NYC Prep: "Paris Hilton was doing it, so I guess it's cool."

For someone who has, at 17, the spirit of a cartoon 50-something dowager, that Jessie would be so utterly unaware of the nature of fashion industry "intern jobs" awarded to applicants who come with a camera crew gave the First Day at Work segment an almost Chaplinesque, comedy-tinged-with-pathos feel.

But the evidence of the huge disconnect between her perception of her worldly-wise sophistication level and the facts on the ground was a reassuring reminder of the existence of Jessie's only visible teenage girl characteristic.

Except for none of it being quite believable. But then her stated goals do not include a career in acting, so it's all good.

Meanwhile, over at the Jill Stuart show, Taylor disingenuously voices over that the reason Cole doesn't like PC is because he thinks PC was "being mean at Camille's dinner party."

Sorry, Taylor. Nobody's suspension of disbelief bungee stretches that far. Cole doesn't like PC because you talk about him the way my neighbor's 11-year-old talks about the Jonas Brothers. Cole doesn't like PC because, at least for the purposes of the show, you are the Winnie of his Wonder Years, the little red haired girl in his bag of peanuts, his Venus in blue jeans, and no matter how much fun the Keyboard Analyst Posse is having speculating about the tender buds of PC's pullulating sexual preference, Cole doesn't like PC because you so obviously want to tap that.

Watching the fashion show, Taylor realizes that fashion is "like an art."

Watching the models, Cole makes typical teenage-boy-watching-models comments. When one of them succeeds in making Taylor giggle, PC suddenly realizes that his Scornful Aside skills need work, so he tosses a practice one at Cole, advising him to "take notes." The way the sequence was edited, it came off looking like he says this because he is miffed that it is Cole, and not he, who recognizes that one of Stuart's ensembles features a Mary Poppins hat.

Sebastian doesn't really know to which show he has received tickets for. He admits that he's not really into fashion, he's just psyched about hanging out with Kelli.

We are treated to a delightful scene where Sebastian clumsily mumbles to Kelli the glorious tidings that since Taylor has wisely declined to hook up with him, he is prepared to confer upon Kelli all the benefits of First Runner-Up, and Kelli deftly but politely slices him up for sandwiches, and just in case we missed it, declares in her Confessional that "I'm not his backup girl."

Poor Sebastian. Just last week, he was all excited because he scored a date with a Real Live Senior (who thought it would be fun to have a walk-on part with lines in a reality show) who not only talked to him as if he were the little brother of a friend that she had agreed to entertain for an evening, but turned out to actually speak French. And if that weren't enough, his hair was looking a little droopy, and wouldn't even flip right.

Hair-flipping and a very basic vocabulary of heavily accented French comprise Sebastian's surefire panty-dropper repertoire in its entirety, and he knows this. His Fashion Week prospects are looking mighty grim. He is reduced half-heartedly Confessing that he thinks Kelli must be bi-polar.

"There's just protocol"

PC apologizes to Kelli for accusing her of being younger than 16. If what you need is a good, old-fashioned nostalgic sigh, reach back far enough to remember just what a Grievous Offense that is.

Kelli does not accept the apology. Instead, she retaliates by accusing PC of fighting like a girl.

At the Pamela Roland show, PC greets Devorah of Social Life Magazine with a kiss and a compliment. Jessie scurries off and installs herself and Cat The Friend in PC's front row seats. It is the cruelest punishment she could impose on PC, and before he knows it, he is Making a Scene. At Fashion Week!

Humiliated, he Confesses that Jessie is a fat bitch. From his disgraceful second row seat, he leans over and hisses an epithet at her. After the show, Jessie and PC continue bickering, pecking at each other like fretful chickens. Cat the Friend is over it, and bails.

Jessie Confesses that people in the fashion industry are sometimes not who they say they are, and informs us that she is not like that.

Kelli and Camille go shopping. Kelli admires some boots. "I like them - for you," says Camille, skillfully dripping equal amounts of condescension on both boots and Kelli.

Undeterred, Kelli tells Camille that her singing teacher wants her to have an Edge and an Image. "That's funny, thinking that she doesn't think you are, you know, put together enough," Camille sneers delicately, looking Kelli up and down.

Kelli tries to save face in her voiceover. "I think Camille is confused about what an Image is."

Camille confesses that she thinks Kelli was "taken aback" by her "questioning."

Jessie gets another faux intern job with Carmen Marc Valvo. She arrives late, but the camera crew is on time, and Jessie is forgiven and even permitted to hand out press kits.

Kelli meets with the stylist, and inexplicably takes Camille along. Camille continues her "questioning" with the stylist.

Camille Confesses that even though they all go to fancy dinners, it is ridiculous for a teenage girl to have a stylist.

"You can tell when someone's not from New York, and just like, not like a real person."

Jessie decides to kill two birds with one stone: make up with PC and show off her new job at Carmen Marc Valvo, so she invites him to the show, but is upset when he shows up with a full court posse in tow - and if that weren't bad enough, Jessie Confesses, he brought people who were "(meaningful pause)different (pause redux) from everybody else that was there." PC, she informs us, knows better.

And the hits just keep on coming. Not only does PC bring one, possibly two gay men to a fashion show (a stylist and a photographer, shrugs PC in voiceover)but which Jessie considers "just not right," but he also invites Devorah the magazine editor.

"Why is she talking to PC?," Jessie wails. It grosses her out. PC should get to know people before he hangs out with them. She doesn't know them well enough to know if they are good people or not. They are 20-something.

She tells PC she is hurt, and she doesn't think he should go out with them after the show. He has time to do that in the future. PC tells Jessie that he isn't going out.

"What's her drama?" asks a bewildered Devorah. PC says he doesn't want to talk about it, and off he goes with Devorah to Buddah Bar, gallantly holding an umbrella over her head, leaving Jessie forlorn and alone in the Carmen Marc Valvo tent.

Things are looking up for Sebastian after all! He has a date "with this really hot girl I met at a party." When he agrees with her that "flambe" means "like on fire," she asks him if he is French.

"Wee," he replies, with a toss of head and hair. Sebastian has high hopes for this one, but is visibly horrified to discover that she attends public school, and immediately declares that the date is over.

This girl not only wanted a reality show walk-on, she really wanted to hook up with Sebastian, and asks if she can at least touch his hair. (It's doing much better today. He must have remembered to volumize). He refuses, and later Confesses that he thought that was weird. For once, he's right.

After gushboasting to a singularly unimpressed friend about her heady experiences at the fashion show and what an impressive manho PC is rumored to be, starstruck Taylor Confesses that she "isn't sure if it's cool to be bisexual, but it's cool that PC is bisexual."

Jessie returns to Carmen Marc Valvo, and is sent to a warehouse in New Jersey to match pictures to clothes and pull accordingly. She is thrilled to be trusted with such an important task.

But she's not thrilled with PC!

There is a really long-ass segment of her variously berating him, interspersed with Confessional, voiceover, back to harangue, and I Confess that I sort of tuned it out shortly after I heard the word "heartbreaking."

While all we saw was a couple of polite inquiries about whether she and her friend had enjoyed the show, to hear Jessie tell it, both Carmen Marc Valvo and his press dude are so consumed with the terrible awfulness of the disgusting, subhuman vermin that PC brought to the fashion show that they can think of nothing else, because "Guests of guests do not bring guests," and now Jessie's job is in jeopardy, and Carmen and the press dude have lost all respect for her, at the very thought that she might possibly know such wretched creatures, but despite all that, her only concern is to protect PC from predators who only want to use him for his money.

Jessie begins to cry and asks that the Confessional stop.

PC confesses that he loves Jessie to death and would do anything for her. He offers to send Carmen Marc Valvo a note, even personally go to the office, which finally shuts her up.

Well played, PC! Check, and mate!

Jessie hands over her queen without a fight, and mumbles something about really wanting the job. Since the last thing we heard they were telling her what she would be doing next week, this appears to be something of a non-issue, and thus the perfect note on which to end the episode.

More To Love Does Not Get A First Impression Rose

Predictably, this show is being pimped as some kind of At Long Last! Inspiring Ray of Hope for the world's 98 or so % of women who are not size 0-2.

It's really just a Chubby Chaser version of the Bachelor. The Grand Prize is Luke, one of those dudes.

What, exactly, would be the difference in someone who didn't want you because of your size and someone who did want you because of your size?

It's pretty much a zero-sum game (pun not intended but left there anyway).

That said, if you loves you some trashy reality show (and who among us does not?) then Yay! Here's a new one!

In the parade of contenders, we were treated to such inspiring and hopeful jewels of self-love as "I'd like to lose 50 pounds" and "I prefer to think of myself as 'big-boned'"

The main thing to me that stuck out about these hamsters compared to the average Bachelor selection is that there is a much higher % of beauties. Now I know that's a subjective judgment, but it's still true. A few of them are weapons grade beautiful - Turn-around-in-the-street-and-stare-even-if-you're-a-straight-woman gorgeous, which I haven't seen on The Bachelor or any other reality show, and only one of Luke's choices is plug-ugly, which I have seen quite a lot of on other reality shows, including the Bachelor, and no, I will not name names.

I heard one girl whimper that she finally loves herself. Maybe one day the thought won't make her cry. Oh well, it's a journey, I guess. Baby steps.

Anna-The-Goddess and Sandy both say that they think they intimidate people, but the one who should really worry about that is Arianne, who might want to consider changing the pronunciation of her name. And I would make the same recommendation even if she were five feet tall and weighed 90.

And just in case anyone needs to be told this, a woman who is 5'7" and weighs 180 is "plus size" in the same way that she is "short."

Just as most women in, for example, the US, are size 14 and up, most women are also 5'4" and under.

Somebody tell me if I missed it, but I counted a total of 1 hamster on this show who was 5'4", and 0 under that. Most of them appeared (coincidentally, I'm sure) to be at least or above the minimum height for fashion models, plus size or otherwise.

Which, by the way, is fine with me. I hope they get work. And I guess the fact that even a couple who are "too short" to model made the final cut is remarkable.

Southern Belles Louisville: The Belles Toll a Toneless Farewell

So this uncomfortable little Real Housewives Lite knockoff has come and gone like the slightly queasy morning after a night spent consuming a surfeit of questionable seafood.

I did get a small chortle when one of them accidentally alluded to their not having known each other from Adam's old fox before the show.

Shea will, and should, end up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.

I have known about 8 dozen versions of Shea over the years, and she always ends up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.

Her obligatory post-emotional trauma drastic hair change is an object lesson for fair-complected brunettes everywhere: No matter what anybody tells you about how lightening your hair will make you look soft and youthful, do NOT do it without first experimenting with a wig to make sure that it does not totally ERASE you!

If we cared to dig deeply enough, which I don't, the "real dirt" we would probably uncover is that they were all recovering from unsuccessful attempts at modeling careers, or unsuccessful attempts at thinking about one, and that Julie is the only one who owns up to it. And will probably be the only Belle who, as a result of the show, achieves it.

I loved her nail polish at the dinner in the opening segment!

It was this really pretty dark burgundy color, which means that while it is perfect on cinnamon-dusted Julie, it probably wouldn't work on dirty mustard-dusted Weimeraner me. Burgundy clothes work fine, but every burgundy nail polish I have tried just makes my hands look sickly, especially now that both sun exposure and melanin production have been discontinued.

But I digress.

I also really liked Hadley's silver necklace at the going-away party, and I hate her for having a big ass enough head to be able to wear a wide headband like that, especially a tacky silver lace one. But I would do one that was silver lace all around, not lame elastic in the back. What was she thinking?

So captivated was I by that silver lace, that while Shea was strolling around Jeff's Dream House, I developed a love-hate relationship with that over-Bedazzled prostitution whore of a black and silver car coat.

I was glad to see that Kellie came to her senses, but I am still so annoyed by the very existence of that butt-fugly gray sweater of hers with that enormous turtleneck. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. Come to think of it, that whole enveloped in giant folds of bulkachunk wool seems to be a sort of sartorial leitmotif for her. Is it that cold in Louisville?

If you can get past all that supersize knitting, Kellie is a sort of Modern Today version of a classical Dutch Baroque beauty, and it's a shame that at her age, she still doesn't know what to do with it.

Speaking of people standing around holding giant lumps of beauty, turning it over and over in their hands and looking puzzled, I would really like to get a hold of Hadley's mama. Although that haircut has become ubiquitous and tiresome, it's the only thing she's doing right. It also appears to be the only thing she's doing.

But she did make me spend several minutes wondering if I should ask my hair designer if she thinks I should add spiky bangs to my own copy of the ubiquitous and tiresome haircut.

I so miss the squillion different length layers hairdo that looked like it had been done with a Weed-Whacker. When is that one coming back in style? I didn't even have to comb it. Plus if you have very coarse, straight hair like I do, it will naturally stick out in all directions, giving the illusion of volume.

I would be very surprised if funding is found for a season 2 of this forlorn thing. The hamsters were spectacularly unremarkable, and failed to produce enough sensation or drama to compensate for that.

Southern Belles Louisville: Lord, this show makes me preachy!

Mercifully, subsequent episodes of this show have not been quite as "raw" as the "premiere," maybe it was just a learning curve thing, with the 1st couple of airings taking viewers along for the ride - an extra bonus layer of "reality" as the producers figure out just how much of that commodity viewers should be asked to stomach.

To atone for past sins, the last couple of episodes have featured some frankly comical overstaging - like the "slumber party," but it's Julie's "babysitting" sequence that, for all its hilarity, gives our suspension of disbelief a serious workout!

First, we are asked to accept the idea that Julie, in the 35 years she has been alive, has never spent so much as an hour or two alone with any children.

From there we glide into the idea that her first-ever conversation with her father on the subject of whether she might one day wish to be a parent occurred last week, and then it is just a hop-skip to Julie's grand Epiphany that in order to find out how becoming a mother would change her life, she should spend an afternoon babysitting - not one, not two, not even three - but FOUR small children!

Enter two of Julie's good friends - each with two daughters of about the same age - two sets of extremely telegenic sisters, one pair blonde, one pair brunette, all completely at ease with lights, crew and camera.

Of course we only see what makes it out of the editing room, but it does not appear that the two sets of sisters have ever played together before. All the interaction between the children that we are shown involves sister playing with sister. Kids who know each other would be much more likely to pair off according to age, kids who have never met will tend to interact with their respective sibling.

This show just might be a contender for the Mostest.Audrinage.Ever reality show tradition award - if some, even most, of the cast of the various Real Housewives shows were only glancingly acquainted with each other prior to the first day of shooting, the Belles' lack of shared "history" is glaring.

Nevertheless, as I continue to watch it, I find that it provides as much fodder for sober refection as for helpless giggling fits.

Kellie's situation, for example, is heart-rending, a grim reminder that whether it feels awkward, weird, even inappropriate, the time for the "Do You Want Kids?" talk (or more kids, if one of you has, like Kellie's Jeff, already obtained offspring) is preferably the second, but no later than the third date, BEFORE either party has had a chance to become "emotionally invested" enough to cause serious damage should there be a wide variance in their respective views on this subject.

It's a thought-provoking illustration that no matter how trashy the show, how stupid the script, or how inane the hamsters, even the lamest and most superficial television shows can educate, even illuminate, and this is something that every one of the "single ladies" - and their single brothers - who watch this show can "take away" from it, and receive the huge benefit of saving themselves from the kind of agony Kellie is suffering, an agony that would be even more emotionally eviscerating, even more causative of permanent harm, if Jeff were not such a tool.

At least when it is all over, she will have the comfort of relief that she did not make a permanent committment to a total asswipe.

Shea, who also has a Jeff, is confronting basically the same issue, at least in my view, since I don't make a large distinction on the basis of species.

Even if we lay aside their housing preferences - while Jeff dreams of mulching and mowing as proud handyman and householder, Shea's notion of the ideal home involves maid service and a spa on the premises - the real non-negotiable, potential deal-breaker is that Jeff comes with what is, for all practical purposes, a child.

The well-being of dependent family members who share one's home, whether human or not, can be neither relegated to the status of non-essential "extra," nor swept aside entirely, and anyone who would even consider such a thing is presenting empirical evidence that they are NOT husband material.

If they are capable of, much less willing, to renege on their committment to that being or beings, what could one expect who considers choosing such a person as life partner? And this goes both ways. If Shea can so easily dismiss the needs of Jeff's dog - well, in the case at hand, Shea has already been pretty upfront with Jeff about just what kind of living hell he could expect, and indeed the internet buzz is that he has wisely delivered himself - and his pupdog - from such a grisly fate, and empowered Shea to return to the garden to seek a more suitably crushable flower.

That this match was doomed was pretty much foretold in every frame of Shea-and-Jeff footage that made it to air, and in case there were any doubts, it was writ large in big red flags in the scene where Shea takes Jeff for a pre-marital counseling session with an gentleman who looks eeriely like Emily's creepy dad. Shea believes that the counseling will prevent her from ending up divorced like her parents.

"I have changed so much for you," Jeff blurts. Shea asserts that she has seen no change, but whether she has or not, whether it is even objectively true or not, if such a sentiment is in the heart of either party, that relationship is dead in the water.

Ideally, true love does change us, in that it makes us want to be, and become, better people, the best version of ourselves, but that's several galaxies away from Jeff's orbit.

As always, even as we keep in mind that the footage of each hamster is deliberately edited for the purpose of drawing a particular "character," we are also obliged to recognize the flip side of that: no matter what they leave out, no matter how they change or remove from context entirely - if the hamster doesn't say or do it, they won't have it to leave in.

Although it may be that Shea's footage is edited frame by frame in order to paint for us a portrait of a woman completely devoid of substance, if we assess the footage that she has given them to work with, we can come to no other conclusion that she is either a talented actress or that there really is no "there" there.

Internet personality aklein has called Emily "painful to watch." She has, aiklen remarks sadly, "emotional maturity of a 12 year old."

It's hard to come up with a credible rebuttal to that.

I am so not the appropriate person to defend any of these hamsters, but in fairness, there was a scene where Emily's Xtreme Cage Match Creepy dad was ragging on her about her hair, while Mama just sits there and says nothing, and there was something about it that looked like it was one of the more natural and effortless bits of footage we are likely to see on any reality show. I got the distinct feeling Emily heard that song with dismal regularity, just another number in CreepyDaddy's extensive repertoire of Pick on Emily showstoppers.

Whether Emily's dad is "for real" or not is a tough call. On the one hand, we have all known people with the misfortune of having parents like that. If it's a role and he is an actor, he has certainly "committed" to the character. He has it down, down to the teensiest creepy nuance.

This is probably born more of wishful thinking for Emily's sake than concrete perception, but a couple of times he has appeared to be mugging for the camera in an almost SpencerPrattian cartoon villain face mode.

I would be willing to bet that there is a connection between Emily's emotional development issues and having grown up with a father who considers his daughter having physically "matured too early" as a sort of inexpiable indiscretion, an unforgivable transgression for which he is still reprimanding her even as her thirtieth (or 30-something) birthday approaches.

Emily is presented to us as the classic damaged bird, her plumage dulled by a lifetime of stern reproaches for having ever had any plumage, without an ally, reviled in the nest which should have nurtured her, and which she now fears to leave, torn between what remaining shreds she has of natural, healthy instincts to go forth and be a person, pitted against the sheer terror of displeasing the father she has never, can never please, who has devoted himself to steadily and relentlessly breaking her down, convincing her that she is essentially incapable of personhood, and her female role model appears to conform to that ideal. Emily's mother is painted as a non-entity, an empty cipher who silently accepts Ogre Dad's condemnation of her daughter.

Her determination to move to Las Vegas may not be the shrewdest move, nor her aspirations of becoming a high profile broadcast journalist the best match for her aptitudes and abilities, but that she has enough "oomph" left into her to recognize and follow the self-preservation instinct to get the hell away from her toxic Daddy is a positive and hopeful sign.

Ironically, while it is Emily who dreams of becoming a TV star, it is Hadley the Flounderer who has the face for it, though she, too, appears to suffer from an extreme case of arrested emotional development, in some ways even more fundamental and deep-seated. So much so that if I were obliged to bet on which of the two would "succeed," in terms of growing into a whole and functional person, I would put my money on Emily.

The character of Hadley is as materially empty and vacuous as Shea, at least as she is presented to us, and as always with the understanding that she could be acting, playing a role that was assigned to her.

Lord, this show makes me preachy!

16 & Pregnant: Making a Way Out of No Way - The Miracle, The Mirror

For most of the world, a girl of sixteen - or even younger - having a baby is an everyday occurrence, as it has been throughout human history.

But in the US, due to a variety of factors, over the last few decades it has become the exception rather than the rule, although some statistics indicate a reversal of the trend.

At the moment, however, it is noteworthy enough to get a reality show, whatever that means, and MTV has obliged.

The first episode was notable only for its extreme predictability.

Featuring the same demographic as Engaged & Underage, the girl steps up, the sullen boy sulks, and we can see that this is going to be one of those kids whose contact with his biological father, if there is any at all, will be infrequent, and the best case scenario will be the girl finding a new partner who is willing to help her raise the child.

The second episode took an uncharacteristic step up from the lower socio-economic tier, though barely. This girl was a cheerleader whose babydaddy never appeared, nor was his presence desired by the girl or her piece-o'-work mother, who was able to provide all the additional tribulations that the pregnant teen required.

Unable to afford housing of her own, and coming to rapid grips with the financial reality of parenthood, I got the sense that this young mother's best hope at salvaging her life would be to apply the advantages of the education she had enjoyed and place the baby for adoption.

In Episode 3, the producers returned to their usual demographic pool and selected a plump young couple remarkable in that the babydaddy not only appeared able and willing to be a father, but not utterly miserable about the prospect, and even professed love for the young girl and asked her to marry him, down on one knee, proffering a pink sapphire ring from Wal-Mart that cost $21.34.

The scene where he calls the same Wal-Mart to inquire about returning the expensive video game he had purchased was strangely moving.

Maci, the subject of the first episode of the series, is probably the most representative of what usually happens, and not just with 16-year olds.

She just sort of instantly grew up, and set about doing whatever she had to do. Of course finding out the boyfriend was a worthless crumb o' dung who didn't really give a politician's ass about her or the baby will have been as horribly painful for her as for anybody who has their heart broken, but being a mom, she no longer has the luxury of grieving about it, receiving comfort and support from friends who will stay up all night with her eating ice cream and letting her talk it all out, doing something new and fabulous with her hair, slowly getting herself back into the social scene, being convinced by those supportive friends to accept the invitation from that really nice guy who has always liked her, etc.

She had to go to work and take care of her baby, just like millions of other moms in her same situation - just like many moms of people who are reading this!

There are many shows that take cameras into delivery rooms, and there is a moment, when the baby is placed in its mother's arms, that is so private and so personal that we should so not be seeing it, but see it we do, in show after show.

Something happens in that moment, we look at the mother's face, at her eyes, and we see magic. We see a real live miracle happen right before our eyes, much bigger than the biological miracle of reproduction, of birth itself, a miracle, it has been suggested, that, along with art, is the closest we will get in this life to seeing our Creator.

That light that comes into the eyes of that new mother, when she holds her child in her arms for the first time, is tinged with the divine. It is in that moment that she ceases to be whoever she was, and becomes something much more - it is in that moment that she becomes what she will be for the rest of her life - a mother.

From that moment on, everything she does, everything she thinks, everything she feels, will be about her child. There is nothing she will not do to provide for that child, protect him from harm, comfort and care for him, today, when he is a tiny, helpless infant, and in 60 years, when his hair is gray and hers is white.

That Maci's story was the most "real" is at once a reflection of that totally awesome miracle, and commentary on the sorry way society treats that miracle.

In many ways, we have not progressed a whole lot from the days of the prevailing cultural mores so poignantly illustrated in Rizzo's song in Grease.

(For those unfamiliar, the thinking at that time was that it was the height of selfishness for a girl who "got herself in trouble" to "try to bring the boy down too" by telling him about it. Her life was ruined, of course. That was a given, but why, society "reasoned," should his life be ruined and his future destroyed too? After all, it was the girl who had "made the mistake." He was just doing what came naturally.)

Today, in one way we have gone in the opposite direction, with most people thinking that the girl absolutely MUST tell the boy she is pregnant, and there is more lip service paid to issues of child support and whatnot, but the reality is that in the US, some 90 odd per cent of people living in poverty are mothers and their children in situations where the father opts out of participating financially. Some of those mothers were married to the fathers, some receive token sums of court-mandated money, but the main societal message remains that it is the female's "problem," and the most likely answer to any statistics on the subject will be some variation of the sentiment that she should not have had the children if she didn't have the money to take care of them.

Ironically, in an age where more girls - and more women - have (at least in theory) more reproductive choices available to them than ever before, there has been an interesting trend among the US mainstream demographic in recent years, a sort of regression, if you will, to the pre Roe vs Wade days.

Terminating an unwanted pregnancy has reclaimed a level of stigma and taboo that it had not enjoyed since the 1950s, even in cases where it is obviously the only sane option - for example, in the case of women - and little girls - who do not have the resources, financial or emotional, to care for a child, nor any realistic chance of acquiring them in 9 months.

Ologists hold forth on a variety of fascinating reasons and theories about why this is so, and it is an intriguing subject for debate and discussion.

What's not up for debate and discussion, however, is the reality of those girls, those women, who decide not only to deliver, but keep, their babies, and while all those ologists and hangers-on are enjoying all those delicious theories and lively discussions, those mothers are rushing to get dressed, feed their babies, pack their diaper bags, hurrying to catch pre-dawn buses, drop their babies off, and run to catch another bus, probably several, praying that they will not be late for their first job, whose wage, even when put together with the wage for the second or third job, is still not enough to purchase the basics of survival.

Not one of the girls on the 16 and Pregnant series chose to end her pregnancy.

We have no way of knowing whether this is because so few girls today make that choice, that there were just no candidates who met other casting and production criteria, whatever those may have been, or whether because of the great stigma of abortion, MTV felt that it would just be too controversial.

In fact, all the girls but one elect to raise their babies themselves.

The season finale features a heart-rendingly sweet and together little couple, flowers who have somehow managed to grow up into strong and loving young people despite both having come from dysfunctional train wreck homes.

They are determined that their child will know a different life, and being smart enough to realize that they cannot give her anything more than what they have, which is, it bears repeating, a train wreck, they wisely arrange to have the baby adopted by a a couple who can give her what they want for her, what they are, in fact, determined to get for themselves - one day.

But recognizing that 1) their baby will need it before "one day" occurs, and 2) "one day" is not going to occur if they set out to try to raise a baby at 16, with their only support consisting of their dysfunctional train wreck parents, "All that baby needs is love" insists the boy's fresh-out-of-prison father.

When I mentioned to a neighbor that I was going to blog about this show, her mother offered an interesting perspective.

"I don't like that show," she said. "It romanticizes it too much. That first girl had a hard time, but you look at some of them, their parents are helping them out, a couple of them got to go move in with their boyfriends, it shows them having these baby showers, they have all the cute little clothes, and then they show them in the delivery room, shows their face when they see the baby."

While her view is directly opposed to most of the comments I have read and heard about the show - including those of many teens who assert that the show has made them much more aware of the difficulties of having a baby while still in high school - I was struck by the kingpin of her argument - "it shows their face when they see the baby."

She was talking about that miracle.

Being a parent is the most important job in the world. We hear a lot of lip service paid to that, but we do not put our money where our mouth is. In actual practice, we do not give that miracle the respect, the awe, that it deserves.

The real "reality" is that as a society, that miracle is Maci making a way out of no way, and we are her no-account boyfriend.

Nurse Jackie: A New Jewel Appears in My All-Time Favorites Crown!

Nurse Jackie is my new favorite show. She has also become one of my All Time Favoritest TV Characters With Whom I Secretly Identify - right up there with Emily Gilmore, Barnabas Collins and Gregory House.

It's just one of Those Shows, and she's just one of Those Characters, that come along only once in a great while - a kind of TV Love at first sight.

Within minutes, even seconds, you just Know.

It shoots right up there into that rare stratosphere of favoriteness where watching re-runs is like re-reading a beloved book, a show that, if you could afford an external hard drive, you would save every episode just so you could watch them whenever you wanted to, and you keep them on your hard drive until you are so absurdly low on space that you are faced with the impossible task of deciding which episodes you absolutely cannot be without.

I've always suspected that the first utterance of that old saying about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts was inspired by an ensemble cast.

It's something that the shows we love the most tend to have in common, and usually what happens is we get to watch the actors' journey, watch them feel and fumble their way to that Golden Ideal.

Nurse Jackie viewers get to witness an even rarer phenomenon - the magic of an instant ensemblization - they just sort of miraculously click themselves into a whole greater than the sum - and do so at least to our eyes - effortlessly.

With the exception of Jackie herself, the other characters, whether taken separately or as a boxed set, are pretty much predictable, standard issue, stock supporting roles, but set into orbit around the sun of Jackie, something cosmic happens.

We'll probably never know an exact percentage credit breakdown for the character of Jackie as we see her - how much of her was first committed to paper by Liz Brixius, how much of her is fleshed out and layered and nuanced by the fabulous Miss Edie Falco, but the result is genius enough to qualify for yet another Miracle Ensemblization Award - another whole that exponentially exceeds the sum of its parts!

Independent of cultural context, and I will dare to predict, historical period, Jackie is first and foremost a kind of SuperMarySue. Through her, we are able to do all kinds of things that we wish we could do, that we would do if we had the opportunity.

Jackie lets us imagine being the person sitting there with the organ donor card in front of us, and no one paying us the slightest bit of attention, through her we can enjoy the wish-fulfillment of getting to slip the wad of cash into the bag of the sleeping single mother, packing up a big bag of medicine for the little girl with the sick mom whose "insurance is shit."

This is not to cast the show in the role of some kind of aid for mental health through vicarious living.

Jackie's choices are by no means always the ones I would make - like yanking the catheter out of the alleged pedophile - or using physical intimacy with a co-worker as a strategy for managing the gargantuan stress-load of job and personal health issues under which she somehow manages not only to function, but excel.

The show is first and foremost just plain old good entertainment, and does a great job of maintaining the right mix of comedy, pathos, and drama. Dialogue is simple but snappy, and story arcs are meaty enough to intrigue but simple and universal enough to be "accessible" to a wide audience.

Granted, my perception is that of a viewer who loves the show and has bestowed upon it - and Jackie - a place in my personal All Time Favorite Hall of Fame.

No TV program is going to be for absolutely everybody, but the good news for critics of the show and particularly of the Jackie character, is that today, what we used to call "the airwaves" are populated with such a wide variety of programming that there is something for everyone.

People who don't like Nurse Jackie simply need to watch a different show!