There's a piece today on Salon asking why in God's name the appalling Cougartown is a hit. Well, I see that and raise you Glee.Yes, I know. It's a classic high school underdog story and, hey, who doesn't love a musical number? It's got Ned Ryerson - with a Ryerson last name, no less. It's got the peerless Jane Lynch. It's got rapturous reviews. What's not to like, you say?

Some of my gripes are personal. I've never been a big fan of Desperate-Housewives-style broad "satire" nor of the po-mo-atmo of such favorites as Pushing Daisies. The super-produced aesthetic and the overtime Fox-hype-machine have always struck me as a cynical contrast to its alleged support of the Aw-Shucks Other. Also, I don't find it remotely funny. These are matters of taste with which people are allowed to disagree, and clearly do. That it's a smug, G-rated Election on uppers with 2-D characterizations would not, in itself, prompt anything more dramatic than a Tivo thumbs-down.

What gets me most is the portrayal of female characters. Yes, everyone's a cardboard cliche - it's supposed to be "playing with" stock types - but I think things get nefarious where the dames are concerned. We've got Shrewish, Lying Wife; Sweet Perky Neurotic; Bitchy Cheerleader; Tracy Flick-esque Nerd; Strong Black Woman. Sure, Lynch's over-the-top psycho-coach is watchable, but only because she is, not because there's any more nuance to her. And all of whom orbit around Main Guy, who is apparently perfect, and a saint. Also saintly: football QB. Both are being manipulated by women in their lives while worshipful Perfect Women wait in the wings to ease their burdens.

I also think it's becoming irresponsible to reiterate high school cliches, thereby reinforcing them. Nerds = glee club. Popular kids = cheerleaders. A show like Freaks and Geeks or Friday Night Lights plays with these ideas with a lot more nuance and sensitivity, whereas Glee simply adds another brick to the status quo. It's cheap and it's disingenuous. And portrayal of the world of the Dramatic Underclass was done a lot better by the movie Camp, which you may not have seen - but I'm guessing this show's creators did. That film was flawed, but it had ambition and heart. Glee makes a pretense of this, but I never feel it.

Cougartown and Glee are both hits because people watch bad shows all the time. In the case of Cougartown, though, it wears its offensive, repulsive trashiness on its sleeve. Look at the title; this isn't a program that's going to advance women's position in society. Glee pretends to be more, but in its way I find it just as offensive. And the more so because it pretends to care.

High-Fiving 40-Year-Olds? Get Out Of "Cougar Town"! [Salon]

Why do some shows feel so incredibly dated now? Watching the introduction to Friends in its syndicated amber, I physically cringe with embarrassment. Why did I ever watch this? I wonder. And why are they dressed like that? It's like coming face-to-face with a middle-school friend who still wants to listen to Jagged Little Pill on a loop, and to boot has married her 7th Grade boyfriend. Maybe it's because a show was so popular, defined an era and a sensibility - people actually got that haircut, and people imitated Joey, and we actually all wore jeans like that. Hortense, high priestess of pop culture, had a good theory: "I think many shows go through these weird periods where the dated-factor hurts them and later helps them, because people start tuning into the show not as a relevant commentary on their lives, but as a reminder of what their lives were like at the time. You move from making fun of the show for being dated to making fun of yourself for the way you dressed/things you thought were cool in 1994, if that makes any sense."

I agree, but some shows are definitely more prone to it than others Seinfeld, which always existed out of time and never had anything to do with any discernible fashions of the moment, doesn't have the cringe factor, even if it's mellowed from must-see to Raymond-reliable. And Sex and the City, even if it dates itself from season-to-season, feels like a time capsule - like a 2001 Spring collection or something, albeit one you wouldn't have worn. Watching it, you know that they, too, (were they real and not 2-dimensional and underwritten) would scorn to wear a name necklace or an enormous flower or the weirdly androgynous wardrobe they saddled Cynthia Nixon with in early episodes. And, that said, I'd still find it very odd if someone replicated one of the glass-and-steel Cosmo palaces they visited on the show; those locations looked quite bad enough at the time.

Other shows, for me at least, age well. When the Gilmore Girls was on, I despised it. I was very vocal and annoying about it, too, and any timid endorsement would be met with a stream of criticisms of the preciousness, the ersatz cleverness, the incredibly grating, colorful townsfolk, the cutesy vocal scoring. Did I watch it regularly? Of course - the better to dismiss it with. And then I caught it in syndication a few months ago and was totally riveted. The character of Rory was so smart and serious! The references were sometimes clever! Was it saccharine and frequently twee? Yes - but in a world where Glee is hailed as brilliant, it started to look like early Arthur Miller. It seemed I was not alone. Two of my friends mentioned to me recently that they've fallen into belated love with Gilmore Girls. "It's sad," said one, "that as a 30-something woman, the only thing I can relate to is a ten-year-old show about a teenager."

Maybe Hortense is right, and when another ten years have passed, Friends will start to feel nostalgic and even iconic. But I'm just not sure it's good enough. I suspect things have to be really good - like My So-Called Life - or Saved by the Bell campy to really pass into the firmament. That's why this Central Perk seems so weird - it would be one thing if this had opened during the show's heyday. Surely most 20-somethings know it at least as well as a syndication bolster, and Jennifer Aniston as much as Professional Sad-Sack as hair role-model. Maybe it's strange, too, because the studio-set New York in Friends was so artificial, and I wasn't familiar with any comparable yuppie-havens; nor, had one existed, would I have wanted to patronize it. But what do I know? Apparently the place is going gangbusters, even though it's coffee-only in a tea town. And as for the "iconic orange couch," well, "there is no possibility of getting comfortable there, due to the constant disruption of people wanting their photographs taken on it."

Cafe Opening Stimulates Friends Fans [BBC]

"I'm very proud of its timelessness and, you know, the fact that it has a political edge that is even more relevant now than it was then," Roseanne tells EW. "I set out to talk about America's working women, and yeah, I guess that's groundbreaking.''

But that's not the only way in which Roseanne broke new ground. Martin Mull, who played Roseanne's openly gay boss, Leon, tells EW, "One of the reasons that I was delighted with the part… was the way it was handled....Whereby let's say both Rosie and Goodman both had a little bit of a weight problem, the show was not filled with fat jokes. And by the same token, when Leon came along, the fact that he was gay was kind of like 'Okay, next! Now, let's deal with him as a human being.'" Sandra Bernhard also played an openly gay character on the show — Roseanne's friend Nancy — and her sexuality was treated with care and dignity, not like a sideshow.

And then there were Roseanne's daughters, Darlene and Becky. Neither girl was a plastic stick figure like the over-plucked teen heroines of 90210 or even the daughters on red state family friendly sitcoms like The Bill Engvall Show. Both Darlene and Becky were shown to be bright and headstrong, just like their mother. Sara Gilbert, the actress who played the sardonic Darlene, has this to say about her character, "I loved that she goes away to art school or to be a writer or whatever. I loved that she, it's the story of this family that sacrifices and is so poor, and this mother does everything for her kids, and her daughter goes on to make something of her life. I think that's so moving."

One could argue that the sitcom format is dead, and that a show like Roseanne is a relic of the sitcom age. But it still doesn't change the fact that families like the Connors are not present on television in any way, shape, or form, even on reality TV. When Bravo airs the "Real" housewives of Atlanta, NYC, and Orange County, they show only the frivolous and the uberwealthy. John Goodman said of Roseanne's debut, "'We came on following Moonlighting, and there was stuff like Dynasty and Dallas with all of these happy, rich, feel-good people, and then there was us. We knew we were different, and we knew she was really plugged in to what was going on in the country. People who looked like us were not doing too good." Looks like we could use another Roseanne these days, if only so she could kick the crap out of those wussy, whiny Desperate Housewives.

'Roseanne': The Cast Looks Back On the Show's 20th Anniversary

The Hollywood Reporter:

Shannon and Blair are fun to watch, at least for a little while. After that, Kim's whining goes from amusing to annoying. By the second episode, about a third of which incongruously takes place in a gay bar, you're forced to concede the two characters, as written, have a combined repertoire of a single note.

Washington Post:

Molly Shannon and Selma Blair are two hoots worth a happy holler in NBC's "Kath & Kim," a cleverly funny sitcom debuting tonight after scoring a smash with a different cast in Australia. The show has been painlessly Americanized and might as well be an indigenous creation, armed as it is with wicked, wacky comment on the mores and morals of the mall culture

The New York Times:

The Australian version is broader, bolder and more callous, gleefully unabashed about sending up lower-class accents and suburban vulgarity; the NBC adaptation tiptoes a little too squeamishly through snobbery and bad taste. “Kath & Kim” should be funnier, and could yet be, but the pilot disappoints.

The Los Angeles Times:

If this seems like a lot of space to devote to wardrobe, it's only because everything just gets worse from here, and, frankly, it pains me to write about it. For one thing, the original Australian "Kath &Kim” was very funny, and it's always embarrassing when a U.S. version doesn't measure up. Though why anyone would think we could take on an Aussie comedy is beyond me. Can you imagine, say, "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" with Brad and George in the lead roles?

For reasons perhaps only Christopher Guest understands, it is very difficult for Americans to do the broad hyper-social satire that the Brits and Aussies specialize in. Perhaps it's because Americans are not comfortable with lead characters who are lovably absurd. We have a disturbing need for simple-mindedness to be recognized as wisdom, à la Forrest Gump.

Variety:

Snide but not smart, "Kath & Kim" will likely leave American audiences scratching their heads, wondering what Australians saw in the concept — or if something was seriously lost in translation. The producers have sought to give the project a Yank accent mostly by having their low-class protagonists reference National Enquirer-type gossip about U.S. stars, but the show irritates more than it amuses. Most fans of the better NBC sitcoms surrounding it that say "G'day" probably won't be able to say "G'bye" fast enough.

New York Magazine:

Copycatted from an Australian TV template, Kath & Kim wants to be a combo platter of Absolutely Fabulous and Gilmore Girls. The always limber, usually hilarious Molly Shannon plays Kath, a single mom who dresses funny. Pop-Tart Selma Blair plays Kim, her Doritos-eating princess of a daughter, who hardly dresses at all. Kath wants to remarry. Kim’s idea of a lasting relationship is Applebee’s; she’s moved back home after her young husband asked her if she might, personally, microwave something. Except for a visit to a gay bar for hip-hop, most of the action (tantrums, blubberings) occurs either in the house or a sandwich shop at the mall. This is because the unappetizing Kath & Kim is fixated in the oral stage.

'Kath & Kim' premieres tonight at 8:30 p.m. on NBC