Holy smokes, there are a ton of DVDs being released today. If you can’t find something you like in this group … well, you have oddly specific tastes. The biggies this week include Californication, Life, House, Lie To Me, NCIS, Smallville, One Tree Hill, Samantha Who?, and Scrubs. That’s just to get started, though. You’ll also find thirtysomething, Wiseguy, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, The Untouchables, and a trio of History Channel favorites. My pick of the week? The complete series of Wanted: Dead Or Alive. McQueen, man. The full list is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of the year where it becomes painfully obvious just how lacking the summer television schedule is.  Hopefully, you’re getting some nice weather in the exchange. The good news is that the summer television season is now half over. We can now start counting down the weeks until the fall premieres. As for the numbers, things mostly held to form. Although, there were a few interesting additions on the schedule this week. Hell’s Kitchen, Dating In The Dark, and Ruby And The Rockits all had premieres, while Samantha Who? and Kings had finales. Read the rest of this entry »

Not only is Burn Notice new tonight, but ABC is airing the last two episodes of Samantha Who?, so you should really be watching that. However, if you just need more, here are some of tonight’s reruns:

• In case you missed it the first time around, the newest Lindsay Lohan opus, Labor Pains, is re-airing at 8:00, on ABC Family. Remember when she was good in The Parent Trap? And Freaky Friday? And Mean Girls? Sigh.
• Also at 8:00, Clark goes undercover as a cop to find out who shot Tom Jones on Smallville, in “Bulletproof.”
• NBC is playing The Office and 30 Rock from 8-10 again, but at 9:30, 30 Rock is airing “The Bubble,” in which Jon Hamm (sadly) finishes his arc playing Liz’s boyfriend.
• At 10:00, CBS is showing an episode of The Mentalist that I may be checking out myself, since I haven’t seen it before. In “The Thin Red Line,” Jane and the CBI crew investigate the murder of a witness in a drug case.
• If that isn’t your cup of tea, and you hate yourself, you can always watch Private Practice, wherein they discuss gender reassignment surgery in babies. Ugh.

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Highlights of the Week

• This event is so epic it’s going to take all week to get through it. Straight from a smash run in the UK, the five-night Torchwood: Children of Earth event begins on Monday at 9pm and runs nightly through Friday. It will have you on the edge of your seats!
• If that’s not enough, the series that spawned Torchwood is back with a movie event. David Tennant is wrapping his run as The Doctor, so don’t miss Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead, now on BBC America. (Sun. 8pm)
• On the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, Discovery takes a look back with the special When We Left Earth: Apollo 11. (Mon. 10pm)
• Gordon Ramsay is back to tell potential chefs what fucking wastes of time they are on a new season of Hell’s Kitchen. (Tue. 8pm, FOX)
• Say goodbye to Samantha Who? with the last two new episodes ever. (Thu. 8pm, ABC)
• The Wanted is NBC’s new reality offering, where an elite team of specialists track down an international terrorist. How about they go after Bin Laden? (Mon. 10pm)
• Discovery is launching The Colony, a 10-part experiment that looks at what it would take to rebuild a society if everything has been destroyed. (Tue. 10pm)
• ABC News is probably going to tell us lies in Over a Barrel: The Truth About Oil, but you never know. (Wed. 10pm)
• So You Think You Can Dance celebrates 100 episodes with new performances of classic dances, past contestants and more! (Thu. 8pm, FOX)
• I don’t even need to read about this one to know how great it’s going to be. It’s a Syfy original movie on Saturday night. And it’s called Malibu Shark Attack. Bikinis. Blood. Gore. Bad effects. I’m there! (Sat. 9pm) Read the rest of this entry »

… and very tiny ones for the King of Gilboa. And,  if we want to carry on with that little game, very good numbers for the King of the Courts. It was another fairly typical summer week. As has been the pattern, FOX was the big winner in the demo, taking 5 of 7 nights. In viewers, despite having only two new programs, CBS still managed to take 6 of 7 nights. Crazy how that works. Along the way, a whole lot of people watched the Jackson Memorial. On the other end of the spectrum, a very few devoted individuals continued to tune in for Kings. There were also premieres for Big Brother, The Great American Road Trip, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Warehouse 13. Read the rest of this entry »

Where the hell have I been? How have you been watching television without me? I worked up this elaborate excuse to justify the absence of this column over the past several weeks including reanimated raccoon corpses and a bizarre Bollywood musical number but I burned myself on a smoke bomb and I feel too lame to lie to you all like that.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE WEEK

• Discovery’s Pitchmen pays tribute to possibly the greatest pitchman of all time, Billy Mays, with a special on Thursday at 9 PM.
• The rebranding of Sci Fi commences on Tuesday with Warehouse 13 debuting on “SyFy” with a two-hour bow. It’s got two secret service agents re-assigned to a giant warehouse of mysterious artifacts, and they’re charged with bringing in more.
• VH1 debuts The Great Debate in daily fashion (Monday – Friday at 10 PM). The show examines such critical questions as Stones or Beatles, and Ginger or Mary Ann? And since it’s VH1 that means talking heads arguing it out.
• Since I’ve been gone (raccoons!), I didn’t tell you about The Philanthropist, but it’s actually a pretty good show so far. This week, Wednesday at 10 PM, Teddy (the good guy) takes on a sex trafficking ring and helps out Neve Campbell. Did I mention Neve was a cast regular?
• They’re back! Get ready for the new Big Brother onslaught with foul language, weird challenges and as little clothing as CBS can get away with. Night vision camera commences Thursday and Sunday (this week) at 8 PM.
• It’s a double dose of Samantha Who? as ABC picks up the pace to burn off the last of these episodes on Thursday at 8 PM. We might get two more later in the month and that’s it.
• Did youse not get enough of The Real Housewives of New Joisey. Did youse expect more yelling and high class broads. Bravo’s got ya covered with “The Lost Footage” Thursday at 9 PM.
• NBC follows up ABC’s Impact, about an asteroid hitting the moon putting it on a collision course with Earth, with Meteor, about a meteor on a collision course with Earth. I guess pick your celestial doomsday body? (Sunday, 9 PM).

Read the rest of this entry »

On the whole, it was a rather uneventful week of ratings. The most interesting story might have been what we didn’t see. As in, new programming on CBS. Despite the lack of anything of note to report in the ratings (even Harper’s Island was a repeat), CBS managed to average the most viewers on six of the seven nights. The network was only topped on Wednesday, and even then only trailed NBC by less than half a million viewers. Of course, that’s just viewers. FOX managed to win four of the nights in the demo. Still, without even trying, CBS is having a successful summer. Elsewhere, more good news to report on the cable side for HBO, Oxygen, ESPN, and BET. Read the rest of this entry »