The week in craptastic television 

OK, so maybe we could've picked a tougher fight.

You can't blame the networks, really, for today's prime-time lineup. The writers are picketing, after all, and the bigwigs need something to put on the air after we all finish dinner. But jeez -- American Gladiators? What's next -- a 61-year-old Sly Stallone remaking Rambo? (Don't answer that.)

Yup, the boob tube's gotten pretty ugly. And because we at CL are gluttons for punishment, we decided to see firsthand just how bad it's become, and spent four straight evenings glued to the couch. The following excerpts outline what we witnessed during our incredibly masochistic project.

One final note on what you're about to read: While it may seem as though the writers behind this article -- Ms. Schurr and Mr. Rozen -- harbor some ill will toward the programs they endured, I have strong evidence that they enjoyed these shows far more than they let on. Because that's what network TV has become in this writer-less, reality-driven age: one long, flashy, humiliating guilty pleasure.

Enjoy.

MONDAY

American Gladiators (8 p.m., NBC)

Damn is Hulk Hogan tan -- and basted. As I sat in front of the television last night, flipping back and forth between "first-run, nonscripted" network offerings before finally settling on American Gladiators, I couldn't help but curse those damned striking writers. So this is what it's come to? Thanks to your greedy little campaign for Internet and DVD residuals, I'm subjecting my already teetering sanity to the chortlings of the Hulkster and a guy nicknamed "Big Country" who likened a physical challenge to "hog wrestling at the fair"?

"You are the baddest of the bad! You made it down, you didn't slow down, you didn't mess around," the erstwhile Terry Bollea praised winner Sienna -- that is, when he wasn't calling her "sister" or a male competitor by the name of Adonis "brother" or throwing the action to fellow reality TV whore and co-host Laila Ali (of Dancing With the Stars fame). Believe it or not, the original American Gladiators premiered almost 20 years ago. Now, amped up as if having popped one too many Flintstone vitamins, the good ol' boys and girls were back, "heck"-ing and "darn"-ing their way through family-friendly challenges like The Gauntlet, The Earthquake and the ultimate obstacle course, The Eliminator, as a color commentator looked on, observing, "Oh, this is painful."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Are we the jabronis here? Sure does feel like it, what with "prime-time" television reduced to a mishmash of aging stand-up comedians on game shows (see opposite page) and D-list stars jumping from reality show to reality show with the frequency of a cheap ham radio. The cameras swirled, the ADHD jump cuts verged on seizure-inducing, and Gladiators' hosts and contestants unleashed a sensory-overloaded, mind-numbing assault that made me feel like I'd been Tasered (bro). Ali may have scored as a footloose celebrity/daughter/"star," and Hogan may have known best in his televised household, but in their unholy union, "fueled on and powered by Subway," I was anything but entertained.

"I'm agile like a mongoose!" Adonis boasted to his rival. (I can't recall whether it was Militia or Wolfman -- I was sucking my thumb in the fetal position at the time). "It's over! It's over!"

Unfortunately for me, it's not. (Schurr)

TUESDAY

The Biggest Loser: Couples (8 p.m., NBC)

I feel sick to my stomach, and it's not due to the pint of Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey I inhaled while watching two hours of The Biggest Loser: Couples. Nope, it was the sheer sadism inherent in a show that strips morbidly obese individuals of their dignity and self-respect -- not to mention their clothing -- and then dangles the proverbial carrot cake in front of them as a test of willpower.

I feel for these people, I really do. Hell, it's post-holidays, and I'm carrying a few surplus pounds myself. But there's a thick line between a daily battle with the dessert tray and the brazen gluttony that brought these 10 couples to their buckling knees on a super-sized erector seesaw. Yeppers, for last night's physical challenge, whomever teeter-tottered the best won a calling card to phone home from this oh-so-very public camp for fatties. There, I wrote the word. But that's the flabby, grotesque reality of the matter.

It's in poor enough taste that at the conclusion of each episode contestants must send a couple home, relegating the losers to losing no more. It's all the more humiliating that folks with such poor body images must weigh themselves on a slab-like scale, the ladies clad only in sports bras and spandex and the men in shorts, jelly rolls and moobs and back fat on embarrassing display for mass network consumption.

By the time the show wound down, as contestants placed their send-off votes down on silver platters, the wretched taste in my mouth was venturing south. I just couldn't digest watching human beings reduced to their basest forms, desperately -- and in vain, thanks to the fine, compassionate folks at The Biggest Loser -- trying to step away from the Ho Hos, deny themselves the Ding Dongs and drop the weight, all of it broadcast for our, what, motivation? Entertainment? What is the purpose of this again?

Time to purge. (Schurr)

Just for Laughs (8 p.m., ABC)

You know how certain crappy TV shows can still seem really funny when you're under the influence?

Just for Laughs isn't one of those shows.

Shockingly, I'd never actually sat through this half-hour Canadian import hosted by C-list comedian Rick Miller before. Featuring sketch pranks played on unsuspecting pedestrians in public parks, gas stations, street corners and parking lots, J4L is essentially Candid Camera-lite; a laugh-track-inducing way for us to watch normal people get punked.

And if you're the kind of viewer who finds men in wigs, seeing-eye dogs wearing glasses and TP stuck to shoes the stuff of comic brilliance, I strongly suggest you tune in. The rest of us will devote 8 p.m. to more entertaining pursuits, like cleaning the fish tank and brushing our teeth. Seriously.

Sketches included an empty car driving itself while senior citizens freaked out in the parking lot (it was an empty vehicle, moved by hidden actors) and a kid getting people to pay for his candy in a convenience store.

One gag made me chuckle in my head maybe once, but only because it involved poop.

"Just think," said Miller, smiling under his stellar puff-do, "if nothing's going your way today, at least you didn't get caught in any of the gags you just saw."

To think I would've had to tell some kid I wouldn't buy him candy! (Rozen)

WEDNESDAY

Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants (8 p.m., CW)

This is getting ridiculous. Wednesday's lineup was so full of shiteousness -- it's a word, look it up -- that the 8 o'clock block was almost entirely reality TV (thank you, Fox, for not making it a clean five for five). That viewing conundrum left my partner-in-crime and me to divvy up the tube droppings. He went with Supernanny; I covered the grenade that is Crowned. (We both considered calling the Camille Paglia hotline before we tuned in.)

Carson Kressley, the most irritating of the Queer Eye guys, lords over Crowned alongside sub-tier stars so insignificant they don't even merit a letter in the Hollywood alphabet. Kressley and Co. had a purpose, though: to encourage a gaggle of mom-and-daughter divas to be the best gosh darned beauty queens they could be. Last week's episode concerned the mastery of "The Smile" -- who knew it so nuanced in Pageantland? Let the record show that there are six distinctive turns of the mouth: The Swimsuit, The Evening Gown, the I've Got a Secret, The Natural, The Interview and The Closing Smile. Watch Crowned for 15 minutes, and you'll develop a newfound respect for that dear, misunderstood Miss Teen South Carolina.

I can't say the same of Redhead Bombshells' daughter Laura, a young lady so refined she politely asked her mum to "Shut the fuck up!" at one point. (Lest one think that team name lacks a certain finesse, flash back an episode or four to a recently ousted duo who anointed themselves, without a trace of irony, Silent But Deadly.) As the pairs took to the pedestal for one minute each, their competition attempting to break their grinning composure with "yo momma so ugly"-inspired disses, it was all but impossible not to smile in return.

Crowned boasts a lion's share of catty hilarity and waterworks, all under the auspices of some old-fashioned mother-daughter bonding. As another team was "de-sashed," courtesy of a velvet pillow holding a pair of jewel-encrusted scissors, I knew I'd be tuning in again to witness the remaining gals, these touchstones of beauty, brains and grace (don't forget the grace), take one high-heeled step closer to 100 grand.

"The only thing fake is both y'all weaves," a rival threw down in the preview for the next episode. To paraphrase Mr. Kressley, it's enough to make me barf fluffy pink cottonballs. (Schurr)

Supernanny (9 p.m., ABC)

Meet Jo Frost, a young, straight-shooting, British child psychologist who likes to masquerade as Mary Poppins. Why? Because she's gimmicky like that.

Her reality show, an hour-long behavioral-Gestalt therapy sesh called Supernanny, follows Frost as she meets, counsels and ultimately heals families with horrible children. It was such a big hit in England a few years ago that the host took her feel-good show across the pond where, I guess, her gimmicky accent could be exotified to its full potential.

"They remind me of bloody dogs!" she exclaims, flaring her Cockney in the episode I watched. She's just met Terri and Brian Schumacher, a Las Vegas couple whose genes somehow combined to give them gremlins. Jessica, 14, is a materialistic trophy-wife-in-training who repeatedly faults her parents for raising her "in a dump." Alexi, 11, is a narcissistic kewpie who likes to Internet chat with older men.

Dylan, 7, is Stalin. Just ... Stalin.

Terri and Brian are the kind of people who will do anything to be loved -- hence the dog comparison -- but aren't self-aware enough to realize it yet. They cook the kids whatever they want and work crazy hours to give them whatever they want. In one scene that I'm sure will force Dylan/Stalin to change his name one day, he asks his mom to wipe his ass when he's done in the loo.

"It's slack parenting," chides Frost.

Using her trademark positive-reinforcement technique, Ms. Poppins intervenes. Basically, it's a one-step process: She introduces everyone in the family to a little system called "Discipline and punish."

Penalizing the kids is hard for the parents, and they flub things a bit. When Frost takes the whole family on a retreat with Habitat for Humanity workers to inoculate the money-grubbing tykes with a social conscience, young Jessica puts up a fight.

"I wasn't expecting to go there and dig dirt and stuff," she seethes.

Mom starts yelling back. Why isn't the twit learning her lesson?

Lucky for Jessica, Nanny is a lot more actualizing -- "I just wanted to take a different approach," she says -- and brilliantly, get this, talks to her like a grown-up in her room during a weird slumber party scene with a lot of controlled whispering that totally went over my head.

Somehow, in the course of an hour, everyone ends up cured, and the family is reborn healthy, organized and mercifully free of late Soviet dictators.

Now if only Frost could teach them to take biscuits with their tea, the show might actually be worth watching again. (Rozen)

THURSDAY

Celebrity Apprentice (NBC, 9 p.m.)

First, a disclaimer for those of you who might think I'm unbiased: I don't like "The Donald." Never have. His trademark machismo is perhaps the diametric opposite of what I like in my moneyed leaders. His blunt interest in trashing his adversaries always feels like capitalism at its most primitive.

Basically, I think he's a baboon.

The baboon's latest outing -- a last-ditch effort to save his show from low-ratings execution -- has everything The Apprentice had and smashes it with elements of The Surreal Life. Celebrity Apprentice is an opportunity for the rich and desperately forgotten to try impressing the judges with their business savvy. Being washed-up, they obviously have a lot of it.

Think that's a bit harsh? Let's see how many of the contenders' names you recognize: Trace Adkins, Carol Alt, Stephen Baldwin, Tiffany Fallon, Jennie Finch, Nely Galán, Marilu Henner, Lennox Lewis, Piers Morgan, Omarosa, Tito Ortiz, Vincent Pastore, Gene Simmons and Nadia Comaneci. (I knew, like, maybe four.)

It's boys vs. girls on this show, Team Hydra vs. Team Empresario, which is not only wrong in terms of gender, but just plain wrong when you do the research and realize that "Empresario" was the name given to the land grants Americans used to settle Mexican territory during the creation of the state of Texas. Just sayin'.

I don't really know how to describe the episode I sat through, other than to simply recount its climax -- i.e., the part where the baboon pissed me off most.

Team Empresario has just suffered its second disappointing challenge loss of the season, a botched hot dog commercial for a Pedigree adoption charity that no one on the judging panel liked. Project manager/former Telemundo executive Nely is called back with the two girls she deems her group's weakest: fashion model/Private Parts star Alt and Comaneci, who showed neither initiative nor "competitive spirit" on the assignment ... nor English-speaking abilities, from what I could tell.

"If you were me, who would you fire?" the baboon asks the three ladies. But it's clear his backward-toupee is already twitching for the Romanian gymnast's dismissal.

"I love you, but Nadia, you're fired," he announces.

Poor Comaneci shrinks like everyone else does in front of Trump. Maybe that's the appeal of Celebrity Apprentice. Instead of watching people we don't know get beaten down, we get to watch people we sort of remember get reduced to people we'll never want to remember again. (Rozen)