Idiot Box Savant: Fall-type roundup!

By Andrew Kiraly

Keebler Sandies pecan shortbread cookies have bivouacked themselves in the littered campground of my soul! Oh, it started innocently enough. There they were one day on the kitchen counter in their rectangulicious package, sitting like a well-behaved puppy that might, in fact, be dead. Little did I suspect, though, that these wan, crisp pucks hid such awesome shortbread might--with a backup pecan flavor on its hard drive that socks home the mouthjoy in a veritable Zell Miller conniption of flavor. The Savant kids not! The utterly undistinguished packaging guarantees you'll be rooting through your grocery store aisles like a coked-up truffle pig, but believe me, it's worth the store manager jumping on your back and trying to price-gun you into submission.

Anyway. Feel that? That's TV continuing to rain benevolently on your teats in bracing cathode hunks. Indeed, another fall season is upon us, and in celebration of the event, the Savant had been taking giganto-gulps of television to inform fellow couchwarts which shows are a waste of time and which shows are a waste of time but in a way more amenable to justifications invoking the concept of quality.

"Father of the Pride," NBC, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. Lispy, flounce-sleeved wondertaffy Roy may have been neck-snacked by Montecore, but you can't keep his spirit--manifested by a fruity CGI action figure, anyway--down, as evidenced in this animated comedy with a few twists. As if throwing a juicy, meat-tufted bone to the PETA crowd, the show is told mostly from the point of view of Siegfried and Roy's menagerie--white tigers, pandas, lithe man-children teasing S&R's carnal desires with loincloths made of Fruit Roll-Up. Voiced by such luminaries as John Goodman and Carl Reiner, last week's premiere had moments of funny followed by moments of soul-baking shittiness. According to my Stopwatch of Lameness, 11 minutes elapsed from the start of the show before the creators deployed the Rapping Panda. No! Not the Rapping Panda! It was nearly enough to make me slit my wrists with the recycled, biodegradable edge of a World Wildlife Fund donation envelope. Cease your joyous clamor: I said nearly!

"Scrubs," NBC, Tuesdays, 9:30 p.m. After "Father of the Pride," I was in a burning mood to watch men in suits box wrinkled old crones about their papery ears on "Antiques Roadshow," when I made a surprise effort to be lazy and not touch the remote. Let's be frank: I haven't laughed out loud for a long time, but I did watching the season premiere of "Scrubs" last week, and the fact that it had been so long since I laughed out loud touched me so much that I cried.

"Hawaii," NBC, Wednesdays, 8 p.m. The crime rate may be down, but crime dramas are on the rise like the pistol-whipping hand of the carjacker/ex-roommate at the window of your Saturn! "Hawaii" is one of the latest, which is like "The Shield" minus the bug-eyed psycho cop Vic Mackey (whose face nowadays looks more and more like two golf balls driven into a giant Hostess Sno Ball) plus lava and bikinis (separately). The plots and intrigues are cool, the characters--all strutting, sunglass-clad doods aiming for Mick Jagger but coming up Lenny Kravitz--are not.

"Things I Hate About You," Bravo, Tuesdays, 9 p.m. It's "ha ha" sad when Comic Brilliance realizes it, like you, has a Cable Bill to pay and thus Needs a Job. In the case of Mo Rocca--best known as the somewhat funnyesque guy on "The Daily Show" who speaks in a susurrating insectoid hiss--that means being host of "Things I Hate About You," the show that, like that purely hypothetical fucking whore aunt of mine, puts the most inane minutiae of married life under wincing microscopic scrutiny. The premise: subjecting themselves to candid camerage, couples point out each other's molar-grinding foibles and, at show's end, a host of funnymakers judge who's more of a punk-ass bitch. Actually, sorry-ass as the premise sounds and as much as it reflects on what a spiritually bereft skid mark my life is on the Underoos of the universe, this show's actually pretty entertaining, if only because it captures the searingly stupid neuroses and habits that mark crappy--er, happy!--coupledom.

"Dog the Bounty Hunter," A&E, Tuesdays, 10 p.m. If Michael Bolton and Hulk Hogan aborted their love child in a Superfund toxic leach field, it would grow up to be Duane "Dog" Chapman, the bounty hunter perhaps best known for capturing rape ape and cosmetic fortune heir Andrew Luster in Mexico last year. Now Chapman has his own show, a reality dealio that shows him chasing down bail-skipping criminals. Actually, "Dog" has some surprising goosh--Chapman's actually willing to have heart-to-hearts with criminals about changing their ways, doing right, etc.--but, alas, that's overshadowed by Dog's bleach-bombed mulletoid that sits on his head like a cataract of painfully mashed Twinkies. American Hair Force, fire on my mark!