If there’s one sure thing you can count on with a new television series, it is a plague episode.

Admit it. You’ve seen this storyline over and over again, especially in genre-type TV shows. A mysterious super virus runs rampant, bringing down most of the main stars and threatening to do even more damage unless a miracle cure is found. And the clock is ticking.

The Star Trek family of TV series is notorious for them. They even have variations of the plague story. There is the actual alien virus storyline, and then there is the crew afflicted with growing old storyline. Or young.

Even The Walking Dead, which is already a show about a plague of zombies, had a plague storyline during the first part of this season. The flu-bug tore through the humans at the prison, adding an unseen enemy to the zombies. (As if dealing with zombies wasn’t enough!).

I’ve been catching up on viewing episodes of Intelligence on CBS and last night came across, you guessed it, a plague episode. Incredible.

Obviously, television writers know what works and what really scares us: the flu. Moreover, it’s a sense of being helpless in the face of death. It’s an oft-tested and proven storyline, so why try to come up with something more original?

Got writer’s block? Just pull out the plague story.

Gack! That kind of lazy writing just makes me sick.