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This isn't normally the best place to cover children's television, partly because I don't like kids but mostly because it's entirely the parents' call on what their precious progeny absorb from the small screen. Leave me out of it.

But I'll break tradition for this grave parental advisory: Beware Kenny vs. Spenny (CBC, 5:30 p.m.). Don't let the youngsters watch this show and you'd be wise to avert your own gaze, as well.

Let's assume Kenny vs. Spenny is aimed at kids, since it airs in CBC's pre-dinner block, right after The Simpsons. It's the new best/worst hour-long block in after-school television.

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Kenny vs. Spenny is a reality series from Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice, two boyhood friends and writing partners who appear to have one credit to their name, the 1997 documentary Pitch, in which they took a half-baked movie script to the Toronto International Film Festival and filmed themselves blindsiding celebrities. It was lunkheaded cubism.

No bites on the movie but the irritating duo apparently conned someone at CBC and a Canadian production company into making this show.

Kenny vs. Spenny is possibly the most annoying new half-hour on television.

You know it's bad, right from the animated opening credits, with Hotz and Rice depicted as duelling ninjas and gladiators. As the setup goes, the two pals are terribly competitive, so this necessitates a weekly challenge.

In the first show, it's a contest to see who can stay awake the longest, something many of us have tried ourselves, perhaps while waiting for Santa.

The result is a video-vérité diary of two men in their late 30s acting like 10-year olds. And not even inventive 10-year olds. They hang around the kitchen.

They play video games and lie on the floor. They become bored and go outside to throw eggs at a wall.

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At the 24-hour mark, the two are woozy. Kenny swills coffee. More lying around, more video games. They go to the Ontario Science Centre where, incredibly, Kenny decides to whip about in a motorized wheelchair. He thinks this a smart way to conserve energy.

It gets worse. Kenny and Spenny wrestle and poke each other, like little boys on a sleepover. At the 48-hour mark, they visit a sleep disorder clinic, where they waste the staff's time. Kenny finds instant coffee and eats it. A befuddled doctor gets off the show's only good line, when he refers to them as Spenny and Benny.

It goes on and on. Kenny sticks his face in a bidet; Spenny goes for a walk; Kenny pours water down his pants. It's all too hilarious.

In the end, one of the two nitwits falls asleep, which means the other has to devise a public humiliation. This involves one dressing up as a washroom attendant, while the other sits on the toilet, drawers dropped. Kenny and Spenny have a peculiar sort of friendship, I think.

Although the camera insists on filming the contents of the toilet bowl, Kenny vs. Spenny can't even manage the dubious distinction of being offensive. As with the wheelchair gag, there's no shock value or wit to any of it. Just stupid elementary-school antics from camera-hungry dopes in arrested development.

None of this can be any good for the youngsters. Kenny vs. Spenny is a low-rent vanity piece by two no-names who slipped through the cracks. They make Beavis and Butt-head look like Ibsen characters.

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The series American Choppers (Discovery, 9 p.m.) is a different take on the biker scene and not a bad one at that.

It's a nifty idea: A reality series set behind the scenes at a prosperous bike shop in California, Orange County Choppers, owned and operated by a father-and-son named Paul and Paul Jr. It's not unlike The Restaurant, except they're handling carburetors instead of calzones.

The shop's clients order motorcycles with six-figure price tags. These are customized choppers with extremely ornate craftmanship. Some of them have themes, such as one designed as a U.S. fighter jet. Some Americans just have too much money.

As on The Restaurant, the best scenes arise from human conflict. In this case, it's the arguments that erupt, especially between father and son, during some of the tight-deadline jobs. It's a strange sight: Two tattooed, bulky brutes going toe-to-toe over a minute detail, but nice to see people taking their jobs seriously.

The new reality series Joe Schmo (SpikeTV, 9 p.m.) demonstrates there will always be new spins on the genre, so long as there are people willing to humiliate others without mercy.

This time, it's a pizza-delivery boy from Pittsburgh, name of Matt Gould, who foolishly agreed to appear on a reality show a while back. Gould was told he would be part of a show called Lap of Luxury, a Big Brother type of reality series with a household of competitors. The paltry grand prize of $100,000 should have been Gould's first clue.

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In truth, he is the only real contestant. Gould is Joe Schmo, and doesn't know it. His happy housemates are actors playing stereotypes of reality-show contestants. There is the gay man, the virgin, the military redneck, the big jerk and so on. They goad and bait Joe Schmo at every opportunity and there are many of those in the first show alone.

The intent of Joe Schmo is to make Gould look like a damn fool and he was clearly chosen for his gullible nature. The promos for the show display him as a dazed and unwitting doofus. This is one young fellow who is going to look very silly when the show concludes in six weeks, and for years to come.

Dates and times may vary across the country. Please check local listings or visit http://www.globeandmail.com/tv.

John Doyle returns on Sept. 9

Jaryan@globeandmail