TV Land has officially jumped into the cable sitcom party, even if they showed up just as the hangovers are starting to set in. And for their first venture, they have enlisted the help of some of television's tastiest babes.

Valerie Bertinelli (One Day at a Time), Jane Leeves (Frasier), Wendy Malick (Just Shoot Me) and Betty White (The Golden Girls) have been brought on board to star in Hot for Cleveland, the second sitcom project approved by the cable network. That's right, Betty White is a TV hottie. I will fight ANYONE who makes fun of me for it.

The other show commissioned by TV Land is Retired at 35, and has lined up actor George Segal, Christine Ebersole and SNL alum Casey Wilson, her first role since she was abruptly pumped from the sketch show. Given TV Land's horrible choices in making their own reality shows, do these even have a chance of being a hit?

Just when you thought we had reached the nadir of mixed TV words with "dramedy" and "celebreality," here comes another word we all have to get used to: "docusoap."

That's how the new TV Land series Harry Loves Lisa is being described. It stars real-life husband and wife Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna. Regardless of what they call it, you know exactly what it is: a reality show that's going to show the day to day lives of two Hollywood stars, because everyone in the world wants to know what Harry Hamlin eats for breakfast and what Lisa Rinna's dressing room is like. And still the network doesn't show The Dick Van Dyke Show.

You know what? You can't see The Dick Van Dyke Show on TV right now, but you can watch every episode at SlashControl. After the jump, one of my favorites.

This show actually isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I mean, it's fluffy and you'll forget about it the day after you see it, and I doubt I'll watch it again. But it's good to see a hidden camera show that goes out of its way to help an unsuspecting person instead of embarrassing/fooling/arresting them.

Did anyone else catch this, and will you watch it again?

So I was watching The Andy Griffith Show marathon that TV Land seems to air every other day. This isn't my complaint, as I would watch that show every day of the week (as long as they're the black and white episodes and not the color ones, but that's another rant). No, my complaint is about the commercial that ran during the marathon.

The promo isn't online so I'll have to describe it. The narrator talks about how times change (with a montage of how phones have evolved over the years), how tastes change (a montage of different foods that people have eaten over the decades), and how we've changed (a montage of different hairstyles you might have had since you were a kid). The point of all this is that things change, but ... change is good! And that's why it's good that TV Land has a bunch of reality shows instead of classic TV shows, because things change and that's where viewers are now in their lives.

You won't believe which show is kicking the collective ass of TV Land's The Cougar. Then again, maybe you will. The New York Times reports that reruns of (Shazam!) The Andy Griffith Show are the cable network's most watched show.

So does this mean that the former classic TV network will go back to running shows that people actually want to watch? Probably not. Sorry to break the bad news to you. Oh, and there is no Santa Claus, and if the tooth fairy does exist, she's probably a big ol' commie.

The marketing for this show has been relentless, and that's an understatement. It's easier to shake the SARS virus in a back alley chicken hut in downtown Hong Kong than it is to shake an ad for The Cougar.

One of my personal rules (number one is "thou who smelt it, dealt it") is the harder the advertising, the worse a show is bound to be. TV Land hasn't just aired a commercial for The Cougar every five seconds in between their few remaining watchable shows. They air it on other networks. They plaster ads all over the Internet. If the economy dips any lower, they'll probably start tattooing ads to people's foreheads.

TV Land just keeps drifting further and further away from what they originally were. It wouldn't surprise me if some day we see them change the name to Reality Land and all of the older comedies and dramas dragged over to Nick at Nite.

The network has announced a few new reality shows, including one that they call an "anti-makeover" show. If it's truly anti-makeover, it will be a scripted comedy, but I'm sure it's really just another damn reality program. They have also announced a third season (gah) of High School Reunion. Guess all the people in their 40s and 50s like these things, though as someone in my 40s I'd just like to say HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT, TV LAND? I DON'T WANT TO SEE MORE REALITY SHOWS AND MAKEOVER SHOWS, EVEN IF THEY ARE "ANTI."

Cable channels used to have fairly rigid formats that followed simple formulas. Nickelodeon was the network for kids. ESPN was the network for sports. USA was the network for non-stop reruns of Wings.

Now most of them have fallen into a strange gelatinous blob of unoriginal and unrecognizable sewage. I believe the technical term is "reality shows."

The TV Land network has been slowly engulfed by this blob of mediocrity with shows like High School Reunion and The Cougar. Their latest VP hire indicates it's about to be swallowed whole by more of the same.