Knock It Off, TBS

Listen, TBS has done good for itself. I remember back in the day when it was a second-rate channel broadcasting in Atlanta and a couple other markets throughout the Southeast. Now, it's pretty much on every cable provider's basic lineup; there's college football in the fall, a stranglehold on Braves' baseball, and some good syndication - Friends, Family Guy, The Office, etc.

Unfortunately, I have to call the TBS brass out. This Tyler Perry's House of Payne crap has got to stop. TBS claims that House of Payne is the number one cable sitcom of all time. Technically, they're correct because the competition for cable sitcoms consists of TBS' original series (like the Bill Engvall show; remember that one? Didn't think so) and some show on Lifetime that just repeats horrible spouse abuse jokes.

So, with those high caliber shows as competition, it's no surprise a sitcom that relies on stereotypes and completely uncreative writing can become the number one cable sitcom of all time. I think they need to knock off the advertising for two reasons. One, the show sucks. In an effort to diversify myself (or I was really, really bored, and the writer's strike left nothing on the DVR), I tried to watch one of the episodes. I made it 3 minutes. The show is simply not funny. At all.

Two, for people that are either too lazy to do the research or too dumb to notice the qualifier "cable" in the ad, it can be very misleading. I hear "number one sitcom of all time" and immediately start comparing it to the likes of Seinfeld, Friends, Full House, which is not correct because those shows are on broadcast TV, not cable TV.

The moral of the story here is that if you're watching TBS for longer than 23 seconds, you're going to see some sort of ad for House of Payne. Do not, I repeat, do not fall for it. Just because you're the least ugly person in the room doesn't make you gorgeous.