Allow me to suggest a new star-studded special for primetime: The Awards Awards. 
   Given the staggering number of awards shows in primetime, honoring nominees in categories like Best Acceptance Speech and Best Presenter Ad Lib Without Aid of a Teleprompter seems inevitable.
    Personally, I feel a moratorium on the proliferation of awards shows should be declared for no other reason than to reduce public exposure to E! Entertainment Television's deadly duo of Melissa and Joan Rivers. 
   A fixture outside every Hollywood ceremony, their presence at last week's Golden Globe Awards provided a potent reminder of why sometimes having cable TV is a very bad thing.
    For those who haven't seen their pre-show shtick, this mother-daughter team has become the Scylla and Charybdis of the red carpet, a two-headed monster that devours every celebrity trying to enter the theater.
    Actors grin gamely as the Rivers individually pepper them with inane questions, most of them cataloguing every handbag, jewelry, outfit, shoe, makeup and hairstyle that comes their way.
    So meticulous is their examination that they usually forget to acknowledge the existence of the star's date, who has nothing to do but smile vacantly into the camera while being ignored. 
   I'm much more interested in whom the actors are dating as opposed to what they're wearing, but maybe that's just me. Jack Nicholson could walk in with a plastic blow-up doll on his arm, and the Rivers would be too busy studying his wingtips to notice.  
    Don't get me wrong.  I have nothing against red-carpet preening or E!'s innovative approach to covering the event. What I object to is the choice of the Rivers, who appear to be getting a tad too comfortable with their jobs, if the Globes broadcast is any indication. Their every attempt at humor fails miserably.
     Joan Rivers' grasp on reality has always been tenuous, but watching her made me question whether she's senile.
    "I'm here today with a terrible, itchy yeast infection," she screeches at the opening of the E! Globes pre-show, later informing viewers that the day marked "25 years to the last time I ovulated."
    That I find a sixtysomething woman joking about her vagina distinctly unpalatable may be a matter of my own comic tastes, but what do her genitals have to do with the show? Even her Hollywood humor was curiously gynecentric; of California's electricity troubles, she japed, "If only Cher would unplug her vibrator for one stinking day."
    Maybe I'm a chauvinist, but if a male comedian "worked blue" on the red carpet, devoting every third joke to his private parts, he would be labeled a pig. At least if Andrew Dice Clay got the assignment, he'd be funny. 
     How about this Joan gem: "If you're not here, it's because you're either Jason Robards or a star of the Pax network."
    Way to go, spit on the grave of a recently deceased Hollywood legend. If that wasn't enough to send bile shooting out of my ears, here's Joan on Faye Dunaway's alleged facelifts: "When she crosses her legs, her mouth snaps [open]."
   That the joke is positively groan-worthy is not the issue; the problem is Joan's own face has been obviously re-upholstered multiple times, as the tabloids used to extensively document. Plastic surgery may prevent Joan from going to pot, but she's still calling the kettle black.
   Melissa Rivers is barely an improvement. To her credit, she seems quite knowledgeable about the celebrities she interviews, as opposed to Joan, who must have mistaken "ER" star Michael Michele for a teenager when she asked her, "How old were you when you started watching the show?" Michele is 34 years old and "ER" is seven; her estimate was off a few decades.
   As we are reminded umpteen times during the course of the show, Melissa recently delivered her first child, a boy named Cooper.  That's truly peachy, but must her pregnancy be her entire frame of reference for the rest of her life? Nearly every interview she did made mention of the recent birth; pregnant "Practice" star Camryn Manheim looked as if she would keel over from boredom just speaking to her about it. She even managed to work the subject into conversations about what jewelry the stars were wearing; she probably would have worn an umbilical cord as her necklace if it would have matched her gown.
    So it should come as no surprise that this Saturday, E! will be airing "Oh, Baby! Melissa's Guide to Pregnancy." Though I myself am not with child, I may request an epidural.

-Andrew Wallenstein is the television critic for Media Life.

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