"The Soup," E!'s weekly clip-and-comment show that rounds up the horrors and highlights of reality television and incisively scorches our celeb-obsessed culture, will serve its last bowl of snark with a finale at 10 p.m. Friday. ("Sooo meaty!") The network rather abruptly announced "The Soup's" cancellation in November, after 11 years in its current incarnation with host Joel McHale — and much longer if you trace its beginnings back to the debut of "Talk Soup" in 1991.

The original intent of "Talk Soup" was to make hay (and perhaps some sense) of what seemed at the time to be a surfeit of syndicated TV talk shows. Thanks to Geraldo Rivera, Oprah Winfrey, Morton Downey Jr., Sally Jesse Raphael, Jerry Springer, Judge Wapner and countless, forgotten others, audiences had found new ways to wallow in the mud of other people's problems, scandals, misdeeds, fringe opinions and outrages.

First hosted by Greg Kinnear (and later by John Henson, Hal Sparks and Aisha Tyler), "Talk Soup" offered a humorous and somewhat satisfying reassurance that someone else — someone as smart or smarter than yourself — had noticed that the talk shows had grown more bellicose and absurd. It was a moment where it seemed as if the supermarket tabloids had all come true. As one of the earliest examples of what we presently call aggregation, "Talk Soup" was a welcome pushback to a widespread insipidness that now seems quaint. What we had thought was relentless noise turned out to be a soft hiss.

Later came the full roar of the post-Paris Hilton, full-on Kardashian era. "The Soup" took the basic format of the first show — in which a smart-alecky host stands in front of a screen projection of some of the most deplorable scenes and exchanges that pop culture had coughed up in the previous seven days — and revved it up for a meme-driven, increasingly Web-savvy audience.

McHale and the show's writing staff proved to be fearless critics of the glut of reality TV and the people willing to debase themselves on it, especially if they were named Heidi or Spencer. (Or Tila Tequila.) McHale's insults were directed at everyone from Tyra Banks to the hosts of morning talk shows in L.A. and New York to the latest goober to get dumped by "The Bachelorette." The show was among the first to exploit the notion that a video clip could become a viral Internet sensation — that broadest possible expression of what used to be known as an inside joke. (Spaghetti Cat, anyone?)

"The Soup's" beleaguered staff scoured the very worst of television so that none of us really had to watch all (or any) of it — a vital service, if you ask me. They went deeper into cable programming than many of us ever will and even kept an eye on telenovelas and children's programming. (I'm still in awe of the show's discovery of the magical "triangle bush" on a Disney kids show.)

In a half-hour "Soup" episode, you could get a safe dose of the decline of civilization and enjoy McHale's snide response to it, which somehow gave you the sense of being slightly above the muck — a remarkably efficient means of staying current on trash without having to touch it. Celebrities of both the minor and major variety learned to play along with "The Soup" rather than against it. Their guest appearances on the show account for some its funniest moments.

McHale himself became a bigger star, starring in NBC's niche 2009 sitcom "Community" (and following that show to Yahoo after NBC canceled it in 2014) and breaking into movies. "The Soup's" tone changed ever so slightly as a result; McHale would still make the vicious joke, but then he would walk it back a few centimeters, with an apologetic gesture (an air-kiss, a shrug) and an admonishment to his small but rabidly enthusiastic studio audience: "Think about what you're clapping for."

More than E!'s other off-center shows, Joan Rivers's "Fashion Police" and Chelsea Handler's "Chelsea Lately," "The Soup" acted as a necessary in-house conscience — a corrective  — to the constant fawning, showbizzy, diva drivel that occupies the bulk of the network's programming. Some of McHale's sharpest digs were directed at E!'s mainstays (the Kardashian family; the hosts of "E! News Daily"; and always, always Ryan Seacrest), and it is therefore entirely likely that the executive suite tired of the ironic dichotomy. Handler's show ended in 2014; "Fashion Police" has struggled to reinvent itself — and its tone  — after Rivers's death.

But maybe it wasn't tone or even customarily low ratings that did the show in. It might have been the unthinkable: It has become impossible for "The Soup" to keep up. No longer can a reality-show outrage or talk-show gaffe wait a week for its proper drubbing. In the highly competitive market of online clicks, such moments can barely wait a half-hour before they turn into old news and tired jokes. Each of us carries around in our pockets a machine that can clip videos and create GIFs, allowing users to provide their own snarky asides and disseminate them to our followers.

That's not to say that the average Twitter feed is nearly as smart or funny as McHale's show. But it does acknowledge a plain fact: "The Soup" didn't die of old age. It drowned.