Staff Picks What we're watching and DVRing this week.
Thursday, May 17
Top Pick: NBC's underdog cult-comedy hit Community [RECORD] caused a stir among its very active fanbase when it was pulled from the schedule for 6 weeks in the middle of the season, but those people will get what they waited for and then some as the last 3 episodes of the season are aired tonight at 8, 9, and 9:30pm.
New Episodes Tonight:
Missing [RECORD]
Rules of Engagement [RECORD]
American Idol (results) [RECORD]
30 Rock [RECORD]
Grey's Anatomy [RECORD]
Person Of Interest [RECORD]
Touch [RECORD]
Scandal [RECORD]
The Mentalist [RECORD]
Awake [RECORD]
Movie Pick: Ron Howard's period disaster film Apollo 13 [RECORD] didn't just introduce "Houston, we have a problem" to the lexicon. It's also just about a perfect piece of cinema: deeply suspenseful, full of interesting characters and conflicts, and all the more compelling for being a true story. Its all-star cast doesn't hurt either: Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris play the astronauts and NASA engineers who worked to get the lunar module and its occupants home after a disastrous malfunction. (Encore, 9:50pm)
Friday, May 18
Top Pick: Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari has risen to the top tier of standup comics in just a few short years, and his first Comedy Central special, Aziz Ansari: Intimate Moments For A Sensual Evening [RECORD], shows why. The guy has an easy charm and an infectious enthusiasm, plus his material is really funny.
New Episodes Tonight:
Shark Tank [RECORD]
Who Do You Think You Are? [RECORD]
Nikita [RECORD]
Grimm [RECORD]
Supernatural [RECORD]
Fairly Legal [RECORD]
True Justice [RECORD]
The Ricky Gervais Show [RECORD]
20/20 [RECORD]
Dateline NBC [RECORD]
The Ultimate Fighter Live [RECORD]
Real Time With Bill Maher [RECORD]
Magic City [RECORD]
Common Law [RECORD]
Movie Pick: George Lucas gets so much praise (and, in recent years, grief) for his massive sci-fi and adventure epics, people forget that one of his best movies was 1973's American Graffiti [RECORD], a nostalgia piece about teenagers in the late 1950s driving around and looking for a good time -- you might call it the original Dazed and Confused -- starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, and Mackenzie Phillips. (Turner Classic Movies, 8pm)
Saturday, May 19
Top Pick: The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger does double duty as host and musical guest on the 37th season finale of Saturday Night Live [RECORD]. Fingers crossed for another moment like his Keith Richards impression, or talking to himself in the mirror (with Jimmy Fallon).
New Episodes Tonight:
The Firm [RECORD]
NBA Playoffs [RECORD]
48 Hours Mystery [RECORD]
Movie Pick: One of the great action films of the '80s is also one of its sharpest satires: Paul Verhoeven's 1987 classic RoboCop [RECORD], which on the surface is about a cop brought back from death to serve and protect once more with a robotic exoskeleton, but is also a searing vision of a dystopian future where everything is privatized, right down to the police department. (Cinemax, 8:15pm)
Sunday, April 20
Top Pick: One of TV's most reliable guilty pleasures, The Celebrity Apprentice [RECORD], closes out another season as Clay Aiken and Arsenio Hall square off for one last challenge, assisted by all the previously fired contestants. Things get a lot more collegial at this stage of the game, so there's not likely to be any more boardroom fireworks, but if you came this far, you've got to see who wins, right?
New Episodes Tonight:
Billboard Music Awards [RECORD]
The Simpsons [RECORD]
Bob's Burgers [RECORD]
Harry's Law [RECORD]
Mob Wives [RECORD]
Family Guy (1-hour season finale) [RECORD]
The Killing [RECORD]
Game of Thrones [RECORD]
Nurse Jackie [RECORD]
The Big C [RECORD]
Keeping Up With The Kardashians (season premiere) [RECORD]
Mad Men [RECORD]
Veep [RECORD]
Girls [RECORD]
The Client List [RECORD]
The Borgias [RECORD]
The Real Housewives of New Jersey [RECORD]
Aziz Ansari: Dangerously Delicious [RECORD]
Hannibal Buress: Animal Furnace [RECORD]
Movie Pick: Wolfgang Petersen's The Perfect Storm [RECORD] is natural disaster porn par excellence: the story of a fishing boat captained by George Clooney and crewed by Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly that hits a confluence of bad weather. Light on character development and heavy on engrossing action sequences. (IFC, 8pm)
Monday, May 21
Top Pick: The doctor with the world's worst bedside manner, Fox's House [RECORD], calls it a series after eight seasons with a two-hour retrospectve and series finale, which -- spoiler alert! -- ends with House dropping his cane, smiling broadly into the camera, and doing a 19-minute softshoe routine.
New Episodes Tonight:
Dancing With The Stars (performance) [RECORD]
The Bachelorette [RECORD]
America's Got Talent [RECORD]
American Ninja Warrior [RECORD]
Basketball Wives [RECORD]
La La's Full Court Life [RECORD]
Movie Pick: Sally Field won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as a textile factory worker who fights to unionize her coworkers in 1979's Norma Rae [RECORD]. (Turner Classic Movies, 8pm)
Tuesday, May 22
Top Pick: After 14 weeks of performances, ABC's Dancing With The Stars [RECORD] tallies the points and names a winner. SPOILER ALERT: It's either Donald Driver and Peta Murgatroyd, William Levy and Cheryl Burke, or Katherine Jenkins and Mark Ballas. Feel the star power!
New Episodes Tonight:
American Idol (final performance show) [RECORD]
America's Got Talent [RECORD]
Glee (season finale) [RECORD]
The L.A. Complex [RECORD]
The Real Housewives of Orange County [RECORD]
American Ninja Warrior [RECORD]
Frontline [RECORD]
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel [RECORD]
Movie Pick: Tim Burton's never made a better movie for my money than his 1994 valentine to the world's worst film director, Ed Wood [RECORD], with Johnny Depp at his manic best in the title role, a man with far more drive than talent, and an affinity for ladies' angora sweaters. (Flix, 10pm)
Wednesday, May 23
Top Pick: This is it: after 2,734 auditions, 414 finalists, and 1,022 questionable song choices, American Idol [RECORD] concludes its 307th season by announcing a winner, who will of course soon take his or her rightful place at the top of the pop culture mountain. That, or crank out a couple of indifferently received singles and do a package tour for 9-year-olds this summer.
New Episodes Tonight:
The Middle [RECORD]
Betty White's Off Their Rockers [RECORD]
Modern Family (season finale) [RECORD]
Don't Trust The B---- In Apt. 23 (season finale) [RECORD]
America's Next Top Model [RECORD]
Revenge (season finale) [RECORD]
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season finale) [RECORD]
The Soup [RECORD]
Movie Pick: Sci-fi action comedy is a pretty narrow subgenre, but what few of them there are are all swimming in the wake of the first Men In Black [RECORD], the movie that cemented Will Smith's status as the last sure thing in Hollywood and figured out a way to make Tommy Lee Jones hilarious. (MoreMax, 9pm)
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