Pixelate this

For the next few paragraphs to make sense — or, as we say in the comedy writing business, for them to "land" — you need to know two things. First, the American television landscape is an incoherent mix of cable, broadcast, and streaming video. The old-line broadcast networks still adhere, mostly, to an antiquated set of rules and regulations about which words, exactly, they're allowed to broadcast and how much of the unclothed human anatomy they're allowed to show. Cable and streaming services can pretty much say or show anything.