Television Listing

8:00 pm 2 (IRS) Beverly Hills Model Patrol. New lip gloss introduced.

• 5 (QUS) Cash Calliope: Musical Detective. Death with a Capital D-minor.

• 9 (PVC) Northern Cops. Town council bans eccentrics at town meeting, but not for long.

• 14 (TTV) Def N B. Beethoven raps for the Queen.

9:00 pm 2 (IRS) Super Hero Bunch. Evil just keeps coming back for more.

• 5 (QUS) Sniffmaster Spot. Spot discovers toxic waste at Acme Dog Food Plant.

• 9 (PVC) Mom's a Klepto. Family stress as Mom plagiarizes daughter's English paper.

• 14 (TTV) Easy Cheesy. Customer asks for Triple Anchovy pizza.

10:00 pm 2 (IRS) X Knows Best. Alien stepdad shows love is not Earthbound.

• 5 (QUS) Dum De Dum Dum. Detective Gump meets murdering publisher.

• 9 (PVC) Betrayal Place. Bob betrays Jane.

• 14 (TTV) Beverly Hills Astronaut. Buzz discovers there are no malls in space!

5.1 Patterns and Compression

Life often reduces to formulas. At least it does on television, where solutions appear every 30 or 60 minutes. When you know the formula, it is very easy to summarize information or compress it. A network executive reportedly commissioned the television show Miami Vice with a two-word memo to the producer that read, "MTV Cops." You can easily specify an episode of Gilligan's Island with a single sentence such as, "The one with the cosmonauts." Anyone who's seen only one episode of the show will know that...