TVSquad

The late eighties and early-to-mid nineties brought out some of the filthiest, bottom-feeding talk shows our country has ever seen. From Morton Downey Jr. and Sally Jesse Raphael to Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, it was the era when "trash TV" became a symbol of a country's swift spiral down one giant cultural toilet in opposition to people like Larry King and Oprah Winfrey, who effortlessly made interviews with, like, Fran Drescher come off looking like Masterpiece Theater.

Around the latter half of the "boom" came Ricki Lake, the formerly obese star of Hairspray (no, seriously, that was basically her résumé), with a show that combined the usual elements of trashy talk (read: "freaks") with something impossibly dumber yet: catchphrases. Unlike today, when it takes weeks to months for squawk-boxes to latch onto cultural buzzwords like "metrosexual" and "baby daddy," Ricki Lake was trotting out episode "subjects" like "You're not all that!" and "Dump that zero and get yourself a hero!"

Naturally, she was a smash.

This news totally makes me want to go re-watch old episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210: Shannon Doherty sorta hinted that she may have hooked up with Jason Priestley, who played her on-screen brother. Brenda and Brandon might've been getting in on, folks.

This isn't the only case of faux-incest on television. On Brothers & Sisters, there's a whole storyline about Justin Walker falling for Rebecca, who he thought was his half-sister. The actors, Dave Annable and Emily VanCamp, got into a relationship off-screen. Then -- poof! -- it turned out she wasn't the Walkers' long-lost sibling and they started dating on-screen.

(S02E07) You know, it's like sitting down for chocolate ice cream and getting strawberry ice cream instead. Sure, you like strawberry ice cream just fine, and heck, it's better than no ice cream at all, but you were still expecting chocolate.

Last night Wonder Showzen did what I could only describe as "pulling a Terrance and Phillip" and dedicated an entire episode to a show within a show. None of our usual puppet pals were around for this episode, instead we got to watch a half hour of Horse Apples, the Hee-Haw spoof which we first saw in the episode titled Knowledge. Now, if you go to the official MTV2 site for the show, they have the episode listed as "Mathematics," which as far as I can tell is actually the season finale, set to air next week. I have no idea what the title of this "not really an episode" episode is supposed to be, but if anyone knows for sure, inform me in the comments.