If you're like me, then you watch television with a critical eye. Besides just enjoying the drunken revelry of the Real World Las Vegas crew, you yell at their television visages when they do something stupid or burst into tears over essentially nothing.

Over the next few days here at the Festival (assuming I survive tomorrow morning's plane takeoff through 20 mph winds and landing into 19 mph winds and rain), I'm going to give my salute to and review of television. Feel free to leave comments with your favorite shows, commercials, or other TV absurdities.

The first major genre is of course the sitcom, during which writers manage to cram 5 minutes of story into 10 minutes of ads and 15 minutes of predictable one-liner jokes. Most sitcoms are simply vehicles for aging stars or situational gimmicks, so most of you reading this are probably quliafied enough to create your own. Here are some tips when pitching your own gimmick to each network:

CBS: Your show must include an overweight, unintelligent man married to a very attractive and witty woman. Apparently years of market research have determined that most nightly prime time viewers are out of shape and a little slow and that they appreciate a character who, while similar to them in appearance, has a much hotter wife and nicer house. If possible, your show's male lead should work a low-paying job while the female lead should be quite content to stay home and take care of the kids except for the inevitable "husband jealous of wife getting a job" episode.

ABC: Your show should feature 2 parents, 3 kids (the younger one, the middle one, and the older one), and 1 pet (most likely a large dog like a golden retriever). While these shows are easy to write since you can reuse the plots of every other similar sitcom (older child gets driver's license, middle child gets girlfriend, etc.), it becomes a problem when the younger child goes through puberty and looks older than the middle child, who mysteriously disappears from the family to pursue unprofitable movie career (see Jonathan Taylor Thomas on Home Improvement).

FOX: Your show should be animated, about the supernatural, or involve people getting hurt by animals or chased by the police. Sometimes FOX airs programs that seem more suited for another network (Malcolm In the Middle is exactly like an ABC show, right down to the middle child pursuing a movie career), in which case the shows will be critically acclaimed since a critic's expectation of a FOX show is incredibly low. The good news is, no matter how bad your show is it will run for a few years (Futurama, anyone?). The bad news is, even if your show is good FOX will change its schedule repeatedly until even your most dedicated fans have no idea when the show is on.

NBC: Bad news writers, there is precious little room on NBC for sitcoms amidst their various incarnations of Law and Order and random doctor shows, and most of the sitcoms they have are at least 5 years old. Having a long-running show is great for the giant cash cow that is syndication, but there is increasing pressure to come up with new ideas and plot twists (or different combinations of characters that should have sex with each other) with the same old actors, who are now demanding a million dollars an episode to play a one-dimensional character that you or I could easily play.

The ultimate sitcom, the bar by which all others are judged, is of course Full House, which not only had the older, middle, and younger children at ages to maximize the time the show could stay on the air and the obligatory golden retriever, but instead of two parents they had 4 (counting Lori Loughlin). And once the show ended its run, all of the actors went on to fantastic careers: Bob Saget of course hosted America's Funniest Home Videos, Dave Coulier hosted equally-inane America's Funniest People, John Stamos married Rebecca Romijn (I didn't necessarily say fantastic acting careers), Candace Cameron married hockey's Valeri "I'm not as good as Pavel" Bure, and the Olsen twins have starred in a number of straight-to-video movies and multiple sitcoms where they basically play themselves as they count down the days until they turn 18 and can really cash in by starring in porn. Isn't TV wonderful?