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How bleak are things at the publicly humbled, last place (UPN and The WB don't count) NBC? So bad that president Kevin Reilly had to conjure a rather unpleasant image to communicate his network's plight to the Television Critics Association:

"Last season for us was kind of like a colonic," he said. "It wasn't a lot of fun to go through at the time, but it's going to be healthy in the long run. It literally took any residual sense of entitlement or complacency at our company and blew it out."

Yet if NBC is still pinning its hopes on a second season of Joey (he finally makes it big in Hollywood this year!), isn't that kind of like asking the technician who just flushed out your clogged colon to cram all of the crap back in?