Love crashes if you try too hard.

SPOILER ALERT: In the final scene of the Judd Apatow-produced Netflix series Love, we learn that eager-to-please protagonist Gus Cruikshank (Paul Rust) is merely a figment of the imagination of eager-to-please Pete Holmes (Pete Holmes), the protagonist of the Judd Apatow-produced HBO series Crashing.

"You taught me that it's wrong to lie, George."

"'After just 22 minutes of deliberation Webster convinced me to plead guilty,' said George Papadopoulos, an aide to President Trump during his 2016 campaign."

Good morning, excessive heat warning.

Last August I started watching the first 20 minutes of Good Morning America every weekday before heading off to work. I like catching up with the previous day's news (I never said anything remotely like that even when I was working at CNN almost 20 years ago), and I like seeing meteorologist Ginger Zee. She obviously knows her stuff, which is one reason why I have a crush on her, but she also happens to be very attractive.

I'm sorry for objectifying you, Mrs. Zee, but I promise to never send you a creepy fan letter or tag you inappropriately on Instagram. Your "excessive heat warning" is on my radar, however, as it was on yours yesterday morning:

A few weeks earlier, on May 11, you said, "It is very elongated in some areas," describing severe weather that formed in the scrotum of Texas and Oklahoma before climaxing in North Carolina. Or at least that's how it looked to me, a recovering adolescent, on your weather map:

I also seem to recall you referring to midwestern homes pelted with hail that "took a pounding in the backyard," but maybe I overslept one morning and dreamed that particular weather report. If I did, it wasn't "the wettest on record," to quote you once again, with "up to six-plus inches possible" (like you, I believe in science, not fiction, no matter how detrimental it might be to my ego), but if my crush could be represented on your high-tech ABC weather map, there's a 100 percent chance it would be a blushing bright red.

Who'd you get down with in '94, Will?

On The Get Down, Netflix's megabudget, disco-era series, Dizzee, played by Will Smith's son, Jaden, draws himself as an alien.

Is he actually Men in Black's Agent J as a teenager?

You're welcome for the crossover idea, Sony, since your proposed Men in Black-meets-21 Jump Street mash-up movie never got off the ground.

Like in 2012's Men in Black 3, J will travel back in time, but in the fourth installment I want him to meet The Get Down's Zeke, played by Justice Smith, and say, "Wait, are you teenage me? You look more like me than Dizzee from certain angles. Allow me to break the fourth wall here for a second: Did I sleep with a Puerto Rican woman around Thanksgiving of '94? I know 'Smith' is a common last name, but you're freakin' me out right now, Justice!"

dystopian future

We're all watching The Apprentice now. And we're all going to pay for it one way or another.

—from "All TV Shows, All the Time" by Joy Wang and Michael Hastings, Newsweek, June 27, 2005

How are we going to survive reality for the next four years?

In the summer of 2001, one year after CBS's Survivor became the first breakout "reality" hit on network TV, encouraging all the networks to produce similar shows, I remember hearing friends and other people say, "This trend won't last." But the following summer American Idol debuted, and it was as big, if not bigger, than Survivor. The fox, and not just the Fox network, had gotten into the chicken coop.

The networks, and especially cable channels, like reality shows because they're cheaper to produce than scripted shows. Donald Trump's presidential campaign spent half as much money as Hillary Clinton's, but Trump still won the states necessary for him to win the election; the star of NBC's hit reality show The Apprentice, produced by the same company that unleashed Survivor on the world, beat the odds.

And even though reality shows aren't really "real"—they're partly scripted to maximize drama, and the people on-screen, despite not being professional actors, are often seen acting out for the camera—they indulge viewers' appetite for voyeurism and rubbernecking, just as Trump indulged in racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic comments to woo like-minded voters.

My supervisor at work reminded me of the scene in Back to the Future in which Marty McFly is trying to convince Doc Brown, in 1955, that he's traveled back in time from 1985.

Doc asks Marty who's the president of the United States 30 years in the future.

When he hears the answer he scoffs, "Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's vice president—Jerry Lewis?"

President Reagan reportedly liked Back to the Future. But the thought of four years (or more) with Trump as our president sends chills down my spine.

"Television's really not my thing."

In November 2013, a little less than halfway through Person of Interest's third season, Taraji P. Henson's character, Detective Joss Carter, was killed off. Henson was billed third on the show, behind Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson, but she was the only cast member who could boast of having an Oscar nomination on her resumé: Best Supporting Actress, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).

"I knew when I signed onto the project that the character would have a beginning, middle and end," Henson said on Late Show With David Letterman, according to TheWrap.com, the day after her final episode aired. "I do more feature films, and television's really not my thing ... I thought it would be the perfect venue for me to do a television show and not be stuck for seven years."

A little more than a year later Henson is costarring with Terrence Howard (also her costar in the 2005 feature film Hustle & Flow) in Empire, Fox's new prime-time hit. The network renewed it for a second season shortly after its second episode aired last week, and although it's anyone's guess as to whether Empire will go the distance of seven seasons, it's clear that even if the feeling isn't mutual, television has a thing for Taraji P. Henson.

"The future is now!"

"The future is now! Soon every American home will integrate their television, phone, and computer. You'll be able to visit the Louvre on one channel or watch female mud wrestling on another. You can do your shopping at home or play Mortal Kombat with a friend in Vietnam. There's no end to the possibilities!"

—psychotic cable-TV technician Chip Douglas (Jim Carrey) in The Cable Guy (1996)

Eighteen years later, however, I still haven't found that female-mud-wrestling channel. C'est la vie.

'Allo, guv'ner! Wot you doin' 'ere?

"If you are seeking a movie about the end of the world, you have a lot of choices," writes the New York Times's A.O. Scott in his June 22 review of the comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. "There are the sturdy, old, large-scale disaster epics, of course, but lately the trend has been toward more intimate studies of apocalypse, Lars von Trier's 'Melancholia' and Abel Ferrara's '4:44 Last Day on Earth' being two notable recent examples."

But what about the trend of English actresses, accents intact, providing romantic interest for American leading men? In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World Keira Knightley is paired up with Steve Carell, while in the recent box office disappointment The Five-Year Engagement Emily Blunt plays Jason Segel's fiancée. Likewise, in the 2011 romantic drama Like Crazy American twentysomething Anton Yelchin falls for British college student Felicity Jones, but the trend also made its way onto the small screen this season as Ashton Kutcher's lovelorn billionaire courted a Brit named Zoey (Sophie Winkleman) on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men.

English actors have also been popping up in supporting roles in otherwise this-side-of-the-Atlantic movies and TV shows, including Hugh Dancy as Sarah Paulson's husband in the 2011 indie film Martha Marcy May Marlene; Eve Best as Dr. Eleanor O'Hara, the title character's best friend, on Showtime's Nurse Jackie; and Richard Ayoade as a suburbanite who forms a neighborhood watch with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill in the sci-fi comedy The Watch, which opens next month. I'd like to throw Lost's Henry Ian Cusick in with this crowd for his role on ABC's soapy Scandal, but he's apparently half Peruvian and half Scottish, not English. Nonetheless, he sounds British on the D.C.-set drama. (This ain't over, Cusick.)

Taiwanese singer-actor Jay Chou was reportedly cast as Kato in last year's Seth Rogen vehicle The Green Hornet to strengthen the film's global box office, especially in China, where cinema screens are being erected left and right: the LA Times noted in April that Titanic played on 180 screens there in 1998, whereas the recent 3-D rerelease opened on almost 2,500 screens. But England's movie theaters don't generate impressive box office tallies the way China and Russia's multitude of new multiplexes do, so it's hard to see actors like Knightley, Blunt, and Ayoade being cast in big American studio comedies for their transatlantic appeal.

Is latent American Revolution guilt to blame? Or have focus groups been consistently telling Hollywood development executives that they'd like to see more token Brits on-screen because (1) they sure do talk funny and (2) they sure do sound smart when they're not talkin' funny? I haven't seen Like Crazy, but at least its casting follows the logic of the story being told. In all the other examples, however, the token Brit just seems to be there as part of a foreign exchange program concocted by Tony Blair and George W. Bush right before the former left office in 2007. I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but plenty of Americans are still out of work—enough already with the outsourcing.

On a positive note, this alleged exchange program I just made up has accidentally given us Showtime's laugh-out-loud funny sitcom Episodes, which is set in Hollywood but filmed in the UK (where it airs on BBC Two), and stars Friends MVP Matt LeBlanc as "himself" alongside Englanders Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig, who play husband-and-wife comedy writers wooed by a major network to create an across-the-pond version of their hit sitcom, "Lyman's Boys." I bet the writers of Episodes could have a great time inserting a random Brit into its show-within-the-show, "Pucks!" (The second season debuts next Sunday on Showtime.)



6/25 update: After watching the first episode of HBO's new series The Newsroom, I can now add Emily Mortimer to this list.

kinda sorta TV reviews for tweens and teens (i.e., shows I watched this year and wrote about for school)

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes! (Disney XD, 2010-present; ages 6 and up)

The animated series featuring Marvel Comics' most celebrated "all-star" superhero team begins by showing its individual heroes in action before they joined forces, with entire episodes focusing on Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, and Ant-Man and Wasp. Later on in season one, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Panther join the existing team, which must round up all the supervillains who've escaped from four specially designed prisons during a mysterious breakout. Earth's mightiest heroes must learn on the job how to communicate effectively with each other while also building trust and respecting what each person brings to the team (teachers, allow the Avengers to show your students how group projects are done). But, most importantly, they must remember to stay out of the Hulk's way when he's angry.

I like how The Avengers takes its time establishing the characters and their personalities. That way the viewer can see certain conflicts coming and therefore will anticipate the fallout between, say, Thor and the Hulk. The action seems fairly standard as far as animated superhero shows go, though both bad guys and (minor) good guys die, which was never the case on Super Friends 30 years ago. Fans of The Avengers are surely looking forward to the big-screen version of the comic book that opens next summer, but the animated series just may give it a run for its money in the storytelling department. (To see a promo for The Avengers, click here.)

JONAS, a.k.a. JONAS L.A. (Disney Channel, 2009-2010; ages 8-14)

JONAS started out as a sitcom in which the bubblegum-rock Jonas Brothers trio—Joe, Kevin, and Nick—would play secret agents; the title of the show stood for "Junior Operatives Networking as Spies." But after shooting one episode, the spy concept was abandoned for a simpler premise in which the three siblings, renamed the Lucas brothers, would balance high school with the pressures of being world-famous rock stars. Jonas just happened to be the name of the street they lived on in this iteration of the show, though the acronym-like spelling of the title was retained. After a poorly received first season, JONAS was retooled and became JONAS L.A., with the brothers moving to southern California. Despite the change in scenery, the ratings didn't improve, and JONAS L.A. was canceled near the end of 2010.

JONAS is pretty airheaded, even for a Disney Channel tween show, and can't hold a candle to The Monkees, one of its TV inspirations, but it does teach kids the importance of looking out for one's siblings, not to mention lip-synching one of your own songs with a certain amount of accuracy so you don't look like a fool on camera. An educational tie-in could revolve around Kevin's song "I Left My Heart in Scandinavia": students would be asked to locate the region of Scandinavia on a map, then follow a teacher's made-up clues to find where exactly in the region—Denmark, Norway, or Sweden—Kevin left his heart, all the while learning interesting facts about those three countries. (To see a promo for JONAS L.A., click here.)

Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide (Nickelodeon, 2004-2007; ages 10-14)

This Nickelodeon sitcom centers on Ned Bigby (Devon Werkheiser), a Ferris Bueller type who breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the tween audience at home when explaining the dos and don'ts of middle school survival. His two best friends are Cookie (Daniel Curtis Lee), the biggest black nerd to hit the airwaves since Steve Urkel, and Moze (Lindsey Shaw), the girl next door who's beginning to catch Ned's eye, and vice versa. Created by Scott Fellows (Big Time Rush), Ned's Declassified has more than its share of silly, cartoonlike comedy, thanks in part to the school janitor's (Daran Norris) seemingly endless pursuit of a weasel (shades of Bill Murray's character in the 1980 movie Caddyshack) and Daniel Curtis Lee's Herculean feats of overacting.

Ned's Declassified is upfront about its lessons, going so far as to post its informational tidbits on screen, such as "Need cash fast? Try babysitting, pet care, and cleaning services," which is preceded by Ned pointing out that you have to be 14 years old to work in a store but not 14 to earn money in other ways. Teachers can add to Ned's long list of helpful hints by asking students to contribute survival tips of their own that weren't covered during the series's three-year run.

True Jackson, VP (Nickelodeon, 2008-2011; ages 8-14)

Nickelodeon's sitcom about 15-year-old True Jackson (Keke Palmer), who's plucked from obscurity to be vice president of youth apparel for a major fashion line, is pure wish-fulfillment fantasy for girls. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but True Jackson, VP doesn't dig far beyond the surface of its premise, saddling True with goofy best friends (played by Ashley Argota and Matt Shively), a quirky boss (Greg Proops), and an ice-queen colleague (Danielle Bisutti) who eventually thaws and treats True as an equal. Nothing new here, and it's hard to shake the feeling that since True is black, the producers saw no need to create other black characters to inhabit her world (Lulu and Ryan, her best friends, are Asian-American and white, respectively; True's parents appear in one episode each).

That being said, True Jackson, VP features a lead character who doesn't abandon her friends once she lands a great job (how or even if she fits school into her schedule is another matter altogether) and doesn't let jealous, condescending coworkers bring her down, both of which are good examples for tweens to live by. A question teachers could ask students after a viewing of True Jackson is "How would you react if one of your best friends suddenly became rich and famous? Would you treat him or her differently than you had before?" (To see a clip from True Jackson, VP, click here.)

Wizards of Waverly Place (Disney Channel, 2007-2011; ages 6-14)

This multiethnic take on J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books revolves around the Russo family's three siblings, Justin (David Henrie), Alex (Selena Gomez), and Max (Jake T. Austin), all of whom have magical powers inherited from their Italian-American father, Jerry (David DeLuise), a former wizard. Their Mexican-American mother, Theresa (María Canals Barrera), is powerless, so to speak, and after the siblings complete their wizard training and face off in a competition to see who will become the family wizard of their generation, the two losing siblings will no longer be able to perform magic.

Unlike Miley Cyrus and company on Hannah Montana, the cast of Wizards of Waverly Place don't stomp on every punchline to get a laugh, making the show more palatable for parents who may want to watch alongside their children. (I also enjoyed the no-big-deal aspect of the family's multiculturalism.) It's easy to imagine Gomez and Henrie moving on to successful acting careers as adults in the near future.

Wizards provides important lessons about being honest with your friends while not giving away secrets about your family that could damage their reputations, and it teaches tweens to appreciate what they have—in this case, magical powers—because one day it might not be there anymore, e.g., childhood. As an educational tie-in, teachers could ask students to do without their "magic" cell phones for a day and see what problems they encounter without them in the real world. (To see a clip from Wizards of Waverly Place, click here.)

The Wonder Years (ABC, 1988-1993; ages 11 and up)

ABC's Emmy-winning "dramedy," now available through Netflix instant streaming, looked back nostalgically but pointedly at the late 1960s and early '70s, when the Vietnam war was raging overseas and the sexual revolution was making heads spin at home. As the series begins, 12-year-old Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) is entering seventh grade, and by the end of his first day in middle school, love and death have intertwined in such a bittersweet way that The Wonder Years's pilot episode became, in my opinion, one of the most memorable debuts in TV history.

Although The Wonder Years was conceived in the late '80s as a family show that could appeal to both baby boomers and their children, the fact that every episode is told from the point of view of Kevin, who also narrates the various trips down memory lane as an adult 20 years later (Daniel Stern provides the voice-overs), makes it ideal viewing for tweens of today's generation. Part of the show's evergreen appeal is that it proves adolescent hell remains the same throughout time, whether you're carrying a transistor radio in your hand or an iPod.

The Wonder Years's peripheral focus on American history of the '60s and '70s can be used for educational purposes to explain how soldiers in wars fought by the U.S. used to be drafted for service, how the "hippie" counterculture compares with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement of today, and how vastly technology has changed in 40 years (a family's first color TV back in those days is almost the equivalent of a family's first smartphone today). The Wonder Years also provides touching lessons about loyalty to friends, the danger of classroom gossip, and respect for institutions that are slowly dying but still matter (in one episode Kevin gets a part-time job working at a mom-and-pop hardware store whose business has fallen off since the new mall opened). (To see a clip from The Wonder Years, click here.)

kiss of death

Actress Jane Lynch has apparently aged quite a bit since I last saw her on the small screen, but I respect the fact that she refuses to "glam it up" for awards ceremonies. Good for you, Jane!

The beginning of broadcasting?

On November 15, 1926, the National Broadcasting Company, otherwise known as NBC, began broadcasting as a radio network with a four-hour "extravaganza" featuring Will Rogers and the New York Symphony Orchestra. Conan O'Brien's grandfather was hired to host the event, but after 45 minutes NBC replaced him with Jay Leno's great-grandfather, setting up a vicious cycle for generations to come.

Turn the lights down. It's time to get romatic.

An ad for 30 Rock during tonight's episode of The Office flashed these phrases across the screen to describe the show's main character, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey):

PROFESSIONALLY GIFTED

ROMATICALLY CHALLENGED

"Romatically"?!?! Is no one looking at these promos before they're broadcast across the nation? Just pick up the phone and call me, NBC! I only charge $1,000 an hour!

On an episode of 30 Rock a few weeks ago, there was a quick scene featuring the French owner of Cristal saying how much he hated hip-hop music. His dialogue was subtitled, and the word "appreciate" was spelled as "appreicate."

Like I said, NBC, call me. You've got some problems. You've also got lots of cash. Let's help each other. (By the way, don't think I don't notice that John Krasinski is wearing a wig on The Office these days. Now I want to know why he's wearing that wig.)

Let's watch some TV!

After she read (well, half-read) my post about PAX/the i/Ion and Charlie's Angels, my friend Mary mentioned that her dad liked Kate Jackson's character on Charlie's Angels the most and that he usually liked "the smart one" on those kinds of shows. I've noticed in my, uh, research that in the few episodes featuring Kate that Ion has shown so far, she's not used as cheesecake the way Jaclyn and Cheryl (and presumably Farrah) are. (Notice who's not bearing any cleavage in the picture above?) They're the ones required to get into bikinis and other skimpy outfits. Fine by me, but what kind of message were you trying to send to little girls who watched the show, Aaron Spelling? That the hottest girls usually aren't the brightest? That's not ni— ... actually, in my experience that's often been true ... but it's still not a nice thing to imply!


Even 30 years later, at last year's Emmy Awards ceremony, the necklines for each Angel hadn't really changed:


One last picture before we move on:


Even Kate's hands are covered up! Good grief, Charlie Brown ...

Wait—we're not moving on yet. There's one other aspect of Charlie's Angels that strikes me as funny: the Angels are detectives who go undercover all the time, yet they always use their real names when they're on assignment. Or maybe I just haven't paid close enough attention to the episodes where Kate goes undercover. It's possible that she uses undercover aliases while Jaclyn and Farrah/Cheryl are clearly too dumb to remember any name other than their own. Did Shelley Hack take on the mantle of "smart Angel" when Kate left? Or did the Angels lose some collective IQ points for the '79-'80 season? Tanya Roberts certainly didn't play the smart Angel in the '80-'81 season.

Okay, now we're moving on ...

As my mom said recently, "Tina Fey sure does show off her cleavage a lot on 30 Rock." That's the advantage of being the star of a show you created, I guess—even if you're more of a Kate in real life, you can pretend to be somewhat of a Jaclyn on the small screen.

In the credits of tonight's episode of 30 Rock I noticed Anna Chlumsky's name. Remember her? The little girl in My Girl? And My Girl 2? And Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain? (I don't blame you if you don't remember that one. Anna and Christina Ricci played literal gold diggers in the movie. But don't fret—in the sequel I'm currently writing, they play conniving, money-grubbing hoo-ers.) Anna's a grown-ass woman now! On 30 Rock she played "the other Liz." I didn't recognize her at all. Then again, why would I? Gold Diggers came out in '95, and that's the last time I remember seeing her.

I wonder who wrote that "Blue Oyster Cult/cowbell" sketch on Saturday Night Live back in 2000? Or who originally pitched it, at the very least? The sketch has its own lengthy Wikipedia entry, but no writer is mentioned. Whoever you are, you deserve some public recognition.

Today I saw a rerun of Married ... With Children on FX in which Marcy, the Bundys' neighbor, was trying to keep a college radio station on the air. I only saw the last ten minutes, but the only Bundy seen in those ten minutes was Bud. Was this one of those episodes where Ed O'Neill and Katey Sagal and Christina Applegate got to take some time off? I remember Moonlighting, my favorite show in grade school, featuring one episode a season in which Maddie Hayes and David Addison would bookend an episode but disappear for the rest of it so that Agnes DiPesto and/or Herbert Viola could solve a mystery on their own. I didn't care for those episodes as a child. (SORTA FUN FACT! The fourth season of Moonlighting only produced 14 episodes, 8 less than the average for prime-time network dramas. Agnes and Herbert got two episodes to themselves that season, and one of them wasn't even bookended by David and Maddie. Actually, neither episode featured Maddie at all, seeing as how Cybill Shepherd was either pregnant or on maternity leave throughout much of that shortened season.)

Okay, back to Married ... With Children, the only sitcom in TV history whose studio audience always seemed to be on the verge of running onto the set and gangbanging Christina Applegate. According to TV.com, the episode I saw today was set up as a potential spin-off for the two college-DJ characters who were prominently featured. I don't know if a pilot was ever produced, but no spin-off ever made it to air, although one Married spin-off did last seven episodes in the spring of '91: Top of the Heap, starring Joseph Bologna and Matt LeBlanc. And I'd completely forgotten about the spin-off of Top of the Heap that aired for seven episodes the following year: Vinnie & Bobby, also starring LeBlanc (and a young, already vocally irritating Joey Lauren Adams), but not Bologna. Thanks for the reminder, IMDB!

Sorry—back to today's episode! Wait, more tangential information—Keri Russell from Felicity was in the episode as a girl who had dated Bud. She was supposed to be a total babe, and she is a good-looking woman, but Keri also seems to be smart, and what did Aaron Spelling teach us? Sorry, Keri, but it's just not working out.

Why did I even bring up this episode? Oh yeah, here's why—the college radio station that was in danger of getting yanked from the air was 106.2 FM on the dial. WHAT?! Pardon me, but aren't the majority of college stations somewhere around 88 to 92 on the left of the dial? No one's going to give prime radio real estate like a 106 frequency to a college station. Married ... With Children writers, use your brains! Oh wait ... are you writers also really hot women? Never mind then. My apologies. But may I give you a word of advice? Stay far away from your show's studio audience.

PAX begat "the i," which begat Ion Television, which begat ...

Back in 1998, PAX TV came on the national network scene like a bat out of hell. A Christian bat out of Christian hell, that is, because PAX tried to rival the major networks with sex-and-violence-free shows. Nice try, PAX, but you need more original programming than It's a Miracle, the Billy Ray Cyrus vehicle Doc, and Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye (that kind of cutesy spelling is inexcusable, even if you are a good Christian) to compete with all the great sex and violence that's on NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox every night. (Sorry, CW, you still don't count.) And do I really want to watch Montana doctor Billy Ray Cyrus teach Christian values to New Yorkers when I can hear Courteney Cox tell someone to suck her dick on a cable show like Dirt? Of course not! My TV time is limited and must be used wisely.

In 2005 PAX became "the i." CBS lawyers, did you notice this? Your network is "the Eye," and all of a sudden PAX is calling itself "the i." I don't know if "the i" had any original shows, and I'm not going to look it up either, but I'm pretty sure they dropped the Christian angle for the most part at this point.

Last month "the i" became Ion Television. The last three letters of "television" are "ion," see, but I prefer to think of Ion Television as dropping an atom bomb of great programming on regular TV every single weeknight! Here's their Monday-Friday prime-time lineup:

8/7c: Mama's Family
9/8c: Diagnosis: Murder
10/9c: Charlie's Angels

On weekends Ion shows movies and things like BodogFight: USA vs. Russia. (Would a formerly Christian network resort to canine death matches for ratings? Maybe if they promote Cold War-era patriotism. Is Sue Thomas's seeing-eye dog one of the competitors? If so, I'll tune in. Wait—according to Wikipedia, Sue Thomas was a deaf FBI agent. But I know she had a dog. What was the dog for? Was it a "hearing-ear" dog?)

The show that I'm happy to see on this lineup is Charlie's Angels, which probably made lots of conservative TV watchdogs uncomfortable 30 years ago. Charlie's Angels was known as a "jiggle" show because it featured its three lead characters running around in bikinis or other skimpy outfits or just plain bra-less quite a bit. I was five when this show was canceled after five seasons and four cast changes: Farrah Fawcett left after the first season (somewhere a 21-year-old David Caruso began to admire Farrah for more than just her feathered bangs and iconic swimsuit modeling) and was replaced by Cheryl Ladd; Kate Jackson left after the third season (apparently she was offered Meryl Streep's Oscar-winning role in Kramer Vs. Kramer but couldn't get out of her Angels contract to do the movie, so she quit in '79) and was replaced by Shelley Hack; and Hack was replaced after the fourth season with Tanya Roberts, who didn't bring up the low ratings that Hack was blamed for, but it was about time the Angels had a hot redhead on their staff. Jaclyn Smith was the only Angel to stay for five full seasons. Way to stick it out, Jaclyn.

What I love about Charlie's Angels, as viewed in 2007, is that it's so ... quaint. Thirty years ago there were only three networks, and cable was still a long way from being in everyone's home. Even when the show was canceled in 1981, cable was a new phenomenon, so I wouldn't be surprised if "low" ratings for Charlie's Angels were probably something like 12 million viewers a week, numbers that a show like The Office would love to have today.

Right now Ion is airing the fifth season of Charlie's Angels. I'm a sucker for final seasons of long-running shows, when the writers and cast are going through the motions and seem ready to move on. Pity poor Tanya Roberts, the newbie, but at least she got her big break on the show and was then ready to star in big-screen classics like The Beastmaster and Sheena, a movie that somehow got rated PG by the puritanical MPAA even though it features full-frontal nudity. (Not that I'm complaining ...)

An episode I saw last week featured a villain who dressed up like Robin Hood and went around the backlot of Mammoth Pictures shooting at people with arrows. The Angels posed as stuntwomen at the studio to find the masked archer.

See what I mean? Silly but charming, especially in light of current shows like CSI and 24, which usually deal with grim subject matter. Maybe post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America needed a lightweight detective "drama" like Charlie's Angels 30 years ago. And maybe, as our current "long national nightmare" winds down in the next few years, it'll be time for another show like Charlie's Angels that can become a top-ten hit.

(Never mind that I hated the Charlie's Angels movie from 2000 and skipped the 2003 sequel. It's tough to make Bill Murray look bad, but Charlie's Angels accomplished that task easily. No wonder Murray skipped the sequel too.)