It’s August, and that means many things. Back to school season has begun, summer is heating up and winding down simultaneously, the frantic end-of-summer romances are burning and fizzling, and Waldorf Van Buren looks forward to the Fall Television Season.

I’m terribly bitter about television shows being axed and ground off the air by merciless executives with no compassion or TASTE. Every year I shed a tear when Fox allows chum like American Idol to grease the screens but nixes quality shows like Firefly. (Yes, I’m still horribly bitter about the Firefly cancellation). So, I’m not going to get involved too much with anything this season; not going to get hooked by anything that the networks might tempt me with. Instead, I will simply discard everything before I’ve even watched a single episode.

Today, I will deal with the Monday prime time lineup.

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Television doesn’t return the love I’m giving it. Yes, it’s tough love, but it would still be nice for TV to give in and grant me a little love. It doesn’t look like Tuesday night will be the night d’amour. No, it will be, in my opinion (which you should view as having the strength of supported fact), just another torrent of shit in an otherwise staticky world.

I’ll begin with a second word about Monday night - sucks. Okay, that out of the way, I’d also like to reconsider Samantha Who? Perhaps I was a little harsh, I’ll give it a second chance, if only that I genuinely like Christina Applegate without ever having met her. I’m not even three degrees of Kevin Bacon from her. Four maybe, but not three. And Chuck I’ll get on Netflix and give it a go. But keep in mind, I’m writing this without actually ever having seen the shows in question. It’s all opinion masked as some sort of snarky journalism. Kind of like Fox News.

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Wednesday night television has a few gems in a sea of malaise-inducing crud. I have to point out the few sparkling nuggets first. I adore Pushing Daisies, and not just because of Jim Dale’s animated voice-overs (he is the guy who performed all of the Harry Potter audio-books), but also because of the quirky nature of the characters, the plotting, as well as the wonderful use of costume, color, line, and. . . sorry, I think I slipped into my Get Your Geek On: Design persona. Anyway, it’s a crisp, colorful show and I’m glad ABC brought it back for another go-round. However, there is so much other silt to sift through that it makes the entire night a maze of sooty weeds.

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When I was a lad of just fourteen, an Irish priest came to visit my class to speak to us about the possibility of receiving Holy Orders and joining the priesthood. That’s not important or relevant. What is important AND relevant is that the Priest, with his Irish accent, didn’t pronounce the ‘th’ in third as a ‘th’ sound at all, but a hard ‘tuh’ sound, thus turning every “third” into “turd.” As a fourteen year old, I found this unendingly amusing. As a thirtysomething (turdysomething) with a fourteen year old mentality, I still find it amazingly funny, and appropriate when discussing this Fall’s Thursday’s (Turdsday) TV lineup.

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Okay, so the past few TV posts have lacked a certain amount of. . . humor. Trust me, I don’t find raking through the muck of television land any funnier than you do. It’s a chore. That, and my left testicle ran away. Rolled, actually. I think it was demanding more exercise, so I slapped it and it fell off, rolled down the couch, across the floor, and into the garden. That’s how devoted I am to you, dear reader. I dropped my left nut for you.

ABC hasn’t shown any signs of life on Friday night since the days of Urkel and Mr. Belvedere or, as I like to call it, the decline of Western Civilization. This year is no exception, and the quality has slid down the slippery piffle slope at an accelerated pace. Again they give us Wife Swap, which has two families swapping wives, but the swapping is less Swingtown and The Ice Storm and more like trading chlamydia for crabs. After an hour of yelling, crying, broken bottles, thrown furniture and a lot of swearing, I decided that I should calm down. It’s only a television show. At ten o’clock is the fairly reliable, yet outdated 20/20, whose usefulness came to an end with the advent of Ashleigh Banfield and Anderson Cooper. It’s a Neanderthal process in a Cro-Magnon world.

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Talking about midseason shows and replacements on Network TV is a little like trying to channel a trendy Nostradamian figure while trying to stay away from the syrupy ickiness of an E! News (quite the contradiction) “host.” I will attempt to guide you through the muddle of Fall and into the “Shroud of Midseason.” While some networks have cemented schedules of certain shows that they KNOW will be coming back, there is also an unknown factor mixed with guesswork and a little transmutation, much like the wok of a crazed alchemist/psychic farting around with capacitors and transistors.

I am delaying. It’s true. I’m trying to find words that will soothe and make it all better. I want to apply a Band-Aid brand Band-Aid to the seeping wounds caused to our psyches by popular entertainment. I’m stumbling, I know, and I’m fishing for sharks in a pond with a piece of gum on frayed twine. I suppose I’ll start with the known quantities.

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There is so little substance and so much short-talented debris in the cesspool of Saturday and Sunday primetime that I could not give each day its own entry. I’m not feeling particularly funny this evening, as I’ve caught some sort of bug previewing the Fall season for you. It’s that or the fifth of Jack.

The rat network (ABC, owned by Disney), gives us college football on Saturday nights. I’m not as much of a football fan since I moved away from Buckeye territory (I lived less than a mile from the stadium, and High Street was always a drunken hoot), but I still prefer this over any other Saturday offering. Sunday’s schedule is the well-cultivated, yet trite, rundown of America’s Funniest Home Videos (America’s favorite piece of schadenfreude), the manipulatively heart-tugging and saccharine Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the overdone yet half-baked Desperate Housewives (loved the first season, then I didn’t), and the angrily self-important Brothers & Sisters. Nothing new to see here, move along.

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I’ve compiled a list of trends and ideas that just need to go away. It will be good for television, good for individuals, and good for society in general. This list is just meant for trends in current media. I have a “no more” list for current trends in society as well, but there were so many for media I had to make a separate list.

1. No more Highlander sequels, television shows, comic books, radio shows, etc. There can be only one? Prove it.
2. No more reality shows. These people are as real as a stripper’s boobs or a politician’s smile. Documentary shows and cinema verité are fine art forms that catch real life in action. Reality shows, however, just exploit the greedy, the stupid, and the false. Normally I’d be okay with that exploitation, but when it gets in the way of “quality” programming (like Jericho, Firefly… but you’ve heard that rant before) I get a little angry.
3. No more news anchors telling me what I should think. I have a wife, a church, and a family to do that for me.
4. No more fearmongering! You read? Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, yada yada yada. If you don’t stop, I’m sure an asteroid will hit us, God® shall smite us, the LHC will poof us out of existence, and the Democrats will let another terrorist attack happen. You’d better be prepared.
5. No more American Idol. I have no words other than “Shit Sandwich.”
6. No more Toby Keith. A moratorium on all things Toby Keith should commence immediately, and last until further notice.
7. No more Paris Hilton. Ever. Well, maybe, but I have secret, wet and naked on top of me conditions.
8. No more legislation of morality. Puritania(!) has been dead for a long while. Let it stay dead.

Editor’s Note: We cannot be held responsible for any sex tapes, STDs or bad mental images that result from exposure to Paris Hilton.