Almost without warning, another episode of Gravity Falls has escaped the Disney Channel labs
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, June 28, and Saturday, June 29. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
Gravity Falls (Disney, 9 p.m., Friday): Disney, in its infinite wisdom, has unleashed another batch of Gravity Falls episodes on the world. And by “batch,” we mean “one,” because we don’t see any new episodes airing next week or the week after that. Ah, well. We should just be happy that Mabel and Dipper are traveling to a land out of time in search of her pig. In the meantime, we invite all of you to determine which Gravity Falls characters correspond to which dinosaurs from the Land Before Time franchise. Alasdair Wilkins hopes you’ll all consider him for the role of Spike.
REGULAR COVERAGE
Magic City (Starz, 9 p.m., Friday): Stevie offers a “peppy pick-me-up” when Vera struggles with some exhausting rehearsals, which can mean only one thing: She’s going to get injected with something very like speed and spend the episode going nuts. Will Harris thinks we’re mixing up our period dramas.
Borgen (LinkTV, 10 p.m., Friday): We’ve been told that things will start to come together nicely in the last four episodes of this season, and since we’re here, we hope you’re not just pulling our legs. We’d really like to see Birgitte burn something down. Todd VanDerWerff is always in favor of massive fires.
Maron (IFC, 10 p.m., Friday): In the one-hour season finale—which is actually just two episodes airing one after the other—Marc gets some suspect career advice from Adam Scott. That Adam Scott is always doling out suspect career advice. Just last week he told Kyle Ryan to become a rodeo clown, the goof!
TV CLUB CLASSIC
Babylon 5 (11 a.m., Friday): This week’s second episode begins a three-episode story arc that sends Sheridan and Delenn into dangerous Earth Alliance space. We’d know what any of that meant if we’d watched this show or paid attention to Rowan Kaiser’s reviews of it, but we haven’t, so we don’t.`
The Larry Sanders Show (1 p.m., Friday): Larry’s looking for a new girlfriend, and this week, he’s going to take his chances with Sharon Stone, because it’s the ‘90s, and Sharon Stone is the hottest woman on Earth, thanks to Basic Instinct. Kyle Ryan spent the early ‘90s dating Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
Wonderfalls (3 p.m., Friday): Les Chappell reaches the end of the episodes that actually aired on television, which means that he’ll spend the next several weeks covering episodes of TV that don’t actually exist. He claims to have seen them, but we’re pretty sure he’s just making them up.
The Twilight Zone (1 p.m., Saturday): This week’s episodes feature one written by Ray Bradbury and one that guest stars Carol Burnett. It’s a pity neither is as good as it probably could have been with that collection of talent, but Todd VanDerWerff’s affection for Bradbury and Burnett will carry him through.
Doctor Who (Classic) (3 p.m., Saturday): Christopher Bahn’s reviews of the first 26 seasons of Who return with an episode featuring both Tom Baker and Elizabeth Sladen, the better to get you excited about old Who again. And this episode’s going to feature people turning into Wirms! Whatever that is.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
Cult (The CW, 8 p.m., Friday): Did you know this show—burning off its remaining episodes two at a time in the doldrums of summer—only exists because CW president Mark Pedowitz asked his development team to give him the best thing the network had never picked up, and they gave him this? True story.
Annie: It’s The Hard Knock Life, From Script To Stage (PBS, 9 p.m., Friday): Attention, Broadway fans: PBS is airing an intriguing new special that shows how one song from one musical gets to the stage. It’s almost guaranteed to get that song stuck in your head, too. Genevieve Valentine can’t stop humming.
Say Yes To The Dress: Bridesmaids (TLC, 9 p.m., Friday): Soon enough, all of television will be variations on this show. For instance, did you know that this spinoff—all about bridesmaids dresses, as you might have guessed—is beginning its fourth season tonight? Because we sure didn’t have any earthly idea.
Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO, 10 p.m. Friday): This week’s two interview guests include a climate scientist and Entourage’s Adrian Grenier. They’ll probably both have a lot to say about whether President Obama’s climate speech will have any effect on policy and what Turtle’s up to now.
Anna Nicole (Lifetime, 8 p.m., Saturday): This new Lifetime biopic of Anna Nicole is directed by Mary Harron, the woman behind American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page, so maybe it won’t be awful. We’re not too hopeful, though, even if Phil Dyess-Nugent swears to us that it can’t be all bad.
Do No Harm (NBC, 10 p.m., Saturday): This medical spin on the Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde story scored historically low ratings for NBC the two times the network aired it. Now, for all of those “fans” who were hoping the show would return, the network has brought it back to burn off the 11 remaining episodes.
Don’t Say A Word (Sundance, 8 p.m., Friday): This Michael Douglas vehicle’s trailer seemed to air before every movie for five years or so, until it finally came out a couple of weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. All we remember about it is Brittany Murphy singing, “I’ll never tell” to herself.
Transformers (TBS, 8 p.m., Friday): For a while there, the marketing made us think this was going to be an awesomely fun movie, one of those big, dumb blockbusters that occasionally entertains, like Independence Day. Instead, we just got a bunch of stupid fucking robots and Michael Bay explosions.
Auntie Mame (TCM, 8 p.m., Saturday): This isn’t the musical, with the immortal lyric, “Who charms the husks right off of the corn?” (Insert the name of your friend here if you know the song we’re talking about.) Instead, it’s a film version of the stage play, starring Rosalind Russell. It’s still pretty good.
NASCAR Racing: Nationwide Series in Sparta, Ky. (ESPN, 7:30 p.m., Friday): Austin Dillon dominated events at this raceway last year, and he’s probably hoping he’ll do the same again. But probably some other racers will be there to stop him if he can’t, though we have no idea what their names might be.
MLB Baseball: Teams TBA (Fox, 7 p.m., Saturday): Fox still hasn’t decided which teams it wants to showcase this weekend, so we get to live in a wonderful world where they might feature the Diamondbacks taking on the Rockies or something equally scintillating and ratings-unfriendly as that.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Independence Day-saster (Thursday): What we saw of this mostly seemed to consist of people in fire trucks ducking from CGI flaming wheels of metal out in wide open locations where the disaster porn would be kept to a minimum. Dennis Perkins can understand budget constraints; he’s still disappointed.