It Is Scary What Passes For TV

By nature I am an optimist, the kind of person who sincerely believes that behind every cloud there is a silver lining, not to mention a flock of geese who will poop on my car.

But even I am now convinced that Western Civilization is coming to an end - I recently saw a man on television drinking out of a toilet.

I had the dubious honor of witnessing this cultural watershed while playing TV critic for Burke Marketing Research of Cincinnati, which called me at home last week - during dinner, of course - to ask if I would watch two new shows and then critique them as part of a nationwide survey.

I will not give anything away right now - you will have to wait to find out how much I hated them - but I will say that the two shows, an alleged comedy and an alleged drama, have somehow made it onto the fall schedule, possibly because network executives have the collective intelligence of squid.

The toughest part of the job, from a man’s perspective, was that I could not use the TV remote to switch channels. Well, I suppose I could have, but then I would not have been eligible for the $200 grand-prize drawing that Burke Marketing is holding for all survey participants.

On the other hand, I would have missed the shows. And that would have been worth about a million dollars.

All I knew at the time was that I had to be home by 6 p.m. on Tuesday so I could watch the two new programs.

As the clock struck 6, my wife, Sue, our two daughters, Katie and Lauren, and yours truly, the TV critic, were sitting around the tube, waiting to be turned into zombies. We were not disappointed.

All you need to know about the first show, a half-hour sitcom called “Bless This House,” is that it stars Andrew “Dice” Clay, the raunchy stand-up comic who has so endeared himself to women, minorities and other large segments of the population that many of them would love to embrace him, preferably by the throat. Now he’s billed simply as “Andrew Clay.”

In “Bless This House,” the Diceman, who I wish would goeth, plays a postal worker named Bert Clayton.

The plot, to be generous, involves a merry mixup between Bert, his wife Alice (played by Cathy Moriarty), their wisecracking kids (played by robots), Bert and Alice’s friends Lenny and Phyllis (played by two people named Lenny and Phyllis) and the busty mother of one of the kids’ friends (played by a busty mother).

Along the way, there are several sparklingly witty and wonderfully sophisticated jokes about “big boobs,” PMS and stamp-licking. In one especially riotous scene, Bert drinks out of a toilet.

“This is stupid,” my wife said.

But not, as it turned out, as stupid as the second show, a “Twin Peaks” knockoff called “American Gothic.” All you need to know about this one is that it was written and produced by Shaun Cassidy. I had to be a hardy boy to get through it.

As the hourlong drama opens, an 8-year-old kid named Caleb is celebrating his birthday with his teenage sister, Merlie Ann, who is sitting at a table in a trancelike state (Alabama, I think), chanting, “Someone’s at the door, someone’s at the door,” over and over until, blessedly, her father brains her with a shovel.

“This is funnier than the first show,” Lauren commented astutely. I had to agree.

Eventually the birthday boy encounters his dead sister, who is still chanting, “Someone’s at the door, someone’s at the door.”

I thought it might be someone selling Girl Scout cookies, but I never found out because the words “TO BE CONTINUED” flashed across the screen, at which point I closed my notebook and dutifully passed out.

As I later told the lady from Burke Marketing Research, whatever they pay TV critics, it’s not enough.