TV's Midwinter Madness

As we enter TV's bleak midwinter -- with its reality dreck, gagworthy rip-offs and insipid sitcoms -- things are looking dire. NBC can't catch a break, Fox shelved Arrested Development, ABC's hits are stumbling, CBS is stuck with David Caruso, and the WB and UPN are throwing in the towel and merging as the CW. Thankfully, Tony Soprano comes swaggering back on March 12th, ready to take on all comers and restore some respect to the dial. But until then, here's what you have to look forward to:

SKANK TV To stand out in the midseason crowd, shows are breaking the emergency glass and yanking out the skank. Newcomers like Fox's promising comedy The Loop (with its naked drinking games) and the WB's dreadful slutty-coeds drama, The Bedford Diaries (which crams a blow job, student-teacher sex and a kitchen-floor romp into the premiere), raise the bar. And after losing its SoCal mojo to Laguna Beach -- despite Mischa Barton kissing a girl and slipping a nip -- The O.C. has fallen back on that time-tested taboo: jailbait. Mischa's where'd-she-come-from lil' sis, fourteen-year-old Willa Holland, has already hooked Adam Brody on the ganj, stripped down to her panties and spawned a series of creepy fan sites. But by banking on the Humbert Humbert demographic, Fox just makes us feel dirty.

TERROR SELLS The only thing hotter than sex? As the White House knows, it's terrorism. Showtime's Sleeper Cell is a sleeper hit; Sci Fi's blistering Battlestar Galactica gets better as it gets darker; and 24 is rocking its highest ratings yet. Now CBS is one-upping 24's lone patriot with a whole crew of badass renegades in TV's best new show, The Unit. Starring 24's ex-POTUS Dennis Haysbert, it tracks a crew of Special Forces soldiers who off hijackers, a terrorist leader and a donkey. And that's just the first episode.

PRIME-TIME RIP-OFFS Apparently, a midseason TV pitch goes something like this: "It's like The Sopranos, but cheaper!" (see Brotherhood, Showtime's poor-cousin show about Irish politicos and gangsters). Or "It's like Ocean's Eleven, but with a D-list cast!" (NBC's haven't-I-seen-this-before drama Heist). Or "It's like Mary Tyler Moore, only it sucks!" (Rebecca Romijn's wretched Pepper Dennis). The best copycat is Sons & Daughters on ABC, Lorne Michaels' sitcom about a large, dysfunctional family. Sadly, the best you can say is "It's like Arrested Development, but with less chance of getting renewed." Which isn't saying much.

THE CURSE OF NBC At least NBC president Kevin Reilly is honest. "Last year was horrific," he admitted recently, and '06 isn't looking much better. Will & Grace and The West Wing are going out with whimpers, and just as things were looking up, with My Name Is Earl and The Office reviving Must-See TV, both shows saw the anvil fall from the sky: Steve Carell is cutting The Office short to film Evan Almighty, and Jason Lee came down with chicken pox, halting production on Earl for weeks. The Olympics may have given the network a shot in the arm, but when the ice thaws, the peacock will still be stumbling.

NAME-BRAND SHOWS The dial's always been clogged with hits like The Cosby Show and I Love Lucy, but lately the trend of naming shows for the star or main character has spun out of control. Everybody Hates Chris and My Name Is Earl scored, but the newcomers are more Joey than Raymond. Emily's Reasons Why Not was killed after one episode; The Book of Daniel and Jake in Progress did little better; Jenna Elfman's Courting Alex should be sued for comedic malpractice. And poor Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who scored with Seinfeld but flopped with Watching Ellie, strikes out again with The New Adventures of Old Christine. And Freddie? Hopefully Prinze won't keep coming back like Krueger.

SHARK JUMPERS Is Desperate Housewives getting desperate? Has Lost lost it? Both of ABC's breakout shows are still riding high in the ratings but suffering a major sophomore slump in buzz, coolness and coherence. Desperate's quirky mixture of Dynast-ic conniving and American Beauty-style suburban malaise has devolved into cliched soap operatics. And Lost, which increasingly seems like the real show about nothing, spends so much time introducing new characters that it's largely abandoned the big questions -- like where the fuck did that polar bear come from? Here's hoping the Housewives focus more on the show than on the red carpet and that Lost learns from hits like Twin Peaks and The X-Files, which got lost in their own brilliant halls of mirrors.

SENSITIVE GUYS Memo to TV execs: Chick lit for men didn't work in bookstores, so why should it work in prime time? Stab-you-in-the-eyeball shows like the failed Jake in Progress, the failing Four Kings and the flailing Freddie keep selling male stars as sappy romantic-comedy leads -- and pitching them to guys, who couldn't care less. Why? Because guys like gangsters (The Sopranos), cops (CSI), fools (Earl) and homicidal vigilantes (24). CBS execs swore that their just-shelved sensitive-man show Love Monkey would be "the male Sex and the City." Maybe that was the problem.