California and the West : Is It Me, or Is Everyone on TV Sex-Crazed?

Like a lot of Americans, I watch too much television. I watch the local news, national news, morning news, evening news, new shows, old shows, talk shows, game shows, movie channels, music channels, network programs, cable programs, public television, public access, pay-per-view and a few programs that somebody should pay me to view.

Ted Turner’s company recently launched something called the Chimp Channel, featuring chimpanzees pretending to talk. This is where I draw the line. Watching a bunch of talking chimps would be too much like watching Jerry Springer’s show.

I am not a TV critic. The TV critic at this newspaper has no choice in what he watches. He has to watch everything. The poor man’s mind must be mush. He is probably spoon-fed by a nurse.

Whereas I watch whatever I please.

For example, there are bright individuals such as Ted Koppel, Ed Bradley, Katie Couric, Bill Maher, Tim Russert, Catherine Crier, Larry King, Roger Ebert and Bob Costas, whose work is generally entertaining or enlightening.

There are others whose only work in television should be repairing sets. I won’t name names. For example, I won’t name Hugh Hewitt of KCET public television’s “Life and Times.”

One thing I do look forward to each year is the new fall TV season, with all its fresh programming. As you know, this is the time of year when the networks unveil their latest unfunny comedies.

I caught a few this week.

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There was a brand new one--with a distinguished cast--that was on the air for, oh, 10 seconds before a child barged in to a bathroom and caught her parents in what appeared to be a compromising position. She called her father a “horn dog.” By show’s end, the wife was insisting that the husband have sex with her, immediately.

This was followed by an old show--an established hit--with a season premiere that was on the air for, oh, 15 seconds before a guy made a joke about a woman’s breast implants. By the show’s end, the guy’s own wife was pretending to have breast implants. He wanted to have sex with her, immediately.

These programs aired at 8:30 and 9 p.m . . . 7:30 and 8 p.m. in many states.

Sex, sex, sex.

I watched show after show about sex, sex, sex, often at what was once known (and mocked) as television’s “family hour.”

In some, every scene concerned sex, every joke was about sex, every line had to do with a physical act or an anatomical part. If a character wasn’t having sex, he or she was trying to have sex. Or talking about some other character having sex. Where. How. When. Please. Let’s go. Right now.

Come back, Mary Tyler Moore, wherever you are.

I am no prude. Some of the funniest jokes I’ve ever heard were about sex. For example, there’s the one where the farmer’s daughter meets the president of the United States and . . . no, wait. That’s a true story.

Humor with a cutting edge is OK. I don’t need every TV comedy to be about Opie breaking his lucky fishing pole or Fonzie losing his comb.

I’d just like to see five minutes of a prime time TV show go by without something raunchy. Make it four. Give me a couple of short scenes in which nobody uses smutty language or tries to turn some vertical person horizontal. That’s all. Just give my ears a break.

There was a popular and respected CBS half-hour comedy the other night in which a female character used an F-word that is a synonym for a worse F-word. It was jarring to me. It wasn’t even a punch line. It was just passing conversation.

To say every character on TV has a mouth like a sailor or truck driver would be an insult to sailors and truck drivers.

ABC’s comedy “Norm” on Wednesday night--at 7:30 p.m., Central time--ended with a woman telling Norm to take off his pants and wait for her atop the kitchen table. This one was a punch line. Somehow I can’t picture any of Bill Cosby’s shows ending this way.

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Look, I feel funny about discussing what’s funny. Like most people, what do I know?

There were scenes in the 1998 film comedy “There’s Something About Mary” that 20 years ago would have made Larry Flynt blush. I laughed.

But it’s different turning on a TV at 8 o’clock and watching a situation comedy about horn dogs and implants. I’m sorry, but it is.

When a TV comedy has a scene involving a kitchen table, people should be having breakfast on it.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com