TV Club Classic coverage of The Shield is all that stands between us and utter TV collapse

Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Tuesday, June 3. All times are Eastern.

TOP PICK

The Shield (Classic): Never before has Vic Mackey’s unorthodox way of getting the job done felt so needed. Brandon Nowalk returns to the TV Club Classic beat just in time to prevent TV Club Tuesdays from completely falling in on themselves—which is convenient, because season four opens with The Barn and Vic’s life in total disarray. Save us, Strike Team, you’re our only hope! (Though you might try saving yourself before saving us.)

Famous In 12 (The CW, 8 p.m.): See, this is the type of thing we’re talking about. Regular coverage shows are on the edge of their season finales, so we’re reduced to highlighting stuff like this “unscripted series/social experiment” rising from deep within the bowels of TMZ HQ.

World’s Strangest (Science, 8 p.m.): To act as a temporary distraction from this early-June boredom, Science Channel presents a series of mysterious explosions.

Fargo (FX, 10 p.m.): Where do we go from “Who Shaves The Barber?” Does anyone really know where we’re going? Can we keep up this rhetorical question routine until we get to the authors names? Has anyone seen Todd VanDerWerff and Zack Handlen lately?

REGULAR COVERAGE

Inside Amy Schumer (Comedy Central, 10:30 p.m.)

The Office (Classic): Back in the salad days of Facebook, when only a college-affiliated email address could gain access to the site and MySpace was still a serious competitor, Erik Adams received an event invite to the wedding of Phyllis Lapin and Bob Vance. It was all downhill for social networking from there.

Who cares that there’s so little new TV to be found tonight? There’s so much more old TV to be watched! Old TV like The Bob Newhart Show, one of the funniest, most purely bizarre sitcoms of the 1970s. But don’t take What’s On Tonight’s word for it! Here’s Todd VanDerWerff:

Despite being deliberately low-concept, The Bob Newhart Show is one of the weirdest sitcoms in history, especially as it goes on. Even the characters who seem to be the most traditional sitcom types, like Bill Daily’s Howard Borden, go beyond what they initially seem to be (in Howard’s case, a generic dumb guy) and take on a specificity that other shows would avoid. Howard, for instance, is a navigator for an airline, who has terrible luck in love and a tendency to spiral blame for things he’s done wrong outward at others. What seemed like a generic riff on Mary’s Ted Baxter early in the show’s run becomes something else entirely—not a buffoon but, rather, a man limited by his own perceptions.

Back Of The Shop (Fox Sports 1, 8:30 p.m.): Things are so bad at Fox’s ramshackle ESPN clone that they’ve had to open up a barbershop to ensure a second stream of income. But Snoop Dogg’s stopping by tonight—he’s probably a generous tipper, at least.

Storage Wars/Shipping Wars (A&E, 9/10 p.m.): A&E Wars franchises simultaneously begin their sixth season, achieve Wars singularity.

Cry Wolfe (ID, 10 p.m.): The real-life case files of private investigator Brian Wolfe are reenacted for the true-crime crowd. Those expecting mysteries solved by Nero Wolfe (or some nattily dressed weeping from Tom Wolfe) will be sorely disappointed.

2001: A Space Odyssey (TCM, 8 p.m.): Finally, summer proves its worth: With big, splashy cinematic blockbusters set in outer space. Only seven of those last eight words truly describe Stanley Kubrick’s speculative-fiction masterpiece, which is only a “blockbuster” in the sense that War And Peace might be considered “light beach reading.”

Alien (TCM, 9:45 p.m.): Then, from the other end of “terror and wonder of the unknown” spectrum comes Ridley Scott’s grimy, sweaty ode to claustrophobia among the infinite reaches of uncharted space. (Pour one out for H.R. “Hey, Really” Giger.)

Highway To Heaven: The Complete Fourth Season.

When is it fall again?

24: Live Another Day: According to social media, this is Zack Handlen’s reaction to last night’s 24. Read the review for less giggly thoughts on Jack Bauer’s latest adventure.