Free thinking and unending questions spread quicker than the Black Death in mainland Europe. The end result was the complete collapse of society.

Thursday night at 7 p.m. — taking the reins of the old NBC “Friends” slot — my sitcom, “Can Our Robot Watch the Game” (CORWG) aired its pilot episode.

A half-hour later, during the closing credits, screams of revulsion from overly concerned parents rang louder than the sound of their spirits breaking. For they knew they had lost.

It was the screeching of a century-long regime of rubes crying out unanimously as they watched a single wrench get thrown into their machine of traditionalist edification.

Before the entire country descended into the burning flames of total anarchy, a few incidents were reported.

Jane Kindfellow, a babysitter in Nebraska, was gunned down by a 3-year-old on a tricycle armed with an uzi 10 minutes after “CORWG” ended. The 3-year-old, who had never shown violent behavior before, was under Kindfellow’s watch. When asked what inspired such a bloody massacre, the 3-year-old proclaimed, “Can Our Robot Watch the Game.”

Hollow-skulled critics later blamed a rambunctious teen character in “CORWG,” Billy, who shoots his babysitter in the face in the pilot episode.

One news station reported that an Ohio mother’s head actually exploded when she witnessed the show’s lovable robot, Fifteen, making love to Candy the prostitute. This was natural selection at its finest. Only the strongest minds could survive the bottleneck effect “CORWG” caused.

Shortly after that report, the United States of America went black. I never expected those Bill O’Reilly-programmed dolts to be right. I couldn’t imagine the power a show some hailed as “pointless,” “meandering and lost,” “nonsensical” and “art for art’s sake,” wielded on its viewers.

Once “CORWG” hit the airwaves, free thinking and unending questions spread quicker than the Black Death in mainland Europe. The end result was the complete collapse of society.

Children beat their parents. The Mississippi River flowed with bourbon. Humans roamed untamed in forests while foxes and deer dined on caviar in their suburban homes. Gravity reversed itself in some parts of the country and pulled people up into space. For the briefest of moments, Big Brother’s eyes rolled back into his head and went comatose.

Where was I during all this? Right where this all began — sitting on my couch in front of the TV. With Taco Wallace to my left, Petunia to my right and a bowl of Spaghetti O’s in my stomach — contentment finally set in.

I breathed in the weeping of those old-fashioned tele-pioneers who no longer understood their offspring, and exhaled the cheers of victory from the defiant next generation of entertainers. A tear ran down my cheek as I witnessed new life breathed into my old friend’s pixilated face.

The American dream flowed through me. From lazy idea to national fruition, I cured television.

It was at that moment of gratification that Ann Coulter and her cohorts broke down my front door with an axe. They dragged my two counterparts and me into the front yard, where a mob of malcontents encircled a bonfire. I was to be the sacrificial lamb to Reagan’s ghost in hopes of ending the revolution and returning their country.

I know not what happened to Taco or Petunia, but their distant screams told me my fate would not be pleasant. I saw that a rotisserie awaited me.

I’d seen these faces before. Lurking in the darkest depths of nightmares — their faces barley visible in the scorching blaze all see when they know their existence is at an end. They were all wearing yellow-toothed grins: John Ashcroft, Rupert Murdoch, Barbara Bush and a slew of followers ready for their main course — me.

Murdoch jammed an apple in my mouth while Ashcroft and “Bar” impaled me on the rotisserie spike. I cooked over burning copies of “Can Our Robot Watch the Game.”

They devoured my burnt flesh and let it fuel their bodies to rebuild the society I resisted and changed.

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