Won't you watch Raising Hope? For us? Or will you be too busy with NCIS: Los Angeles again?
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Tuesday, November 8. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
Raising Hope (Fox, 9:30 p.m.): It feels like we say a variation on this every week, but, man, we’re enjoying Raising Hope this season, and the ratings it’s getting (as well as the readership numbers it’s getting ) suggest not a lot of the rest of you are. Why is that? We’d like to say that it’s because you’ve just never heard of it, but enough of you watch and read about Glee, so we’re forced to conclude that you’re all just tuning out because you have simply awful taste and/or you don’t like poor people. You wouldn’t want us to just write you all off like that, would you? Actually, you probably don’t give a damn, but we still think you should watch Raising Hope and read Phil Nugent’s reviews. So there.
REGULAR COVERAGE
Glee (Fox, 8 p.m.): Tonight’s episode is all about teenagers doin’ it, so if you watch it, then you should probably just admit that you’re an awful person who tuned in for all the wrong reasons. Don’t feed us that baloney about exciting musical numbers, well-drawn characters, solid storytelling, or funny jokes! Even Todd VanDerWerff knows Glee doesn’t have any of that.
Last Man Standing (ABC, 8 p.m.): Mike usually says “yes” to everything his daughters want, so his wife asks him to be the one who says “no.” How much more awesome would it be if his wife asked him to be the one who knocks? So much more awesome. Tim Allen could shave his head, learn all about explosives, and make friends with a burnout loser. Todd VanDerWerff would love that.
Frontline (PBS, 9 p.m.): The Syrian government is cracking down as hard as it can on the country’s opposition movement, so Frontline sends reporters inside the movement to see just what they’re up against. Meredith Blake takes a look at one of the few places on American TV where you can get honest to goodness news about actual world events. Sadly, no Kardashian updates that we know of.
New Girl (Fox, 9 p.m.): New TV shows of the world: We know that will-they/won’t-they relationships are profitable, but you don’t have to push them too hard! You can totally just let the people in the show figure out who has the best chemistry and go from there. Every time you push too hard, Shelley Long loses her wings. And Erik Adams wants Shelley Long to fly along safely.
Ringer (The CW, 9 p.m.): This one’s called “Maybe We Can Get A Dog Instead?” Look, we all know that Sarah Michelle Gellar pulls focus from the other actors in the cast, but it seems sort of ridiculous that they would suggest she be replaced by a dog. She’s the reason anybody’s tuning in to this thing! (Okay, they can recast her with a canine if they get the Shaggy Dog. Carrie Raisler loves that dude!)
Covert Affairs (USA, 10 p.m.): Tonight, we’ve got an episode called “Uberlin,” which sounds like the most awesome last name ever. In fact, we propose that everybody on our staff changes his or her last name to “Uberlin,” just because we think it would make us that much cooler. (Good luck telling the Emilys apart.) Simon Uberlin… er… Abrams puts you through the paces.
Parenthood (NBC, 10 p.m.): The promos for this episode focus almost entirely on the… assets of the new secretary that Crosby and Adam have hired to work at their recording studio. This almost certainly means that the episode will be a three-handkerchief weepie about the guys learning that their children really do love them after all. And so does Todd VanDerWerff. Sob.
Sons Of Anarchy (FX, 10 p.m.): This episode is called “Hands,” so named because the centerpiece of the episode is a shot-for-shot remake of the sequence in Magnolia where the movie stops dead so everybody can sing Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up,” only on Sons, everybody will be singing Jewel’s “Hands.” Just wait until Perlman croons, “In the end, only kindness matters.” Brings a tear to Zack Handlen’s eye.
TV CLUB CLASSIC
Avatar: The Last Airbender (11 a.m.): Hayden Childs has reached some of the most pivotal stuff in the second season of this show, which means he’s spending all of today’s write-up on season two’s terrific episode, “City Of Walls And Secrets.” We wouldn’t dare spoil all of what happens for you, but we assure you there will be cities, walls, and secrets.
The Muppet Show (1 p.m.): We forgot that season one of this show wasn’t exactly ringing with A-listers. Today’s episodes see just what Connie Stevens and Joel Grey were up to in the mid-70s. We like to assume that Grey brought his Oscar to set and taunted the still winless Miss Piggy with it. Erik Adams wants to let Piggy know that she’s got his vote for The Muppets, as much as that counts.
The Larry Sanders Show (3 p.m.): Larry and his girlfriend deal with how awkward it can be when people in a new relationship have slept with celebrities, and Larry is stalked by a fan in this week’s double episode write-up. Also, Kyle Ryan lets you know just how much money you can get the Larry Sanders autobiographical memoir for on Amazon. (It’s not very much.)
WHAT ELSE IS ON
Roll Tide/War Eagle (ESPN, 8 p.m.): Somebody in comments yesterday was asking why we care so much more about the NFL than college football. Now, that’s not exactly true, in that we do care about the NFL more than college football, but not so much more. Marcus Gilmer, however, does love the college football, and he takes a look at this doc on the subject from ESPN.
Vietnam In HD (History, 9 p.m.): You’ve seen Vietnam documentaries before, but the pitch of this one is that you’ve never seen footage this sharp and this clear. Resident documentary fan Rowan Kaiser checks out the first of this miniseries’ three parts to let you know if, indeed, it’s as revolutionary as it claims to be, or if it’s just another bunch of History Channel blather.
Quints By Surprise (TLC, 10 p.m.): With modern medicine, how exactly does one have quints by “surprise”? Did these people just not get a sonogram? Or is this the ultimate, “I didn’t know I was pregnant” story? I suppose it’s possible the couple was trying to get pregnant and didn’t expect quints, but if you’re expecting quints, you’re probably going to be disappointed.
Tosh.0 (Comedy Central, 10 p.m.): Here’s another one you guys always want us to cover, but another one where we’re not sure what we’d say from week to week about how the Web Redemption was pretty cool, but the rest of the show wasn’t the best. Anyway, we’ve made an open thread for you to debate the show and post mash notes to Daniel Tosh.
Strange Days (FMC, 8 p.m.): This hallucinatory sci-fi classic was produced by James Cameron and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and while we love the shit out of it, it’s also one of those movies that instantly dated itself by being set in 1999 and showing stuff that was way ahead of 1999 tech. Then again, it was filmed in 1995, so maybe that was the point.
Humpday (Showtime, 8:25 p.m.): We—by which we mean your humble author—still haven’t seen this on, but we know that the folks who write about film here at The A.V. Club really, really liked it, and the premise—about two straight guy friends who decide to make a sex tape because why the fuck not, right? That’s totally something we’ve done in our spare time.
NHL Hockey: Hurricanes at Devils (Versus, 7:30 p.m.): But as much as we don’t care about college football (of which there are bountiful options tonight), we really don’t care about the NHL. Still, there are games on just about every night on Versus, and we had briefly forgotten there was a team in North Carolina, so this listing is a nice reminder for all of us, right?
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Scrubs (Monday): Myles McNutt wrote a shit-ton of words about Scrubs, and we would very much like if you would go read them, then join in the debate in comments about whether J.D. was annoying from the first or only gradually got annoying. Then, you can tell him how he wrote a shit-ton of words! And we know from shit-tons! We wrote way too much about 2 Broke Girls again.