It's summertime, so that means networks' programming schedules are much like summer vacation: NO CLASS.

Yes, the students are on break and apparently so are the television studios' taste police. Therefore, for the next three months, gone are most of the quality shows (both scripted and unscripted) and in their place on the programming grid are soulsucking seasons of The Singing Office, I Survived A Japanese Game Show, Wipeout, and Celebrity Circus. Not exactly series that'll be on the Emmy judges' shortlists come voting time later this year. But the Emmy judges are probably on summer break too, so no worries.

And besides, these shows are like the boob-tube equivalent of trashy, pulpy, Harlequin-romance beach reads. Who wants to overwork their sun-addled gray matter during summer break with cerebral shows, anyway? So this brainstem-rotting TV dreck will do nicely until school (and sanity) are back in session.

Soooo...sitting high atop summer's reality TV crapheap is ABC's eye-gouging yet still oddly watchable Dance Machine (not to be confused with TLC's Joey Lawrence-hosted, similarly themed piece of garbage, Master Of Dance), on which "ordinary" people dance like, um, "special" people, if you catch my drift.

Seriously, this show makes Fuse's Pants-Off Dance-Off look like a PBS broadcast of Swan Lake.

Yep, the freaks on Dance Machine sure know how to get their freak on, and they'll be doing so every freaky Friday night this summer...unless the show gets cancelled soon. Which is a very real possibility. But I do hope Dance Machine lasts more than a couple episodes...because if it does, it's going to give The Soup and Best Week Ever so much fodder from now till September, those shows' writers can take a well-deserved break and go on summer vacation themselves. Hey, maybe I will too!

So celebrate summer by pouring yourself a frosty, foofy umbrella drink, slapping on some sunglasses to minimize the garish glare of Dance Machine's stage set, and indulging in some refreshing snippets of this soon-to-be-possibly-cancelled summer show: