We'll end this blog as we began it - with the first entry, from two and a half years ago.

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Welcome, good people of Television. The Council of Network Executives and I have labored mightily to ensure that Television is a place where entire families that have been strategically relocated outside of the FX and HBO Districts can thrive and enjoy life - we're still working on making life palatable for those dwelling in the neighborhoods dominated by QVC, Spike TV and Lifetime - and that our community truly will be a place where your fantasies can become real life.

First, a few housekeeping notes:

* Once again, I must implore reality-show producers in the Southern Quadrant to limit their attacks on more northern Regions of Good Taste on a Need-to-Bomb basis. Talks are ongoing with the insurgent creators of "Flavor of Love," "My Super Sweet 16" and "Date My Mom" to cease their audiences' metaphorical beheadings, and we're making quite a bit of headway, so to speak. So other reality-program producers need not escalate the hostilities toward their viewers with ever-more-visceral assaults on genteel sensibilities.

Also, I beseech those in that area to give a wide berth to the loyal patriots in Kevlar-enhanced Hazmat suits cleaning up the spillage from "My Fair Brady: We're Getting Married!"

Remember, Television is home to all of us, and our goal is a serene, relatively incident-free environment that we would all be proud not to denounce as our own.

* There will be a Zoning Commission meeting Tuesday to discuss whether The CW's Sunday-night comedies - "Everybody Hates Chris," "All of Us," "Girlfriends" and "The Game" - might be allowed to exist peaceably at other points on the schedule.

* Will whoever is planting the effigies of Jeff Zucker's head on a pike in public spaces please remove them. Again, I remind you, Television is a land of happiness, enforced or otherwise, and such forms of protest are at odds with our Doctrines of Infinite Q Scores and Failing Upwards.

* Also, we implore those who are leaking to YouTube.com the results of our Test Laboratories' failed Petri dishes - known to some as "pilots rejected by the networks" - to please cease immediately. Television is a land of Compulsory Harmony, and the dissemination of such confidential governmental documents may lead the citizenry to question not only our motives but our sanity.

OK, these notes aside, we have some new business to attend to. As you know, the Council of Network Executives and I are pleased to announce the commencement of a new television season that we are confident will be the most successful ever or, at least, not result in the embarrassments of seasons past. Fox, being Fox (desultory chuckle), will commence the season on Monday, with the season-two premiere of "Prison Break" and the debut of "Vanished."

There is a great deal of hope amongst all involved this year, particularly in the area of gentrifying the Eastside Comedy Ghettos.

Our Ministry of Aesthetics will be issuing Analytical Reports of each broadcast networks' prospectus in the coming days, and we invite you to inspect our thoughtful inquiry as to how Fox has improved upon its already celebrated schedule when it appears on this blog on Monday. Subsequent White Papers analyzing each network's impending fortunes will be issued at appropriate times as the new season continues to roll out.

Moreover, we are fast approaching the Emmy Awards, many of our citizens' favorite time of the year, except for those at the newly rechristened CW and, apparently, some disgruntled fringe elements at ABC, who have opted to air "Pirates of the Caribbean" opposite our bread-and-circuses ceremony. (Remember, if viewers can't enjoy yet another spurious awards show, the terrorists win.) Our upcoming discussions of the controversial nominating process within this forum threatens to be nominally insightful and to contain an almost certain amount of vague interest. So keep your eyes on this forum: We of Television haven't made this a Constitutional Requirement - yet - but it's always nice for a constituency to have a healthy interest in what little we Leaders want you to know about the democratic process.

Finally, would those posting signs proclaiming, "Recall the Mayor" please desist. You knew coming in that Television has never been a Meritocracy: It's a Stalinist Democracy. And so it shall ever be.

All Hail Television!

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Look out for mayoroftelevision.com soonish.

Variety offers an all-purpose Oscar-acceptance speech, as written by "Rescue Me" co-creator and star Denis Leary. Here's a taste:

"I just wanna say that -- acting is -- so ... awesome. It's just such an incredibly - awesome - thing - to do! It touches people and it makes people - change - and grow and cry and laugh and -- feel ... stuff! And stuff is so -- important. And - it ... encompasses. Us. All of us. And I love acting because now I will be able to do the kind of work I've always dreamed of doing which will reach and touch and help people and -- make them smell better. Cause when I get a new perfume contract - a really really classy one that smells really really good but different too! And I wanna help people with their hair and do one of those beautiful slow motion hair commercials that look so luscious and I wanna help George Clooney with the Darfur stuff and the anti-paparazzi thing but -- and, um -- last but in absolutely no way least -- to my partner, to my costar in life and love -- who will probably leave me for The Next Big Thing in about eighteen months after I've squandered whatever tiny bit of sparkle and power I may appear to have at this very moment by doing six overblown gimungous box-office bombs that leave three studios and eight agents left for dead in my wake, but tonight my sweet -- I love you."

Conan O'Brien is approaching his impending new gig as "Tonight Show" host - as well as bumping "Host, 'Late Night with Conan O'Brien'" down a notch on his resume - with a combination of awe and dread. His run at 12:35 a.m. ends tomorrow with his 2,725th episode.

"I'll probably cry like a baby on Friday night," he tells the New York Times. Aw, c'mon, Conan - at least cry like a man.

The story recounts the rigmarole that went into NBC prematurely bouncing Jay Leno from the 11:35 p.m. timeslot and the last-second negotiations that'll put Jay in primetime, stripped across NBC's weeknight schedule at 10 p.m., which has been explicated at length here and elsewhere. It also points out that O'Brien's ratings have slipped of late - he's even started losing the hour to CBS's Craig Ferguson on a semi-regular basis.

"I feel a little sorry for Conan," one longtime late-night executive tells the Times in reference to Jay still preceding him on the schedule. "I think he's getting sandbagged."

But Conan insists he's OK with it: "Of all the alternatives in the universe, this one honestly does work best for me," he says. "I didn't want to suddenly be perceived as this person who forced someone into a bad position. I wouldn't be comfortable in that role." Or, no doubt, the role of personal ratings punching bag for Leno should he have turned up at the same time on another network.

What remains to be seen is how much Conan will alter or water down his act when he's on an hour earlier. The weirder stuff will no doubt get jettisoned - say farewell to the Masturbating Bear - but then, David Letterman polished his act a bit when he moved to CBS but remained enough of the weird old Dave that audiences continued to embrace him.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon - best known for laughing at his own jokes on "Saturday Night Live" (at least someone did) - takes over in the "Late Night" anchor's chair on March 2, and he's curiously chosen a couple of notoriously prickly interview subjects as the guests of his inaugural show: Robert De Niro and Van Morrison (way to chase that youth demographic, Jimmy!).

To be fair, De Niro's gotten a little better at the whole sitting-for-an-interview thing, but then, he's had 30 years to adjust to it. I remember sitting through a press conference with him for a movie - he couldn't bring himself to talk with journalists on a more personal level at the time - and it was excruciating; not a single full sentence emanated from his mouth. A few years later, I sat down with him for a one-on-one interview, and I actually managed to get some usable quotes, but it was still a pretty awkward experience. Morrison, on the other hand, will just perform a song or two and doubtless forego the small talk, which is best for all involved.

Plus, a fun new fact about NBC's ongoing cheapskate ways: The network won't pay music royalties, which means Fallon's house band the Roots will have to cook up a wealth of their own riffs and musical tags with which to accompany guest entrances and lead-ins out of commercials. As opposed to, say, when Paul Shaffer plays a pop chestnut that also serves as an inside joke about whatever guest is sauntering toward Dave's guest chair.

"We have to write 200 new songs, which will probably last about a year," ?uestlove tells Rolling Stone. "We've written about 55 so far." Well, quit gabbing about it and go back into your little den and get to work!

A recent poll found that fewer young adults think of TVs or cable or satellite hook-ups as "necessities," though they do think of their cell phones and high-speed Internet access in that way.

Which sets the old-school old-guard into paroxysms of panic, leading them to making observations and asking questions like:

"As many already know or will soon find out, youth is fleeting. Which leads to the question: Are young adults different just because they are young and, if so, will they set aside childish things as they get older? For example, if a young adult has relied solely on mobile wireless, will she want a landline phone when she's 30? If someone has grown accustomed to the selectivity of online video, will he pay for a package of 500 basic and premium TV channels when he gets older, especially if online TV can by then be streamed conveniently to big screen TVs?"

(The evils of technology.)

The answer to these questions seems to be "No." Those anarchists. On the other hand, did we continue to buy fedoras like our dads or frilly aprons like our moms?

Anyway, this poll sees big, brutish changes in the future, changes which I anticipate the status quo will be loathe to follow, since it means they won't be able to make so much money then.

PaleyFest, the latest and most chipper-sounding name for the annual series sponsored by the Paley Center (formerly the Museum of TV and Radio) honoring worthy-ish TV shows, runs April 10-23 at the Cinerama Dome at the ArcLight Cinema on Sunset, followed by a concluding program at the museum's Beverly Hills location on the 24th.

There are no retrospectives of classic shows this time around, just a bunch of current programs - except for the ones that have already been cancelled, or won't likely be around come the fall. There's even an evening centered around a one-off Internet sensation.

Here's the drill: For each event, they show an episode or two of the series being honored, then the cast and creators come out and take some questions from a moderator (some of the moderators are pretty decent; others are so bad you wonder how they got the gig) and then finally questions from You, The People. The questions from You, The People tend to go like this: "Hi, I just really love your show and I wanted to say 'Hi.'" Which isn't a question.

Herewith, the schedule (all programs begin at 7 p.m. unless otherwise specified):

Friday, April 10: "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." FX's sitcom starring Danny DeVito, Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day and Kaitlin Olson as a hive of conniving weasels can be pretty hilarious, and they're all funny extemporaneously, as well. I'd consider going to this one.

Saturday, April 11: "90210." This sure had a buzz about it when The CW announced it last May. That buzz built and built and built - and then it premiered. Still, I'm sure someone likes it.

Monday, April 13: "True Blood." People tend to love or hate Alan Ball's HBO vampire gothic drama. I think Anna Paquin's a little miscast, but then, the Hollywood Foreign Press gave her a Golden Globe. Those in attendance won't be of the hate-it variety, though.

Tuesday, April 14: "Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog." This amusing oddity from geek god Joss Whedon stars Neil Patrick Harris as an aspiring supervillain in love and his plot to thwart the heroic Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion) and was a hit online. Harris isn't yet scheduled to appear, but I can't imagine having a discussion of the project without him.

Wednesday, April 15: "Dollhouse." Whedon returns with his latest effort, which we've picked on enough here, so we'll just say it's a cult show starring Eliza Dushku.

Thursday, April 16: "The Big Bang Theory." Nerds are becoming a theme this week: This sitcom, which has seen a spike in its ratings in recent weeks, stars Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons as geniuses at everything, it seems, except getting the girl (Kaley Cuoko).

Friday, April 17: "The Mentalist." The only new big hit of the season stars Simon Baker as a former fake psychic who now works for the California Bureau of Investigation, where he pesters Robin Tunney. But Baker can pick up on your body language, so he'll probably know what question you're going to ask before you ask it (mainly because it'll probably be, "Hi, I really love your show and just wanted to say 'Hi'").

Saturday, April 18: "Desperate Housewives." They've done this show before - all I can remember of the previous session was that moderator Carrie Fisher talked about herself quite a bit. So maybe this time they'll talk about the show and defend that jumping-five-years-into-the-future thing.

Sunday, April 19 at 1 p.m.: "Pushing Daisies'" unaired episodes. For you absolute die-hards out there, series creator Bryan Fuller will introduce the episodes of his too-eccentric-for-broadcast-TV pastiche that were produced but never aired on ABC.

Monday, April 20: "Battlestar Galactica"/"Caprica." The soon-to-depart sci-fi cult classic and the soon-to-debut impending sci-fi cult classic are squashed together in one big night of fan ecstasy.

Tuesday, April 21: "The Hills." MTV's reality program focusing on professionally loathsome twentysomethings boasts a lot of fans who watch it only out of a sense of Schadenfreude, so it might be interesting to watch the give-and-take here. On the other hand, attending means that you would actually have to be in the presence of people who like the show unironically, and that's just a fate to grim to consider.

Wednesday, April 22: "Big Love." Bring all your wives to the panel discussion of HBO's polygamy series.

Thursday, April 23: "Fringe." The jury's still out on whether J.J. Abrams' latest convoluted thriller has what it takes to go the distance or is simply an interesting, well-intentioned shrug. Perhaps the cast will be able to make a convincing case one way or the other.

Friday, April 24 at 6 p.m.: "Swingtown." CBS's quixotic summer series about '70s swingers may not have made the splash the network hoped for, but at least it merited one of these PaleyFest events, even if it will take place in the more intimate environs of the Paley Center rather than the sprawling Cinerama Dome. They haven't scrounged up any actors yet, just the show's creators.

Tickets go on sale for Paley Center members Thursday, Feb. 26 and for the rest of the planet Sunday, March 1. They've really jacked up the prices - tickets are $50/$35 for members, $60/$45 for the rest of us plebes (except the "Pushing Daisies" screening, which is $12 for members, $15 for everyone else) - and will be available at TicketWeb.com or at (866) 468-3399.

Hmm, this is a tough one: Blogger Paul Shepard of Black Spin decries TV Land's censoring episodes of the '70s sitcom "Sanford and Son" by badly dubbing in some other less incendiary word whenever Fred (the late Redd Foxx) uses what we'll euphemistically describe here as "Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Epithet (and that's saying something)," otherwise known as "The N-Word."

("Nooo! They're censoring me, Elizabeth! I'm comin' to join you!")

"Hearing the n-word doesn't cause black people to turn into a pile of dust," Shepard writes. "Yes, I admit it is still a word that can start a fight if uttered by the wrong person in the wrong tone of voice. But that's not what we were talking about in the 'Sanford and Son' episodes. There, it's part of an extremely funny joke."

Being fairly virulently anti-censorship, I have to agree: To deny our cultural past is to wish to remain in ignorance. It's useful to understand the way we used to behave and think, and censoring anything invariably gives that message more power than it might otherwise have. Plus, it's kind of fascinating to think that this sort of thing flew in the '70s but we're squeamish about it today, even though there are far fewer things we find objectionable these days.

On the other hand: It's TV Land, which caters to a family audience expecting genteel entertainments. Non-black kids watching the show and not understanding the context and historic underpinnings of the show may not get the joke and unwittingly subject themselves to a righteous beat-down on the school playground the day after seeing an episode. This wouldn't be the same issue were "Sanford and Son" airing on, say, TV One.

Is a compromise possible: Alter the wording when kids might be watching, but don't censor it late at night? Or feature a disclaimer before every episode in which Fred uncorks an N-bomb:

"The following program comes from an era in which the sociocultural climate was far different from our own. Therefore, it contains language and situations that defined that time but may not have aged well for contemporary audiences. We present this program not just as entertainment, but as an historical document that mirrors its day and is not intended to reflect current mores and attitudes. Enjoy - or don't, it's up to you, you delicate little fragile flowers who can't process a word that in the end is just a word."

("Nooo! I just heard the 'n-word!' I'm comin' to join you, Elizabeth!")

Of course, if they do that, everyone will have changed the channel before they finish the disclaimer.

What do you think? Should Fred be allowed to amuse/offend at will, or is TV Land right in protecting the more innocent members of its audience?

Apparently, someone begrudges Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and the flight crew of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 the kudos for their heroism that they've picked up throughout their media tour, because I received this, via one of those exhaustively forwarded Emails with the subject header "TOO TRUE:"

Apparently, Sully could've just thrown his hands in the air and declined to attempt any seat-of-the-pants tactical maneuvers and all would've been well. What I never get is some inspirational mass Emailing like this whenever a deity has a case of the butterfingers trying to catch a doomed airliner.

SpongeBob SquarePants is celebrating his 10th birthday; hooray and all that. But Nickelodeon is commemorating the sea sponge's decade of daffiness, naturally, by pushing a huge glut of toys out onto the market, where they'll sit on store shelves because no one has any money anymore.

And a couple of their new offerings sound downright naughty. For example:

SpongeBob ShakyPants! "SpongeBob can sense how you move him, and he laughs so hard that you can feel the funny - even his eyes go all wild! Slow down, so SpongeBob can catch his breath..."

Barbie® Loves SpongeBob "Barbie® doll shows she's a big fan of the sea-dwelling sponge ..."

Actually, it looks like this:

But couldn't they have called it "Barbie® Really Just Adores SpongeBob" or "Barbie's® A Big Fan Of SpongeBob" and spared me that gruesome image of anatomically-impossible-airhead-on- Amphimedon-queenslandica action now burned into my retinas?

The director of a Buffalo TV station was arrested for beheading his estranged wife (yes, that's illegal in Buffalo) when her decapitated body was found at the station. Grim irony department: The man founded the station after Sept. 11 in an effort to counteract negative attitudes toward Muslims, yet the murder has been described as a possible "honor killing," "a murder rooted in cultural notions about women's subordination to men."

Like the rest of us, former MTV icon and current disgraced punchline Michael Jackson is feeling the pinch of the current crummy economy. Unlike the rest of us, he doesn't have to get taken by taking his stuff to Amoeba Records - he can put the stuff on auction, which he will, in April, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. What's he putting up for grabs? Let's take a look - start saving your pennies:

Amusingly self-aggrandizing portrait: expected take, $4-$6K

Electric Golf Cart with his image on the hood - expected take, $6-$8K

Robotic MJ head - expected take, $2-$3K

Painting ludicrously comparing MJ to other icons - expected take, $1-$2K

Here's how far Michael's fortunes have stumbled - his detritus is expected to garner a lot less than the recent "Battlestar Galactica" auction. Because Cylons, after all, just wanted to conquer Earth; they had no (alleged) prurient aspirations for the planet's young boys.

When Fox announced it had signed a deal with Joss Whedon to do a show called "Dollhouse" with Eliza Dushku, everyone was very excited. When Fox announced it was going to air the show on Fridays, everyone quickly became a whole lot less excited and we wondered if this was just going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for failure.

("I'm sure there's a viewer around here somewhere...")

Turns out, yep: "Dollhouse" was seen by a mere 4.7 million viewers, though it did squeak past its competition in the Viewers Aged 18-49 Demographic. This being a Friday, most of the show's target audience was out, probably seeing the "Friday the 13th" movie. This is a show that'll probably get TiVo'd and watched online a lot, so its overall viewership won't seem that awful, but geez - it was the second-lowest premiere for a scripted show this season, behind "Crusoe," another show that foundered on Friday nights before washing ashore dead on Saturdays. ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," which premiered about a year ago to nearly 13 million fans, debuted in its Friday timeslot preceding "Dollhouse" to a woeful 3.7 million viewers. Both of these shows are far too pricey to produce to draw these piddling numbers.)

Only CBS is having any success on Fridays, with shows aimed at older viewers who have lost the will to socialize. It'll be interesting to see if the other networks even bother to schedule original scripted shows on Friday next season, because if it wasn't obvious before that Friday is the new Saturday as far as the broadcast networks are concerned, "Dollhouse's" weak bow makes it gospel forevermore.

And Joss might want to rethink the whole working-with-Fox thing in the future.

I had a dream early this morning in which there was a parade featuring a lot of big if dinosaur-ish figures in journalism - Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Dan Rather, whoever's the editor of the Chicago Tribune, etc. And they were all on different - well, "floats" is the wrong word, because they weren't decorated or anything. Let's just say they were flatbeds. And as each flatbed puttered down the parade route, each journalist wasn't waving to the crowds (and, oddly, there was a big crowd) but, rather, sitting at a folding table rolling pennies.

I don't even think that's a metaphor anymore.

I confess to enjoying TNT's "Leverage" even though its storylines strain the reasonable reaches of credibility - but, more often than not, they never make me roll my eyes and think I'm being played for a chump, merely that the show's trying to be whimsically and entertainingly convoluted and sometimes crashes through that window we know as "common sense." And apparently, enough other people are finding it fun enough, as well, as TNT has picked it up for a second season, which makes the cliffhanger for next week's season finale a whole lot less so. (Belated not-so-spoiler alert.)

So: This week and next, in a two-part season finale, Nate's (Timothy Hutton) team decides to go up against Ian Blackpoole (Kevin Tighe), the insurance dirtbag who dragged his feet on allowing coverage on the procedures that might've saved Nate's son, who died before the show began but kicked it into motion and taught Nate his epicurean appreciation of the finer boozes.

Nate's colleagues form something approaching an intervention, except they're not after him to give up booze - they want him to f@&k over Blackpoole, but good. "You don't need rehab," Sophie (Gina Bellman) tells Nate. "You need revenge," Elliot (Christian Kane) adds. Which should serve as justification for alcoholics everywhere for years on end - just mercilessly torture the person you think caused you to start drinking!

Anyway, insurance dirtbag Ian Blackpoole is a big-time art collector (how better to demonize the wealthy at this point?), and Tuesday's episode opens with Nate, drunk, falling out of a cab, stumbling up to a charity function and pulling a gun on his nemesis.

"Are you here to kill me, Nate?" Ian asks.

"Not tonight," Nate slurs.

"Well, in that case, come in," Ian responds amiably. "There's shrimp."

But of course something else is afoot, and of course even greater obstacles will prevent the Leverage team from their goal, not the least of which is the fact that Nate's ex Maggie (Kari Matchett) is playing for Ian's team and may scotch their intricate plot (she doesn't know about Ian's role in her son's death because Nate kept that information from her, it's soon explained).

Stealing the diminutive artwork, one of two Davids Michelangelo crafted before chiseling out his masterpiece, is child's play (thanks to Parker (Beth Riesgraf)),

but Ian has a team in place that's every bit as thorough and unforgiving as Nate's, if not moreso. And, it's tipped, one of Nate's team may have given Sterling (Mark A. Sheppard), Ian's scoundrel-in-waiting and Nate's season-long nemesis, an in to outing the plot.

Next week opens with Leverage's staff in flux and in flight to avoid Sterling's sinister do-gooderism (he plans on selling off Nate's band of scam artists to the countries where they're on Most-Wanted lists), but, well, they just can't help themselves, and they're sneaking into Ian's latest art exhibit. Nate - who's such a tease! - brashly informs Ian and Sterling he's going to rob them. Good - or, at least, the good that's better than the perceived-good bad - prevails; surprise, surprise.

For me, the show's saving grace has always been its sense of wit, that it can deftly backtrack from a lachrymose scene to an agreeably glib one. But next week's episode manages to cut from a histrionic, overplayed flashback to a nominally touching scene. (Fun Fact: When Nate worked for the Evil Insurance Company, he slicked his hair back with lots of Brylcreem or some such to approximate the style favored by evil corporate pr!cks in entertainments committed to film; now, he just doesn't wash it often enough, which manages to be a better look for him).

At any rate, the fact that we know that the show will be returning for a second season makes its first-season finale all the more satisfying, if less suspenseful.

- "Leverage:" 10 p.m. Tuesdays, TNT.

Michael Hirschorn has an interesting piece that may serve as a eulogy for TV As We Know It at TheAtlantic.com, entitled, appropriately enough, "The Future is Cheese."

Hirschorn links two events - NBC announcing Jay Leno's move to primetime and "Heroes" creator Tim Kring lamenting that only "saps and dipsh!ts" watch his show Mondays at 9 on an NBC affiliate - to underscore the dire straits the broadcast networks find themselves in.

Kring isn't entirely wrong, Hirschorn says - it's much more satisfying to watch multiple episodes of a highly serialized show back-to-back than to visit it once a week cluttered with commercials, so such a show's very ambition and the fact that it's so costly to make turns it into an albatross for the broadcast networks, who can cut costs massively by stripping Leno across its weeknight schedule.

He continues:

"(T)he problem is what I'd call cultural attention-deficit disorder, which afflicts the consumer bombarded with choices: more TV networks ... more video games, more Web sites, and more ways to consume shows than ever before (VOD, DVD, PPV, etc., etc.). ... Amid the chaos, it's difficult for a media consumer to care enough about any one thing to stick with it--and for a network trying to build allegiance to a brand, convincing anyone that what you're showing matters becomes almost impossible."

And concludes that in the era of niche programming, the quality shows will continue to migrate to cable, where they're content with smaller audiences, while the networks will continue to trot out flotsam like "Superstars of Dance."

What's fascinating is not just that it's true, but that the guy writing this - and kinda sorta passing judgment on bad TV - was named "Mr. Bad Taste" by the New York Observer back when he was running VH1 and junking it up with stuff like "Flavor of Love." In the piece, Hirschorn calls a book by John Seabrook, called "Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture" a major influence on his life and says, "I haven't resolved that conflict -- if I'd like to be a populist or highbrow."

So TV's troubled future is a win-win for him, if for nobody else.

On Sunday's episode of "Flight of the Conchords," Jemaine (Jemaine Clement) wakes from an evening of drunken revelry to discover he has - gasp! - slept with an Australian woman. Which is anathema, of course, for New Zealanders, kind of like a New Yorker palling around with someone from Jersey, someone from Bel Air venturing into the Valley or anyone hanging out with a Kentuckian.

He calls Bret (Bret McKenzie) in a panic: "I went home with a woman. I think she might be Australian."

"You've got to get out of there," Bret, understanding his alarm, quickly advises.

From there, lots of Aussie jokes: "What did she sound like?" Jemaine's asked; he responds, "Like an evil version of our accent."

The woman in question boasts, "You couldn't get more Australian than me. My great-great grandpa was a rapist, and they shipped him out to Australia, where he met my great grandma, who was a prostitute. I say, 'met,' but he raped her."

But, hey, she's not bad-looking, so Jemaine weighs his shame against the notion of a too-rare booty call. He dabbles with a song: "Do Australians Feel Love?"

"Flight of the Conchords" has tried to up its production values this season while maintaining the show's low-rent deadpan sensibility, and so far, they've managed to balance the two pretty well. The music videos are more elaborate this year (in one on Sunday, Jemaine is haunted by the girlfriends of his past, which includes one with some suspicious facial hair), and the guest stars are name comics - Jim Gaffigan last week, Kristin Wiig next week.

But the show continues to revel hilariously in the Kiwi talent for officious inefficiency. Bret receives a handful of biscuits from New Zealand, while Jemaine doesn't because he didn't fill out the form properly.

- "Flight of the Conchords:" 10 p.m. Sunday, HBO.

On Sunday's episode of "The Simpsons," Bart's make-work chalkboard assignment is to repeatedly scrawl: "HDTV is worth every cent." And so begins the first episode of "The Simpsons" produced in high-definition, a truly historic occasion, for one can just imagine seeing something like this in high-def:

And a not-bad episode, either, another variation on "It's a Wonderful Life" in which Homer discovers what his life might have been like had he been elected class president in high school, an era described as "a simpler time when the only thing we worried about was total nuclear annihilation."

Could Homer's life have been better? Could he have scored better than Marge? Could he have avoided having Bart as progeny? Homer answers that middle one, telling Marge, "I'd still be married to you, but you'd be hotter."

High-def seems to make Homer a little more philosophical: "If losers like me know one thing it's that, deep down, winners like him are miserable," he says at one point, and also: "I want him to know that if your life doesn't turn out the way you want, there's someone else you can blame."

- "The Simpsons:" 8 p.m. Sunday, Fox (Channel 11 in L.A.).

Here's all you need to know about all those crappy reality dating shows in three minutes, augmented beautifully by a Bible lesson, as well:

I'd like for the marketing department for the film "Confessions of a Shopaholic" - which, given the current economic crisis, may be the most poorly timed movie in the history of poorly timed movies (just beating out "Citizen Kane," which was released just as audiences were exhausted with hyper-literate and brilliantly photographed thinly disguised parodies of bloviated media magnates) - to explain, exactly, what they were thinking with their campaign for the film. (Actually, I pretty much know what they were going for; I'd just like them to admit it.)

First: Isla Fisher's facial expression. Fisher was absolutely hilarious in "Wedding Crashers," until the filmmakers decided they didn't need her to be so anymore, but it's hard to figure out what she's trying to convey here, if in fact she's trying to convey anything chaste.

Her expression seems to read, "OMG! I've just purchased a load of overpriced, superficial consumer goods that I can't possibly afford! How did that happen? LOL!"

However, there's a load (pardon the expression) of individuals who aren't violently misogynistic, as well as a wealth of literature that explores the subtext of attractive women with blank expressions and mouths wide open that divines prurient intent. And Fisher's relationship with Sacha Baron Cohen (best known on these shores as "Borat," whose semi-exposed male member was comically extenuated by wishful-thinking censorship in his brilliant and wildly popular 2006 film), only suggest to those viewing this poster: You do the math.

Everyone who doesn't have a date this Valentine's Day can wallow in their misery - or, perhaps, feel a sense of relief that they're being spared the misery that comes with relationships - with comedian Christopher Titus's Comedy Central special, "Love is Evol."

Titus has always been a dark comic - his Fox sitcom got laughs from the most twisted family dynamics imaginable - but with this special, he's smarting from a recent divorce and doesn't care who knows it.

"If you have never contemplated suicide, then you have never been in love," he says at the outset. "And if you've never contemplated murder, then you've never been divorced."

One wonders what Titus's ex will make of this performance, but given that she must've known the guy pretty well, she probably saw this coming. Titus, at various points, refers to treacherous women as "life-sucking vampires," "soul-sucking humps," "life-force-@ss-killing nozzles," and so on.

"Tonight's show will either fix your relationship or destroy it, and either way, you're welcome," he tells the couples in his audience.

After railing against the pain that the end of a relationship inevitably brings, and sharing demented stories about his parents' twisted relationship, Titus abruptly shifts gears and starts talking about his new and improved relationship. Everyone will be able to relate to his material about heartbreak; the "I'm-dating-a-super-hot-model" stuff, probably not so much.

- "Christopher Titus: Love is Evol," 10 p.m. Saturday, Comedy Central.

Pink slips are flying everywhere, even on hit (and not so hit) shows on ABC. Whether they're stars who complain their way out of their contracts or people who have proven to be too much of a headache or distraction on the set or a long-running show whose time has simply come, ABC is feverishly culling the herd, sending a sharp, pointed message to the rest of the performers in its stable of programming: Behave.

Katherine Heigl ("Grey's Anatomy")

T.R. Knight ("Grey's Anatomy")

Nicollette Sheridan ("Desperate Housewives")

Balthazar Getty ("Brothers & Sisters")

The cast of "Scrubs" ("Scrubs")

You will be missed. Except for those of you who won't.