Credit: HBO
TONIGHT: Smile Pinki (7pm on HBO)
As far as documentaries go, this Oscar winner has several tricks up its sleeve to deliver some warm fuzzies. It’s got cute kids, wishes getting granted and a medical problem we can actually treat. Five-year-old Pinki, born in poverty in India, has a cleft palate, and it takes a three-hour walk to a medical center to get to the free treatment—but after the simple procedure she can finally smile properly. The doctor on Pinki’s case does some 3,000 operations per year with what he calls a 100 percent success rate, delivering satisfaction other health crusades can hardly match. The adorable children are reason enough to stop feeling like a grump for once, and maybe even toss a few ducats to the sponsoring nonprofit, The Smile Train.
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SUNDAY: Expedition Africa: Stanley and Livingstone (10pm on History)
When Survivor creator Mark Burnett cast this new reality show, tracing the 19th-century route taken by Henry Morton Stanley to find Dr. David Livingstone (”…I presume”), he didn’t return to his usual well of wanna-be actors and D-list celebrities. (Sorry, Flava Flav, we’ll get you on the next go-round!) Since Burnett knew his re-creation of the 1871 African expedition would be torturous, he enlisted a survivalist, a wildlife expert and—to play “Stanley,” of sorts—a journalist. Just how much more real than Survivor is this monthlong experience? Adventurer Benedict Allen introduces himself on this weekend’s series premiere by saying, “On my very first expedition, I had to eat my dog to stay alive.” For his part, Mount Everest guide Pasquale Scaturro solemnly calls a hatchet the best defense against the 29 deadly snakes in Tanzania (to slice up the snake? No, the chopping motion Scaturro makes against his own wrist is explanation enough: “Lots of times that’s the only way to survive.”)
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TONIGHT: The 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee (8pm on ABC)
Who would you pick to host the purest competition left on television? Tom Bergeron of Dancing with the Stars? Yeah, we wouldn’t either, but that’s who we get. We’d rather see NY1 paper-reader Pat Kiernan as ringmaster—an apt choice since this annual spell-a-thon is sponsored by local newspapers.
We’ll just have to make do with Bergeron reminding us, DWTS-style, that this show is “live!” and focus instead on all the awkward, sharp-minded preadolescents on display. The bee gets more popular every year (the first several rounds air on ESPN earlier in the day, complete with a Sports Center host); catch it now before the kiddie pageant circuit gets hold of it and adds a swimsuit competition.
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The Goode Family (9pm on ABC)
Fact: Assholes make for better TV (See: Dynasty, Survivor, every soap opera ever made). So this animated clan of do-gooders will have to work extra hard just to keep up. They were thrown for a loop when their adopted African baby turned out to be a white South African, and can’t figure out what to call their African-American next-door neighbors. Between the “What Would Al Gore Do?” motto and vegan dog, the Goodes are a hippie-dippie version of the Flanders family on The Simpsons. But while Ned Flanders is a treasure, would you really want to hang out at his place all day?
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TONIGHT: Glee (9pm on Fox)
It’s the little show that could—could get a premiere following American Idol, that is, though more episodes won’t air until fall. If you haven’t seen/downloaded/done a little chair dance to the “Don’t Stop Believin’” promo, Glee is about a show-choir teacher (Broadway vet Matthew Morrison) and the assorted freaks and geeks that make up his sad little glee club. As charming as the drama is (and it really, really is), remember that it’s helmed by Ryan Murphy of Nip/Tuck and Popular, which means it’s gonna get weird really quickly. Hold on to your musical theater–lovin’ hats.
Plus, hear what Glee star Matthew Morrison told us about sprained ankles, a 24 crossover episode and boy bands—and which of his Broadway buddies he wants to see on the show.
Tonight: Gossip Girl (8pm on the CW)
OMFG. WTF. LOL. NASDAQ. We can’t say enough, in acronyms, about Gossip Girl’s big finale. It’s graduation day for the gang, which means, er, cocktail parties? Okay, sure. And vendettas against anonymous gossip bloggers—that’s more like it. We’ll hand it to the show, which has been flagging of late (just ask our own gossipy GG bloggers, Josh and Amy)—their season-ender has a pretty good balance of cliff-hangers, resolutions and crazy schemes that go FUBAR. TTFN!
What other finales have us in a tizzy? Find out here.
It’s season-finale time! See, even American Idol’s Kris Allen, above, can’t believe it. But he has Ryan Seacrest, and we have a week full of send-offs. What questions do we have before these series sign off, and how likely are we to get the answers? Friday’s goodbyes are below, plus info on Gossip Girl, The Mentalist and more here. Read more »
TONIGHT: Lost (9pm on ABC)
In tonight’s two-hour season finale, Jack gets his Cher on and wonders “If I could turn back time/If I could find a way” (you’re humming it now, aren’t you?). He tries to set off a hydrogen bomb in the 1970s to erase everything that’s happened on the island thus far in the series. Hmm, that means no self-righteous Kate and her endless love triangles, no Dharma Initiative creepazoids like Radzinsky, and no Locke talking like a fortune cookie. Sweet! But on the other hand, we’d lose kick-ass Juliet, the show’s excellent Möbius strip of a plot and this season’s standouts, Miles and Faraday. Don’t do it, Jack!
Whatever does (or doesn’t) blow up, odds are we’ll be gnashing our teeth over another humdinger of a cliffhanger at the end of tonight’s finale. Can we time travel to the show’s return—for a final season—in January, 2010, please?
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TONIGHT: The Alzheimer’s Project: Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am? and Momentum in Science (7:30pm on HBO)
Experts say that memory-loss disorder Alzheimer’s disease is the second-most feared illness in America, after cancer (dunno about that, we get night terrors over contracting flesh-eating bacteria). To shed some light on the scary, sad disease, HBO put together a whole package of documentaries and films, all bearing the network’s trademark gravity and high production values. Tonight’s special is on the family aspect of Alzheimer’s, helmed by Maria Shriver, while Momentum looks at the science of the elusive cure. Couldn’t we just put cranky genius Dr. House on the case? His season finale is tonight (at 8pm over on Fox); he’ll be free for the summer months.
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TONIGHT: 30 Rock (9:30pm on NBC)
How big is this week’s 30 Rock, nerds? First, daddy issues are served with a side of inanity for Tracy, who’s hanging with his illegitimate kid, and Jack, who’s looking for his real father. (Who’s his daddy? Alan Alda guest stars, so we’re betting all our night cheese on Hawkeye.) Meanwhile, Jenna and Liz fight over credit for a joke—and who gets to appear on the cover of a certain local magazine (hint: it rhymes with Mime Pout Dew Dork). Yeah, we want to go to there.
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Tonight: Lie to Me (8pm on Fox)
Can anyone out-dissemble lying expert Cal Lightman (Tim Roth)? It’s like out-cranking Dr. House or out-dithering Meredith Grey—not easy. Unless you’re a convicted rapist with nothing to lose, of course, and that’s just who Lightman is hanging out with this week while he searches for a copycat. Lightman’s human-lie-detector act is a charming parlor trick (we bet he kills at parties), but this tense hour is the show’s best so far. It’s perhaps even the top procedural hour of the season, especially with the ever-cool Mekhi Phifer guest starring as an FBI agent.
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TONIGHT: New York Goes to Work (10pm on VH1)
We don’t care who you are, what artsy events you frequent or how many postmodern poets you can name off top of your head—you or someone you know watches New York shows. And by New York, we mean the loudmouthed Tiffany Pollard, a reality-show star who has been twice rejected by Flavor Flav and is now starring in this, her sixth reality show. And yes, she’s pretending to get a real job. Viewers will be invited to vote on which crazy gig Miss York will attempt each week, but never fear—the fact that you’re voting will stay a secret between you and your cell phone.
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TONIGHT: Lost (9pm on ABC)
A mere 100 episodes ago, Lost was just another new show, about the guy from Party of Five getting stranded on an island with a Kate Beckinsale lookalike and a hobbit. Now, about a season shy of the series end, we’re juggling Joseph Conrad references and time-travel paradoxes, debating whether the building tension between factions is supposed to be biblical or Homeric. If we could travel back in time to the fall of 2004, we’d press a copy of A Brief History of Time into our past selves’ hands and instruct them to pay closer attention from the get-go. (”But I’m just here for the guy who played a hobbit!” they’d say. “You’ll learn,” our 2009 selves would reply.)
To mark the 100th episode, center stage goes to adorable floppy-haired physicist Daniel Faraday (not to be confused with the equally adorable and floppy-haired Scot, Desmond). This being Lost, Faraday’ll likely spend the first half of the episode patiently explaining what’s up with the island and the second half honestly expressing his emotions to his fellow castaways. Psh. As if.
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TONIGHT: Dallas DNA (10pm on Discovery)
Are the lab geeks on CSI just too darn flashy and glamorous for you? Then hunker down with the first-of-its-kind Conviction Integrity Unit in Dallas, where they reexamine cases using DNA testing (while cameras peek at the pipetting). Since 2001, the unit has found fault with 19 out of the more than 40 cases they’ve investigated, leading to the release of 10 prison inmates. With that ratio, winding up in a Texas courtroom just got even more terrifying.
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TONIGHT: Chuck and Heroes (8pm and 9pm on NBC)
Yeah, we know, you don’t watch Chuck or Heroes anymore, having given up sometime around the fourth time-travel stunt or the zillionth Captain Awesome joke (just kidding! Captain Awesome is always awesome). But if you don’t catch their season finales tonight, you’ll probably be spoiled about the ridiculous plot twists—and you always secretly planned on catching up, right? Besides, the struggling series need the ratings help; Heroes will produce fewer episodes next season, while Chuck is still waiting for the clemency call of renewal. And what other prime-time programming slate includes the two scariest men in Hollywood, Chevy Chase and Zeljko Ivanek, as guest stars?
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ON DVD: Caprica (Universal Studios, $26.98)
Are you approaching Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica prequel available today on DVD, with trepidation? We don’t blame you. For one, the 93-minute pilot/movie could be fraktasticly cool, making the wait until the show’s 2010 TV premiere interminable. Or, alternately, it could be a poor imitation of BSG, and you’ve only just recovered from the colossal WTF-athon that was that show’s March finale.
Well, Caprica is a little of both. It teases us with a corrupt, complicated society on the verge of creating some seriously powerful artificial intelligence. But it’s no space odyssey, and doesn’t have the same emotional momentum as Ronald Moore and David Eick’s previous series (but what does, other than a a meteor full of ethical dilemmas and daddy issues, hurtling toward Earth?). Caprica, which takes place 58 years before Battlestar, stars Eric Stoltz (aw, from Some Kind of Wonderful!) as a filthy-rich inventor and Esai Morales (NYPD Blue) as a mob lawyer. A terrorist act brings the two together, but it’s Morales’ Joseph Adams who holds the screen, clumsily adopting an old-worldish religion and facing his bereft son. (Little Willie “Adams” grows up to be—oh, who are we kidding, you’ve figured it out, right?) It’s a promising, if not explosive, tease to the series, and don’t worry: There are plenty of daddy issues to go around.
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SATURDAY: Grey Gardens (8pm on HBO)
How do you like your crazy old ladies? If you like them prettied up and sometimes singing, you’ll enjoy this fictionalized take on the famous Beales documentary about aristocratic relatives of Jackie Kennedy. The mother and daughter were famously eccentric and reclusive; in HBO’s new film, the Miss Havishams of the Hamptons are brought to life by Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. Read our review here, then check out what Barrymore had to say about Little Edie Beale’s legendary fashion sense (it starts with “How the hell did she make this?”).
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Tonight: Deadliest Catch (9pm on Discovery)
Will Alaska Week ever rival Shark Week? Not until someone makes the equivalent of the “Live every week like it’s Shark Week” T-shirt. But this week’s Alaskathon does give us a chance to recognize the massive state for something other than hotbed politics. Tonight the series features the fourth-season premiere of everyone’s favorite crab-fishing hit reality show, starring old captain favorites like salty Sig, the king of the king crab. Plus, the show was shot in hi-def for the first time, so take your Dramamine already.
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Tonight: We Shall Remain (9pm on PBS)
Pop quiz, hotshot: Who was Metacom? Okay, Tecumseh? Geronimo? Are you zero for three? PBS’s five-part “American Experience” series isn’t meant to shame your ignorance, nor is it out to fill massive gaps in the American historical record. It’s a history lesson that goes down easy—read more of our five-star review here.
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TONIGHT: Friday Night Lights (9pm on NBC)
There are two places that last-minute Hail Mary plays work. On the football field (rarely) and on TV (even less often). Darling gem Friday Night Lights looked to be a lost cause when DirecTV picked it up for a 13-episode third season, airing first on their premium network and then on NBC. Tonight marks the broadcast finale—get ready to bawl, y’all—and miracle of all miracles, the never-say-die Dillon Panthers beat the odds again: DirecTV will repeat the format for not one but two more seasons.
Football performance aside, FNL has given us a strong season. Smash and Street got deserving send-offs, and Tyra grew the hell up already. How will the show survive without broody Tim Riggins and heartbreaking Matt Saracen, both graduating? Replacement quarterback J.D. McCoy—a dead ringer for UNC’s Taylor Hansbrough, oddly enough—has been anything but championship material. Will Coach, Mrs. and Julie Taylor be enough to sustain the sweetheart of a series? If you have doubts, flash back to the show’s fall 2006 premiere, when the show convinced us, in under an hour, that the Dillon Panthers simply couldn’t exist without Jason Street; the team managed then, and they will again. Clear eyes and full hearts endure.
More TV, plus read how Friday Night Lights is like pie.
