WEDNESDAY: "Law & Order" (10 p.m. ET, NBC)

The lovable right-wingers over at Free Republic have particular disdain for "Law & Order," possibly dating to the time when the show savaged Ken Starr in an elaborate two-hour send-up. "'Law & Order' serves in socialists' culture war against whites," wrote one. Another imagined "'Law & Order' writers sitting around an Upper West Side coffee house" dreaming up liberal-leaning plot lines, while a third wondered, "Couldn't the producers just leave out all those political comments?" The answer to that question, of course, is no, since when you have to provide compelling crime drama on a weekly basis, it's inevitable that you'll touch on the controversial. Of course, "L&O" writers haven't exactly shied away from controversy: This season started with two polarizing "ripped from the headlines" story lines, one about a bitter 9/11 widow and the other featuring the vengeful sister of an Iraqi prisoner tortured at Abu Ghraib prison.

But the Freepers are wrong to portray "L&O," which features some of the most sophisticated political back and forth in prime time, as one-sided propaganda. Look at the Abu Ghraib episode: We heard from (a) a military commander who said it was worth psychologically torturing prisoners if it saved innocent lives, (b) a former Iraqi citizen who complained America protected Iraq's oil fields but not its people, (c) a detective who says the prison-abuse scandal was blown out of proportion, (d) a district attorney critical of the war who wonders why we didn't invade Rwanda, and (e) another D.A. who defended the war. The latter is played by Fred Thompson, a former U.S. senator who, most episodes, articulates a pointedly conservative point of view.

It's also worth pointing out that in shows like "L&O," as well as imitators like CBS's "CSI" and "Cold Case," the protagonists are governmental figures, and you're generally expected to sympathize with them. You want the cops to figure out who committed a crime, and you want the lawyers to make that person pay. The shows reinforce cultural messages about the sanctity of the social order. That isn't to say that "L&O" panders to traditional conservatism -- for the most part, the show is both more balanced and more intelligent that the political programs featuring partisan carnival barkers that pop up on cable news networks. But "L&O" and its imitators are celebrations of governmental authority figures. It's tough to argue that prime time has a liberal bias when so much programming features heroic cops and prosecutors instead of sympathetic social workers and heroic public defenders.

THURSDAY: "The Apprentice" (9 p.m. ET, NBC)

I used to be puzzled by the fact that all those Upper West Side coffeehouse dwellers I know eat up "The Apprentice," despite the fact that Donald Trump may well be the closest thing America has to an embodiment of shallow materialism. But somewhere along the line I figured out that the show works better as a wicked satire of traditional capitalism than as a celebration of it. Sure, there are those that see "The Apprentice" as a window into a business world in which talent and the elevation of work above all else are justly rewarded, who marvel at the opulence of destinations Trump invariably describes as "the most luxurious in the world." But for the rest of us, the show's portrayal of back-stabbing, ambitious overachievers drooling over an ultimately meaningless brass ring is one of the most persuasive arguments against life in the boardroom that there is.

That's why "The Apprentice" really is a liberal show, no matter how much Trump tries to spin it the other way. It exposes the artifice behind what we otherwise might have thought an ideal life, much like a particularly disappointing trip to the Playboy mansion might. Conveniently, the genre is about to reach its apotheosis with the debut this Sunday of Fox's "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss," a show that takes Trump's ridiculous conceit a step further; even those who take "The Apprentice" at face value -- people whom a friend describes, perhaps too unkindly, as "rural rubes" -- will be in on the joke on that one. And then we'll all be laughing as the high achievers we're theoretically meant to emulate are made even more obvious targets of ridicule.

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