Can we add ‘Monday Night Football’ to the list?

When some people think of memorable television they summon up broadcasts from the moon, the Kennedy-Nixon debates, Cronkite’s dispatches from Vietnam or the fall of the Berlin Wall. But David Hofstede’s recently released 209-page volume examines the opposite end of the TV continuum.

“What Were They Thinking?: The 100 Dumbest Events in Television History” (Back Stage Books) describes the infamous, ignominious and sometimes inexplicable bits that many entertainers try to keep on the down-low.

Farrah Fawcett might not remember her incoherent 1997 David Letterman appearance, but Hofstede does: “ ... she fretted and struggled until finally uttering the word she couldn’t remember, ‘embankment,’ with the awed solemnity of Madame Curie discovering radium.”

Numerous jump-the-shark moments, like miscasting Shelley Hack to replace Kate Jackson on “Charlie’s Angels,” are also detailed in the book. But the title of “Worst. Recast. Ever.” belongs to “Dynasty” producers, who hired a saintly Emma Samms to take over the naughty Fallon role. “It was like casting Audrey Hepburn as Batgirl,” Hofstede writes.

The countdown’s 10 dumbest events include the Rick Rockwell-Darva Conger television wedding on Fox and the 1986 “It was all a dream” episode that marked Bobby Ewing’s return on “Dallas,” which the author describes as “the greatest cop-out in the history of dramatic television.”

But the top -- or is that bottom? -- spot belongs to “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” Aired in 1978, the TV show featured the “Star Wars” cast (yes, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill) trying to get Chewbacca home for the important Wookie “Life Day” holiday.

Hofstede doesn’t mince words when describing one of the show’s highlights: “Carrie Fisher, who appears to have arrived from a three-day bender on planet Happy Dust, warbles a painfully off-key tune that may be based on the ‘Star Wars’ theme.”

He says that George Lucas and pals would love to forget this sublime piece of television kitsch. So you probably won’t find the special as a “Star Wars” DVD extra anytime soon -- not in this galaxy anyway.