What's that smell?

Earlier this year, CL took a cue from the then ongoing writers strike to comment on the chunky, putrid explosion of Craptastic TV. I thought it couldn't get any worse back then, when captive audiences were shoveled trough-worthy fare like American Gladiators, The Biggest Loser: Couples Edition, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? and Crowned. But alas, the poop tubage gets more prolific.

There's the CW network's Farmer Wants a Wife, a pathetic, un-amusing attempt at milking humor (get it?) out of gals in heels doing ranch chores. I take it The Powers That Be deemed that old sing-song lyric "the farmer takes a wife" to be too bassackwards a term for the times, but the sentiment remains the same. Much like the new season of ABC's The Bachelorette, it's a lame attempt at girl power. And don't get me started on The Real Housewives of the O.C. and/or New York City, Bravo's domestic reality duo that celebrates the national sense of entitlement instead of criticizing it.

At the top/bottom of this festering, soul-sucking, mind-numbing pile of tripe are the masterful programming plops shat out by the E! network. First there was Kimora, a show about a former model-turned-PHabulous-Russell-Simmons-trophy-wife-turned-PHashion-designer-divorcee, and Keeping Up With the Kardashians, the chronicle of three privileged, floozy sisters and their drooling, botched plastic surgery, fallen-from-grace stepdad, Bruce Jenner. Now we're blessed with two new series about celebu-wannabees of even less substance. And curiously, these latest primetime fame whores are also female -- I'll get to that in a bit.

I'm referring to this past Monday evening's one-two punch of Denise Richards: It's Complicated and Living Lohan. Feast those dead, empty eyes on Richards, the ex-wife of "reformed" party boy Charlie Sheen -- an actress whose career peaked portraying Dr. Christmas Jones in a mediocre Bond flick (The World is Not Enough), and Dina Lohan, the uber-tanned, enabling momager of "rehabbed" party girl Lindsay. Even for exec-producer Ryan Seacrest, himself no stranger to rationalizing a trip down the rabbit hole for the sake of ratings (see also The Kardashians, American Idol, all that personal manscaping), there's nothing Complicated about this program.

As Richards took to Larry King, The View and any other media outlet willing to let her defend her decision to exploit her two young daughters in front of millions, the simpler her agenda became. She claimed, repeatedly, as if assuring herself and an appalled audience, that her tots' presence on-camera is "minimal." Um kay. Their loose mother's piss-poor taste and desperation is not. Admitted PR spin aside, how lacking in character are you if, in a public divorce battle with an acknowledged F.O.P. (Friend of Prostitutes), gambling addict and drug abuser, you come off as the person of worse moral code?

As for the hard-hitting profile of newly minted "Mother of the Year" Dina Lohan, it should be a big friggin' clue when your eldest daughter -- best known anymore for her line of leggings, penchant for getting dropped from movies and throwing any attempt at sobriety to the wind -- doesn't want to be associated with your television show. Instead, parental unit Lohan is reduced to navigating the career waters of younger sibling Ali, who says, on-camera and without a trace of irony, that she "aspires to be like my sister, Lindsay. ... She's taught me the things to do and not to do." From the looks of things, not quite everything, kiddo. "A lion protects her cubs," Dina pipes in, lamenting how, "unfortunately," she must guide the littlest Lohan lass through the perils of the entertainment business.

The "reality" of this television sitch is disheartening on so many levels, the least of which is the pair of hangers-on clawing for the spotlight despite any cost to those they purport to love and nurture. I don't give a rat's ass about these gals. What really disturbs me -- along with the therapy awaiting these kids, thanks to their mommies' desires to reveal "the truth" about their "misunderstood" lives -- is how the gender scales tip here. Again. Are E!, Bravo and like-minded channels courting fame-hungry fathers? (Michael Lohan, this does not mean you.) Even Hogan Knows Best's Terry "Hulk" Bollea appealed to the press for privacy in the wake of his family's crisis -- Lohan and Richards invite, nay, capitalize on it.

I'm all for mindless entertainment at the expense of consenting participants -- and lord knows, these women are ready, willing and chomping at the bit to oblige. But dregs like Richards and Lohan go beyond craptastic into raw, wanton sewage that ultimately doesn't do our gender any favors. Ladies, the morning after your 30 minutes of fame finally get cancelled, and when it dawns on you just how far you've bent over -- cheapening your children in turn -- will you want to put that sad look in the mirror on air?

Momma-to-be Jamie Lynn Spears, you've been warned.