"You'de think that after so many decades of flops and failed pilots - Hollywood would buy a clue and have some toast and coffee and wake the Frak up,"

Yup- Stories should have a beggining, a middle and an end. Thats what every one of these shows are missing. They all end up writeing an ending to fill in the last episode. Look at Babalyon5(sic?)
They had 3 seperate story plots that each had a beggining, a middle and an end. Each story ran to the end then the next one started.
Truely great writeing.
And buy an original story? heaven forbid. The networks might not get 20M viewers every week. Entertainment, quality, creativity, now thats secondary.

"...constantly launching convoluted sub plot assaults on your audience necessarily translates to "sophistication".

Not even- they do that to stretch the story line out to the breaking point. See 'Lost'.
Endless story plots that go on and on forever, bah.