Television is filled with pretty people. So why do television characters constantly act like ugly losers who can't get any? Luckily, we can count on one show to keep it real.

One of the things that annoys me the most about most primetime television is the lack of sex. Don’t get me wrong: It’s not the lack of sex scenes that bother me; I’m not looking for cheap thrills in the 8:00 hour or anything. It’s the lack of sex that TV characters seem to be having that drives me absolutely bonkers.

Back in the day, long before I started writing about television, I was a huge fan of Ed. For those of you who need a refresher, Ed (Tom Cavanagh) came back to small town Ohio to woo his high school crush, Carol (Julie Bowen). It was a cute, funny show, but watching Carol reject Ed season after season drove me up the damn wall. The writers wanted us to believe that Carol still saw Ed as the dorky guy from high school. The problem with this is that it assumes that neither Carol nor the audience has eyes. Because Tom Cavanagh is hot.

Not only is Tom Cavanagh hot, but Ed is funny and sweet, and he owns a freakin’ bowling alley. Also, have you seen his eyes? Come on. For Carol to not see that for so long was completely unrealistic, because here’s the thing: When two single people spend that much time together, they have sex. They might not get married and have babies, but those two are going to bone at some point — and that point isn’t going to be in season six.

This is especially true if you are thrown into an intense situation, which is why — despite the smoke monsters, the hatch, the polar bears, the Others, or the freakin’ time travel — the thing about Lost that made the least sense to me is how everybody kept their clothes on.

If you crash on a desert island, the first thing you do is assess your likelihood of being rescued. The second thing you do is find food and shelter. The third thing you do — if you were on Oceanic flight 815 — is look around and go, “Holy shit. This is the most attractive group of people that has ever been assembled on a single airplane. Imma get my swerve on.”

Sure, Shannon and Sayid proved pretty quickly that they knew what was up, but it was ages before the triumvirate of adventurers, Jack, Sawyer and Kate, started getting busy. Sitting and watching them run around the jungle like assholes week after week was infuriating. All I wanted to do was yell at the TV. “You are all pretty! And single! And in a land of no responsibilities! Who gives a shit about the hatch???”

Comedic supergroup Garfunkel & Oates put the Lost problem perfectly in their song, “Why Isn’t There More Fucking on This Island?” (As the title suggests, the audio is very NSFW).

Lost‘s finale didn’t end the problem of course. Recent episodes of Castle have just gotten ridiculous. Castle and Beckett are both attractive. They are both (usually) single. They work closely together, yet neither of their careers is tied to the other, so a messy breakup actually wouldn’t be that catastrophic. Yet, for some reason, they have not gotten naked together.

I don’t have many hard and fast rules in my life, but here are a couple:

1. If I nearly freeze to death in a meat locker with an attractive gentleman with whom I am obviously in love, I will take that as a sign that the time to get down and dirty is nigh.

2. If, not even 24 hours later, I find myself a whisper away from dying with the same attractive gentleman in a nuclear explosion in midtown Manhattan, I will also see that as a sign that it’s time to stop playing hard to get. Because seriously. NUCLEAR EXPLOSION. What am I trying to prove?

These seem pretty reasonable to me. Yet, when Beckett and Castle find themselves in these very situations, not only do they not take a couple of personal days, fire up delivery.com and lock the door to Beckett’s apartment, but Castle can’t even get up the nerve to say that he likes her. WEAK.

This is why I love Community: they dispense with the bullshit. For most of season one, we had Jeff following Britta around like a little puppy dog. It was weird and borderline annoying — but THEN. Then the paintball episode happened, and Community actually did something that makes sense: Jeff and Britta had sex.

Why did Jeff and Britta have sex? LOOK AT THEM. Once again, they are two attractive, single people who spend a lot of time together. That’s all it takes. Was it the beginning of an epic romance? No. Because, let’s be honest: For most people, the number of times you’ve had awkward hookups in study rooms greatly outnumber the epic romances in your life. Community keeps it real.

What’s even better is that Jeff later realizes that Britta isn’t the only attractive lady in the group, so he makes out with Annie. Then he realizes it’s weird because she’s twelve. Everything about these peoples’ actions makes sense to me. After years of television characters making dumb decisions and acting as though they’re ugly, it’s so refreshing to see a group of characters acting like the pretty people they are. I only hope more shows follow their lead.

Photo Credit: NBC, ew.com, ABC, NBC