The episode of HBO's new sitcom 1st & Ten opens with a shot of two comely lasses soaping themselves in a locker-room shower. Their endowments are on full display and duly noted by two football jocks ogling them from the doorway. The casual nudity may be startling to some viewers, especially since it has nothing to do with anything that follows. But for veteran watchers of cable TV series, such obligatory "skin scenes" are old hat. Their purpose is not so much titillation as information. The message: This is cable, folks, not network TV.
More and more, that is the only...
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