The Nightmare Scenario

Yesterday in the Chicago Tribune, Maureen Ryan wrote about what seems to be a new fixation in prime time TV: mushroom clouds. Jericho on CBS led it off, then there were hints that one was coming to New York on NBC's Heroes, and finally 24 on FOX did away with Valencia (to the delight of Florida orange growers, no doubt). But if you look at that list, there's an obvious omission. Where's ABC's atomic bomb? We’ve got three of the four major networks covered, but no ABC show.

That got me to thinking. Where would a nuke show up on the ABC network. Lost is an obvious option, because nobody knows what's going on there anyway, and a stray atom bomb could be shoehorned without much difficulty whatsoever. But that's too easy. There must be some other possibilities.

On Desperate Housewives, Edie is manipulative enough that she wouldn't be above at least threatening to use a suitcase nuke. He's supposedly in rehab at the moment, but if pushed to the wall, Isaiah Washington might be willing to go nuclear on his castmates from Gray's Anatomy. And we could easily have a Wife Swap between a family assigned to NORAD and a highly placed North Korean military family. Whatever series would end up being in the center of the bull's-eye, we know we can count on Ty Pennington to rebuild on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. So where would you drop a nuke in ABC's schedule?