Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Friday, October 18, and Saturday, October 19. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
Strike Back (Cinemax, 10 p.m., Friday): It’s been a season of things blowing up really nicely on this always enjoyable action drama, and Myles McNutt is dropping in to let you know everything that happened in the finale in a timely fashion. Which is not at all what’s happening with this What’s On Tonight, because your ol’ pals at What’s On Tonight central absolutely forgot they had to do this tonight, so they are just going to try and slam out a quality product in a limited amount of time. In fact, let’s see how fast we can do this, shall we? Starting time on the clock… 4:02 a.m. Pacific time. And… go!
REGULAR COVERAGE
The Legend Of Korra (Nickelodeon, 8 p.m., Friday): TV Guide’s programming grid lists a full hour of this show this week, for an episode called “Beginnings.” Will it be a full hour? We genuinely don’t know, but we’ll remind you that Emily Guendelsberger’s reviews appear on Saturday morning now, not on Friday.
Comedy Bang! Bang! (IFC, 10 p.m., Friday): Hey, this is back, too, and David Sims is back covering it. If you haven’t read Erik Adams’ thoughts on the show at its midseason point, you should definitely go do that right now. And tonight’s episode features Rainn Wilson, who’s the Patron Saint of Sims. Look it up.
Borgen (LinkTV, 1 a.m., Saturday): Birgitte managed to find a few stragglers and hangers on to join her political party. Soon, she will be a powerful titan of the political world, a woman who controls her own destiny! Or she’ll have to convince the Danish to vote for her. Todd VanDerWerff would love to do so.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
The X-Files (1 p.m., Saturday): It’s been five episodes, so it’s time for Agent John Doggett to get a tragic back-story of his own. Zack Handlen sees what’s up with that, then checks out what happens when Joe Morton goes a-time travelin’ in an episode that hopefully points to what he’ll be up to on Scandal soon.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
MasterChef Junior (Fox, 8 p.m., Friday): Like a cross between actual MasterChef and Family Double Dare, this has become our reality show of choice in recent weeks. If you didn’t see the thing last week where one of the kids dumped poorly whipped whipping cream all over Gordon Ramsay, go find it now.
America’s Next Top Model (The CW, 9 p.m., Friday): Tonight’s episode features the models taking rides on an elephant, and it’s all a metaphor for the recently completed government shutdown, one that’s practically worthy of Thomas Nash. Y’know what? We can’t do it. It’s just pretty people on an elephant.
Great Performances 40th Anniversary Celebration (PBS, 9 p.m. Friday): The long-running program that’s been bringing high culture to American living rooms for decades celebrates its latest birthday with performances from Julie Andrews, Josh Groban, Don Henley, and many others, though no other Eagles.
The Birthday Boys (IFC, 10:30 p.m., Friday): Josh Modell offered up his thoughts on the arrival of this new sketch comedy series, which hails from Bob Odenkirk, among others. He pronounced it funny, so if you like to laugh at things, you might want to DVR this one tonight. Or not. We won’t make you do it.
Missing At 17 (Lifetime, 8 p.m., Saturday): A teenager goes in search of her birth mother and ends up sucked into the ifestyle of a big city criminal gang. What’s On Tonight was adopted, and it can remember when it went off to the big city in search of its birth mother and ended up killing five or six people.
The White Queen (Starz, 9 p.m., Saturday): One person who keeps saying we should have covered this weekly despite it airing on Saturday nights on Starz: This one’s for you. The show wraps up its first season with an episode called “The Final Battle.” Hopefully everyone goes further up and further in.
Cujo (AMC, 8 p.m., Friday): It’s not the best Stephen King adaptation—you have to turn to the original Carrie or the original The Shining for that—but it’s still a surprisingly good movie, particularly for how it spends so much of its time inside a parked car and tries to menace characters with a fake-looking dog.
Diner (Sundance, 8 p.m., Friday): We’re going to be running a “scariest scenes” A.V. Q&A next week—spoiler alert—and one of our writers picked a scene from this movie. We’ll give an imaginary $500 bill to anyone out there who can guess the writer and the scene that was selected. A fresh imaginary $500 bill!
Mama (HBO, 8 p.m., Saturday): A lot of horror heads seemed to think this one was a dud, but we found its story of two young girls who were raised by some sort of ghostlike creature eerie and strangely moving. But you could also watch Freaks over on TCM or Texas Chainsaw Massacre on IFC at this time.
MLB Playoffs: NLCS Game 6: Dodgers at Cardinals (TBS, 8 p.m., Friday): Both League Championship Series made it to six games, and if we were betting folk, we’d wager they’d make it to seven games once all was said and done. There’s been some highly entertaining baseball in both series. Check it out.
College Football: Florida State at Clemson (ABC, 8 p.m., Saturday): Sometimes, we put a little “research” into the college football game we pick, but we picked this one in a blind panic because we recognized at least Florida State as sometimes being good at college football. How did we do, everyone?
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Scandal (Thursday): Sonia Saraiya found the latest episode of this high-wire thriller harder to take than the show usually is. Was she correct in that assessment? Only you can decide. Meanwhile, we’ve managed to crank this sucker out in just 18 minutes, which is a new personal best. And such high quality too! (That is a joke. This is terrible.) On to the coding!