A new fall TV season... woo hoo! What daring new treats are in store? What shows will you fall in love with, only to find that they've been cancelled after just a few episodes?

Before you get emotionally involved, let's remember some losers past. Here, for your viewing pleasure, are a few TV Guide Fall Preview tidbits from 10 and 20 years ago, glimpses of shows that barely saw the light of day (praise heaven). Were they possibly as crappy as this year's "Out of Practice"? Did they feature as deadly a combo of the washed up and the hopeful? I dunno. I sure as hell never watched them. And "Out of Practice" is absolute crap.

So, think back... to 1987... when "Unprovoked War" meant someone was playing "Why Can't We Be Friends" on the old 8-track. You could have been watching this:

Yes, the incredible Elizabeth Pe�a with that guy from "Hardcastle & McCormick" and that old guy that sounds just like that other old guy who did the Smuckers commercials. She's the maid...she's illegal...his wife left...hey, kids! Let's put on a wedding! I think this lasted two weeks. I'm sure the Immigration and Naturalization Service was in stitches. You know you're in trouble with the only joke TV Guide can find to quote is about a 13-year-old's developing breasts. Interesting tidbit: the 13-year-old was Juliette Lewis. Really.

Or, you could have turned to...

Anne Jackson with some buff dude that never went anywhere and George from Seinfeld. Before he was George from Seinfeld, of course. When you look through these old pilots, you tend to see the same faces over and over. Like Robert Urich. And Nancy McKeon. And Bonnie Hunt. And Jon Cryer. Over and over. And you can see the increasing desperation in their faces as they pray this one isn't yet another loser.

But I digress. "Everything's Relative" WAS a loser. Top jokes were about mistaking shaving cream for toothpaste, and liquid liver for soda. How very, very sad.

So let's skip ahead to 1997, just 10 short years ago. You could have been dabbling on that new worldwide web thingie with your five-cents-a-minute Compuserve or Prodigy account. Or you could have turned on the tube and cringed at:

How much is enough of the Lawrence Boys? For me, it was five minutes of "Blossom." For NBC, I think it was about three weeks.

Speaking of crappy-lesser-characters-from-crappy-shows-trying-to-make-it-big, how about

COULD Kirk Cameron be more annoying? Sure! Stick him with a precocious mushroom-headed child, a couple of precocious teens, and his real-life wife: hilarious hijinks are sure to follow. Glad he's moved on to the "Left Behind" movies, since I'll never have to see them, either. Interesting tidbit: that is the fabulous Jason Bateman pictured for "Simon" down below, just one of his unfortunate efforts before crashing into brilliance on "Arrested Development"

Flip the channel, and you could have seen

Mariska Hargitay, Louis Mandylor and the unfortunate Nancy McKeon shilling for what the Guide calls "a 'Three's Company' level of gratuitous lewdness." Thank heaven for cop shows and Greek weddings that gave two of the three something worthwhile to do. I"m sure there's a godawful TV movie somewhere with Nancy McKeon's name on it as well. Interesting tidbit: the legs shown above are Jon Cryer's in some show called "Partners." Never heard of it.

So whenever you're watching complete dreck and wondering how the hell it stays on TV, remember all the even crappier shows that made it look good in comparison.