All the World's a Stage According to Some

Maybe you saw ''Big Day'' last night on ABC and The World According to Stephen Tobolowsky. OK. That wasn't quite the title. But Mr. Tobolowsky did play The Garf and the ep was called The World According to Garf — an obvious homage to John Irving's novel, The World According to Garp.

When looking at ep titles for other shows, I was surprised to find so little creativity. Writers for only one show really had fun with word play:

• The World Accordion to Bobby (''Bobby's World,'' 10/2/1993)

The rest of the writers just replaced Garp's name with somebody else's name:

• The World According to Avery (''Murphy Brown,'' 2/15/1993)
  
• The World According to Chrissy (''Growing Pains,'' 12/19/1990)
  
• The World According to Dil & Spike (''Rugrats,'' 4/20/2001)
  
• The World According to Freedom (''Hill Street Blues,'' 1/7/1982)
  
• The World According to Garf (''Big Day,'' 12/5/2006)
  
• The World According to Jim (''Charlie & Company,'' 10/16/1985)
  
• The World According to Jonathan (''Who's the Boss?,'' 12/5/1989)
  
• The World According to LARP (''The Life & Times of Juniper Lee,'' 7/24/2005)
  
• The World According to Matt (''Melrose Place,'' 9/14/1998)
  
• The World According to Mendehlson (''Sheena,'' 2/23/2002)
  
• The World According to Smurflings (''Smurfs,'' 11/15/1986)

So disappointing.