At first they kind of made it a dramedy. Then they tested it, and people were like, we don’t want a dramedy at the airport.”

— Heather Locklear, New York Times, September 19 2004

So Heather, explain to me what the difference is between a dramedy and what I’m actually watching every Monday night now?

There’s something about LAX that transcends drama and dramedy and probably most forms of comedy into that campiness that has been missing for awhile on television. The fact that the show uses ELO’s frolicky “Mr. Blue Sky” as its theme song should be a pretty hefty indicator that you won’t be watching anything that could be termed “gripping drama.”

I hate to fly, so you’d think I’d avoid a television show that seems to center around airplane angst as its primary plot generator but if anything, it has restored my faith in the Friendly Skies. For all I know, an ex-Navy flight engineer might be on my next flight to Hawaii…and he will most definitely have the sage wisdom to call Ground Control Barbie at the nearest airport from my husband’s Blackberry, then talk down the rattled Captain with a Snoopy vs. the Red Baron flight formation technique. Hell, we’ll even get the actual Red Baron up there with us!

Let’s not forget about the ground crew now, because their role is just as important. In a customer-service based industry such as airline travel, it is important to ensure your hot Australian airline supervisor is at all times in a terminal bar drinking a tall, frosty beer in a tank top. I don’t know why more airports don’t do that. Perhaps LAX is ahead of its time.

Although, I have yet to see LAX introduce a wacky TSA employee who has people do the Macarena while he/she performs a hand-wand inspection. “Ehhhhhh Continental!” Maybe next week.