Who wouldn’t want to tango with fickle Hollywood, a monster that embraces you one minute and chucks you the next like yesterday’s moldy cheese? Who wouldn’t love to soak in all of that attention and praise, then fall from grace and be forever referred to as “desperate” or a “C-lister”? How cool would it be to hear people scream at you, “Watchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” or, “Hey, Tattoo! Where’s de plane?” 20 years after the fact? And wouldn’t we all love to be invited to perform in the midst of an alcoholic downward spiral, just so Sarah Silverman could rip us a new asshole afterward?

And that’s not to mention the undeniable allure of agoraphobia, depression and the inevitable descent into addiction. It’s impossible not to crave fame! Just think, everyone out there could love you for all of the wrong reasons, too! What could be better?

Country ham
Well, a hard shovel to the side of the head, for one thing. But sadly, most kids don’t recognize that all of the disorienting headaches, dizzy spells and confusion of fame could be theirs, with just one well-aimed swat to the head.

But if you’re one of the unfortunate nobodies, the kind of person who no one is stalking on Gawker right now, the sort of sad sack who picks their butt in public without anyone capturing it on their camera phone, well then, you’ll be able to relate to the fame-seeking honeys and beefcakes of “Nashville” (9 p.m. EDT Fridays on Fox).

Yes, it seems that those wacky producers behind MTV’s “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” went sniffing around for a more genuine, authentic-seeming backdrop to suit another batch of young, pretty back-stabbers, and where did they land? Smack dab in the heart of the Volunteer State, Tennessee!

Too bad nobody’s volunteering any original thoughts or insights on this country-fried stink bomb. Not surprisingly, young, pretty back-stabbers look and sound and act the same no matter where you find them. Once the producers select their pretty faces, then get all of their little love triangles twisting in the wind, you’ve got the same basic scenes you’ve seen on “Laguna Beach” and “The Hills” and every other reality soap in the book:

Step 1: Mediocre Player flirts with Hot Girl.

Step 2: Hot Girl decides that she’s in love.

Step 3:Mediocre Player flirts with Other Hot Girl, ignores Hot Girl.

Step 4: Hot Girl hates Mediocre Player. They talk. She loves him again. He flirts with OHG again. She hates him. Etc.

Mix in crowd noise, angry outbursts, trumped-up confrontations, and insipid big-dream rhapsodizing and serve cold on a bed of bad country songs.

Apparently most of the young folks on “Nashville” can sing and write songs, but aside from one kid who’s about to get a record deal, you wouldn’t really know it from the pilot. All we see is a bunch of guys and gals flirting, pouting and occasionally droning on and on about how the one thing they want, more than anything else in the world, is to be famous.

“I want to be a star. I want to be a star,” repeats Rachel, who also happens to be Terry Bradshaw’s daughter. “And I want everybody to love my music and believe what I’m singing and come to my concerts.”

“Listen, be careful what you wish for,” says Daddy Terry, and then he catches himself. “But at the same time, if that’s what you want, who am I to say don’t chase your dreams? God, that’s what’s fun.” Until the shovel knocks you in the head, anyway.

But look, Rachel! You’re on TV right now and you’re Terry Bradshaw’s daughter! You’re already famous! What, it’s not really all that great unless they love you for you — or rather, the version of you that your record label (if you ever get one) decides to sell them? Well, that explains why Britney Spears and Kelly Clarkson and so many other big-deal pop singers are so unreasonably happy.

As it turns out, the drive to be famous is the great equalizer: Everyone who wants to be famous looks and sounds exactly the same, and they’re all about as charming as a bag of hammers. Add to that the fact that the producers of these shows like to cast human beings who are unreasonably dull and lacking in wit or ideas, and you’ve got a show that’s just dumb and repetitive enough to be embraced by a bunch of fame-hungry teenagers nationwide. Nice going, Fox! Another highbrow feather for your very sophisticated 10-gallon hat!

Talk of the town
The brooding teenagers on “Gossip Girl” (premieres 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 19, on CW) aren’t really famous, but they are rich, and thus worthy of Gawker-type gossip, delivered via a “Desperate Housewives”-style voice-over featuring the telltale snark of Kristen Bell, aka Veronica Mars. As the mysterious Gossip Girl, Bell doesn’t appear on-screen, unfortunately; she just offers a play-by-play of rich-kid shenanigans on her Web site, vowing all the while never to reveal her identity.

Josh Schwartz isn’t stupid. Just as he knew that we’d love a soap about a sulky working-class misfit, stuck in a hopelessly pretty, McMansion-filled California beach town, now he recognizes — as the producers of “Nashville” do — that we’re sick of sunshine and nice tans. Schwartz has determined that what we want, more than anything else, is to lounge around with some seriously rich prep school brats in New York City.

Hurray! Prep school brats in New York City! I’ve been craving this flavor of mean-spirited sulking ever since Nancy Jo Sales wrote that scathing New York magazine exposé of the white-boy prep school gangstas of Manhattan.

Lord knows this terrain is much juicier and more disturbing than the bland new-money Californians of “The OC.” For one thing, the rich NYC mothers are far more intimidating and scary than the Newpsies (loaded but tacky Newport Beach divas). One well-timed glare of disapproval or cutting remark from one of these heartless sophisticates, and you’re struggling with multiple eating disorders for the rest of your days on earth.

“Blair, if you’re going to wear one of my designs, tell me, so we can at least get it properly fitted,” one mother hisses sweetly at her daughter. Another is overheard braying, “So I told them forget it, I don’t care if it’s Murakami, it clashes with my sofa!”

And unlike those smart-talking ruffians on the West Coast, these prep school kids are hopelessly well-bred. “Nate, can I borrow you?” murmurs Blair, “Gossip Girl’s” high-end version of Summer from “The OC.” “Sure, can you excuse me for a second?” breathes Nate (Chace Crawford) to his father and a friend. The two hurry off casually, then slip into a nearby room for some heavy petting. Aww! It’s somehow reassuring to know that even couture-clad teenagers are horny enough to dry hump on the sly.

Of course we’re provided with a good, down-to-earth Sandy Cohen-style daddy, Rufus (Matthew Settle), who has the added advantage of having once been cool (his band was No. 9 in Rolling Stone’s “Top Ten Forgotten Bands of the Nineties”). Then there’s a slightly hotter version of Seth Cohen, Dan (Penn Badgley), and his somewhat naive, social-ladder-climbing little sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen). But the real center of attention here is Serena (Blake Lively) — the new, improved NYC Marissa — who’s being pushed out of her circle by nasty Blair (Leighton Meester) because of some bad choices Serena made in the past. So it looks like Dan secretly loves Serena, and Blair’s guy Nate secretly loves Serena, but Serena’s just, you know, depressed and stuff, but hopefully not with the big “Kick Me” sign on her back that Marissa had from Day One. Let’s just keep Imogen Heap out of this.

When you really think about it, “Gossip Girl” is like an “OC” spinoff starring Oliver, Marissa’s sophisticated but suicidal ex-boyfriend. You just throw in a bunch of similarly sullen richies, have them sipping drinks at luxury hotels or strolling through the aisles of the trendiest high-end department stores, and it’s all very romantic and special. As a result, kids nationwide daydream about one day making enough money to live in the giant upscale walking mall that NYC has become.

Onward to some predictions for the first season of “Gossip Girl”:

1. Someone attempts suicide. Maybe self-destructive Chuck (Ed Westwick), since he’ll have played the villain in so many episodes that we’ll need to feel sorry for him by then. (Remember poor Luke, ostracized thanks to his gay dad?)

2. Someone battles an eating disorder. Because when you’re too rich, the only thing left to be is too thin.

3. We’re teased with finding out the identity of Gossip Girl herself.

Now, if Schwartz were really smart, he’d get Kristen Bell to materialize on-screen halfway through the season instead of relegating her to voice-over land. That way little Dan could fall madly in love with her. Maybe Bell could dye her hair brown, so we wouldn’t secretly wish she’d ditch the rich losers and help out the NYPD instead.

Anyway, if it isn’t already obvious, “Gossip Girl” should be a good ride, at least until all the characters become more and more likable and there’s no conflict or tension anymore, and then you have to kill off the weakest one just to get people to pay any attention.

Broccolini and I
Speaking of killing off the weakest one, the elimination challenge on last week’s “Top Chef” (10 p.m. Wednesdays on Bravo) was seriously brutal. The chefs were asked to create a dish that could be heated and served to first-class passengers on an airplane, and the quality of the resulting dishes ranged from fantastic (Hung) to inedible (CJ). But the very best exchange of all occurred when judge Tom Colicchio and guest judge Anthony Bourdain ganged up on defiant cheftestant Brian Malarkey:

Tom Colicchio: You’re surprised that you’re here (in the bottom three)?

Brian Malarkey: I’m very surprised I’m here, yes.

Colicchio: You’re here because that hash was disgusting.

Malarkey: Really?

Colicchio: That hash was gross.

Anthony Bourdain: The lobster had the texture of doll head.

Doll head! Sweet Jesus. Bourdain should have his own show. Oh yeah, he does have his own show. OK, he should have his own planet.

But then they eliminated CJ, which is sad because he’s the most entertaining cheftestant in “Top Chef” history. Even though Bourdain compared CJ’s broccolini to something found in the back of Bob Marley’s closet and Colicchio declared it the worst dish in three seasons of the show, CJ still had a swagger in his step on the way out. Since Bravo seems to like handing out shows to colorful personalities, they should really find a way to put CJ’s charms to good use somewhere.

Speaking of which, did you catch last week’s interview with “Flipping Out’s” Jeff Lewis? That guy should have his own solar system.

Emmy time!
While I’m outlining my personal wishes, let me add that Sunday night’s outstanding drama Emmy should clearly go to “The Sopranos,” the outstanding comedy Emmy should go to “30 Rock,” Alec Baldwin should win best supporting actor for his role on that show, Elizabeth Perkins should win best supporting actress for her role on “Weeds,” and all of the members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences should get brand-new TiVos so that they’ll actually watch a little television now and then. That way they’ll know what “The Wire,” “Friday Night Lights” and “Battlestar Galactica” are, and they’ll realize that some of the shows they keep loving for all of the wrong reasons are, not to put too fine a point on it, bad.

But then, isn’t bad really beside the point, when money and fame are in play? In the dizzying glare of the limelight, one man’s delicious lobster is another man’s rubbery doll head. Hand out the awards to whomever you want, all we really want is to imagine that those shiny humans on the red carpet are immune from sadness so we have something uncomplicated to strive for. Ladies and gentlemen, swing those shovels!

Because even though most of us don’t feel very passionate at this exact moment, shuffling along in our scratchy pants, tending to the very necessary trivia of our lives — screening calls, throwing away important receipts, forgetting to water the plants — we are all passionate people.

Yes, you, too! Don’t let the slouched shoulders and the dark circles under your eyes fool you. Picture the town you grew up in, the way the sky looked when a thunderstorm was about to roll in. Picture that sandwich you ate while driving through Spain, the one with the surprisingly delicious Manchego and the jamon iberico (“Ham of the Gods” you called it) and the really, really good olives, all purchased at a humble truck stop. You were listening to Pinback in the car, the sun was sparkling across the Mediterranean, and nothing in the world was wrong. Everything was shiny and perfect!

OK, maybe you had some strong coffee, too — but even so, remember how passionate you were? That’s because you’re a very passionate person! Don’t let your flagging enthusiasm or your lack of a will to live make you think otherwise. Just because you’re not spewing a steady stream of superlatives like you’ve been huffing paint thinner all morning, that doesn’t mean that you have no passion!

Passion-fruit jungle
This is important. Because when you know, deep down inside, that you’re just as passionate as the next person, only then can you appreciate passion in others. Then, when people make deeply irritating statements like “I live for my art,” or “Having children made me fully human — before that I was more like some species of primitive, prehistoric amphibian,” you won’t want to smash their faces in (although, I’ll admit, that is a very passionate response).

No, you’ll want to hug them! That’s how much you love life and all God’s creatures, annoyingly great and pathetically small.

The truth is, passionate people can be a real joy to behold. Take the effervescent young people of “So You Think You Can Dance.” Now stay with me, please — I know you have important calls to ignore and crucial interoffice e-mails to delete. Even though you may imagine that “So You Think You Can Dance” is just a dippy “American Idol” also-ran, even though you’d rather iron your soft pants and regrout your tub than watch dorky teenagers waltzing or, worse yet, putting on “funky hats” and “hip-hopping” or whatever they call it, this show really is worth watching.

Despite the bad outfits, despite the screaming preteens in the audience, despite the “Vote for me!” hamming of the contestants, despite the alienating “Meet your dancers!” routines, with their excess of cheesy, exaggerated grooving, this is a competition that hinges on passion. Each performance, whether it’s a contemporary extravaganza of tangled limbs and faux-passionate emoting or a faux-passionate Argentine tango or a romantic, graceful faux-passionate waltz, depends on the real passion of the dancers involved.

Yes, the dancers are more talented than ever in this, the show’s third season on the air. Yes, you get to see these young, lithe, athletic humans learning remarkably difficult routines in a matter of hours, which can make “Dancing With the Stars” look about as entertaining as watching an old dog trying to learn a new trick. Yes, the producers and judges clearly aim to recruit not just great dancers, but kids with very positive, bubbly personalities, the kinds of happy, healthy, well-adjusted teenagers who a crotchety old grump like you might be tempted to trip if they walked by you in the mall.

But even if you tripped these bright-eyed kids and they fell on their faces, as they picked themselves up and dusted themselves off, they’d flash you a jazzy thumbs-up and say “My bad, man! My bad!” Their unbridled jubilance, although somewhat creepy, is actually infectious. Just as your nasty attitude is infectious, whether you’re bitching at boneheaded drivers on your daily commute or silently cursing the nimrod who left a paper jam in the copier, the unabashed enthusiasm and appetite for life that these kids feel is uplifting, somehow. Not when they say the stupid things that they say about how passionate they are about dance, of course. No way! No one wants to hear them string words together into sentences or anything like that. But when they dance, you get to know them and, eventually, love them.

You think I’m exaggerating. Something tells me your heart is as dank and cold as a cellar when you read my words about these irrepressible lords a-leaping! But trust me, when you watch these kids learn a different style of dance each week, you’ll recognize how some of them struggle and fail to sell it, or they’re good little robots who lack a certain flair, while others creep and shimmy and leap and flail and sneer with the raw electricity of the possessed. These are the ones who’ll grab your eye, who’ll demand your attention and respect, these rabid little weirdoes, these odd little physical magicians, who can take a hip-hop or jazz routine and turn it into a transformative, emotional roller coaster.

And if Wade Robson is the choreographer, then watch out. Robson crafted dances for Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears, and I know you couldn’t care less about any of that, but you will when you see this guy’s dances. They remind me of that scene in Bob Fosse’s “Sweet Charity” where Shirley MacLaine shows up at a fancy party, and all of the sophisticated hipsters break out into dance, not in that terrible “Flashdance!” or “Fame” kind of way, but in a stylized, transfixing way. Their dance, called “Rich Man’s Frug,” tells a story: You are not one of us. We are special! Each gesture is haughty and fluid and elusive.

Robson’s choreography shares the same whiff of disturbed whimsy. Watching his dances is like witnessing a witty, fantastical three-minute-long play or a demented puppet show.

I’m not saying there aren’t lackluster waltzes and crestfallen sambas to sit through. I’m not saying the solo dances are consistently original or groundbreaking — they are choreographed by the dancers themselves, which is sort of like asking an “American Idol” contestant to write an Elton John-like ballad and then perform it. But at least once per episode, a couple churns out a remarkable performance, and afterward, you can see it on their faces: Feeding off the crowd and the music and the excellent choreography, they just danced better than they have in their entire lives.

And unlike Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson, two people who have remarkably little to say given the time they spend on camera, the judges of “So You Think You Can Dance” are smart and outspoken and not easily impressed: Nigel Lythgoe (who is also a producer of “American Idol”) serves as both an unreserved judge and a spokesman for the show, contemporary choreographer Mia Michaels vacillates between pleasingly opinionated and irritatingly precious, hip-hop choreographer Shane Sparks is sometimes in awe and other times bored, and my personal favorite, ballroom choreographer Mary Murphy, aka the Dick Vitale of dance, has an alternately funny and unpleasant habit of screeching loudly out of sheer delight, but they’re all unself-conscious and odd and their interactions rarely feel forced or showy. Beyond recognizing talent, they’re in touch with the emotional weight of a good performance — last season, every one of the judges got teary-eyed on more than one occasion.

All of which probably sounds unbearably dorky, but once you develop a taste for the show, such unguarded emotional responses feel rare and special, like eating Ham of the Gods while speeding along the southern coast of Spain. It’s inspiring, and it will remind you that you, too, breathe oxygen and walk on two feet and eat food and sleep in a bed at night.

What I like about food
Speaking of eating food, is there anything in the world better than eating food? Maybe it’s just because I’m currently feeding two people, both of whom are fatter than they’ve ever been in their entire lives, but goddamn it I’m passionate about food right now. I’ve always been a big eater, so much so that I’ve spent my entire life saying stupid things like “I really, really like to eat.” And even though someone might’ve been tempted to tell me, “Look, everyone likes to eat, jackass. That’s why we’re not all starving to death,” no one ever has, probably because of that crazed look in my eyes that told them of the strength of my passion, and my willingness to belt anyone who stands between me and my pastrami sandwich. No, let’s make that a prosciutto sandwich, with aged parmesan and really good balsamic and tasty virgin olive oil and some plum tomatoes on some freshly baked sourdough, the kind that’s soft but still springy…

The point is, I’m hungrier than ever, hungry enough to announce, after eating a huge prosciutto sandwich, “Wow, I could eat one more of those. I really could. Damn it, I want another one.” And since I can’t really eat another prosciutto sandwich without requiring a forklift to leave the house, I watch “Top Chef” instead.

I love “Top Chef” more than I ever have, too. Like “So You Think You Can Dance,” it puts me in a good mood. I anticipate it all week long, wondering what ingredients the Cheftestants will have to work with this time, wondering what they’ll make. And the third season of “Top Chef,” set in Miami, seems to feature some of the most talented Cheftestants yet.

Someone once told me that “Top Chef” wasn’t a good show because you can’t taste what the chefs are making, therefore you can’t really judge the dishes. I disagree: I love the guessing game. I love gazing longingly at the dishes, thinking about how delicious they must be, or how they don’t look very tasty at all.

Like last week, when Sara N. made that BBQ with the marinated cucumbers? I wasn’t sure that worked, and it sounded like she made her cucumbers too spicy — but the judges loved it. It also seemed like Micah was going to crash and burn, up until the moment when judge Gail Simmons began smacking her lips in that telltale way that spelled Elimination Challenge victory for Micah.

In that way, “Top Chef” is sort of one part cooking competition, one part unfolding mystery: You develop your theories about which dish tastes the best, but you don’t really know that it’s lacking oil or acid or is unevenly salted until the judges have their say.

But mostly it’s interesting to see a bunch of talented, passionate professionals protecting their egos from what can be a seriously demeaning experience. Take Tre Wilcox from Dallas, who has the words “Gotta Have Passion” tattooed on his arm. (Personally, I’d prefer a tattoo that says “Gotta Have Oxygen.”) Tre explains that passion, like oxygen, is very important indeed. “Anybody who has a career, the only way that they’re gonna be the best at it is if they’re passionate about it. That’s it, period.” Tre certainly looked passionately depressed during the first episode when he was in the bottom three during the Quickfire Challenge, in which the Cheftestants are charged with making an amuse bouche using the hors d’oeuvres they’d been feasting on, but he rebounded by being in the top three of the Elimination Challenge.

And you have to love a challenge in which contestants are forced to choose between snake, eel, geo duck (a big nasty-looking shellfish) and black chicken (which also looks exactly like it sounds), among other exotic meats. And with Anthony Bourdain bringing his unpredictable wit and strong opinions into the mix as a guest judge? Bravo, lure that guy away from his “No Reservations” job with big money and make him a permanent judge already. Yes, it would drive judge Tom Colicchio crazy, taking some of the sting out of his Disapproving Daddy act, but it would also make “Top Chef” a mainstream hit. Who doesn’t want a guy like Bourdain around, asking a competitor who failed to finish his dish, “What is your major malfunction?”

Bourdain embodies the very best kind of passion: one that doesn’t talk about itself so much as knock over everyone else in the room with its bluster. Let’s stop sending him around the world and make him sit in one place, with other opinionated people (whom he’ll quickly grow to hate, of course). Imagine Simon Cowell, but weirder, meaner and more passionate!

Sounds like a mega-celebrity in the making. Because even though snippy curmudgeons like Bourdain and Cowell are often mistaken for apathetic grumps, they’re passionate about plenty of stuff, or else they wouldn’t be so passionate about the things that gum up the works and blot out all that’s special and good in the world. You know: slow-moving mouth-breathers, mediocrity, engine sludge, lint and Paula Abdul.

Next week: The undying passion of pirates, posers and polygamists!

Going into Wednesday night’s finale, then, it seemed that the title of Top Chef was within reach of Marcel’s chemical-dusted fingertips — at least it did to those of us who didn’t have the finale spoiled for us by the premature publication of the winner’s name on Food & Wine magazine’s Web site. So how did an even younger and less experienced cook, Ilan Hall, 24, take home the big prize? All he seemed to have in his arsenal was a thorough knowledge of Spanish-style cooking and an ability to bring the best out of his sous-chefs, Elia (whom he pronounced the most talented of the bunch in an interview with Chow.com) and Betty (a clutzy goofball known for her colossal screw-ups and miscalculations in the “Top Chef” kitchens).

Marcel summed it all up with his typical savory mix of respect and humility: “I thought it was going to take more than f***ing saffron and paprika to beat me, but, apparently not.” (To see more of Marcel’s post-award comments, go here.)

Of course, Ilan had more skill in the kitchen than Marcel was willing to give him credit for. While he may have leaned heavily on some Spanish-flavored standards, Ilan managed not only to choose an appealing array of dishes for his final meal but to cook most of his dishes perfectly (with a major assist from Elia, of course). Marcel took a far riskier and more egocentric route, fiddling with miniature hardened-sugar bottles of vinaigrette for an otherwise bland salad instead of focusing on making every dish memorable and flavorful in the absence of such highbrow nouvelle magic. And Marcel somehow had trouble playing nicely with others to the very end, even when his victory depended on it. He chose executive chef Sam Talbot (who has looked like the most obvious choice for a winner all season) and amiable slacker Michael Midgey as his sous-chefs, then promptly alienated both of them by neglecting to fill them in on his grand vision the night of the big meal. As a result, Sam and Michael seemed ambivalent about helping Marcel win, and didn’t prevent him from making a number of big mistakes, including leaving the main ingredient for one of the courses behind entirely.

In fact, even after the “Top Chef” finale was done taping, the cheftestants weren’t through with Marcel. When asked about Marcel’s annoying traits by New York magazine, Ilan and Sam were both more than happy to dish: Sam painted Marcel as a poseur who spoke like a surfer or a gangster, depending on who was listening, while Ilan offered up this anecdote:

“This didn’t air, but he [Marcel] had to make this dish about lust and I told him that he’s never lusted after a woman, all he does is go home and jerk off thinking about Joël Robuchon. And the only thing he could think of as a comeback was, ‘I don’t jerk off to Joël Robuchon.’ That was it.”

Of course, insulting the weakness and humorlessness of Marcel’s comebacks may be the weakest and most humorless comeback of all, particularly given that Ilan’s win was so narrow. In fact, the celebrity chefs who gathered to judge Ilan’s and Marcel’s meals seemed more impressed and inspired by Marcel’s cooking than by Ilan’s. And the show’s main judges seemed to hedge their bets before announcing Ilan as the winner, making it very clear that they hadn’t chosen the person who might be a better chef in a few years, but had selected the best chef today.

It was exactly the sort of practical, well-reasoned choice that those of us who love a spirited sociopath couldn’t get behind. Even though Marcel’s talents for precious plates and frothy foams at first seemed as laughable as his Heat Miser hairdo, even though he slowly but surely enraged each and every one of his peers, starting with the oldest chefs in the group, Betty and Frank, and moving on to his last remaining ally, Elia (who not only abandoned him but accused him of cheating in last week’s episode), even though he angered Cliff enough to inspire him to grind his smug face into the carpet in the guise of a prank (a move that led to Cliff’s dismissal from the competition), Marcel had the kind of inspired inventiveness and courage of conviction that a young chef needs to succeed.

And Ilan? He may possess a very practical approach to making the tastiest food he can (and hey, no one’s knocking taste over frilly foodie flourishes), but does he have the kind of personality that inspires a team to rally around him? Does he have the fire and drive and passion to succeed in the brutal restaurant business? Hell, does Ilan even want to start his own restaurant? Isn’t it easier to see him blowing those hundred-thousand U.S. dollars on a decadent food-, wine- and babe-sampling tour of Europe?

Then again, maybe it’s time to ask WWABD, i.e., What would Anthony Bourdain do? Surely the confident author of “Kitchen Confidential” would’ve gone for some high-priced thrills and spills before committing himself to the huge challenge of starting a restaurant. On the other hand, Marcel has more of Bourdain’s arrogance and nastiness and imperviousness to criticism, which may be exactly what it takes to survive on the brutal culinary landscape. Judge Tom Colicchio seemed to agree on his “Top Chef” blog last week, where he dismissed complaints about Marcel, asserting that “jokes, insults, and tough banter are part of every kitchen I’ve ever been in, and most people just let it go.”

In the end, Ilan left Hawaii with the title of Top Chef, the fancy kitchen (What if he’s renting?) and the $100,000 prize, but Marcel definitely won the title of Public Enemy No. 1, a title that, if fellow losing winners Boston Rob (“Survivor”), Puck (“The Real World”) and Omarosa (“The Apprentice”) are any indication, may be even more bankable than an actual win. Maybe bringing the cheftestants’ tempers from a slow simmer to a full boil was Marcel’s most inspired move of all.

Although Mrs. Stemkowski was the sort of teacher who seemed to despise about half of the kids in the class for their lazy, unruly ways, I was almost as tightly wound as she was, so she was always nice to me. Still, I found one of those cards above the chalkboard extremely unnerving. It said something like:

Time, that’s it! When it’s gone, it’s gone!

Each time I looked up at those words, I’d get a feeling of vertigo. I’d imagine that time was disappearing behind us every second like pavement on a superhighway, and the future was rushing toward us at breakneck speed. The phrase really spoke to my anxieties at the time, since I’d recently figured out that I’d never be 7 years old again, a fact that seemed unspeakably sad, particularly since most adults I knew seemed to wish they were still little kids. Also, it reminded me of some lyrics on the radio that year: Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future! The song didn’t make sense, since time was clearly not slipping into the future but rushing into the past, but either way, like Steve Miller, it made me want to fly like an eagle, to the sea instead of sitting in the classroom, having a silent panic attack.

Time after time
And yet, when I didn’t look up and read that quote, I usually felt that time was unbearably slow and plodding, particularly when we were forced to write in cursive or memorize our multiplication tables.

This discovery that the experience of time is highly subjective and malleable occurs to me whenever we meet up with Jack Bauer of “24″ again. Before we can even get a handle on what Jack’s been up to since we last saw him (crouching in some watery Chinese dungeon, being whipped and beaten and injected with truth serum and getting particularly merciless Brazilian waxes), the clock starts counting down all over again.

Time is Jack’s worst enemy, worse than those unforgiving Chinese who’ve been torturing the poor man for two years now (and he never spoke a word to them!), worse than the steady parade of Yusufs and Bierkos and Fayeds that clamor relentlessly to bring our great country to its knees. Jack has no time to tell anyone what he’s been through, no time for a few counseling sessions or even a brief consult with a psychiatrist who might prescribe something for his post-traumatic stress disorder, no time to thank Chloe for helping to fake his death or for risking her job and sometimes her life to get him out of a million and one bad situations. When Chloe starts to say to Jack, “Oh my god, I thought you were still in some dank, smelly torture chamber in China…” Jack doesn’t just cut her off, he actually scolds her the way Mrs. Stemkowski might’ve scolded a kid who was scribbling on her desk or talking in class: “Chloe, we don’t have time right now!” he says, which is the same thing he tells everyone he meets, over and over again, whether it’s the president or some guy on the street whose car he wants to borrow and then wreck.

Actually, have you noticed how Jack doesn’t have time to ask anyone for anything anymore? In the old days, he would explain to complete strangers that he was a CTU agent and he needed their car to prevent a major disaster. “This is a matter of national security,” he’d hiss at them while reaching for their keys. These days, Jack just shoves them out of the way. During last week’s premiere, Jack made like the protagonist in a game of Grand Theft Auto and blithely walked up to a random car, opened the driver-side door, pulled out the driver, threw him onto the ground and drove away, no explanation.

Like Mrs. Stemkowski, Jack has a lot to teach us about time management. We all say to each other, “Sorry I haven’t called until now, I’ve been so busy.” “I’d love to do that if I had the time, I just have no time these days.” The irony is that we usually say these sorts of things when we’re in the middle of a two-hour phone call. If we were Jack Bauer, we’d answer the phone and say, in a scoldy voice, “Martha? I don’t have time for this right now!” and then we’d hang up and do our taxes.

In addition to possessing such admirable curtness, Jack is able to make lightning-fast decisions, and he’s always right. When Jack is handcuffed to a chair and Fayed leaves the room? Jack secretly removes his pulse monitor so it looks like he just died. Fayed’s stooge comes over to check on him, and chomp! Jack bites him in the jugular vein and kills him instantly without even using his hands. There may be more violence on other shows, but nowhere else is the violence quite this efficient.

Yes, you know it’s going to be a great season of “24″ (9 p.m. Mondays on Fox) when Jack (Keifer Sutherland) bites a man to death in the first few minutes of the season. On top of that, Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) has a feisty love interest in her semi-shifty ex-husband Morris (Carlo Rota), and the guy who played Claire’s first creepy boyfriend on “Six Feet Under,” Eric Balfour, appears as a possibly traitorous CTU agent named Milo who hates Morris’ guts. Throw in the fact that Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside) is president with Karen Hayes as his national security advisor and Peter MacNicol as his deliciously pesky chief of staff, and you’ve got a group of people likely to spend the next 24 hours panicking, bickering and undermining each other’s authority in rapid succession. Best of all, instead of having to wait until the middle of the season for the terrorists to bring death and destruction upon the land, a mushroom cloud rises over L.A. within the first four hours of Jack’s ticking clock. When the president and the agents at CTU turned pale and got very quiet, the audience at home high-fived and settled in for some good old-fashioned morbidity.

And how great was it that Jack was forced to shoot Curtis (Roger R. Cross) when Curtis was about to take out Assad? This ranks at the top of the list of morally ambiguous moves Jack has had to make in order to save untold millions of lives, right above Jack’s indirect murder of Audrey’s ex-husband when he insisted on disconnecting the man’s life support in order to keep a key informant alive instead, and below his point-blank assassination of CTU director Ryan Chappelle (Paul Schulze). You also had to love current CTU director Bill Buchanan’s (James Morrison) call to Jack, in which he casually mentioned Jack’s coldblooded murder, saying essentially, Hey, bummer about Curtis, but you did the right thing, man. Hang in there!

Naturally Jack belongs in the “Stop screwing around!” camp rather than the “Do what you can to get by!” camp, so Bill’s words hold no comfort. Yes, it’s a little odd that, right after Jack expresses a distaste for torture, having endured it for two years straight, he turns around and quickly blows Curtis away instead of letting the standoff unfold for, say, a few more seconds. While we’re at it, it’s also strange that the president would even consider loading a bunch of known terrorists onto a plane and turning them over to another known terrorist, or that Palmer would grant Assad amnesty, or that young terrorist Ahmed (Kal Penn) would get some jittery suburban dad to deliver his package to Fayed for him.

But that’s what makes “24″ so damn good. You don’t suspend your disbelief when watching this show so much as savor the total implausibility of the entire charade. That, along with Jack’s excellent time-management skills, is what brings me back every season, and this season looks like it’s going to be more idiotically rushed and implausible than any season that came before. Plus, don’t you get the feeling that Jack is going to be horribly, horribly wrong for the first time in his life very soon, and that Wayne Palmer is going to trust him and live to regret it? As long as it makes Jack miserable and gives me that old feeling of vertigo, I’m all for it.

Food, glorious food!
Time is also running out on the second excellent season of “Top Chef” (10 p.m. Wednesdays on Bravo). With only the most capable and creative aspiring chefs left, the competition is more interesting than ever. Last week, Sam, Ilan, Elia, Marcel and Cliff had to make a five-course dinner for a bunch of couples on a romantic night out, and the dishes they created seemed to be their best yet. The judges loved Sam’s scallops and Ilan’s fideos with clams and saffron the most, with Elia’s dessert and Marcel and Cliff’s dishes coming in at the bottom of the heap.

But after the five-course challenge, the aspiring chefs went back to their digs, got drunk and went a little crazy. First, Elia and Ilan shaved their heads. Ilan already had short hair, but you really had to admire Elia’s audacity, to shave off a head full of pretty, long, dark, shiny curls. (Sam claimed that he would shave his head, but then backed out, apparently deciding that it was too hard to part with his pretty curls.)

Next, the group decided that it would be hilarious to shave off precious Marcel’s Heat Miser hair while he slept. After all, pretentious Marcel had been pissing everyone off all season with his snotty comments and his haughty schooling in molecular gastronomy and his self-serving babyish attitude. What would be better than to take a swipe at his big, stupid head of hair?

Cliff was the clear man for the job, being big enough to hold Marcel down while someone else shaved him. But instead of taking the clippers to the smarmy little wiener’s head, the white folks stood around giggling while Cliff strong-armed Marcel. Cliff dutifully waited for someone to approach with clippers… OK, maybe he ground Marcel’s snotty face into the carpet a little bit, but nothing more than you’d expect from a domineering big brother. Having had my own snotty face ground into a carpet on more than one occasion, I can tell you that, while it’s certainly a humbling experience, you never arise from the situation with more than a few rug burns and a slightly broken spirit. Besides, wasn’t this the humbling experience that Marcel was unconsciously crying out for these long weeks?

Here’s where things got annoying: Judge Tom Colicchio solemnly informed Cliff that the rules clearly state that contestants can’t lay hands on each other, and then told him that he was ejected from the competition. Cliff accepted this decision humbly (as far as we know), and though we saw the other competitors quietly accepting that Cliff was out, it was pretty clear that intelligent, independent thinkers like Elia and the others wouldn’t have taken such news sitting down.

Isn’t it more than a little creepy how often black people are kicked off reality shows? Obviously the culture of these shows is pretty white — black reality-show stars mention this all the time — plus the other contestants are white and often don’t remotely understand the black contestant, and the black contestant rarely has other black people to confide in, and, after weeks of alienation, the black person gets pissed off, and all the white producers freak the hell out. Get rid of that angry black man before he hurts someone!

Rules are rules, sure, and of course it’s not acceptable to overpower a fellow teammate under any circumstances. All I’m saying is that, if it were a skinny white boy and not a big black man who wrestled Marcel to the ground, I can’t see that guy getting kicked out of the competition. The judges kept saying that Cliff would’ve gone home anyway, since his steak was too rare and too dull, but if that’s the case, why not just send him home for his food? The trumped-up drama of dismissing the guy for breaking the rules felt more than a little sanctimonious, not to mention unfair. To encourage conflict to a ruthless extent and then balk over a little hazing seems out of place on a show that has managed to remain entertaining by relentlessly focusing on the food above all else.

The nose knows
Speaking of a little hazing, after receiving some delectable examples of truly terrible dialogue that could not, however, be described as “on-the-nose,” it’s clear that I need to explain what on-the-nose dialogue is in the first place. When characters deliver lines that are hopelessly on-the-nose, that means that they come out and say something directly instead of letting the other characters in the scene and the audience figure out what they mean. Most of the dialogue in “24,” for example, is on-the-nose: “We don’t have time!” “Why are you doing that? Get back to work!” “We have to stop Fayed before he kills again!” This kind of talk works just fine on “24″ (or it does most of the time), but on other dramas, on-the-nose dialogue sounds hopelessly obvious and clumsy, since normal people don’t speak that way about emotionally charged issues (and if they do, well, it’s artless and boring).

When a man and a woman are in a fight, for example, they rarely say exactly what they mean to each other. The wife doesn’t say, “I love you but I feel that your inability to have an intimate conversation may mean that you’re having an affair.” To which the husband never responds, “Well, I feel crowded by your suspicions in a way that makes me tempted to go out and have an affair!” Instead, the worried wife mumbles that the wallpaper in the kitchen is peeling off, and the husband snaps that she should stop occupying her head with such petty matters. Good dialogue hints at what the characters are feeling without coming out and saying it, so that the audience’s thoughts and feelings are provoked, and they have to sort through what’s going on the way they might have to interpret the words and actions of someone in their own lives.

At any rate, we may have to include a second-place prize for general-purpose crappy dialogue, because some of the examples you’ve sent so far are just too bad not to share. Ach, but there’s no room for that now! I wasted time and now doth time waste me!

Next week: A slew of midseason comedies bring the pain.

Yes, countless are the times I’ve awoken in a cold sweat in the middle of the night — to quiet the cries of my firstborn, sure, but more importantly, to address my racing thoughts about you. I have imagined you during my absence from these pages, chickens, flipping aimlessly through the TV section of your local newspapers, or running out and purchasing a copy of TV Guide in a moment of silent desperation. I can’t bear to picture my poor flock like that, clucking anxiously, your bloodshot chickeny eyes wandering to and fro across the page, trying to make sense of the concrete information presented therein! You can only be wondering: Where are the extremely biased, high-strung, rambling assessments to which I’ve grown accustomed? Where are the endless personal digressions and indulgent asides that keep me distracted from the fact that I’m actually reading about television, that I’m skipping right past the cover article on Guantánamo or North Korea or the results of the election, and instead greedily devouring bemused conjecture regarding the new season of “The OC”?

Don’t think for a second the stakes aren’t high. What if one of your intellectual chicken friends were to stop by and spot that TV Guide on your coffee table, right next to a crumpled New York Times Style section, on top of that untouched front-page article on child labor abuses in Ghana?

And what if, over the course of the past month, you’ve actually become attached to such printed material, offering as it does actual programming information and balanced, straightforward critiques? Perhaps by now you’re even willing to overlook the various authors’ obvious shortcomings, as evidenced by her enthusiasm for some of Oxygen’s lighter offerings, or by his inability to miss a single episode from the “CSI” franchise including “CSI: Miami.” Perhaps it doesn’t even bother you, the idea of being led through the hinterlands of television by someone who doesn’t remotely attempt to hide his willingness to spend one hour each week in the company of David Caruso, someone who doesn’t even cringe ever-so-slightly at the umpteenth sepia-toned swamp scene that begins with a close-up of a prettily manicured severed hand and ends with Caruso, blinking into some middle distance while growling a miserably macho line of dialogue, inevitably speculating on the unmatched brutality and mercilessness of the sort of human being that must be responsible for such a brutal and merciless killing.

Don’t lose your sense of what’s important now, chickens, at this 11th hour, when a sea of useless notions and incoherent evaluations and highly prejudicial analyses are once again available to you! Don’t forget that I know you, my fowl friends. I know that you care more about TV shows that you don’t even watch than you care about the latest car bombing in Baghdad or the latest unreasonable bit of legislation introduced in Congress, and I love you just the same! I love you unconditionally, regardless of how hopelessly shallow you are, and I always will. Becoming a mother made it possible for me to love you that much. Do you think that guy with the “CSI” jones can love you like that? Unless he also recently bore a child, I’m guessing that he’s incapable of such a depth of compassion and love.

So take a deep breath and silence those noisy thoughts scurrying through your tiny pea-brains, chickens. I’m back and more unfocused and long-winded than ever!

Absence of malice

And thanks to the fact that I’m a mother now, a state which only those of you who’ve sat tirelessly on eggs for several days can possibly begin to comprehend, I also have a whole new understanding of the meaning of family, and, more importantly, the meaning of shows about families — namely, I hate them more than ever.

Now, HBO’s “Six Feet Under” was a show about family, sure, but the family in that show was portrayed realistically. They spent their time barely tolerating each other’s existences, silently judging each other, openly criticizing each other’s choices and only occasionally expressing love for each other, mostly by talking nonsensically about the spaghetti being perfectly cooked. Because the writers of that show knew that in real families, comments like “I like those shoes. Are those new?” or “Can I read that book when you’re done with it?” are taken by other family members to mean “I love you” — which, thankfully, makes the unsavory task of actually saying the words “I love you” completely unnecessary.

But that’s not how the fictional family on ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters” (10 p.m. Sundays) operates, no sir. The Walkers demonstrate their love for one another by lavishing one another in warm embraces, kisses on the cheek, sincere smiles, heartfelt inquiries into their well-being. This greeting-card cooing is followed immediately by gentle ribbing and sweet-natured teasing, which very quickly (after the first commercial break) devolves into tense exchanges in which the truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth) springs into the picture: “We hate going to your annual charity event, Mom, we’ve always hated it!” “You never accepted me for who I was, older brother!” “Why don’t you get your act together, drug-addled younger ne’er-do-well? Your drunky antics wear all of us out!”

But those awkward confrontations, in which the entire emotional history of two members of the family is laid bare in a matter of minutes? Don’t let them get you down! Because, after the next commercial break, relief is on the way, in the form of a tearful “I always loved you and respected you and admired you so, soooooo much [Mom, brother, sister, husband, son, etc.]! All of our issues and problems are utterly overshadowed by my undying love for you! (Did I mention that I’ve always been secretly a little bit envious of you?)” In case you can’t quite understand just how touching and important the exchange is, there’s warm, fuzzy “Touched by an Angel” music playing in the background. If you doubt me — and thanks to your newfound familiarity with more evenhanded, less biased reviewers, you probably do — take a gander at these actual lines of dialogue, spoken by actual characters on recent episodes of “Brothers & Sisters”:

“Kitty, did I drive you away? Did I really? Because I swear, I’ll never forgive myself!”

(Through tears) “Mom, you rule! You just do.”

“Oh, all the emergency rooms I’ve been to with you kids!”

“I’d trade lives with you in a second!”

“I’m so worried about us — all of us, the family. I don’t know how we’re going to get through this! So much is changing since your father died! It feels like everything we swallowed down or papered over or just chose to ignore and put off fixing is coming out to haunt us!”

“Whatever it was that happened between us, we did it together. I went out to crazy New York and I found myself — or the beginning of a self. Maybe it was supposed to happen!”

“You were right about Page, I’m sorry.”

“You were right about me!”

Now, I can understand a mother drawing on such tremendous wells of compassion and forgiveness and love. Mothers are simply superior to regular people, let’s face it. Plus, the mother here is played by Sally Field, who we all know feels emotions more passionately than pretty much any other human being on the planet. But obviously people who aren’t Sally Field and aren’t mothers don’t say things like “I’ll never forgive myself” or “I’m sorry.” People who aren’t mothers tend to have about as much ability to feel meaningful emotions and express them as, say, Fonzy.

How much Ecstasy do the writers of “Brothers & Sisters” have to take just to write a single episode? I mean, they actually expect us to believe that a non-mother, an ordinary, regular, limited mortal, could say something like “I’d trade lives with you in a second!” — and not just to another person, but to a blood relative?

Look, I’d be willing to believe that maybe the Walkers are just one of those really strange touchy-feely California families in which everyone hugs and learns and speaks openly about their issues. Maybe if everyone in a family is smart and beautiful and rich, maybe then they can get into big fights and resolve them completely, with no residual resentment or unspoken anger, by the fourth commercial break. But it’s not just the family — everyone on this show is utterly healthy and expressive and open. Sarah (Rachel Griffiths) takes her daughter to the doctor, and after giving her a diagnosis, the doctor stops and looks Sarah right in the eyes and says, “I want you to know something. I see a lot of families come through here, but I don’t see a lot of kids come through here with that many people in the waiting room.” Sarah smugly concedes, “We’re kind of a tribe.” The wonderfully compassionate doctor’s (totally unnecessary) reply? “Yes, you certainly are.” Blech!

But the best episode of all featured that fabulous charity event that no one in the family wanted to attend. It was a big night for the Walkers, see? But everything — and I do mean everything — went wrong! Gay brother got drunk! Sexy married brother got caught having sexy sex with his sexy wife in the coat closet! Mom confronted Dad’s mistress in the ladies’ room! It was a total fiasco! Ah, but even though the night was a total disaster, in the end, everyone apologized to everyone else, and then the whole family stepped outside and slow-danced together in the parking lot. Yes, slow-danced. In the parking lot. Then the camera pulled up and away — I think it was a crane shot, in fact — so we could savor just how poignant and special a moment the whole huggy, lovey family was having together, while really terrible sappy music played — not good sappy music, like you’d find on “The OC” or “Party of Five,” but incredibly awful sappy music, music awful enough that you suddenly felt like it was 1995 and your grandmother just switched the channel to CBS while you were in the bathroom.

Oh, and did I mention Calista Flockhart was there, slow-dancing in the parking lot with everybody else? Honestly, ABC should send out promotional barf bags with its press kits for this one.

Malice in wonderland

Ah, but it feels good to hate a TV show as much as I hate “Brothers & Sisters”! I can’t remember the last time I hated a show this much, and it’s downright nourishing to my soul to feel such extreme loathing and disgust for a truly cringe-inducing, cloying nightmare of a show.

Of course, I’m a mother now, and mothers love to hate. Just as motherhood enhances one’s capacity to love with all of one’s heart — a feeling that non-mothers can’t even touch, really (trust me, I’d describe the feeling to you, but it would only frustrate you to recognize how far from feeling it yourself you actually are and will always be) — motherhood also enhances one’s capacity to hate with reckless abandon. Think of the grizzly who rips innocent passersby limb from limb only when her cubs are present. A mother’s ability to hate can be truly awe-inspiring!

Luckily, I’ve also found a show that taps into my overflowing reservoir of love and adoration: Bravo’s “Top Chef”! During the show’s first season, I assumed Bravo was pathetically attempting to retain “Project Runway” fans with some low-rent “Next Food Network Star” also-ran. Little did I know that “Top Chef” (10 p.m. Wednesdays) is everything that Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen” always wanted to be, but never was.

In contrast to the belligerent thugs recruited to appear on “Hell’s Kitchen,” the aspiring gourmands of “Top Chef” are dynamic, strange, interesting people. Instead of demeaning, abusive challenges that have nothing to do with culinary talent, “Top Chef” features creative, interesting cooking challenges that actually give the viewer an idea of which of the contestants has both solid skills in the kitchen and also an inventive spirit and an imaginative approach to food. And, rather than boring us with endless shouting matches as they do on “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Top Chef” puts the food front and center, only veering into the interpersonal relationships when they’re entertaining enough to warrant airtime.

And they often are, thanks to the assortment of outspoken oddballs selected for the show, from whiny tattletale Marissa to jolly, likable Josie to skilled down-home cook Mia. Each chef’s skills are a little bit different from the others, and their personalities are varied enough to guarantee a steady flow of clashes and conflicts as well as burgeoning friendships.

Also, if you’ve ever known anyone in the restaurant business, you know that these people drink like fish. The culture is conducive to heavy drinking — these are people who stay up late every night, surrounded by good food and high-priced bottles of alcohol. Throwing back strong drinks and socializing and gossiping — this is why half of them were attracted to the business in the first place.

If you doubt me, check out the episode where the chefs are split into two teams and charged with feeding thousands of people at an upcoming food event. While one team breaks down exactly what they’re going to make, what they’ll need to make it, etc., the other team mixes up a batch of drinks and gets wasted, then spends the next day wandering around the market in a hung-over haze, trying to grab what they need.

But the highlight of the show so far has to be Marcel, a 26-year-old with Heat Miser hair who says he’s “best at avant-garde molecular gastronomy” — I think that means in addition to being a chef, he’s also an artist and a chemist. Naturally, Marcel disdains the other chefs, with their pathetic lack of degrees in art and chemistry. Sadly, though, his odd creations tend to befuddle rather than beguile the judges. And when the “Create an ice cream flavor” challenge comes along, you just know Marcel is going to crash and burn. Cut to Mr. Green Christmas, serving up his avocado and bacon ice cream to a crowd of horrified children, who promptly spit it out onto the ground. If only Marcel would complete this fine picture by turning on his heels and howling, “Everything that I touch, starts to melt in my clutch! I-I-I-I-I-I’m too much!” (Da dum dum dum, daaaa-dum.)

Mother’s ilk

Speaking of too much, this column is way too long, but I have so much more to share with you! I guess that’s just the way life is for mothers: We have so much to give, and we tend to give way too much of ourselves without taking anything in return. We simply can’t help it; it’s in our nature. We’re just incredibly benevolent, luminous beings who float above the petty concerns of mere mortals. I’d say more, but I don’t want you to feel insecure about how self-serving and limited and shriveled up and dead inside you are, by comparison.

On the other hand, if you enjoy being painfully aware of how relatively impoverished your soul is, just tune in for the next episode of “Brothers & Sisters” and take a gander at that simpering, faraway look on Ally McBeal’s face when she surveys the landscape and reflects on her deep faith in the family and in family values. Or soak in a few seconds of Sally Field’s harried, sentimental Mom shtick. Don’t you wish you were that genuine and idealistic and soulful? I wish you were, too, chickens, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you just the way you are.

Next week: Are you lost in “Lost” or has “Lost” finally lost you? Does darkness become “The OC”?