Suzanne Baumgarten '11 draws a line between documentary and reality television.

On the menu: ribs, macaroni and cheese, pizza, monkey bread, eggrolls, pies, chocolate cake, fried chicken and bacon cheeseburgers. But not everyone can resist ...

 Shania Twain is making her comeback — not with a “That Don’t Impress Me Much” style single, but with a new reality show on new Oprah’s network set to launch on January 1, 2011.

Hello again. The midterm races are heating up so, at first, I thought I’d write about my all-time favorite crazy-pants, ex-cokehead, adulterous and blind governor, my home state’s David Paterson — or, as I like to call him, good time Davey.

If your winter break at all resembled mine, it likely included hours upon hours spent vegetating in front of the TV, flipping through SportsCenter reruns and History Channel documentaries (can they give this Nostradamus crap a rest already?) before settling on MTV’s latest reality show, Jersey Shore, which proves once again what suckers we all are for rubbernecking.

The vomiting sure didn’t help. With the intensifying stench of bullshit emanating from the whole Balloon Boy Fiasco the Heene family, specifically their sleazy patriarch Richard, needed a near-perfect performance from B. Boy on the morning talk-show circuit. He’d have to pour on the cuteness. He’d have to kill ’em with innocence. He’d have to make America want to reach through their TV screens to pinch his little cheeks, tussle his hair and send the little rascal on his way.

While most of us are just settling into a new school year, a certain band of blondes — and one heavily highlighted brunette — are finally getting ready to move on. Audrina Patridge has made the decision to follow her co-star Lauren Conrad and “graduate” from The Hills, which means the beginning of the end for the soapy “reality” saga.

It was bound to happen eventually. The Hills has been desperately trying to hold on to its shrinking audience for years now — somewhere between Speidi’s fake engagement and fake marriage, America realized that this glittering, platinum-blond, veneered world is not the “reality” MTV claims it to be.

One thing I never quite understood about the summer is the absolutely brainless TV programming. It would seem smart, given the fact that everyone has so much more time on their hands, for the networks to run some quality shows during these lazy, endless days. Yet for some reason summer seems to be the prime season for the most ridiculous, insipid programs ever conceived.

It takes a lot of time and energy to channel-flip towards anything even remotely stimulating. Of course, this never stopped me from watching two-plus hours of television almost every day this summer. And as the weeks and months stretched on, I began to notice a common theme in the shows I watched most avidly ...

We sat outside CTB, incognito, each wrapped in blankets and R’s face masked by her fedora —

R: It’s a “lady hat!”

— sipping our espressos, discussing the upcoming election, Proust, the human condition and Project Runway. R and R’s political discussions never seem to result in much r-and-r, and this instance was no different.

R: You don’t have to hold me down and spray Fantastik in my mouth every time.

R: That last time was an accident.