Most exceptional television is in the realm of comedy. Here’s my list:

The episode of Bosom Buddies in which Henry (the other guy, not Tom Hanks) falls for a girl from California. Hanks and co-star Wendie Jo Sperber (who, sadly, died yesterday at the age of 46) do an amazing two-minute Valley Girl riff before anybody had ever heard of Valley Girls. It airs every few months at 5 o’clock in the morning on any of 8 cable channels.

The first all-sock-puppet TV show, MTV’s Sifl and Olly, who do a “Wayne’s World”-like program. It was made for 11 cents by a crazed genius named Liam Lynch, and for sheer absurdism, there’s never been anything like it. (You can see clips from the cable-access show in New York that gave birth to MTV’s program at sifl-n-olly.com.)

And speaking of sock puppets, Ben Stiller did a parody of the ludicrous NBC sitcom “Alf” on his self-titled comedy show. His alien character was a sock puppet named “Skank,” a really foul-tempered creature who screamed “shut your stinkin’ trap” at every turn to a preposterously delighted wholesome suburban family. In the most inspired skit on The Ben Stiller Show, Skank ends up in a debate with a pompous senator on a “Nightline”-like show. It turns out that Skank is played by a very serious British sock-puppet named Theodore Hume, who smokes a pipe, wears a smoking jacket and can converse knowledgably about water conservation (“the human body is ninety percent water…how much of that is wasted every year by murder?”)

And, of course, there’s the Bewitched episode introducing Uncle Arthur, the practical-joking warlock played by Paul Lynde. There has never been a funnier moment on television than Dick York’s Darrin attempting to exorcise his evil mother-in-law by dancing around, blowing on a kazoo, and chanting, “Yagazuzi, yagazuzi, yagazuzi zem!”

Okay, back to my book on how to stop Hillary. Bye, all!