This is the thread where we briefly describe and review every show on American television.

How It's Made: Endless production-line footage detailing how common items are manufactured -- kind of like a cross between those Mr. Rogers episodes where they visited factories and the stock footage that runs beneath news reports about industrial layoffs. Accompanied by bizarrely funky music, often Kraftwerk rip-offs. You think it's boring you up until you realize that two hours have passed and you really, really need to stick around to see how they make fire hoses. Also, you are your dad. In much the same way that reality competitions turn you into the sort of blowhard who suddenly has authoritative-sounding opinions about which aspiring model just doesn't have the right poses for couture, watching this show with other people will lead you to toss around observations about how you assume they'll finish that joint with a high-pressure laminate.

Cold Case: Eerily blank-faced detectives solve murders that took place in grainy, sickeningly green approximations not of past decades, but of popular films from past decades. (For instance, if a coked-up early-80s Wall Street broker was gunned down next to his DeLorean, there's a very good chance the culprit is an aspiring dancer in a neckless sweatshirt and legwarmers.) Lead detective used to have a curious steaky-blonde pseudo-mullet that was the most interesting thing about the show -- the entire run time could be spent debating the metaphysical fine points of whether her hair was worn "up" or "down" -- but now her hair is different, and they're probably running out of movies. It's impossible to overstate how much the producers of this show believe that decades past were really, really, extremely green.

Monk: Tony Shaloub employs a multitude of shoulder tics to play an obsessive-compulsive detective, distracting you with forty minutes of dialogue about Handi-Wipes before revealing that he's solved the case. All of this takes place in that PBS / Agatha Christie / Perry Mason world where criminals are invariably middle-class and non-scary and their crimes are invariably devious and puzzle-like. Plus the police sergeant has the world's awesomest moustache and looks like something out of Tin-Tin. The problems are (a) it sucks at plotting mysteries and twists, and the big reveals are sometimes infuriatingly stupid, plus (b) painful Randy Newman theme song.

TRAYLOR

Dogs with Jobs: Sadly, neither a franchise of The Office cast entirely with dogs nor an animated series about businessdogs. Rather: tidy documentary-style segments about things people have trained dogs to do, of which there are more than you'd think. May make you feel about your dog the way looking at fashion supplements makes you feel about your clothes. Also featured: mildly creepy English country farm folk.

Medical Examiner Dr. G makes a y-incision (cue animation of same), pixelated corpse had an enlarged heart, stays dead, end.