Well, that certainly was awkward.

David Letterman's jaw-dropping account of being extorted was so surreal, I was sure it was a setup to a taped skit. Convinced that at some point he was going to say, "Here, take a look," and show us a clip of Bruce Willis as a sinister Snidely Whiplash blackmailer tiptoeing up to Dave's car to drop a package in the back seat.

What was creepy was the way the audience kept chortling long after it became apparent that this was no joke. Like Court TV with a laugh track.

You can't blame the crowd. Letterman disingenuously framed the moment as a jape. "I have a little story that I would like to tell you. . . . Do you feel like a story?" he asked.

So they kept waiting for the punch line, and laughing in anticipation.

Dave posed himself as the victim - and no doubt he is. But shouldn't his curious diatribe have contained at least a hint of remorse for putting himself, the show, and his family in an embarrassing position by having sex with staffers?

He was more contrite after making an off-color joke about Sarah Palin's daughter.

By discussing the blackmail incident on the air, Letterman clearly hoped to get out in front of the story, to distance himself from the fallout. But he might as well have been wearing one of his old Velcro suits.

Gone and quickly forgotten. Some people celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Others observe the spring equinox. Personally I look forward to an annual rite of fall: the first cancellation of the network season.

I suppose I treasure this event because it creates the illusion that TV has standards, that some shows are so irredeemably bad that programming executives will actually pull them off the air. (Of course 'Til Death shoots the heck out of this theory.)

Last year, the first casualty was the disturbing Fox sitcom Do Not Disturb. The year before it was CBS's musical monstrosity Viva Laughlin (that is, if you don't count the Fox reality show Nashville, which got an even quicker hook).

This time The Beautiful Life was the first to bite the dust. The CW's drama about the cut-sleeve world of fashion models lasted two episodes.

What do you think will be the next to go? Mercy? The Forgotten? Eastwick? I'm going to go out on a limb and pick Hank, the Kelsey Grammer vehicle that bowed this week.

It's never a good sign when you watch an entire episode of a sitcom without cracking a smile.

Drunk again. There are some curious depictions of sobriety on television. On Rescue Me, Tommy's AA sponsor took him to a bar, put a tumbler of Irish whiskey in front of him, and demanded he drink it.

On FlashForward, Mark's sponsor opened an AA meeting by explaining why he resumed drinking.

Aren't these guys supposed to be providing an example?

No wonder Tommy ended the season drunk and bleeding out on a barroom floor. And am I wrong, or in Mark's vision of the future, isn't he furiously slugging from a flask while on the job?

Maybe you guys need new sponsors.

A gracious host. In this week's Big Bang Theory, Sheldon and Howard settled a bet by going to the lab of the university's reclusive entomologist.

It was a wild cameo for apoplectic comic Lewis Black, who welcomed them to his buggy enclave, saying, "Don't knock. Just walk in. Why be polite to the world's leading expert on the dung beetle?"

Yee ha. Funniest line of the week went to Gaby on Desperate Housewives.

After Carlos listed all the trials his poor niece had endured, Gaby said, "Yeah, yeah. She's one dead dog away from a country song."

Contact staff writer David Hiltbrand at 215-854-4552 or dhiltbrand@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http:// go.philly.com/daveondemand.