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With close-ups of full penetration still probably years away from their primetime television debut, producers are forced to linger closer to the darker side of the eros-thanatos continuum to keep their audiences properly scandalized. Somewhat embarrassingly, both the NY and LA Times (apparently spurred by the sudden deaths of 24 characters in the last two episodes) chose today to run their "Death is the new black" stories. From the NYT:

So far this season, main characters have died on "Lost," "Smallville," "Las Vegas," "One Tree Hill," "Desperate Housewives," "Battlestar Galactica" and previous episodes of "24." The killing isn't over, either: the casts of "The Shield," "Everwood," "ER" and, again, "Lost" and "24," will be culled by the end of May. And the always-violent "Sopranos," which returned on Sunday, promises to be a bloodbath: its season premiere featured one death by natural causes, and one shocking suicide by hanging.

And repeateth the LAT:

Other important players have also passed away on the show Jack's wife, Terri, at the end of the first season, for instance. But when Almeida became the fifth main casualty in the span of Day 5's first 13 hours, "24" kicked up the ante as leader of a storytelling shift in Hollywood. At the end of Sunday's season premiere of "The Sopranos," Tony (James Gandolfini) was shot in the stomach by his Uncle Junior, leaving unclear the future of the lead character on the HBO drama that helped set the small screen bloodbath in motion. Two of the original survivors on ABC's "Lost," Boone (Ian Somerhalder) and Shannon (Maggie Grace), have died. Even actors on monster hits with lighter tones aren't exempt: The first season of "Desperate Housewives" concluded with the death of one of the husbands.

Accompanying both stories are the requisite showrunner sound-bites about how they'll only kill their darlings when it's a story they believe in and want to tell (The L Word's Ilene Chaiken in the NYT) or to "renew the contract with the audience that anything can happen" (24's Howard Gordon in the LAT), so we can all rest easy that our beloved, fictional family members were not senselessly slaughtered just to appease networks looking for some cheap, Nielsen crack.