Everyone I've spoken to in every demographic — except newborns; I tried talking TV to my week-old twin niece and nephew, but they slept right through my spiel — agrees that there appears to have been no summer, and all of a sudden it's Labor Day. But for those of us who cover TV, fall is the best time of the year, when we get to sample what the networks and cable stations have to offer, and hopes are high that one pilot, or, praise the cathode ray tube, maybe more than one — will exceed expectations.

Growing up, I loved awards shows like the Oscars and the Emmys. But by 1995, when David Letterman hosted the Oscars and laid an egg with his flat attempt to find humor introducing Uma Thurman to Oprah Winfrey and both of them to Keanu Reeves ("Uma…Oprah. Oprah…Uma." "Oprah…Uma…Keanu"), the thrill was gone. Since then, I've recorded the shows, fast-forwarding through the stiff, scripted intros, which are rarely as funny as the writers thought, unnecessary production numbers and the endless commercials.

Well, the viewers have spoken. Not the viewers who write to us; they've written often and loudly (in CAPS) about how much they dislike (and that's a nice word) the Erica and Ryan cougar story. Now the Nielsens have spoken: Erica and Ryan flirted, and ALL MY CHILDREN's rating dropped a tenth of a point. Doesn't seem like much on the face of it, but if you consider that ratings for the soaps in general are anemic, every 10th of a point counts. Does this mean AMC will scrap the cougar plot? No way. But if the ratings keep tumbling, it might give the show runners pause.

How great is it when one of your favorite new prime-time series references your favorite soap opera?

In its first two 13-episode seasons, TORCHWOOD was a jaunty, clever, and occasionally chilling and horrific sci-fi series — a spin-off of DOCTOR WHO that I enjoyed as much as, if not more than, the parent series. This season, TORCHWOOD, a five-episode miniseries, got serious.

ALL MY CHILDREN has a (recent) history of making its viewers angry. Fans want a storyline for Aidan; it was bad enough that he was paired with Annie, but now he appears to be little more than adjunct to the Ryan/Zach plot to bring Annie down.

When is a cake a soap opera? I'll get to that in a minute. I'm not a big fan of reality shows in general. I want scripted shows, with real actors. But the reality is, reality shows are easier and cheaper to produce, so we're stuck with them. And now that it's summertime, the living might be easy, but it's not easy finding a decent show to watch that's not a rerun.

Showtime's summer series have kicked into high gear, and the cable net is determined to push the envelope…even for nighttime, adult (R-rated) soaps. When WEEDS began in August 2005, the show was set in a tidy Southwestern desert suburban development called Majestic, and recently widowed Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) was dealing drugs because she had no other way to support her kids.

Let us now praise and say a fond farewell to PUSHING DAISIES, a show I loved that is now pushing up daisies itself, in TV heaven. Twenty-two episodes spread over three years turned out to be more whimsy than most viewers wanted. Interrupted by the 2007-'08 writers' strike, the show lost its momentum and never got it back.

If there's one thing I'm hearing from ALL MY CHILDREN fans lately, it's actually three things: