Remember, you’re not supposed to be bright enough to make the distinction between clever and creative and low and desperate.

The Starz cable network’s original comedy series, “Head Case,” seems to be an attempt to blend “Curb Your Enthusiasm” with “Sex and the City.” It’s about a Hollywood therapist, played by Alexandra Wentworth.

The show has a cable TV series sound to it, as its characters curse as loudly and as often as they can for no apparent reason other than that they can. Cable TV’s original series are special, that way.

Why have your characters not curse, or only curse when it legitimately serves the scene, when they can curse at all times? Why have an office receptionist holler, “I’m very late!” when, as heard during Feb. 6’s episode, she can holler, “I’m f- – – ing late!”? The funny within “Head Case” – and there is some – is obscured by an overabundance of just-because expletives.

That Feb. 6 episode of “Head Case” was titled, “A Tard For All Seasons.” The word “tard,” in this case, isn’t short for leotard, but for retard. A talent agent, looking to cast an actor in a role of an impaired character, goes looking for “a retard,” a “tard.”

Sure, retard, used in such a manner, is antiquated, too hurtful and backwards to have survived into the 21st Century. But “Head Case,” mistaking excessive insensitivity for irreverence seemed eager to give it a shot.

Clearly, naming that show, “A Tard For All Seasons” wasn’t the best that “Head Case” could do, but that’s what it wanted to do. To be edgy and clever, ya know?

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Veteran talk show host Joe Franklin has long preached to the younger people in his midst – and that’s just about everyone – that the secret to success is sincerity. “Sincerity is everything; you must have sincerity,” he says. “Once you learn how to fake sincerity . . .”

To that end one of the sincerest-looking and sounding spokesmen to have appeared in a TV commercial – for a heart medicine, no less – was recently revealed to be, well, somewhat insincere.

Dr. Robert Jarvik, known for the artificial heart he helped develop in the early 1980s, stars as the doctor in an ad for Lipitor, Pfizer’s anti-cholesterol drug and biggest seller. The ads depict Jarvik as both a physician and a woodsy adventurer, even rowing a one-man shell across a remote lake.

Turns out, though, that’s not Jarvik doing the rowing. He’s not even an outdoorsman. Turns out, too, that Jarvik, while he has a degree in medicine and surely knows plenty about the heart, is not a cardiologist; he’s not even a licensed physician. He just sorta plays one – a very soulful and sincere one – in an ad for heart medicine.

So why risk Jarvik’s and Pfizer’s credibility with some easily exposed nonsense? Isn’t it enough that a heart expert recommends the heart product? Pfizer and Jarvik couldn’t work with that and leave it at that?

What’s next? Will Dr. Phil be exposed as a self-serving, attention-starved grandstander?

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Speaking of dubious come-ons, there’s now a TV ad for “Chaser,” hangover prevention pills. The narrator declares, “Just take two pills with your first drink, then two more, later!”

At ad’s end, the narrator says, “Please drink responsibly.” Of course, if people drank responsibly, Chaser could be used as a paper weight.

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Those hired to be legitimate journalists can only be as legit as they’re allowed.

Jonas Schwartz, a Ch. 4 News sports anchor, and holder of a masters in broadcast journalism from Syracuse’s prestigious Newhouse School, is among the latest to have his news bosses (and their bosses) turn him into a see-through network shill.

Last Saturday, on WNBC’s “Weekend Today In New York,” Schwartz hosted a lengthy segment that was fully designed to promote NBC’s “American Gladiators.” For a business that ostensibly trades on the public’s trust, that’s now the first thing to go.