Cheap, flimsy TV clip shows - someone make me stop watching them!

I love clip shows. Sure, they're as cheap to make as Costco tennis shoes. Pay a roomful of slackers $12 an hour to find wacky videos on TV and online and make catty comments about them. Hire a D-list celebrity to read their jokes off a prompter. Presto -- more chewing gum for a public that ought to have a sore jaw by now.

Well, I can't help it. Clip shows are my GPS (guilty pleasure source). They're the ultimate infotainment. As you forget your cares, these shows efficiently download piles of useless data into your head so you can keep your friends from looking for new friends who are even more superficial than you are. It's like the show "Chuck," only instead of state secrets, your brain is filled with Tim Gunn catchphrases.

(My apologies for that last paragraph. That's the hazard of watching too many clip shows -- after a while, you start to mimic them. Besides, everyone knows Tim Gunn doesn't have a catchphrase.)

"InfoMania" is probably my favorite clip show on TV right now, though most people reading this can't turn on their sets and watch it. That's because this smart, up-to-date review of the news and all things media airs on Current, a cable channel that's in a tiny fraction of homes across the country and is mostly watched at current.com.

Every Thursday, host Conor Knighton leads a team of satirists who cut through the week's news and media coverage with sardonic, razor-sharp reactions and more than a little social commentary. I know Jon Stewart is the gold standard of topical comedy, but even he would admit that "InfoMania" goes places his show won't, with sophisticated treatments of media stereotypes, politics and technology.

"We can't compete day to day with 'The Daily Show' on a news level," says show contributor Sarah Haskins. Yet "InfoMania's" tiny band of troublemakers manages to serve up a surprisingly rich stew of cultural criticism that might possibly be good for you.

Take Haskins, who anchors my favorite segment, a takedown of television's patronizing treatment of her gender called "Target: Women." Her spot-on sendup of yogurt ads became an instant Internet pass-along this summer ("Yogurt eaters come from every race but just one socioeconomic class: the class that wears grey hoodies. The 'I got a masters but then I got married' look!").

Last week Haskins took on "The View" -- not exactly virgin turf for satire, but she nailed the psychopolitical makeup of each of the show's five regulars, including the panel's resident low-information voter.

"Sherri Shepherd's the kind of emotional swing voter that's going to determine this election," Haskins said. "It all comes down to people like her. And she thinks the world is flat. God bless America!"

(Time Warner Cable in Kansas City offers Current on its digital tier, where "InfoMania" airs 9 p.m. Thursdays.)

"The Dish" (9 p.m. CT Saturdays, Style). I don't know what took the Style channel so long to come up with a companion to "The Soup," the long running pop culture snarkfest on its sister channel E!. There plenty in the fashion world to make fun of.

The host, Danielle Fishel, used to trade starry-eyed glances with Ben Savage on "Boy Meets World" in the 1990s. I didn't recognize her at first -- methinks she had some collagen implants -- but she's pretty good doing a standup routine over clips from "Project Runway," "Bridezillas," even shopping channels. It's not for the Keith Olbermann crowd, but then, what on Style is?

"Best Week Ever" (10 p.m. CT Fridays, VH1). VH1's influential pop-culture funhouse recently got a makeover, replacing its no-host format with one in which lovable gap-toothed comic Paul F. Tompkins runs the show. But "BWE" remains the single most authoritative source on goofy stuff that appeared on prime-time TV and the Internet in the past seven days.

I especially enjoy the weekly roundup of "Dancing with the Stars" highlights, as it saves me and no doubt thousands of other viewers the trouble of actually watching "Dancing with the Stars." Last week, we watched tape of Susan Lucci's pathetic attempts to put moves on a hip-hop beat just long enough to drive home Tompkins' point: "Someone should introduce her to J.J. Abrams because she is lost."

OK, it's not that funny if you don't know that Abrams is the creator of "Lost." Knowledge of world affairs isn't essential to enjoying "Best Week Ever," but you'd better know your network TV producers.

Comments

[renton]

These clip shows are perfect for when you're watching TV on the treadmill at the gym.

[MIKE]

While channel surfing, I have seen some of Dish, and I agree that the host, whom I am not familiar with, does a good job. Then, this morning, more channel surfing, and I discover the next variation on this brand--don't remember what they were calling it, but it is on Versus, and it's basically a sports-themed Soup. Watched only about 5 minutes, but this one didn't work. The host--didn't recognize him--was too jock-like to be believable as the guy making rude asides (like Joel McHale and Greg Kinnear). Plus the clips tended to depend too much on gross-out scenes (a wrestler bites his opponent and real blood spurts--fun for the whole family) and nascar crashes.

[Tom]

That's Topanga? Wow, I didn't recognize her.

I think The Soup is the leader of the clip show pack. McHale is probably what led to BWE's change.

And the VS. sports version does suck.

[odessasteps]

There's just too much snark these days and most of it is just not that clever.

Give me old episodes of MST any day.

[Valli]

How could you leave out The Soup? When I started watching BWE years ago, I thought that The Soup was just an inferior version of Talk Soup. Now I can take or leave BWE but I have to have my Joel McHale every week or else! Seriously people, check it out.