Dave on Demand: Gore on TV: Clot enough for you?

The movie I've been looking forward to most this summer? Conan the Barbarian.

I mention that just to point out that when it comes to screen violence, I am anything but a shrinking violet. But even as someone who doesn't mind a little blood with his gore, I'm shocked at how brutal TV has become.

Last weekend I was watching Breaking Bad. Drug kingpin Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) suddenly tilts back the head of one of his henchmen and repeatedly slashes his throat with a box cutter. (The name of the episode: "Box Cutter.") The camera then lingered on the man bleeding out on the floor.

Even Esposito was dismayed by the scene. "I had some deep concern about being able to do it and coming out of it unscathed, without really hurting my spirit and my soul," he said in an interview this week.

What made this graphic slaughter worse is that it was totally gratuitous. It served no plot or character purpose.

At the end of the episode, AMC showed a highly promoted trailer for the second season of The Walking Dead. No dialogue. Just series star Andrew Lincoln using a large rock to bash in the heads of two zombies. And I mean bash.

So we have that to look forward to, as well as the annual abattoir that is Dexter.

Cable is like a teenager whose parents have gone away for the summer and left him in the house. The first boundary to fall was language, culminating with Deadwood, which threw around f-bombs like rice on honeymooners.

Then there was sex. Soft porn is probably too mild a label for Californication.

Now ultraviolence. Why, when I was your age, you couldn't even shoot someone on TV. (All right, maybe you could wing somebody once in a while.) But these days TV is like a grindhouse double feature.

Objection! NBC News recently shifted former White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie to chief legal analyst. But they don't seem to have much confidence in her.

Every time they bring her on Today, they flank her with camera hog Star Jones. Guthrie has yet to get in a word edgewise. Next time she should demand of Ann Curry that she be permitted at least a brief rebuttal.

A changed man. I'm really enjoying the new gentler version of Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) on True Blood. Since a witch put a spell on him, the diabolical 1,000-year-old vampire has taken on a sincere, childlike innocence.

Yes, he's a little impetuous, but his eyes shine with a puppy-dog sweetness. He just wants to cuddle with Sookie. Isn't that cute?

Goal? Is it just me or is there something fishy in Frankfurt? Did you see the FIFA Women's World Cup final this week?

I don't mind us losing, but I'd kind of like to see how it happened. The crucial goal was delivered by Japan's Homare Sawa. She was sprinting through the box, closely marked, when she threw out her leg. The ball then shot off with great velocity in the direction opposite from the one in which she was running and into the U.S. net.

Sorry, the physics on that just don't work. Despite numerous attempts, ESPN was never able to provide a replay that showed how Sawa was able to propel the ball backward with such force. In fact, in most of the clips it didn't look as if she touched the ball at all.

This is the biggest sports mystery since then-Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston in 1965 with a phantom punch.