I WAS so outraged, I almost spilled my contradictory cup of tea - an English Breakfast on an Australian evening - all over my lap.

A Channel Ten ad for the final few episodes of Offspring declares it will be "the best television you will ever see". 
Excuse me, but presumptuous much? I may be the only person in Australia to say this (although this may not now be accurate given the fan backlash after the death of Patrick this week) but I do not like Offspring.

I haven't watched since season one, when I tried to give this then-fledgling show a chance; but became so infuriated with Nina after three episodes that I threw in the towel.

I just don't get how an intelligent, capable obstetrician can be so silly. Sure, people have varying facets to their private and professional lives, but no one I've ever met is that black and white.

The slapstick and fantasy scenes are cringeworthy and, I would suggest, a lame attempt by the writers to make Nina, played by glamazon Asher Keddie, relatable to the ordinary garden-variety chicks out there in TV land watching in their onesies while scooping in gobfuls of Ben & Jerrys.

Yes, that's a stereotype and it stings, doesn't it? 
Which is exactly the reason I take issue with Nina Proudman and the way the women in Offspring are drawn. 
The female curse of the silly superficial. It's ok for the men in the show to be broody, unpredictable, desperate, empathetic, flawed, but the women are just klutzes?

Even the opening credits inspire a 1950s-era ditziness when I think women in 2013 should be given more credit.
While I don't watch the show (witchhunters, go!) I am kept updated thanks to network promos. So when the plot takes viewers into darker territory (drug use, infidelity, paternity and the loss of a baby) the moments are somehow cheapened because of the irritating distraction of the ridiculous elsewhere in the show.

And unfair, yes, but I also dislike Asher Keddie. Like Nicole Kidman, I cannot warm to her. A fact almost entirely based on the ice-cold, uptight character she played in Love My Way.