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!)

To promote the new USA show White Collar (as in crimes), Thomas Pink is giving away free custom white collars (as in shirts) at Rockefeller Center today. What’s the catch? Only the wait—in a hefty line now to get measured by Pink tailors, then about ten days for the freebie to arrive in the mail. But there are several cuts, fabrics and collars to choose from, and the nearby free coffee and shoe shines will spiff you up immediately.

The shirt bar is open through 6pm today at Fifth Avenue between 48th and 49th Sts, and 8am–6pm tomorrow (stars Matt Bomer, Tim DeKay and Tiffani Thiessen will also make an appearance around 9am tomorrow, promoting the show’s 10pm premiere that night). No, even a custom-fit button-down won’t make you look as dishy as Bomer’s dandy Collar character, whose mug has been plastered on bus ads all over the city. But he’s a suave con man on the FBI’s payroll; you’re just a schmuck who could use a free shirt.

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.

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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 »

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.

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.

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Travel Channel

TONIGHT: No Reservations (10pm on Travel)

Crusty Anthony Bourdain is the classic local NYC celebrity: He’s smart, arrogant and creatively credentialed; his Kitchen Confidential launched the badass chef memoir genre and has been copied mercilessly ever since. In the first episode of his travel/food show’s summer run, Tony pops down to Chile to sample the local cuisine and culture that regular folks never see on the package tour, this time taking in the countryside on horseback. In following weeks, he’ll go more local by visiting the exotic lands of Buffalo and Detroit to wax philosophical about wings and, one assumes, artisanal motor oil. It’s okay if you kind of hate the guy for journeying to amazing locations and then talking down to his audience about how cultured he is; the hate is part of the fun.

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Credit: Isabella Vosmikova/NBC

SUNDAY: Meteor (9pm on NBC)

In the grand tradition of made-for-TV miniseries, this one wrapping up next weekend, a motley crew of estranged family members and plucky scientists band together to stop the “extinction-level event” of the meteor hitting Earth. You know, like they did back in Armageddon, but with 100% less Ben Affleck. Here Stacey Keach, Jason Alexander and Billy Campbell try to keep up with Back to the Future’s Christopher Lloyd, who spouts the requisite crazed-scientist talk; it takes experience to sell the constant refrain of “Right now, every minute counts!”

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TONIGHT: Warehouse 13 (9pm on Syfy)

That government warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark was cool, wasn’t it? And again when it popped up in the fourth Indy flick? Hope you’re still fascinated, because this thriller is more or less That Warehouse: The Series. The show debuts with a two-hour premiere on Syfy—that would be the Sci Fi channel’s new moniker, not an extraterrestrial STD. So, should Mulder and Scully be watching their backs? Read our review of Warehouse 13 here.

TONIGHT: Pitchmen (10pm on Discovery)

It’s not every country in which salesmen are celebrities, but when Billy Mays passed away last week, his life was being mentioned alongside Michael Jackson’s and Farrah Fawcett’s. Today, an all-day marathon of his Discovery channel show about pitching products (scheduled before his death) culminates in the show’s first-season finale; the whole run is sprinkled with tributes and unseen footage of Mays. Even if you weren’t a fan of the Kaboom cleaner he hawked, Mays’s career was still impressive—the man sold the very act of selling. Now that’s America!