What's really depressing about yesterday and today's TV articles is that this bland melange of the overcooked and the one-joke is probably pretty much how most TV gets made.

"How about 'House' in space?"

"Hey, what about another PI show? We haven't done a PI show in a while."

"Say, what about 'Rain Man' meets 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre'?"

This is what Harlan Ellison called "creative typing." It shares the operation of a keyboard with real writing, but that's about it.

Let's think instead of one of the most successful writers in history: William Shakespeare.

Don't groan and scroll, folks. Nobody has been produced more than Shakespeare, and for good reason. The man was market-driven. He wrote for a known group of actors, and he wrote for money. That's why "Hamlet" has low comedy and a fight scene, along with lots of (implied) sex (ah, those "sweat-enseamed sheets"!). It's why a guy chops off his hand in "Titus Andronicus."

The differences between writing for money and a market in Shakespeare's day and writing for 20something TV execs today are that when Shakespeare stole, he knew how to steal, how to file off the serial numbers and slap a new coat of paint on the sucker; he knew that he had to write for his audience, not for an under-educated and over-powered group of self-important idiots; and he knew, finally, that if he didn't write stuff that was true, that came out of his heart and his head rather than repeat the cliches of the last few generations, he might as well as pack it all up and go back to Stratford-on-Avon.

Where his wife was waiting. And so, he wrote, with heart, and with brains.

Where's the heart and brains in this crop of crap? All I see is "irony."

>Apparently it's a major challenge for Americans to stomach a woman delivering the news at night.

Oh give me a major break.

It's Katie frackin' Couric we're talking about, not a real journalist. The moment that CBS or another network decides to put a true female journalist on, rather than a flack for People magazine, we can have this discussion (and haven't the cable networks been using female readers for some time now?).

I'll take this article seriously when somebody aside from the TV critic from the "Arts and Entertainment" section in Salon writes it.

So which was Katie? An Art, or an Entertainment?

Why Tim! Read your colleague, Heather. Obviously you're just biased against Katie because she's a woman. Why, you might as well have asked where her cojones are!

I know it's the question *I'm* askin'....

Kerry had his chance, and decided to be a "gentleman"--not to fight for his country, his policies, or his reputation.

Thousands of innocents have died since then, both Americans and Iraqi, because Kerry couldn't be bothered to stoke a fire in his belly.

I'd vote for Hillary before I'd vote for John Kerry. Kerry should understand: you get one chance at the brass ring, and if you blow it, you're out.

If Kerry had spine, guts, or balls, he'd find someone with both a chance and a real desire to win, and back that person.

Put Kerry in the "It's All About Me!" column, along with Joe Liebermann.

I've waited to respond to HH's review until after I saw the second episode of the show. I wanted to give it -- both the show and the review--some time to percolate.

Well, I've done so, and I have to say that HH is both right--and wrong. On the absolute scale of things, the concerns of the people in the show are pretty small potatos: their paychecks, the worth of their work, how much their egos get stroked. And we're used to shows that pump up the stakes--trusting that we won't be interested in the doings of mere mortals. It's got to be life or death; it's got to Jack Bauer, all the time. Or we simply don't care.

It's especially infuriating to folks like HH when the subject is TV. Disregard the fact that TV is still the big medium for the culture; disregard the fact that we shape our lives, our jobs, our politics, and our very identities based upon what we see on TV. It's just TV, after all. Ubiquitous, insidious, trivial, utterly quotidian. The Muzak of our lives. The stuff they make HH watch every damn day in order to get a paycheck.

What must be absoutely maddening to HH is how much these people care about what they do, the passion they bring to their work. Sure, it's all wrapped up in their egos, their paycheck, their drug habits, and their sex lives. People not as angry as HH might even say that this is Sorkin's genius--like the playwright that Arthur Miller called The Great Intimidator, he writes about everything, and everything touches every other thing.

And this is an age in which we're told, repeatedly, especially by folks who spend their time, after all, writing about nothing more important than TV, that we shouldn't care. Irony is the order of the day: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." This is a show that cares, that cares deeply, passionately, and, according to HH, way too much, about what it writes about. As Sorkin did with politics, so now he attempts (again) with TV: to make us care, as he does.

And, as HH notes, the show has brilliant dialogue, a great cast, intriguing plots: so let's all hate it together.

How do we know that what we're going to see is the original document--that is has not been redacted to meet the Administration's political needs?

"You're doing a heck of a job, Denny!"