Random, I know, but this week's "Baby" Scrubs (which featured the same mix of awesome and irritating as last week's episode) featured a scene in which a few characters get stuck in an elevator. It got me musing about that particular TV cliché, which almost every show parodies or does straight at some point.

So, I Googled away and found this hilarious page from TVtropes.org listing tons of examples. (Some that brought back memories: Trapper in a hut with Margaret on M*A*S*H, Family Ties' Mallory and Skippy locked in a basement, Archie Bunker stuck in an elevator with a black businessman and a Puerto Rican woman in labor.) But I was still not satisfied!

And to put the cherry on this Lost–obsessed day, here's NPR's Linda Holmes naming Lost the show of the decade, arguing that despite any flaws, the series acted as a positive role model for more ambitious network television:

"Going forward with a show, raising question after question after question, asking people to be patient about a monster for five-plus seasons, knowing that it's all going to get you a kick in the teeth from your own adoring fans someday because you have taken on more than you will ever be able to really explain? That's audacious. And network television absolutely has to be much, much more audacious in order to survive. Audacity isn't so hard to find on cable to varying degrees, but against the network drama backdrop of doctor/lawyer/cop shows, it is to be treasured."

Here's another great roundtable, this one of TV critics: the marvelous Maureen Ryan, Alan Sepinwall, and James Poniewozik. The first installment is filled with great Lost chatter.

My personal favorite moment was Ryan's analysis of the fan rage at the end of Battlestar Galactica, and some speculation about the Lost finale — with a sly Sopranos reference:

There were the people that wanted the whole mythology to add up correctly and make sense, and there were the people who wanted the character stuff to kind of wrap up. I was mostly in the latter camp. And so for me, I felt like there were a couple of wobbly things in the finale, but I was willing to live with them because the "Battlestar" finale really delivered, for me, on a character level.

Whereas, in the post-finale comments I was seeing, people wanted the math to add up. You know, like, the show is a math equation and the show needed to get the right answer. And in my mind, it was never going to do that -- I necessarily didn't expect that or think it was going to be possible for it all to add up neatly. I felt like, this is a show that has taken many risks. A few of them have not paid off, but I'd rather watch a show that does something crazy that has an 89 percent chance of working out down the road, story-wise, than a show that plots things out in a way that is purely logical and kind of clinical.

So I just think certain segments of the various "Lost" fandoms are, if anything, more obsessed with various bits of arcane mythology and they will want everything to add up a certain way. I think there's a chance the "Lost" guys are going to have to go to France and hide.

GQ did a nice roundup with the creators of Lost, Fringe, Star Trek, and Transformers, "Geekdom's Counsel of Elders." It's worth reading as a whole, especially for Lost fans, as well as for illuminating bits of TV history like this exchange:

Bryan Burk: I also think with the shift in how television is now, it's possible to watch serialized shows on DVD, which you couldn't do twenty years ago, let alone 30 years ago. There are loyal viewers who watch it every week, but you can also wait and watch it all as a box set and still be in the loop as to what's going on in television. When we started Lost, doing serialized television was unacceptable. None of the shows were working, that were serialized. I remember vividly saying [to the network] that they'd be standalone episodes. The episodes will be serialized, but they'll also be standalone.
Damon Lindelof: We lied.

And this far more depressing one:

Roberto Orci: Networks don't want serialized.
Damon Lindelof: Yeah, serialized is still a dirty word.
J.J. Abrams: Literally—I was at a network pitch recently, and someone mentioned how the show we were discussing would be a standalone show, and there was applause in the room. Literally. They don't want shows that people have to invest that kind of time in, and make that kind of commitment to.

(I also loved when Orci wisecracked: "I hate serialization. And I'll tell you why next week.")

Glee, I apologize. I've been dunning the show all fall, the way some underminer might insult their innocent honey: You're attracted to the person, you just wish they were, you know, more perfect — so you can't help nitpicking, demanding more, even to their sweet, shocked face.

But this week's Glee finale made me feel bad for all the abuse, and not just because of the incredible "Rain On My Parade" number, which knocked me back into my Barbra Streisand–soaked childhood. So I might as well admit that I do, in fact, like the show, despite its significant flaws, especially now that I've gotten the thrilling news that Idina Menzel is onboard for the "back eight" episodes. I refuse to say "squee," but you catch my drift.

Here's my big fat essay on the decade in television, full of starry-eyed raving and theories that are mine. In it, I get to slather praise on my favorite medium — and to analyze the role of many of the TV creators who are my heroes.

I still remember the period, sometime around 2000, when The Sopranos was in its early days and I myself was pretty much constantly at the mercy of one Buffy-induced neurological event or another: let's call it "the year I became a crazy TV person." (There was an earlier age, at the beginning of The Simpsons, when the syndrome began, but it only took full flower in the last days of the '90s.) This essay allowed me to turn ten years of televisual madness into a fat argument for the medium's essential greatness — basically, it's everything I've wanted to say to some annoying cocktail-party person who bragged about not having a TV — and for this I am eternally grateful to New York Magazine.

I'm interested in other people's takes on the decade: Do you think I'm overstating my case? Did I miss any shows? (Big Love came to mind when the piece was going to press.) What show made you think of TV in a new way? And what comes next, in this age of corporate and technological flux, branded entertainment and the Madness That Is NBC?

Tomorrow night at 8 pm Fox airs two more episodes of Dollhouse, the flawed-but-fascinating Joss Whedon misfit series finishing up its run in the next few months. I've watched the first of tomorrow's episodes, and it's terrific: twisty, clever, and flat-out weird in satisfyingly Philip K. Dick–ish ways, with a particularly striking performance by Alexis Denisof.

Since the devastating "Belonging" episode ran a few weeks ago, I have had high hopes that this show would go out with a bang. Some of the best series of the last decade have been one or two season wonders — Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life, The Office U.K. — and I'm peculiarly confident that the end of Dollhouse could resolve a lot of my ambivalent feelings about this inconsistent, thought-provoking mess of a series. Either way, I'll be watching: Something doesn't have to be perfect for it to be fascinating.

I've always loved the idea of a TV show shaking things up after a few seasons. I was excited when Newsradio seemed like it might switch to a new workplace (a rumor I remember from when the show was airing but couldn't find confirmation for online: Am I crazy?). I was thrilled when Buffy went to college. I seem to be the only fan of middle-era ER, with that fresh cast of characters, almost all irascible, corporate, and/or one-armed.

So I was open to the reboot of Scrubs, which debuted last night on ABC. It's basically a sequel to the original show: The old hospital has been torn down and the original cast are teaching med school (for at least a few episodes). Perry Cox is still ranting; Zach Braff is in it for six episodes; and they've still got the hilariously coarse tomboy Denise, a great late arrival on the old show. And then, of course, there's an entirely new ensemble of baby doctors jostling around for breakout status.

It's the 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street, the gorgeous children's series that gives "educational" a good name. With two kids, I still watch it; I've even been won over by nouveau Elmo, who is way weirder than I ever gave him credit.

But here's a clip I remember from when I was a kid, not one from Sesame Street itself but from the equally wonderful The Electric Company. Man, this seemed sophisticated to me! Funky and almost scary, with its stripped-down Jules Pfeiffer–y cartoon lady. It was also the first time I'd heard any reference to "the blues," which makes it the toddler equivalent of stumbling into some dive in Greenwich Village in 1971.

John Leonard died a year ago, after nearly a quarter century as New York Magazine's television critic.

John's legacy is too wild to sum up in any simple way. As a critic, he was a brilliant clown, cheerleader, chastiser, and philosopher, sometimes acid with disdain, far more often passionate with praise. As a writer, he was a fantastically original stylist who was downright loopy on the page. His trademark move was big, sloppy, madcap, omnivorous lists — the "cascades" — inferring connections everywhere. He drew links between worlds that many thinkers kept separate (TV and literature, psychology and left-wing politics). And he was also one of the most interesting people in New York City.

Here's my essay denouncing Cougar Town (and placing the sitcom in the historical context of television cougardom) in the current print issue of New York.

Here's my earlier blog post defending (sort of, while ranting against) Cougar Town.

And here's a thoughtful essay by Willa Paskin on Double X, which doesn't exactly denounce my denunciation, but does argue that the show has greater potential than I'm giving it credit for.

Late-seventies television was, with a few exceptions, a wasteland for teen girls. In 1982, we got one intriguing season of Square Pegs, but the real breakthrough came in 1988, when Roseanne's Darlene Connor slouched onto the scene, swiftly followed by Blossom, Daria, Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg, Angela Chase, Rayanne Graff, Lindsay on Freaks and Geeks, the daughters on Once and Again, Rory Gilmore, and many more: Teen girls as multilayered protagonists, not crush objects or spunky ciphers.

In contrast to so many seventies and eighties girls, Joanie on the hit sitcom Happy Days had an appealingly bratty presence. But what really blew my mind was a far more minor Happy Days character: Susie Quatro, who appeared from 1977 to 1979 as Leather Tuscadero, the younger sister of Fonzie's girlfriend Pinkie. With her husky voice, Kristy McNichol–ish shag, and greaser clothes, Leather was a bit of a baby butch, freakishly rock-and-roll for TV, almost exotic. Plus, she had her own trademark hand gesture: two slaps to the thigh followed by shooty-fingers!

While surfing around to determine whether Flo "Kiss My Grits" Castleberry did in fact qualify as a cougar (long story, next week's essay), I came across this list on the blog TVMunchies: the Twelve Grossest TV Characters Who Get Laid Constantly.

Which should have offended me — so mean! So, uh, weightist! — except that it was funny and perversely accurate.

Sternbergh was right.

Early this fall, I'd watched the first few episodes of Bored to Death in a state of mild twitchiness, griping that I wanted to like it but didn't. In fact, I actively disliked the premiere — and then I managed to be annoyed even by the funny third episode, although in an abstract way I thought it was pretty good. So that was all very confusing.

I described my concerns to my colleague and aesthetic duelling partner Adam Sternbergh, who was unsympathetic. I like Jonathan Ames's novels just fine, I told him, but I didn't quite buy this emo Woody Allen–ized version of him in the body of Jason Schwartzman. The whole conception was so sad-sack, so self-pitying, too boyish-begging-for-pity. Maybe it's Judd Apatow poisoning, but I didn't think I could take a show about an immature man-boy mooning over his lost, more "adult" girlfriend, she of the complaint that he drinks too much.

But then the series started getting to me. First of all, it's been a while since I've seen a TV series that actually feels like contemporary New York, especially Brooklyn, with scenes at the co-op and in Prospect Park and people racing through Grand Army Plaza. It's thrilling! And pretty. Even the set decoration was oddly perfect, like a random Rubik's Cube in some dude's ashtray.

Also, it's so great to finally watch a show about magazines that actually acknowledges what's happening to magazines (I'm talking to you, Ugly Betty). And last night when I was catching up on some old episodes, I giggled throughout that whole Ted Danson plot in which his therapist advises him to try bisexuality in order to try to reach his magazine's lost female demographic, a plot which may have made no sense, but made me laugh like a crazy person, as did the scene where he hit it off with a male hustler, and especially the scene in which he rants about the perfection of Danny Kaye's affair with Laurence Olivier, which was pretty much the funniest thing I've watched all year. ("He could do so many accents. He could be a different woman for Olivier every night.")

The show had crossed what I think of as the Tootsie barrier: if it doesn't bother you that a recently nationally famous TV star is able to anonymously knock over mimes in Central Park, it's because you like the movie (or show, or book) too much to nitpick over the little things.

Now perhaps I'm probably not the best audience for a show with a whiny streak about masculinity issues. I'm still suspicious of the Apatow bent. (During yet another scene of a girlfriend kvetching at a sad sack, my husband glanced up at the screen and said, "Why are all the women such nags?") But although Sternbergh was wrong about Cougar Town, he was right about this. It's hard to describe the show's appeal, but it's funny. It's oddly addictive. Even a little sexy. I'm happy it was picked up for a second season. Season pass.

I'm working up a piece about Mad Men, because people! The backlash must stop. I'm not saying the show is flawless, but a panicky jump-the-shark reflex is a reliable phenomenon among audiences during the third season of almost every great series — and it's hit the AMC hit even harder. People are not unreasonably desperate for great television in this, the season of post-Sopranos, post–The Wire anxiety. We're mid–Jay Leno, trapped in the Lost hiatus, it's an economic and aesthetic 1962 of the televisual soul! Don't panic! (Although I admit that Betty is pretty off-putting.)

In the meantime, I advise you fans of Adult Cable Shows to watch the fourth season of Dexter, which has been outstanding, genuinely chilling, and powerful. I'm going to respectfully disagree with our Vulture recapper who complains that "once again, Dexter identifies with a murder victim. Stifle that yawn." This is, to me, sort of like complaining that Six Feet Under has too many funerals. From my perspective, Dexter might look like just a jokey killer's-eye-view procedural, but the show is at its best a dark, funny, stylized allegory about masculinity. Each season hacks a fresh path through Dexter's pathology, as he murders his way into self-knowledge, contrasting himself with the evil people he tracks down in order to work his way toward (delusional, grandiose, but strangely genuine!) emotional health.

Maybe I'm still a little shook up from our long national silver-balloon nightmare yesterday, but I got PTSD-ish flashbacks re-watching this excerpt from The Day After, the Very Scary and Important Television Event of 1983.

For those of you who weren't around to be excessively vulnerable to television in 1983, the seventies and eighties were an era of traumatically educational television events, many extended throughout multiple nights: Holocaust, Roots, Shogun. Here's a column I wrote on the subject a few years back, explaining my Amelia Bedilia-ish linguistic misunderstanding of the time: "As a teenager, I didn't even realize that 'mini' was a prefix: I simply jumped to the conclusion that a miniseries (rhymed with rotisseries) was a literary genre in itself — a sprawling, quasi-educational epic studded with torture and interracial romance."

The Day After ran for one night, but as far as I was concerned, it might as well have been on television every night of my junior year in high school, since concerned adults kept raising the show again and again, attempting to solicit earnest conversations about nuclear war. (It was a little like those cockeyed, horrifying encounter groups about suicide in Heathers: "Whether to kill yourself or not is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make!")