him ... a blow job! Teehee!

Then -- you guessed it -- her son and ex-husband walk in. "There's my boy!" Jules yelps, and her husband says, "Ohhh, you said you hated that!"

Why is comedy this bad simultaneously depressing and vaguely decadent, like smoking crack with your mentally unstable cousin?

Not that I'm suggesting you should move to "Cougar Town," but you should at least stop by for a visit, so you can marvel at the depraved goings-on along with me. After all, there'll be plenty of mediocre new shows on TV this fall, but it might be years before a sitcom this unnervingly awful comes along again. And if there's one thing that's more romantic than ant freeways and billowing clouds of smoke and overpriced desert real estate, it's got to be deeply stupid comedies about pathetic middle-aged women, the roof rats of this golden, glowing age.