Many a reason to give your TV a big smooch

4214513

She’s always there for you. She never has a headache, and she never needs a girls’ night out.

She’s television. And, in honor of Valentine’s Day, here are 33 reasons to love her right now:

1. The fearlessness of Jimmy Kimmel.

2. “How I Met Your Mother’s” twisted view of Canada and its people.

3. That HBO still makes time for small, diamond-in-the-rough shows. Take “How to Make It in America” (10 p.m. today). The comedy, a sort of East Coast, pre-fame “Entourage,” follows two hustling, street-smart friends (Bryan Greenberg, Victor Rasuk) as they navigate the New York arts scene and try to launch a high-end denim line. There’s virtually nothing in that sentence that appeals to me, yet I still get swept up in the world the series creates.

4. Glenn Beck’s tears.

5. Every single detail of ABC’s “Better Off Ted.” It’s almost too perfect to live, which is why it almost certainly won’t.

6. NBC’s “Mercy.” More fun than “Grey’s Anatomy” with almost none of the pretense.

7. Jorge Garcia’s Hurley, the heart and soul of “Lost.”

8. New episodes of “Southland” begin March 2 on TNT. They’re the six hours that had been completed when NBC canceled the gritty drama, declaring it an incompatible lead-in for “The Jay Leno Show.” And they begin airing the week Leno returns to late-night, leaving the network desperate for content to fill those five hours a week. Reason No. 237 why NBC is run by idiots.

9. Curling.

10. The way “Modern Family’s” 11-year-old Luke Dunphy (Nolan Gould) always seems really, really high.

11. Season two of “Dollhouse,” which proved once and for all that when he’s left to his own devices, Joss Whedon is still one of the world’s great storytellers.

12. “24” star Annie Wersching’s freckles.

13. That, thanks to “The Soup,” I’ve never had to watch a single episode of “Jersey Shore,” “Toddlers and Tiaras” or “Bridezillas,” but can discuss them at length.

14. “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” (10 p.m. Fridays, Starz). With its startling amount of violence and sex, it’s like “300” meets one of those Skinemax series. If only Starz would incorporate a sports ticker across the bottom, guys would never need to watch anything else.

15. HBO’s “The Pacific” starts March 14.

16. TNT’s “Men of a Certain Age.” No cops, no doctors, no lawyers. Just three top-shelf TV stars — Ray Romano, Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher — riffing on each other.

17. The quiet nobility of “Friday Night Lights’ ” Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch).

18. That for two hours each weekday, 8-10 a.m. on Bravo, “The West Wing” is there to provide welcome relief from the channel’s teeming hordes of housewives, matchmakers, designers and “cheftestants.”

19. “Chuck” dreamgirl Yvonne Strahovski’s slightly oversized front teeth.

20. The SEC on ESPN.

21. USA’s “White Collar” and “Burn Notice.” Who knew you could have that much fun in a designer suit?

22. “Breaking Bad” returns March 21.

23. Those moments in every “Family Guy” episode when you laugh, instinctively and uncontrollably, just before the guilt sets in.

24. “Supernatural’s” winking in-jokes.

25. “Community’s” Abed (Danny Pudi) and his unwavering love of pop culture.

26. How, whenever you’re stuck in a hotel room with bad cable, Discovery will, as if by magic, air either a “MythBusters” or a “Dirty Jobs” to bail you out.

27. Cox’s MyPrimetime. The on-demand service resolves those network programming nightmares — “House” vs. “Chuck” vs. “How I Met Your Mother,” for example — by letting you watch episodes of select ABC and NBC series at your convenience without running to your computer.

28. “Glee” returns April 13.

29. The way “The Biggest Loser” inches closer and closer to killing one of its morbidly obese contestants each season.

30. “Fringe’s” mad scientist Walter Bishop and the masterful way John Noble plays him as more than comic relief.

31. Michael Bublé’s “Haven’t Met You Yet” video. Bublé dances down supermarket aisles, accompanied at times by a marching band and sprawling, movie musical-style choreography. There’s such a joyful innocence in those four minutes, it’s as though no one involved had ever seen a music video. Of course, given the way the art form largely has disappeared over the past decade, there’s a very real chance they haven’t.

32. “Nip/Tuck” finally ends March 3. Is anyone else rooting for murder-suicide?

33. That, after reportedly spending nearly $2 million of her own money on it, Heidi Montag’s debut album sold fewer than 1,000 copies in its first week. Technically that has very little to do with TV, but it makes me smile. A lot.

Christopher Lawrence’s Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.