Photograph: Janette Beckman

The day is finally upon us: The last season of Lost premieres tonight at 9pm. We already told you about the parties at the Bell House (which—we know—has sold out) and at Firehouse on the Upper West Side. Here are a few more places where you can hang with Lost fanatics tonight.

We recommend getting to Brooklyn Bowl hella early; the Williamsburg bowling alley hosts a screening of Lost, and seating is first-come, first-served. If you don’t want to be shut out, get there at 6pm, when the bar opens (the viewing party begins at 8pm with the catch-up episode). Ten HD screens will show the episodes, and the bar is offering special $2 pints of Brooklyn Brewery’s 2007 Monster ale. You can also test your Lost knowledge during the “un-google-able” silent trivia contest (you’d better start studying the show’s wiki page now). Brooklyn Bowl, 61 Wythe Ave between North 11th and 12th Sts, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (718-963-3369, brooklynbowl.com). Doors 6pm, viewing 8pm; free.

Read more »

Last night, in a red-carpet event overshadowed by irony, Rosie O’Donnell was joined, for a moment at least, by her ex-partner Kelli Carpenter and their kids (Parker, Chelsea, Blake, and Vivienne) for the premiere of HBO’s A Family Is a Family Is a Family: A Rosie O’Donnell Celebration.

In any event, the documentary film celebrates family diversity—same-sex, single-parent, mixed-heritage and adoptive. Also at the premiere were HBO’s Shelia Nevins and director Amy Schatz, who specializes in animated and sing-along kiddie fare. So it was no surprise to see that, in her latest effort, the families burst into song alongside cartoon bunny rabbits. It was slightly stranger, though, to see Frank Sinatra brought back to life as an animated sperm.

A Family Is a Family Is a Family: HBO, January 31 at 7pm EST.

When you think of Baileys, you probably think of bottles and bars, but don’t dismiss this pop-up shop as just another boozy gimmick. This temporary boutique is shilling high-end, brand-name shoes by the likes of Sergio Rossi, Farylrobin, Vanessa Noel, L.A.M.B., Barbara Bui, Claudio Merazzi and much more—all marked down to $75 a pair. Even better, Baileys is donating the proceeds to the nonprofit Clothes Off Our Back. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the unbeatable deals.

421 West Broadway between Prince and Spring Sts (no phone). Wed 11—Fri 13 11am–7pm.

Michael Yarish/Fox

Remember how pop star Tiffany used to do mall tours back in the ’80s? Ah, good times at the Orange Julius. The songbirds from TV show Glee are continuing that fine tradition with store appearances in New York and L.A. next week to promote the album Glee: The Music, Volume 1. They’ll be signing at Borders Columbus Circle on November 3, with Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Dianna Agron (Rachel, Finn and Quinn), among others, in attendance. They won’t be actually singing (boo), but that doesn’t mean you can’t lead your own sing-along to “Sweet Caroline” in honor of the kick-ass Mark Salling (Puck). (Besides, rumors point to a spring tour for the McKinley High Glee Club. Score!)

How is Mischa Barton worse off than a caveman? We’ll put it this way—the God-awful Cavemen sitcom lasted six miserable episodes back in 2007 before being canceled, while Barton’s Ashton Kutcher–created The Beautiful Life aired just twice before the CW canned it this week. “The show will speak for itself. It’s a great show,” Barton told TONY just a few weeks ago; unfortunately, what the show said sounded something like “pfffftttt.”

What does this mean for Mischa Barton? Hopefully more Off Broadway (yeah, she’s done it!) and not more public health crises. And for the CW, TBL’s cancellation means room on the schedule for a reality show about NYC socialite Tinsley Mortimer or, fingers crossed, a spot for the network’s excellent new Gilmore Girls–ish midseason drama, Life Unexpected.

SUNDAY: Bored to Death (9:30pm on HBO)

A disaffected Brooklyn writer does his best Nancy Drew—advertising his private-eye services on Craigslist, of course—in Jonathan Ames’s new noir comedy. Starring Jason Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson, Bored to Death promises to be drier than a fine chardonnay. Read our review here.

Paul Drinkwater/NBC

Community premieres tonight on NBC at 9:30pm, and associate degrees have never been so hot. Danny Pudi plays a hyperactive student who ends up in a study group with various other misfits (misfits like Chevy Chase, that is). But is this half-Indian, half-Polish Chicago comic really community college material? Comedy editor Jane Borden found out:

Tell me a little bit about your character, Abed.
I talk a little too fast, because I don’t have a filter. I don’t really pick up on social cues. I might scare you a little too long. I mean, I will not break eye contact until you do… Uh-oh: Are we having a staring contest now?

Yep.
Okay.  Oh, this is serious.

Have you played more characters that aren’t from India than that are?
I played a Turkish French guy.… Oh no, you won; I looked away.
Read more »

Giovanni Rufino (courtesy of the CW)

TONIGHT: Gossip Girl (9pm on the CW)

College is a minefield for the teen drama—somehow the story lines always end up getting mired in the administration, like when Steve Sanders dated the chancellor’s daughter on Beverly Hills: 90210, or when Veronica Mars spent her freshman year investigating the dean’s murder. OMG, how dull.

Hopefully Gossip Girl will be smart enough to steer clear of the stultifying world of university politics. The show’s third season will include roommate clashes, boy-on-boy power flirting and Hilary “the Duff” Duff, playing a movie-star-turned-NYU-classmate…and, who knows, maybe Chuck having a three-way that includes the provost? That we could handle.

Check out the TONY blog tomorrow to see what we thought of New York’s trashiest TV addiction.

More TV

Mad Men: Season three, episode five

Five episodes in, and Mad Men has already given us flashbacks and now a dream sequence. Is the drama losing its snap? Or are dream sequences cool again? (Please, no one tell Grey’s Anatomy.) Our top five moments from last night’s Men:

10:06pm: The rep from Sterling Cooper’s parent company, Lane Pryce—we like to think of him as the British nanny sent over from the home office—rips up his employees’ expense reports and announces that he’s investigating the “conspiracy” of a missing credenza. Knowing Mad Men, that missing credenza is going to go off in the last act of the season. Maybe it’s where Peggy’s baby has been hanging out for two seasons? Read more »

SUNDAY: MTV’s Video Music Awards (9pm on MTV)

If the 26th annual VMAs were a person, they’d be one of those twentysomethings who starts bailing on bar nights in favor of book club meetings. But the award show is still going strong, with its usual three-ring circus for the kids who’ve actually heard of Cobra Starship, Pitbull, Miranda Cosgrove or The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

If you haven’t, you may still like the idea of Green Day and Jay-Z performances, an MJ tribute from Janet Jackson and British comedian Russell Brand, the show’s host, taking potshots at American teen culture. So set the TiVo and skim through it on Monday before work; who can stay up late on a Sunday anymore?

Quantrell Colbert/The CW

TONIGHT: The Vampire Diairies (8pm on the CW), Project Runway (10pm on Lifetime)

It’s only four more days till new Gossip Girl episodes, kids. You teen-angst addicts will get your fix soon enough, so don’t harsh your buzz with the premiere of vamp-themed high-school series The Vampire Diairies. If the voiceovers don’t kill you, the wistful, blank stares of the bloodsuckers and their would-be prey will.

Instead, hold out for a new episode of Project Runway, which has successfully navigated its channel switch and booted its whiniest contestant. The only problem? The remaining designers all seem so…nice. We want to see blood spatter in the sewing room, not in yet another suburban high school.

See more of what to watch and what to toss in our Fall TV preview.

Carin Baer/FOX

TONIGHT: Presidential Address to a Joint Session of Congress (8pm on ABC, CBS, NBC); Glee (9pm on Fox)

Health care, public option, Medicare, blah blah blah. We forced America’s schoolkids to sit through a presidential speech this week, so we should probably  endure a little civic instruction ourselves. And as a reward: Glee! The song, dance, geek and freak show that premiered last spring is back with an episode all about sex, including a killer PG-13 rendition of “Gold Digger.” Plus, when the show’s Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch, Glee’s highlight) hears about Palin’s death panels, she’ll install one in the cafeteria, just to keep the cheerleaders in line.

See what Glee star Matthew Morrison had to say to Time Out New York about high school (like “the people who were kinda cool and popular in high school are kind of messes now”).

Carin Baer/AMC

Mad Men (Season three, episode two)

Don Draper and Co. continued their long, solemn march toward Emmy Awards this week. Don was lusty (again), but things are really getting humming on the business end of things at Sterling Cooper. Our five most exciting moments of the episode (yeah, Don’s father-in-law dealings didn’t make the cut. Yawn!):

10:02 One of the metaphor-heavy clients this week is Patio, a proto–Diet Pepsi. The client wants a commercial that apes Ann-Margret’s performance in Bye Bye Birdie, so in Peggy’s words the firm has to “find a girl who has Ann-Margret’s ability to look 25 and act 14.” In 2009, they’d have to settle for the opposite—preteens that act near-middle aged are a dime a dozen now.

10:04 And the second anvilicious client of the night shows up: Madison Square Garden. They need some PR repair since they’re destroying beautiful Beaux Arts Penn Station to build the future venue for Stephon Marbury’s temper tantrums. Paul calls the MSG design “ambitious, pedestrian and dull,” and he hasn’t even tried to buy a beer there yet. While spewing themes about the passing of the old guard and New York City’s Don Draper–like reinvention, the whole story line just makes us sad about visits to the new underground Penn. Read more »

TONIGHT: Project Runway All-Star Challenge (8pm on Lifetime) and Project Runway (10pm on Lifetime)

We’ve survived almost a year without new episodes of Project Runway, and it’s a wonder we’re still sane—or clothed. After behind-the-scenes scuffles, Runway has changed networks and even locations, now shot at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles instead of New York. Heresy! Fortunately, the revamped Runway will high-tail its haute couture booty back to New York for its final Fashion Week show, and nearly half of the new contestants hail from NYC. Hrmph. They better.
To kick off the new season, eight returning contestants will compete in a special all-star challenge. To the show’s credit, it’s the talented standouts (Mychael Knight, Sweet P, Daniel Vosovic) who are back, rather than old camera muggers and manufactured “villains.” After all, this is Runway, dang it, not Groomer Has It.—Allison Williams

Mad Men: Season three, episode one

Who’s sick of Mad Men already? The show’s third season has been covered, promoted and talked about incessantly for the past month, but last night we finally got…exactly what we expected. The men drank, the women were uptight, and Don Draper was a big ol’ cheater cheater pumpkin-eater. Our top five moments of last night’s premiere:

10:04pm: In the show’s opening moments, we learn that Dick Whitman—Don Draper’s real identity—was named after his father’s hooker-screwing private parts. We’d say it’s no wonder Dick changed his name, but the guy obviously never gave up being a dick. Read more »

How ready are you for the big Mad Men premiere on Sunday? Check out our exclusive coverage:

• A premiere preview

• Vincent “Pete” Kartheiser in the Hot Seat: “Our audience might think of [Pete] as slimy and squirmy and kind of weaselly—and he can be all of those things.”

•  John “Roger” Slattery answers bold questions: “Am I really going to jump in the sack with this hooker and then go home to my wife?”

• Info on a Mad Men–themed shindig at the Roosevelt Hotel

What are you waiting for? Grab a highball and go to town.

SUNDAY: Mad Men (10pm on AMC)

While we (in the present day) are dealing with job insecurity, so too are those at Sterling Cooper as Mad Men kicks off its third season. When our well-groomed, boozy friends left us, they were mid-merger with British advertising company PP&L. And, as expected, there’s some house cleaning to be done when season three premieres. It’s a hearty serving of  juicy office goodness, sexual debauchery, the pop culture evolution of Popsicles, and more insights into the man that was Dick Whitman but is now sexy adman Don Draper.

Who stays and who goes at SC? Anyone hoping to see Pete Campbell’s pink slip is in for a disappointment; he gets some good news, which he then turns into bad news in a way only Pete Campbell can do. (Actor Vincent Kartheiser has plenty to say about his weaselly alter ego.) Back in the burbs, Don and his preggers wife Betty seem to be at peace—but was that lengthy time apart enough to scare Don off his unfaithful ways? Do you really want to bet on it?—Lisa Freedman

For more Mad Men coverage, check out the insider info we scored from the randy half of Sterling Cooper, Roger Sterling (er, actor John Slattery). Can’t get enough ’60s swing? Check back Monday for our day-after episode recap.

TONIGHT: NYC Prep (9pm on Bravo)

Bravo’s attempt at making The Real Houseteens of Manhattan was, at best, a rip-off of prime-time dramas to tide us over until fall. But there was something sad about watching real adolescents, rich as they might be, emulating the soap-opera mannerisms they saw on TV. Tonight’s season finale features a charity event and the ascension of a new “queen bee” in the kids’ social circle. If that sounds like a plot pulled from the Gossip Girl recycling bin, that’s because it is—the producers and “stars” both do their best to follow a “What Would Chuck Bass Do?” credo. When do we get a reality version of, say, Stargate Atlantis or 24? That we’d watch.

Bearer of really good bad news (courtesy of the Discovery Channel)

The most important and ferocious seven days on the Discovery Channel’s yearly calendar returns, to much rejoicing among those of us yearning for a proper summer holiday (after all, who hasn’t taken off a day of work for Shark Week?).
One of the highlights of this year’s programming is Blood in the Water, an informative historical piece (complete with typically awesome period actors) about the beginnings of recorded shark attacks in the United States. The 1916 attacks were reportedly used as source material for Jaws. It is, of course, in New Jersey that the sharks congregated—clearly, the sharks don’t have the same distaste for shore tourists that the locals have–and several fatalities were recorded.

Also on the slate is Sharkbite Summer, which examines the incidents that led to shark hysteria in the summer of 2001. After several highly publicized attacks (and some panic-mongering on primetime news shows), people displayed a collective fear of the ocean not seen since the days of “duh-nuh, duh-nuh.” The media, always in search of the most recent sensational story, did much to promote panic and disinformation about the nature and likelihood of shark attacks in local waters. Shark Week also includes plenty of documentaries about how nonlethal most sharks are, but there’s enough underwater menace to make anyone think twice about going for that late-night dip in the ocean.
Blood in the Water airs Aug 2, and Sharkbite Summer airs Aug 4 on Discovery.

SUNDAY: Labor Pains (8pm on ABC Family)

It’s hard not to feel a little perverse glee in seeing party girl Lindsay Lohan fall to the level of cable made-for-TV movie. But while this comedy, originally intended for theaters, definitely belongs on the small screen, it’s one of the network’s better offerings. Lohan plays Thea, a noble secretary trying to raise her teenage sister; when her cartoonishly awful boss (Chris Parnell, doing his usual shtick) tries to fire her, she lies and claims to be pregnant. Of course, she becomes caught up in the ruse to wacky results, and every rom-com cliché is here in full force. While Lohan herself is rather flat (in manner and in washboard abs), her supporting cast livens up the joint, most notably Cheryl Hines, Janeane Garofalo and Creed Bratton from The Office. It’s not the worst place for Lohan to start a career rehabilitation, provided she was paying attention during breaks on set.

More TV