Every Halloween season, I learn to hate the word “Spooktacular” all over again. Television, particularly bad cable and local television, tends to work some words and phrases to death, pulverizing them into meaninglessness, or worse, the absolute opposite of their original intention. If some cable personality calls something “cool” or “hip,” you better believe it’s anything but.

Which brings us to something called “Outrageous Food” (9 p.m., Food Network). In addition to using an all-but-commonplace word, this show follows in the dispiriting tradition of turning food and its preparation into something akin to a circus run by macho carnival barkers. Gone are the days when we actually learned to cook on cooking shows or food-related series. Now we have to be screamed at or bludgeoned with the tasteless passing as the “outrageous.”

On “Outrageous Food,” host Tom Pizzica, known as the “Big Chef” will shine a spotlight on extreme eating — the biggest, the hottest and the most expensive. In the first half-hour helping, he will travel to a New Jersey diner where they serve a 105-pound hamburger and dare a group of college kids to devour it within one hour. None dare call this disgusting. Then he attempts to eat a barbecue sandwich drenched in sauce containing the hottest pepper on Earth and visits an ice cream parlor offering more than 5,000 flavors, including ice cream that tastes like lox, or pizza.

“Outrageous” falls back on the hackneyed tradition of presenting lists, dimensions and a series of ultimates. Wow, 6-foot-long burrito! A 10-pound meatball sandwich! A Kobe beef steak costing more than the monthly wages of the folks who put the stuff on sale at Walmart. Instead of presiding over another expensive Kobe steak celebration, why doesn’t the “Big Chef” just ask his diners to eat a salad made of hundred dollar bills? Now that would be outrageous.

• The “Brady Bunch” may be 40 years old, but it still resonates. And I’m not just talking about Florence Henderson appearing on “Dancing with the Stars.” Jo Frost returns to the seventh season of “Supernanny” (7 p.m., ABC) and faces a blended family nightmare that not even Alice (Ann B. Davis) could untangle.

Speaking of children out of control, has anyone else seen the Toyota commercial — run in heavy rotation during the World Series — in which an angelic and precocious 8-year-old boy berates his parents’ minivan? “Just because you’re parents,” he intones, “doesn’t mean you have to be lame.” All the while praising the virtues of the 2011 Highlander.

Any parents who would involve a third-grader in the purchasing decision of a $30,000 SUV aren’t exactly “cool.” And they’re raising a potential monster that may be beyond the help of even “Supernanny.”

Tonight’s other highlights

• A disturbing dream leaves Allison without the power of language on “Medium” (7 p.m., CBS).

• An elite academy in Detroit faces closure on “School Pride” (7 p.m., NBC).

• Mac returns to an abduction case that may have inspired a killer on “CSI: NY” (8 p.m., CBS).

• A sudden illness derails an art heist investigation on “The Good Guys” (8 p.m., Fox).

• Ethical questions abound on “Primetime: What Would You Do?” (8 p.m., ABC).

• Erin targets a law-abiding citizen to ensnare his gangster brother on “Blue Bloods” (9 p.m., CBS).