Californication

Let’s face it: It’s tough to let go of the past completely, or we wouldn’t collect a colorful assortment of Facebook frenemies or Google the ex-girlfriends of long-lost ex-boyfriends to see how their boob jobs have weathered the storm of the childbearing years.

If Michael Jordan, the best basketball player in the history of the game and also one of the hottest men on the planet, can still relive the rage of being left off the Sports Illustrated cover more than two decades ago, how can mere mortals like you and me be expected to forgive and forget?

Revenge may be pathetic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sweet. And these days, it comes with a big, fat paycheck attached.

The Russell Index
The vengeful avengers of the world found their natural leader last week when “Survivor: Samoa” premiered and one of the players, Russell, announced his intention to make everyone in the game, including his teammates, miserable.

Naturally, longtime fans of “Survivor” (8 p.m. Thursdays on CBS) assumed that Russell was making the usual big claims to utter ruthlessness, just like the countless other players over the years who sounded just like Ming the Merciless until it came time to making kissy-face with some cuddly fellow player. Even Johnny Fairplay, who lied and said his grandmother died to win sympathy from his fellow contestants, wasn’t openly unkind to anyone else in the game. Hell, even card-carrying sociopath Richard Hatch, who lamented repeatedly that he despised his opponents, walked around naked despite groans of protest, and eventually did hard time for tax fraud, never really rocked the “Survivor” boat all that vigorously.

Surely, Russell was just another poser to the sociopathic crown.

Next thing you know, though, Russell is secretly emptying the water out of all his teammates’ canteens while they’re sleeping, even stealing one teammate’s sock and setting it on fire. Then he runs around forming “exclusive” alliances with three women on his team at once. “My strategy is to be able to have a secret alliance with each one of these dumb girls,” he explains. “I got an alliance with the dumb short-haired blonde, the even-dumber long-haired blonde, and the dark-haired girl. I like to call it my Dumbass Girl Alliance.”

Next, Russell tells his teammates that he lived in New Orleans when Katrina hit. “I grabbed my axe, because as a fireman, one thing you learn is, when you go in something, you have to be able to get out.” Then he gets to the sad part: He lost his German shepherd, Rocky, to the flood. His teammates gasp! How terrible.

“I never lived in New Orleans, I’m not a fireman, I’ve never even had a German shepherd,” Russell tells the camera afterward. “I’m really a multimillionaire. I own an oil company in Houston. I’m not here for the money. I’m only here to show people how easy it is to win this game.”

Yes, “Survivor” fans, this is the bona fide vengeful dickhead that we’ve been waiting for all these years. Because we all want to know: Can you be a complete asshole and still win at the game of “Survivor”? Russell seems to think so. “I plan on making it as miserable as possible for everybody. I figure that if I can control how they feel, I can control how they think.”

But the question remains: Who is Russell trying to avenge with these random acts of assholitude? Is he angry at the entire universe? And why is he telling everyone about everything he does?

Although Russell is mean and claims to be rich, it remains to be seen how smart he is. Not surprisingly, within the first few days of the game, he’s already made an enemy in Betsey, a cop who quickly surmises that he isn’t trustworthy. He also raises a lot of hackles by pulling too many different players aside to talk to them in private. In this game, such a notable lack of discretion might end up being a big problem.

On the other hand, in the second week of the game, Russell finds the immunity idol without any clues – he just looks inside a hollow tree near camp. He pretends to cooperate with teammate Ben, whose nasty, blatantly racist remarks about a fellow player make him a natural rival to Russell’s sociopathic crown. But Russell chuckles behind the scenes about how Ben is losing favor with the team.

Russell will probably go reasonably far, but he doesn’t seem likely to bring home the million-dollar prize to add to his huge stack of cash. But in the game of life? Russell is guaranteed to win big, because never before at any time in history has it been more lucrative to be a vengeful.

Wake up, little Suze!
Just look at Suze Orman, who takes revenge on money itself every single Saturday morning on CNBC by making us all her captive slaves, doomed to spend the balance of our days socking money into a retirement account, never, ever spending so much as a few dollars on something frivolous or pointless without quickly calculating the hundreds of retirement dollars we’re losing when we do.

Now personally, I love Suze Orman. I don’t know what money ever did to her to make her so mad, and I don’t even care. Sure, she slept in her car for a while and probably pawned her mother’s one pair of dentures and dolled out sexual favors for spare change. Who didn’t? All I know is that Suze Orman is disgusted with the rampant wasting of money and crappy financial planning that goes on out there, and when you watch her, you’ll be disgusted, too — with yourself!

Mmm, sweet self-loathing, nectar of the gods!

Now, I don’t expect all of you to savor the warm, chewy goodness of self-hatred quite as much as I do. All I know is that, even during these troubled times, in this economy, when we can all become instantly depressed after a simple trip to the grocery store, there’s nothing better at the end of the day than opening up an icy cold Peroni (that’s imported Italian beer I can’t afford), taking a sweet sip, firing up “The Suze Orman Show” on my TiVo and listening to Suze berate ordinary human beings with even less financial sense than you and me. It boggles the mind, but they’re out there, ready to purge us of our guilt over our own crappy decisions and nonexistent eight-month emergency funds.

My recent favorite was the guy who wanted to blow his life savings just to upgrade his fiancée’s engagement ring to a tacky three-carat monster. Suze tells him he’s an idiot, flat-out, all the while calling him “boyfriend.”

But speaking of boyfriend, Suze’s favorite type of caller is Monica, the hapless woman who cosigned her ex-boyfriend’s car loan and now pays $950 a month to finance his BMW, which is now in her possession.

“Nine hundred and fifty dollars a month. What kind of a BMW did he buy, an $80,000 or $90,000 car?!” Suze asks, incredulously. “All right, before I tell you how to solve this or whatever, what were you thinkin’?! You wanted to have a boyfriend and possibly a husband who wanted to drive a fancy shmancy car, and he needed his girlfriend to cosign for him?”

I love it when even Suze’s mind is blown at how one casual, careless decision can lead to total financial ruin. Thanks to the fact that, if the car is repossessed, Monica will end up owing $40k with no car to show for it, Suze advises her to file for bankruptcy.

Suze’s right, money can be a ruthless bastard. But she’s not about to let money off the hook for what it did to her. She’s going to spend every second of her free time grinding money’s face into the rug until it cries “Uncle!” Isn’t it unfair how some people’s secret demons make them rich, instead of just making them fat and twitchy like the rest of us?

“Oh, I get it,” said my 13-year-old stepson during a recent broadcast, when Suze got to the part about not funding your kids’ college funds and not even paying for their guitar lessons unless you’re already maxing out your retirement contributions. “Suze Orman thinks it’s stupid to give your kids money, at all! Don’t teach your kid to play guitar. Save it all for yourself!”

“No, honey, she’s saying that unless you want your decrepit, smelly, incontinent daddy to move into your den and hog your PlayStation for the rest of your life, unless you want to wipe his chin and empty his bedpan every few hours, he’d better get smart and start socking away retirement money immediately.”

Ahh! It feels so good to talk tough about money, even when it makes everyone hate your guts.

Going back to Cali
Speaking of everyone hating your guts, finally we come to David Duchovny’s Hank Moody, the loathsome Lothario at the center of Showtime’s mediocre, unfunny half-hour dramedy “Californication” (premieres 9 p.m. Sunday). Hank Moody isn’t vengeful so much as just horny and pathetic. So why does his patheticness feel like such an act of vengeance on humanity?

Maybe because it’s supposed to be sort of amusing and clever the way Hank wanders around getting drunk, flatly insulting people and sleeping with their girlfriends. But why would he do that if he weren’t seeking revenge? It’s unclear.

And why, if he’s really a writer, does everything out of his mouth sound so unoriginal and clichéd? Why is he so repetitive in his aggressive streaks? Why is he so boring, for a sociopath?

He flicks his cigarette at a bicyclist who’s hogging the road, only to find out he’s the professor father of his daughter’s friend. Get it? He’s a rebel, an outlaw, the kind of devil-may-care stud who hates tree-hugging professorial types!

“Hey ladies, no Mary Jane.” He tells his daughter and her friend in front of the friend’s parents, “I’m like a drug-sniffing dog with a hard-on for justice.” John Phillips aside, what father uses the word “hard-on” when addressing his daughter? Villains can be so entertaining – Al Swearengen of “Deadwood” is the first and best example that springs to mind. But thanks to the tone-deaf writing here, Hank Moody is not only far less interesting than your average drunken, over-the-hill frat boy, but he’s also far more repugnant.

“I just flexed my cock muscle,” Hank tells one lover. “That’s pretty cool, huh?”

Maybe this is Showtime’s way of avenging its loyal audience, the fans who tune in for “Weeds” and “United States of Tara” and “Nurse Jackie” despite the fact that their flaws seem to multiply, week by week, like drug-resistant bacteria.

Or maybe the shallow, wilted, lowest-common-denominator lameness of “Californication” is meant to make those other shows appear witty and clever by comparison (and it most certainly does).

Who can tell? Because revenge, like a fine wine, is complicated. It’s also sweet – even a little too fruity for most palates – with a strong finish of regret and self-loathing. So while the vengeful avengers of the world gain fame and fortune from their vengeance, let us all savor the honor and dignity and extreme poverty that come from keeping our fat mouths shut.

While our TV shows paint us all as easily distracted, neurotic, spoiled, grumpy human beings, we chuckle along as if we’re above it. “Ah yes, a dark comedy — a warped, overly cynical take on life!” we say, then blow off even more work to troll the Internet for something shallow or despicable or depraved to distract us from our lazy, irritable, vainglorious selves.

Drugs, not hugs

“Quiet and mean, those are my people. I don’t do chatty.” — Nurse Jackie

Imagine if Carmela Soprano woke up this morning, got herself a gun, and blew Tony Soprano’s head off. Then, picture Carmela selling her McMansion, cutting up her credit cards, cutting her hair short, throwing out her make-up, and moving to Manhattan to take a job as a kick-ass vigilante nurse, happy to break the rules whenever it means helping ordinary, everyday people to make it through a hard time.

But in this age of darkness, we can’t very well stop there, now, can we? Next, we give Carmela a nasty addiction to pain pills, a self-involved doctor friend who takes her out to expensive sushi lunches, a pharmacist lover who slips her free Vicodin, and a sweet husband and two little daughters waiting at home, unaware of Mommy’s secret life.

“That doesn’t sound like Carmela at all!” you say? Exactly. Welcome to Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie” (premieres 10:30 p.m. Monday, June a new half-hour dramedy that’s more drama than comedy, showcasing Edie Falco’s numerous charms outside of the realm of suburban Mafia angst. Jackie Peyton is a (mostly) good egg with a sharp tongue who doesn’t do chatty but who’s willing to go to any length to alleviate her patients’ suffering.

“Doctors don’t heal, they diagnose. We heal,” Jackie tells newbie nurse Zoey (Merritt Wever), but doesn’t fully explain her policy of healing her patients by any means necessary, whether it translates to protecting them from uncaring hospital administrators, stealing drugs for them, allowing their children into the E.R., respecting their requests to decline treatment or putting a cocky but negligent doctor in his place.

When she’s not preventing the system from crushing the sick and uninsured, Jackie is crushing Percocet into her morning coffee. She may have started taking the pills to treat chronic back pain she developed from being on her feet all day, but now it’s clear that Jackie is hooked. Against the backdrop of an incredibly difficult, hectic, largely thankless job, it’s obvious what the pills give her: an ability to beat back the darkness and cope with whatever unpredictable, messy challenges get wheeled into her E.R. next.

Jackie navigates her world with a dissatisfied smirk plastered on her face, like she’s steeling herself in anticipation of the next blow. Every now and then, though, her eyes grow wide with empathy, and we see how much she cares. Once the moment passes, Jackie returns quickly to the picture of no-nonsense efficiency, instructing rookie nurse Zoey not to be so cheery and not to say hi so many times a day, or informing her that only idiots and magicians say “Ta da!” In another actress’s hands, this would constitute an implausible tightrope walk, but Falco lends Jackie grit, compassion and an unapologetic, frank flavor of selfishness. This is the toughest sort of character to play, an impossible knot of contradictions, at once funny, kind-hearted, dismissive and slightly nihilistic. It’s easy to see why Falco chose this role.

The colorful range of characters around Jackie are equally entertaining, from her close doctor friend Eleanor O’Hara (Eve Best), who’s more concerned with pricey lunches and expensive clothes than her patients (albeit in an likeably edgy, British Catherine Keener sort of way) to Mohammed De La Cruz (Haaz Sleiman), a fellow nurse who alternates between supporting Jackie and giving her a hard time. Their cynicism is counterbalanced by the dorky, tiptoeing cheer of Zoey, whose irritating interruptions often serve as a somewhat naive but necessary voice of reason among the world-weary longtime denizens of the E.R.

But even with such a jaded and narcissistic circle of friends, Jackie’s affair with Eddie the pharmacist (Paul Schulze, who also played Edie Falco’s priest love-interest on “The Sopranos”) is tough to parse. Maybe Jackie started sleeping with Eddie to get more pain pills once her legitimate prescription wore out, but now she genuinely loves him — or at least she seems to in the first episode. Obviously an affair is within the realm of possibility, even for a morally upright person like Jackie. But once you meet her handsome, adoring husband Kevin (Dominic Fumusa) and her two young daughters, the whole picture gets a little confusing. Yes, it would’ve been a cop-out to make either her husband or Eddie unlikeable. But to present a stridently self-righteous, smart, reasonable woman who’s sleeping with two really great guys? That not feasible to me, even with loads of pain pills and an unbelievably stressful job in the mix. Jackie is shocked when Dr. Cooper, a young physician new to the job, grabs her breast and tells her it’s a “Tourette’s response to stress,” but her own response to stress is even more fantastical than his.

 Unfortunately, the affair doesn’t make any more sense by the show’s sixth episode than it did by the end of the first. How does someone like Jackie end up constructing a double life for herself? Yes, it’s easy enough to say that this is a side effect of addiction, that it comes with the territory. But after watching half a season of this show, there should be more hints to Jackie’s problems in the mix, beyond the pills. We can see that Eddie may have a more refined, intellectual side than Kevin (who’s a bartender) does. But as long as you’re working with a dark comedy, why not give one or both of the men some obvious flaws, instead of presenting them both as lovable, great guys? There’s something slightly disingenuous about this picture.

TV darkness can take many forms, and after years of watching unnervingly optimistic tripe, it’s more than welcome. But sometimes darkness is used to hide the flaws in a concept that doesn’t completely hold together. Under the cover of darkness, “Nurse Jackie” veers into wild and woolly territory without clarifying its characters’ motivations or its central premise.

Naturally we’re willing to forgive these flaws at first; there are more than enough snappy insults and bad attitudes around to keep us happy for a while. But several threads of the story are picked up and dropped again without warning. Jackie is annoyed when Dr. Cooper (Peter Facinelli) strikes up a friendship with Eddie, but it’s not quite clear why. Jackie looks likely to get into trouble with her boss, Gloria Akalitus (Anna Deavere Smith), but any real consequences are obviously being saved for the last few episodes of the season.

We do get a glimpse of Jackie’s concern for her family when her older daughter, Grace, starts staying up late obsessing about the bubonic plague. Her teacher calls Jackie and Kevin into a conference to tell them Grace has been drawing drab pictures with no sun in them. Jackie is defensive at first, but later asks, “Who draws Florida with no sun? It’s the goddamn sunshine state!” Instead of agreeing to treat Grace, Jackie draws a bright yellow sun on her picture, demonstrating her attempts to will her problems out of existence. Unfortunately, though, that subplot disappears almost entirely for two episodes, so that we pretty much forget about it.

Obviously if “Nurse Jackie” were more of a comedy and less of a drama, it might not feel like a problem. It’s not as if we demand to understand the motivations and inner workings of Jack Donaghy of “30 Rock” or Michael Scott of “The Office.” But a dramedy faces the unfortunate challenge of having to walk a line between believability and farce. If you really want your show to be character-driven — and there’s no doubt that’s the aim here — you have to make sure the characters make some logical sense. Even if they behave illogically, it should all fit together, however sloppily, into some form the audience can connect with.

Showtime is a sucker for half-hour dramedies with an appealingly modern, smart tone: “United States of Tara,” “Weeds,” even the relatively disappointing “Californication” appeared stylish and fun at first. But clever quips and absurd, edgy plots that lead nowhere are getting harder and harder to rally around. As the first season of “Tara” drew to a close, something about Tara’s (Toni Collette) self-consciously casual-cool demeanor started to make her feel far less authentic than her relatively whimsical, absurd alternate personalities. Similarly, “Weeds,” which begins its fifth season the same night “Nurse Jackie” premieres, constantly threatens to spiral into such darkness that it’ll never find its way out again. While Doug and Andy and the boys always have their high times to cut the tension, this season a pregnant Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) finds herself trapped in a severely twisted relationship with a menacing Mexican drug lord who, through gritted teeth, threatens her into seeing a Spanish-speaking gynecologist of his choosing. Ha. ha. Hysterical.

The point is, unlike the family sitcom or the procedural drama, the half-hour dramedy genre is relatively young, and that shows in its wobbly plot lines, unsteady character development and unfocused premises. For all of its charms, “Nurse Jackie” needs to offer a little more than an enigmatic nurse and a parade of clever grouches. Sometimes rather than seeking out thoughtful ways to address and resolve the questions and problems they presented at the start of the season, TV writers today hide behind witty quips, lovably flawed characters and the chaos of a morally unsteady universe. In other words, they do what we do: When confronted by complexity, they hide behind insults. It works for a while, but then some larger guiding principle has to come into play. Even to the most pessimistic among us, the darkness gets a little old if there’s no sense of order or redemption to balance it out. When will TV pull out of its current nose dive into the inky abyss and find some new flavor of sweetness and light to believe in? Would it kill them to draw a shiny, yellow sun into the picture for a change?

“I always thought I’d quit this job some day and write a novel,” one consumer told this reporter. “But now it’s clear that day will never come.” When asked about his outlook for the next two years, he responded, “I’m going to be the same loser I’ve always been, only I’ll have bigger love handles, darker circles under my eyes and even more credit card debt.”

The share of consumers who believe happiness is just around the corner dropped below 25 percent for the first time since August 2006. Meanwhile, an October survey of consumers indicated that those who believe that “It’s all good” fell to their lowest level in two years, while those who believe that “It is what it is” increased by 34 percent.

The cheese stands alone
As the housing market and the U.S. dollar tumble downhill and America’s self-confidence plummets with them, how can we boost morale and get our groove back as a people?

The answer is cheese, my friend, good old-fashioned American cheese. If you’re feeling blue over your impending foreclosure, go out and buy a massive cheeseburger and some freedom fries and an enormous, icy cola, and stuff it all into your fat face while you enjoy a steady stream of ridiculously stupid shows on TV.

Because a veritable revolution of cheese, unseen since the mid-’70s, is unfolding on the small screen for your viewing pleasure. Perhaps as a result of the uncertainty in the air from terrorism, global health scares and a shaky economy, American pop culture is odd and manic and ludicrous and over the top and deeply cheesy right now, and you really, really shouldn’t miss it.

At the very least, sit back and allow me to describe it to you in filthy detail. I personally guarantee you that, for the next three minutes at least, you’ll forget about your late mortgage payments, lost as you’ll be in a gooey, chewy universe of the rankest, stankiest cheesestuffs.

Uh oh, it’s magic!
We begin with the crown jewel, the strangest, cheesiest show to come along since Drunk Asshole Hotel (and that’s saying a lot): NBC’s “Phenomenon” (8 p.m. EST Wednesdays), a live show aimed at locating the “next great American mentalist.”

Yes, mentalist. Even though that sounds about as exciting as a search for the “next great American orthodontist,” it seems magic isn’t nearly a magical enough word for today’s TV magicians. Apparently, when viewers hear the word “magic,” they picture David Copperfield in flared polyester pants, glowering and making menacing gestures for the camera while dry ice floats about at his ankles. Or they picture an old guy in a nursing home, boring the hell out of everyone with his long-winded card tricks.

In order to escape such a stigma, “magic” seems to have been recast as some vague paranormal essence, a mix of mind reading and levitation and such. The words “magic trick” and “illusion” and “illusionist” have also fallen out of favor, replaced by a perplexingly imprecise and repetitive vocabulary: What we see instead are mentalists and mystifiers, performing mental feats and using their mystical mental powers to mystify the audience!

To be fair, the mentalists on “Phenomenon” do mystify us, either by molesting Carmen Electra using only their minds or by guessing what Electra or the other C-list guinea pigs have drawn on pieces of paper. But my favorite competitors are the ones who threaten to severely injure or kill themselves on live TV. On the first episode, one of the mentalists played Russian roulette with a nail gun. What better way to amp up the suspense and excitement, after all, than by threatening to shoot a nail into your brain while the cameras roll?

But the highlight of the first episode came when Uri Geller announced his intention to complete an “interactive mental challenge.” Aiming to “test the intuitive abilities” of the viewers at home, Geller told the camera, “For this to work, I really need you to focus.” OK, Uri! We’ll try!

Next, Geller showed the viewers at home five ESP symbols, then secretly drew one of them on a card, which he placed in a locked box not to be opened until the end of the show. After that, he became very, very intense and serious, and pointed at the camera.

Geller: Now, I want everyone to stare into my eyes. (Points at his eyes.) I’m going to say “one, two three,” and I will project the symbol into your mind. Now we’ll do this three times. Are you ready? And try to use your intuitive abilities to receive it. I will visualize the symbol. (Takes off his glasses.) Stare deeply into my eyes. Here we go. One, two, three! One more time. This time, I’m going to shout out the symbol, from my mind into yours. Ready? One two three! And the last time, one, two, three. Much energy!

Host: Thank you, Uri. So, what symbol are you sensing, America? Is it the square, the star, the circle, the cross or the wavy lines? Let us know now by logging onto NBC.com and tell us what symbol you received. Stay tuned because we’ll be revealing the results later in the show. Can’t wait to see what you’ve chosen!

I don’t know about the rest of America, but personally, I’d chosen to watch every second of this show until it’s off the air.

At the end of the show, 28 percent of viewers chose the star symbol, which is the one Geller chose. Twenty-seven percent chose the circle, 16 percent chose the wavy lines, 22 percent chose the cross and 7 percent chose the square. Statistically, not exactly a home run, but hey, wasn’t that cool when he took his glasses off and his eyes bugged out of his head?

Sadly, on the second episode of “Phenomenon,” Geller presented a much less intense “interactive challenge” that involved spelling out planet names. The trick clearly had nothing to do with psychic powers or the paranormal, and could easily be solved afterward using simple math. After offering up such passionate weirdness the week before, how could Geller retreat into a trick about as mind-boggling as one of those forwarded e-mails that ask you to choose between a limited set, then tell you what your choice was?

But luckily for Geller, most Americans don’t know simple math. They can see, however, so like me, they probably spotted the shiny string above the pair of sunglasses one mentalist was “levitating.” Even though these are just magic tricks, trussed up in the paranormalist’s black cape, I was still a little disappointed. Can’t they do better than that?

Perhaps sensing impending defeat, the host seemed determined to regain our attention: “Our next competitor is going to stop his heart using the power of his mind and die for your entertainment!”

Hey now, that does sound entertaining! Before his suicide attempt, Guy Bavli told the audience, “I am nervous because I have my lovely fiancée and I will attempt, in front of her and America, to stop my heart and put my life on the line. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, I will try to die tonight, for your pleasure.” When you say things that stupid, it’s hard for other people not to take pleasure in your death.

So a nurse hooked Guy up to a heart monitor, and guinea pig Raven Simone (who really is sooo Raven) was asked to verify his pulse by holding his hand. “Please, please do not try this at home,” Guy pleaded with us, as if we were poised and ready to will our own hearts to stop at any moment. After a few minutes, Guy’s pulse slowed until he was slumping in his chair, and then there was a flat line on the heart monitor. Raven scampered away, perhaps to demonstrate that she was creeped out to the max. Guy’s fiancée emoted convincingly, the camera zoomed in on some concerned faces (cleverly avoiding snickering, heartless children like myself), and you could almost hear Criss Angel distractedly flicking lint off his pleather pants.

But then Guy came back to life! Hurray! The audience erupted into applause, and Raven was more Raven than ever, gasping and shaking her head, seeking solace among her squealing, chattering guinea pig colleagues.

Time for judges Angel and Geller to weigh in. “Your demonstration looked and felt genuine, but if it wasn’t, you still had me sitting on the edge of my seat,” offered Geller. What, is he implying it was a trick?

“I thought he was very intense. It was dramatic,” said Angel. “I don’t know if it was the right performance for this spot, because of the time restraints.” Time restraints?! Performance? Spot? How dare he use such terms to describe a mystifier who just died for our pleasure?

But Angel really killed the golden goose after paranormalist Jim Callahan drooled and groaned on the stage for several minutes in order to receive messages from some dead guy named Raymond.

Angel: I just think it’s comical, quite frankly. Before I even move ahead now I’ll invite Uri and your friend Raymond right now, I have two envelopes here. I will give you a million dollars of my personal money right now if either one of you can give me specific details of … Now don’t tell me about the energy or that it’s not the right time!

Callahan: (Getting angry) I find you an ideological bigot, that’s what I find! You claim that …

Angel: Blah blah blah. Tell me what’s in the envelope!

Sweet Jesus, is it really wise for the Mindfreak to call another illusionist’s bluff like this? Why didn’t Criss just bum-rush the stage and show everyone the string attached to the sunglasses while he was at it?

Soon, Angel and Callahan are chest to chest, “Jerry Springer” style, and have to be held back from beating each other’s faces in by the show’s host and Geller. Sadly, all the moment proves is that it’s not the age of magic anymore, it’s the age of YouTube, and this act is not only intense and dramatic but exactly the right performance for this spot, given the time restraints. This is a pitch-perfect stunt sure to create controversy, boost ratings and be replayed on YouTube over and over again.

But then, this cheesy three-ring circus is at war with itself, and doesn’t know what it should be. What are we seeing anyway, mental powers, or tricks with smoke and mirrors? Mystical psychic feats, or savvy performances? Maybe the producers should choose one and stick with it. Forcing the audience to alternate between suspending its disbelief and analyzing the nuances of each performance doesn’t make any sense.

Criss Angel himself summed it all up best after the next performance, when he blurted out, “Thank God you didn’t claim you had psychic ability!”

Wii the people
This is the paradox presented by the latest wave of reality competitions: Live shows and opinionated judges are trotted out with hopes of big ratings, but the performances aren’t that entertaining (nail guns to the temple aside) and the judges aren’t sure what they’re supposed to be judging.

Take “The Next Great American Band” (8 p.m. EST Fridays), Fox’s attempt at a band version of “American Idol.” You’ve got John Rzeznik, lead singer of the Goo Goo Dolls, drummer/pop performer Sheila E. and Ian Dickson, the Australian Simon Cowell, and they’re supposed to help America decide which bands are truly great.

Sadly, though, not only are very few of the bands all that good, but their styles are so diverse that the voting boils down to personal taste. Obviously America votes for cute guys with crappy voices on “American Idol,” but generally, that show is about vocalists who take similar material and perform it as well as they can. That’s very different from asking a swing band, a preteen heavy-metal band, a bluegrass band and an all-girl punk-pop band to compete against one another, performing a Bob Dylan cover and an original song.

You heard me right: A Bob Dylan cover. Yes, the countercultural revolution is officially dead and buried, replaced by shiny plastic puppets and text voting and faux-critical celebrity judges who pretend to disagree and bicker adorably on command. Isn’t it all more than a little tedious? And doesn’t true representative democracy in the consumer-friendly universe of high capitalism mean that we should be able to control John Rzeznik™ and Sheila E.™ with our Nintendo Wiis? For that matter, shouldn’t we be able to change that drippy host to Cat Deeley with the flip of a button? And why can’t we just choose to watch/control “The Next Great Alternative Pop Band” or “The Next Great Emo-Prog Band,” since most of us find bare-chested tweens rocking out to a hair metal version of “All Along the Watchtower” about as enjoyable as tweezing our nose hairs.

That said, the lead singer of Franklin Bridge is hot, and so are those cute, violin- and mandolin-playing Clark Brothers. Maybe the answer is just “The Next Really Hot American Band.” After all, wasn’t it that Flock of Seagulls hair that made John Rzeznik the swoony balladeer we’ve all come to know and vaguely dislike?

Spent my days with a woman unkind
Speaking of knowing and vaguely disliking, how bad was the season finale of “Californication”? (Yes, I’m about to spoil it if you didn’t watch it last week.) Hank Moody (David Duchovny) spends the entire half-hour showing us what a stand-up guy he is, allowing his ex, Karen, to marry that bland Bill; Karen (Natascha McElhone) spends the entire half-hour showing us what a stand-up woman she is, marrying the loyal guy instead of that drunken weasel Hank; and then in the last few seconds of the show, Karen jumps into Hank’s car in her wedding gown, and she and Hank and their teenage daughter, Becca, drive away, laughing their asses off? Ha ha ha, smell ya later, sucker?!

I love strange, unexpected, mean-spirited endings, but this one made me feel sorry for Becca, then Karen, then Hank and, last of all, Bill, who should feel pretty thankful to be free of that whole sorry lot. It’s impressive, really, how they managed to take a somewhat promising show and drive it into the ground in just under five episodes. That has to be a record.

Next time you can’t think of a good way to end your bad show, let the kids at home with their Wiis come up with the ending.

Desperate thespians
As usual, I’m running out of time and space, but I still need to address another very important subject. Is it just me, or has the acting on TV really gone downhill lately? I was watching “Meerkat Manor” a few weeks ago, and I totally didn’t buy that scene where the lead female character, Flower, is all “Ooh, a cobra! I’m sooo scared!” What happened there? It was like she didn’t even glance over the script before they started shooting. Her life was supposedly on the line, but she just looked distracted and blank, like she still had half a brownie waiting for her back at the craft services table.

The way her face puffed up was so fake, too. I know it’s just the Animal Planet, but can’t they get some serious makeup artists and stylists on the set to make that shit look real?

Meanwhile, Lauren Conrad on MTV’s “The Hills” hasn’t brought her A-game in weeks now. She has always been a little low-key and unconvincing with her deliveries, but these days she doesn’t even bother to read her lines. She just stares blankly at whoever’s talking until he or she starts talking again.

Plus, who blocked that scene where Lauren met fashion designer Marc Jacobs? Lauren’s character supposedly la-la-loves Jacobs and all of his overpriced clothes, but when she met her so-called idol, she just sat there like a lump and draped a limp hand in his direction. She didn’t even stand up! She didn’t even deliver her greeting from the script, something about how much she adores his designs, leaving Jacobs nervously glancing around the room for the script supervisor. And who let Jacobs onto the set in those droopy sweatpants, anyway?

Drawing conclusions
Listen up, America. Your confidence may be down, but don’t join Lauren and the Meerkats in slouching, stuttering and staring at your shoes. Even though you know that over the coming years, you’ll just get older, fatter, less cool and far less financially solvent, the key to happiness lies in accepting yourself for the old, fat, uncool, broke, powerless chump that you are. Remember: It’s not all good, it is what it is! Now focus, and on the count of three, I will shout that message from my mind to yours! One, two, three! Much energy!

Next week: More shows with “America” in the title, from “Aliens in America” to “America’s Most Smartest Model.” Plus: Why can’t the heroes of “Heroes” stand to fly?