I'm watching "Back To You," a new sitcom with Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton, while getting ready to brine the turkey for tomorrow.

He is overfeeding the goldfish, and she warns him not to do this (it's a metaphor about what a lousy absentee dad he is, to put it in context of the ongoing plot).

The goldfish, of course, because this is television, dies immediately from overeating.

The only problem is that no goldfish ever died from overeating. Or at least, that's not why you shouldn't overfeed a goldfish (nor is the related Dr. Seuss story worth worrying about either).

It's bad to overfeed fish because they won't eat all the food, and the uneaten food will rot and pollute their bowl. It happens over a period of many hours or days, not instantaneously. But the dumb writers think that the fish gorge themselves and die (otherwise, they'd have no story line).

Maybe the Goldfish was a defective clone, as explained in the next episode.

Well, I'm brining my turkey as well. Having 20 over tomorrow - it's a biiiiig turkey.

But I'm not watching a sitcom. I think the form is basically moribund. There hasn't been one I really liked since Sports Night.

Television and movie writers: aren’t they also the people that assure us that loss of power causes orbital vehicles to fall, that big businesses are invariably evil (oil companies and “developers” being the locus of evil in the world), that every military man is a cigar-chomping fascist wanna-be, that hookers all have hearts of gold, that building ventilation systems require no tools to access and are roomy and well-lit enough for adults to crawl through, that cars explode on impact, that a guy with a pistol can easily defeat a bunch of guys with automatic weapons, add your own cliché here.

The only thing I’m not sure of is whether they’re all so clueless, or whether they really think we are.

Well of course he made a stupid mistake on a sitcom! He has a pen1s and he's old enough to vote. The current sitcom formula,

Mom: knows all, sees all, solves all problems

Daughter(s): might be smart (dark hair / glasses) might be dumb or dumb and slutty if teen aged (blond) Some shows have one of each

Sons: like dad but no hair down "there" yet.
0 to 5 cute
6 to 12 semi-cute smart mouth
13 to 21 either gets beat up often or captain of his sports team.

The Father: 21 to 60 his adult male pen1s has made him the butt of all jokes and ONLY his wife and kids keep him from eating dirt or dying from a porn addiction.

Over 60: his wife is a shrew, his son is divorced without a job living in the basement, his daughter(s) have children with no husband in sight unless he is a total jerk or dumbass in dad's image. Gramps is wise beyond his years. But he's STILL the one they make fun of.

This scenario also works for commercials.

Steve, you aren't supposed to work while the strike is going on.

If this sort of discussion is your cup of tea, I would suggest the web site tvtropes.org.

It's an entire wiki site dedicated to everything that's screwy about television today.

Oh, and here's the entry for bumbling dad stereotype:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BumblingDad

Well, what do you expect. TV scripts are written by people who are writing fiction because 1) there's nothing else they know how to do better and/or 2) they've been fascinated by TV and movies since they were kids and never learned much about history, science, business or other real-world topics. That's why their products are called entertainment rather than facts, logic or education. And to be fair to the entertainment industry (and also the weather reporting industry), facts, logic and education are not nearly as entertaining as are drama and hysteria. As with movies, too many people in the TV audience confuse images with reality.