To tell the truth, I found Bean Bird a little charming — but the approach is definitely an easy target for snark, and if LG isn't judicious in using the little guy (or gal?), Bean Bird will earn a well-deserved place alongside Clippy. Watching the bird wave a surrender flag to protest your attempt to skip the Wi-Fi setup once is amusing — having to live with it all the time would be the exact opposite. Luckily, LG tells me that it's just a first-use experience.

A smaller ambition for a bigger screen

Still, once you get into actually using the webOS interface on LG's smart TVs, you'll be struck by the consistency of the experience. Vonshak says that the design was inspired by the same "war cry" of making TV simple. "The strong colors, and the lines, really come from old TVs and how even the 'no signal' used to look," Vonshak says. "We really found that as a great inspiration source to how to focus specifically on content, on TV itself, and what that thing is."

TV first is a good philosophy, but creating (and branding) the interface with webOS doesn't necessarily seem, well, necessary. Why webOS? Vonshak clearly still has faith in the mission of the open web. "We really believe that the web is the right path forward and the web will win because it's the right ecosystem," he says. Missionary zeal aside, using HTML (and Enyo) makes very good sense for smart TVs — many of the core apps that consumers demand are already available in HTML on the web itself, so it's relatively trivial to get them working on LG's smart TVs.

Earlier I called webOS on smart TVs "a smaller ambition for a bigger screen" and after seeing how webOS works now, that assessment still stands. LG hasn't solved any of the truly thorny problems in the living room. But executing well on a smaller ambition is still to be commended — and my initial impression is that LG may have pulled it off. webOS will never achieve the goals its original creators had set for it. And, to be honest, it won't generate massive consumer demand for LG's TVs. But what it could do is make your next smart TV a little less painful to use. Five years ago at this very show, webOS dreamt big. After seeing those dreams burn in up a conflagration of missed opportunities, even that small victory is a pleasant surprise.