The worst night of television of the year so far is saved once again by RuPaul's Drag Race
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Monday, April 23. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
RuPaul’s Drag Race (Logo, 9 p.m.): Look, we’ve taken a look at everything that’s on tonight, and we’ve pronounced it, frankly, awful. Even the movie options are pretty bad, and the best we could do for a sports pick was a Yankee game. A Yankee game! So you should be pleased that the season finale of the eminently entertaining RuPaul’s Drag Race is airing, and we’re celebrating the event with a live chat. Oliver Sava and a band of TV Club rapscallions will be gathering to talk through every moment of the show and speculate as to just what really did happen to Willam earlier in the season. It should be fun!
REGULAR COVERAGE
Adventure Time (Cartoon Network, 7:30 p.m.): “A suitor pursues Tree Trunks,” says the plot description. A suitor pursues Tree Trunks?! A suitor pursues Tree Trunks?!?! Actually, we think we might like that sentence better if Tree Trunks weren’t capitalized. Oliver Sava thinks he might agree.
The Voice (NBC, 8 p.m.): Emily Yoshida is ready for Team Cee Lo and Team Adam to perform, especially after last week’s down-to-the-wire results episode, which stuck the final result in literally the closing moments of the episode. (Seriously, you might doubt us, but it was weirdly thrilling. We mean it.)
House (Fox, 8 p.m.): Park starts having intimate dreams involving co-workers, and we’re just going to assume this show is going to depict the fan-fiction community’s deepest desires in full. Zack Handlen will no longer have to write his House/Wilson OTP fic to prove how great they would be together.
Smash (NBC, 10 p.m.): Julia’s son goes missing. Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound like a good prospect… for an episode of television. We rather hope that Noel Murray just ignores whatever’s happening with that black hole of a plotline and just keeps posting excerpts from Smash: The Novel. Because those are great.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
Scrubs (11 a.m.): Myles McNutt was a little horrified when he found out what the “T.C.W.” in “My T.C.W.” stood for, but he eventually got over it with the help of significant psychological counseling. And, for the record, it stands for “Tasty Coma Wife,” not “Totally Cool Walnuts,” as he’d hoped.
Batman: The Animated Series (1 p.m.): Part of the Wikipedia plot summary for this week’s episode reads, “Batman pursues the tiny fiend through a deadly carnival funhouse.” Oliver Sava thinks he’d like every episode of the show more if it included a section just like the one described above.
WHAT ELSE IS ON
Dancing With The Stars (ABC, 8 p.m.): Highlighting the awfulness of this evening in television, we’re going to recommend that you check out this show again, since this week is Motown Week, and what better way to weep for humanity than to watch living legends perform for faded celebrities dancing?
Regular Show (Cartoon Network, 8 p.m.): You guys have been all up in our guff for not covering this show like we cover Adventure Time. And while we’d like to remind you we can’t cover everything, we’re certainly going to do our level best to cover this one in the weeks to come. Cool? Cool.
Make It Or Break It (ABC Family, 9 p.m.): Or maybe it’s time for you to check out the latest season of this teen gymnastics drama, which had to frantically retool when its lead got pregnant. Because it would be a little hard to hide a pregnancy on a teen gymnastics show, we’re assuming. Not that we know.
World’s Scariest Plane Landings (Discovery, 10 p.m.): Wait. We’ve found what you’re going to watch tonight! It’s right here! Passengers and pilots help Discovery Channel count down the top scariest plane landings in history. We seriously hope the Hudson River crash landing isn’t number one. Over-rated!
Open Water (IFC, 8 p.m.): This horror movie about a couple stranded in shark-infested waters after a scuba-diving expedition isn’t all that great, honestly, but it’s worth seeing just to watch how the directors pull off an ultra-low-budget movie that looks like a sweeping epic in the middle of the ocean.
Wild Hogs (FX, 8 p.m.): Even FX has apparently gotten into the spirit of “television takes the last few nights before May sweeps off” night, re-airing the Tim Allen/John Travolta/William H. Macy/Martin Lawrence “classic.” Oh well. At least Stephen Tobolowsky’s stories from the filming are funny.
MLB Baseball: Yankees at Rangers (ESPN, 7 p.m.): We don’t know a lot of things in life, but we do know that the season could end with the Yankees and Red Sox competing for the worst record in baseball, and ESPN would still make all of September all about which one could be next-to-last. Positively infuriating.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Check It Out With Dr. Steve Brule (Sunday): Brandon Nowalk, er, checks out the second season of the fake public-access show, hosted by John C. Reilly’s slurring dumbass. It’s not the most sophisticated show in the history of television, but it makes us laugh a lot, dammit. And that’s enough, no?