Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, October 26, and Saturday, October 27. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
Mockingbird Lane (NBC, 8 p.m.): Way back in olden times—like when the original Munsters was airing—TV pilots that didn’t make it to series got their due as one-off “special presentations” and “movies of the week.” As a way of paying respect to its elders (and the dead), Bryan Fuller’s corpse-with-a-new-wardrobe-and-contemporary-sound-effects Mockingbird Lane will be given the same treatment, a scenario that counts as a Viking funeral, seeing as it’s being “burned off.” Similarly macabre jibes will never get the chance to delight Todd VanDerWerff after tonight.
REGULAR COVERAGE
Fringe (Fox, 9 p.m., Friday): Noel Murray comes face [Pause for arppegiated guitar riff.] to face [Pause for reprise of arppegiated guitar riff.] with “The Bullet That Saved The World.” [Pause for tiresome joke to sink in.]
Grimm (NBC, 9 p.m., Friday): La Llorona, a spirit of Mexican-American folklore who kidnaps children she believes to be her own deceased spawn, causes trouble for Nick and Hank. “Don’t talk to strange ghosts” proponent Kevin McFarland is in no danger of being snatched, however.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
The X-Files/Millennium (1 p.m., Saturday): After watching “Three Of A Kind” and “Nostalgia,” Zack Handlen is eager to go trick-or-treating in his hometown as The Lone Gunmen. He’s got a long blonde wig and the vintage Ramones T-shirt for a Langly outfit—potential Byers and Frohikes may state their qualifications below.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
Ask Obama Live: The MTV Interview With The President (MTV, 5 p.m.): The 44th president of the United States subjects himself to the same forum that once asked Bill Clinton “boxers of briefs?” [Make your own “Mitt Romney’s temple garments” joke here.]
Hoops & Yoyo’s Haunted Halloween (Hallmark, 7 p.m.): Screeching greeting-card animations are locked in the mall during a search for the perfect costume—which, if we wanted to quibble with screeching greeting-card animations, we’d argue sounds more like the setup for a Christmas special.
Jungle Gold (Discovery, 10 p.m.): Before it can form the source material for a high-stakes action thriller starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Channing “The Big Brisket” Tatum, the lucrative racket of mining the jungles of Ghana for gold gets the docudrama treatment.
Health Inspectors (Food, 10:30 p.m.): Following the similarly themed Mystery Diners, restaurant consultant Ben Vaughn helps the proprietors of Chicago’s Salud clean up their act—thus ensuring that The A.V. Club will avoid dining at Salud for the time being.
The Haunting Of (Biography, 10 p.m.): Before moving on to such showbiz luminaries (boo-minaries?) as Regis Philbin and Fairuza Balk, a medium helps 7th Heaven’s Beverly Mitchell relive a terrifying period in her life: Shooting the direct-to-video Paranormal Activity rip-off Pennhurst.
D.L. Hughley: The Endangered List (Comedy, 11 p.m.): The comedian gets deeply, deeply satirical, attempting to add “the black man” to the Environment Protection Agency’s Endangered Species List in a special that plays like an extended Daily Show correspondent spot (largely because it was produced by veterans of that late-night institution).
Monster In Law (Oxygen, 7 p.m., Friday): “No way, Oxygen—we’re onto you’re tricks. You’re not going to fool us into watching Jane Fonda spit venom and Jennifer Lopez just because it’s the weekend before Halloween and this movie has “monster” in its title,” you’ll say right before you discover you’ve watched half of Monster In Law.
Misery (BBC America, 9 p.m., Friday): And as Kathy Bate’s raised her sledgehammer the second time, a million “Oh, that’s what Happy Endings meant by ‘Misery-ing’” lightbulbs went off.
Rise Of The Zombies (Syfy, 9 p.m., Saturday): Just in time for The Walking Dead to launch its prison arc, Syfy stretches the limit of “original” in “Syfy Original Movie” by trapping Levar Burton, Mariel Hemingway, Danny Trejo, and a bunch of zombies within the confines of Alcatraz.
NBA Basketball: Exhibition: Hornets at Heat (ESPN, 8 p.m., Friday): Then again, when it comes to annotating Happy Endings gags, it’s more likely that this pregame match between New Orleans and Miami will help viewers of the show, who’ve been scratching their heads since Tuesday thanks to Jane’s reference to a certain Chris Bosh and his resemblance to one of Omar Little’s boyfriends.
World Series: Game 3: Giants at Tigers (Fox, 8 p.m.): We’re writing this before Game 2, so let’s just go ahead and predict that Doug Fister made Pablo Sandoval forget how to hit home runs on Thursday, and that the series heads to Detroit looking much more evenly matched than it did after Game 1.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Parks And Recreation: [Spoiler alert]
BEN PROPOSED TO LESLIE! PREPARE THE CONGRATULATORY .GIFS! EVERYTHING IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD! STEVE HEISLER’S MAKING THE SAVE THE DATES! AHHHHH!