All right. I'm sorry if the 'glazed over eyeballs' came across as insulting to TV-watchers. I used to watch Buffy, and my eyeballs glazed over :-P On the subject:
You both make a persuasive argument. I don't think every episode of every TV show is de facto notable for inclusion, and I also don't think we can base a guideline of notability on something like Nielsen ratings (i.e. this show is more popular than X, therefore it should be included). The top of that notability guideline is definitely in need of some rehabilitation, but lower down there is a link to a great essay from Uncle G:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Uncle_G/On_notability
If the core of notability is non-trivial coverage in reliable secondary sources (not just peer reviewed journals) then most episodes of most TV shows will fail that guideline, as will most movies and most novels. And yet, even the most obscure TV shows and episodes have fans who will want to have articles about their favorite characters, shows and episodes. There is an argument to preserving the totality of the output of popular culture for research or other posterity-related purposes, but that conflicts directly with Wikipedia's notability guideline. Holding on to an enormous collection of NN data is not the mission.
Maybe the solution is a WikiTV project, and listification of all episodes with wikilinks to related WikiTV articles? Then the project can have its own inclusion mission and guidelines, perhaps along the lines of all plot summaries are presumed to be accurate unless contradicted by a secondary source and all episodes of all TV shows are allowed.
Hopefully less 'radically off-base',
Nathan