Jon Hamm or Russell Brand for MTV's Best Dirtball?

The Real Housewives of New York City (8pm Mon, Bravo)

Bravo takes the traditional approach for the fifth season of The Real Housewives of New York City: put catty, wealthy, surgically enhanced women together and watch the sparks fly. Women like Ramona, who prides herself on telling people off: “I’m not afraid to say what everyone else is thinking!” she brags. All we viewers have to do is sit back and wait for one of these provocative statements to kick off a battle royal.

In the season premiere, however, the battle never arrives. A few of the Housewives gamely try to pick a fight, but it’s paltry stuff. Nobody screams, or overturns a table, or even issues a threat. Ramona hosts a party — usually a surefire way to get Housewives throwing pinot grigio at each other — and everybody has a distressingly nice time.

Nice times on The Real Housewives of New York City? I’m going to say what everyone else is thinking: One of these women had better call another one a slut, and fast.

Franklin & Bash (9pm Tue, TNT)

TNT’s legal dramedy is Animal House in a courtroom. Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer play hard-partying lawyer dudes who stick up for the underdog while making a mockery of the judicial system. They chase women, pull outrageous stunts to win their trials, and refuse to let their serious jobs make them grow up. In the second-season premiere, Franklin and Bash are inexplicably offered partnerships in a big firm, angering their straitlaced coworker Damien (Reed Diamond). “Do not allow me to get in the way of moronic justice!” he sneers.

Franklin & Bash is fast-moving, funny, and easy to watch. At the risk of sounding like Damien, however, I have to protest the treatment of women as sex objects. In this week’s episode, it’s a female cop with Playboy curves and an unlikely openness to Bash’s crude come-ons.

I know the show is supposed to be a silly fantasy, but in this particular case I feel obliged to get in the way of moronic justice.