Austin City Limits 7-8pm, PBS. Elvis Costello and The Band of Heathens perform.
Austin City Limits 7-8pm, PBS. Elvis Costello and The Band of Heathens perform.
Law & Order 7-9pm, NBC. Back-to-back episodes tonight. In the first hour, a wealthy young woman’s death is traced to a drug cartel.
The folks behind the U.S. version of The Office are behind “Subtle Sexuality,” a spin-off Web series featuring the supporting ensemble behind the hit NBC comedy (Steve Carell, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer and Rainn Wilson are notably absent). “Subtle Sexuality” is shorter than previous Web series from The Office—only three episodes, just under 8 minutes total. The series culminates in the hilarious music video—clock it above.
Community 7-7:30pm, NBC. No wonder Jeff spends so much time hanging out at the school he hates so much; turns out he’s been living out of his car.
FlashForward 7-8pm, ABC. The FBI, with assistance from MI-6, investigates the relationship between recent suicides and the Blue Hand club. Battlestar Galactica’s Callum Keith Rennie drops by, perhaps to prattle on about what he did or didn’t see in his flash forward, like everyone else in the show.
World Series, Game 6 7-9:30pm, FOX. The Yankees lead it 3-2; will they bring a win to tonight’s hometown crowd?
V 7–8pm, ABC. The creator of USA’s The 4400 revamps this 1984 miniseries about Earth’s first encounter with an alien race, as represented by Firefly’s Morena Baccarin. Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell and Party of Five’s Scott Wolfe also star.
Jumping the gun a bit, aren’t you, Matthew Weiner? Watching “The Grown-Ups,” the first Mad Men episode directed by Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune, Murder by Numbers), it’s actually pretty clear why the show didn’t save the Kennedy assassination for its season finale. Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, which ended season two and which provided a suitably paranoid backdrop for an episode of secret-spilling, with the Kennedy assassination, you’re essentially limited to having an entire episode of characters glued to their television sets (or in the case of Roger’s daughter’s wedding guests, reluctantly unglued). There are certain marks to hit—the announcement of Kennedy’s death, Ruby shooting Oswald—and since nothing else is going on in the world, it’s not exactly the best week for advancing the series’ drama. Yet it would be weird not to address it at all. Good on Weiner for getting it out of the way and—we hope—saving the season’s biggest fireworks for next week.
Settle in or fire up that DVR, here’s what’s on TV tonight:
How I Met Your Mother 7-7:30pm, CBS. Barney gets himself in trouble with Robin and it’s up to relationship experts Marshall and Lily help the new couple out.
30 Rock is back, people. I thought the first two episodes of this season were just okay, but this week’s installment is chock-full of laughs and great story lines. Liz is still searching for a new cast memeber for TGS, and Jack insists she find the person in the “real America,” which means a trip to Kenneth’s hometown, Stone Mountain, Georgia. (Although, we learn that when his family first came to America, they lived in a town called “Sexcriminalboat.”) As Liz and Jack roadtrip down South, Liz talks about her sandwich-based theory of humanity. Of course, it’s a sandwich containing deep-fried bits of pig that keeps her praying to porcelain god during most of the trip. So Jack scouts at the local comedy club and finds—and hires—ventriloquist Rick Wayne and his dummy, Pumkin. He then proves Liz’s point that everyone is the same all over the country (the point being that, everyone is pretty much an asshole), and the ventriloquist never makes it to the TGS set. Jack McBrayer makes another cameo this week, as woman in the audience of the comedy club (I’m assuming she must be Kenneth’s cousin or something). The camera cut to this character way too much. It would’ve been a better gag if we just noticed her in the background. After his appearance in last week’s “Microwave” song flashback, I’m wondering if we can look forward to McBrayer cameos more often. It’ll be like playing “Where’s Waldo” each week!
Tonight, both NBC comedies Community and Parks and Recreation have Halloween-themed episodes—which might render them dubious propositions, but the former, at least, is worth watching while you think about the concept for your Halloween costume. The quick-witted comedy about community college students is pulling out of its pilot stage and into the pure pleasure zone. Chevy Chase, who I worried might be underutilized or never fit in on Community, is hitting his stride tonight when the gang of oddballs at the school throw a Halloween/Day of the Dead party. In this episode, Chase echoes his role in Modern Problems, which, if you haven’t seen it, is essential rental viewing. And Joel McHale’s selfish, shallow Jeff ends up showing a bit more substance, which doesn’t render the show quaint so much as realistic—and lends Jeff a bit more believability. There is something life-affirming about the collection of kooks that one meets in community college—I can even vouch for that. Oddly enough, the show is starting to play less silly and is the better for it. One of the best things about this comedy is that it never wastes a minute. There’s nothing so much as a subplot in the densely joke-riddled Community, but that’s just fine with me—it never has to awkwardly switch gears, it moves too fast.
Community airs tonight at 7pm on NBC.