While you ponder those options, consider which of these three other plots is just too ridiculous for even FX's audience to witness:

 1. Matt, a teenaged boy, having sex with his middle-aged "life coach." Her own teenaged son is aware of it, sees them in bed together and is asked to help hide the affair from Matt's parents.

 2. In a crazed attempt to conceive a pregnancy, a character has sex with at least four different men in a very short span of time, complete with nudity and graphic visuals.

 3. An episode about a pre-teen girl starting puberty with a celebration involving a woman telling a gathering of girls a story about 'Princess Menses' going on a date that ends with the line: "'Take off your clothes, Princess,' said the prince. Pressing up against him, the princess felt a hard bulge ... "

 If you're familiar with "Nip/Tuck," you know the answer. None of these plots is too ridiculous. They all unfolded on prime-time cable TV.

 The outrages are not all sexual or violent. It shouldn't be surprising that creators of a show like this have utter disdain for religion. In one August episode, a woman comes for plastic surgery after having stigmata in her feet, which she told a Catholic parish were miracles from her faith in Jesus. The Catholics are amazed by this "miracle," but she suggests to the surgeons it was all a fraud put across by the nun running the Catholic parish so the diocese wouldn't close down her programs. She declares near the show's end: "Don't you get it? There's nothing to believe in anymore."

 If Ryan Murphy is correct, and this is the direction "cool" TV is going, if this is "the future," then where will Hollywood stop? Where is the bottom of the barrel located, or is our desire for "fabulously lurid" entertainment a bottomless pit of nihilism? "Nip/Tuck" is not just a show that's completely inappropriate for impressionable children to watch. It's a show adults should be convincing other adults not to support. The sanity of our popular culture depends on our objections.

 And you can thank Toyota, Coca-Cola, Victoria's Secret, and especially the enthusiasts at XM Satellite Radio for sponsoring this garbage for us.