Musty TV

Thursday nights on the gym TVs can make you cry, especially if you can remember The Cosby Show, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Hill Street Blues and the like.

Hey! On Wipeout a colorful padded thing hit someone and knocked them into the water! And then they got covered in something gooey while a couple of never-was personalities waste air with "jokes" that the EPA ought to regulate out of existence.

Over here, we've got dysfunctional people who interact with each other in a way that's humorous in every way except for actually being funny. Were we watching Community? The Office? 30 Rock? Parks and Recreation? Perfect Couples? Outsourced? Who could tell? And who could care?

And on American Idol, adequate singers will sing more or less adequately and try desperately to follow in Kelly Clarkson's footsteps instead of Justin Guarini's. Who? Exactly.

I would ask if it was possible for television to get any worse, but until everyone in American reads at grade level and by doing so puts MTV Networks out of business, that's not something one safely asks. One might awaken their slumbering creativity, which is absent in most areas but not in defining quality and deviancy downwards.