TV Tonight: Happy Endings, Criminal Minds, South Park

What’s new tonight:
Happy Endings (ABC) Max’s high-school girlfriend drops in on the gang—awkward, since, you know, he’s all gay now. Meanwhile, Jane discovers that Brad has a “work wife” and sets out to land her own “office husband.” And these are just two of what’s sure to be a dozen hilarious situations tonight!

Criminal Minds (CBS) Garcia asks the BAU team for help when a mother in her survivors support group goes missing on the anniversary of her daughter’s kidnapping—weird. Even weirder, computer jockey Garcia’s going out into the field! She always gets shot when she does that!

South Park (Comedy Central) Season Finale: It’s the Season 15 finale, so it’s time for another bummer cliffhanger: When his parents are jailed (what took so long?), Kenny and his siblings are forced into foster care—which can only be a step up, right? Not if Cartman’s plan to keep Kenny down and broke are successful, and Cartman does have an oddly high success rate.

Nick Swardson’s Pretend Time (Comedy Central) Season Finale: Nick welcomes fellow comics Duncan Trussell (The Lavender Hour!) and Owen Benjamin (no idea!) to talk about sketches that somehow didn’t make it onto the show, and then there’s something about drunk girls in a fast-food joint—it’s all sure to be funny as hell, trust me, as I’m one of there several hundred people who watch Pretend Time, like, every week.

Also new tonight:
The Middle, Suburgatory, Modern Family, Revenge (ABC); Survivor: South Pacific, CSI (CBS); Up All Night, Harry’s Law, Law & Order: SVU (NBC); The X Factor (Fox); America's Next Top Model (The CW); Ghost Hunters (Syfy); The Ultimate Fighter, Blue Mountain State (Spike); Whitechapel (BBC America); The Real World (MTV); Top Chef: Texas, Work of Art (Bravo); Extreme Couponing (TLC); Psych (USA); American Horror Story (FX)

They just wanna legalize meth on Nick Swardson’s Pretend Time, y’all!

TV Tonight: South Park, Psych, Top Chef: Just Desserts

What’s new tonight:
South Park (Comedy Central) Much—exactly, really—as he became obsessed with the Food Network last season, Randy sees a musical in the big city (well, Denver) and goes completely Broadway batshit. Think there’ll be a dozen or so inside references to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Book of Mormon musical? Of course not …

Psych (USA) Just in time for Halloween, there’s a suspiciously vampire-like murder in Santa Barbara—and clues point to Lassiter’s mysterious new girlfriend, who just happens to be played by the O.G. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kristy Swanson. But, really, you’re here for Shawn and Gus in totally ree-dic vampire costumes.

Top Chef: Just Desserts (Bravo) Season Finale: The final three pastry … cheftestants … fuck that term … compete down to the wire for the $100,000 and the Food & Wine mag swag. It’s all about Orlando! I mean, I don’t have any bets placed or anything.

Also new tonight:
The Middle, Suburgatory, Modern Family, Happy Endings, Revenge (ABC); Survivor: South Pacific (CBS); America’s Next Top Model (The CW); Ghost Hunters (Syfy); The Ultimate Fighter, Blue Mountain State (Spike); Law & Order: UK, Whitechapel (BBC America); Nick Swardson’s Pretend Time (Comedy Central); Work of Art (Bravo); (TLC); The Real World (MTV); Penn & Teller Tell a Lie (Discovery); American Horror Story (FX)

South Park goes Broadway tonight and … Wicked?

Broadway Bro Down
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PARKRandy Marsh,Sharon Marsh,more...

TV Weekend: Nikita, Free Agents, Breaking Bad

What’s new this weekend:
Nikita (The CW, tonight) Is Nikita making any sense yet? Of course not—but shit’s blowin’ up and everybody looks cool, so just roll with it. Tonight, Nikita (Maggie Q) learns that an agent she captured for Division years ago has been committing heavy political assassinations for Division. Oh, snap. Yet more revenge rage, inexplicably effective disguises and guest star Rekha Sharma (Battlestar Galactica—Tory!) ensue.

Also new tonight:
A Gifted Man, CSI:NY, Blue Bloods (CBS); Kitchen Nightmares, Fringe (Fox); Supernatual (The CW); Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Cartoon Network); Strike Back (Cinemax); Sanctuary (Syfy); Real Time With Bill Maher (HBO); The Soup (E!)

Free Agents (BBC America, Saturday) U.S. Debut: Now that the ‘Merican version has been canceled by NBC, check out how Free Agents was supposed to be done—with Buffy’s Anthony Stewart Head in the lead instead of on the sidelines. Much better.

Also new Saturday:
Saturday Night Live: Ben Stiller & Foster the People (NBC/CW30); Terror Beneath (Syfy); Bad Dog! (Animal Planet)

Breaking Bad (AMC, Sunday) Season Finale: Read all about it at CityWeekly.net (Item 2), and come to Brewvies (677 South 200 West, 21+) at 8 p.m. to watch it all go down on the big screen.

The Good Wife (CBS) Clash of the MILFs Alert: Lisa Edelstein (House) guests as Will’s ex-wife, which probably won’t sit well with new gal Alicia (Julianna Margulies). Am I just mentally manufacturing a catfight? Maybe …

Six Days to Air: The Making of South Park (Comedy Central) Special: How do Trey Parker and Matt Stone slap together a South Park episode? Find out in this documentary—that’s right, it takes six whole days.

Also new Sunday:
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives, Pan Am (ABC); The Amazing Race, CSI: Miami (CBS); Sister Wives (TLC); Kendra, Dirty Soap (E!); Squidbillies (Adult Swim); Boardwalk Empire, Hung, How to Make It in America (HBO); Dexter, Homeland (Showtime)

How’s Breaking Bad going to end this season? Kinda like this:

TV Tonight: American Horror Story, South Park, Penn & Teller

New shows picked up for full seasons: New Girl (Fox); Whitney, Up All Night (NBC); 2 Broke Girls (CBS). Canceled already: The Playboy Club (NBC). Old shows in danger of cancellation over $ disputes: The Simpsons (Fox); Dexter (Showtime).

What’s new tonight:
American Horror Story (FX) Series Debut: Two conclusions after watching the pilot of American Horror Story: 1. Showrunner Ryan Murphy has some seriously dark weirdness to work out after three seasons of Glee, and 2. The Walking Dead won’t be the scariest show on TV this fall. Dylan McDermott and Connie Britton headline a killer cast (which also includes Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy) as a couple who moves across the country with some heavy marital baggage and a teenage daughter (Taissa Farmiga) to Los Angeles into—what else?—a haunted Victorian. The setup is familiar, but the execution, from the deliciously Grindhouse-style opening and closing credits to the slowly stacking creepiness and tension in between, makes for the best horror movie no one’s made in years. At least, for the first episode, which is all FX has provided so far—let’s see if American Horror Story can sustain the intensity until Christmas. [Update: Episode 2 airing Oct. 12 falls on the “meh” side, so maybe not.]

South Park (Comedy Central) Midseason Premiere: If you recall, the first half of this season left off on a major bummer, what with Stan having an existential crisis on his 10th birthday and all. There’s more of that tonight, as well as Cartman dealing with Asperger’s Syndrome—when did South Park turn into The Big C?

Penn & Teller Tell a Lie (Discovery) Series Debut: Done with Bullshit!, Penn & Teller move onto bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, truth! in Tell a Lie, a shell game of a TV show wherein you have to pick which wacko scientific theory is actually real. Great, more homework …

Raising Hope (Fox) Special Night: Apparently, The X Factor could only fill 90 minutes tonight, so we get an extra ep of Raising Hope. Enjoy!

Also new tonight:
The Middle, Suburgatory, Modern Family, Happy Endings, Revenge (ABC); Survivor: South Pacific, Criminal Minds, CSI (CBS); The X Factor (Fox); Up All Night, Free Agents, Harry’s Law, Law & Order: SVU (NBC); H8R, America’s Next Top Model (The CW); Ghost Hunters, Paranormal Witness (Syfy); The Ultimate Fighter, Blue Mountain State (Spike); Luther (BBC America); Nick Swardson’s Pretend Time (Comedy Central); Top Chef: Just Desserts (Bravo); Dance Moms (Lifetime); I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, Extreme Couponing (TLC); The Real World (MTV)

American Horror Story brings that Ryan Murphy freak-magic back to FX:

Bonaduce Breaking

So last night at the Fox Reality Channel Really Awards (one bomb, hundreds of reality-TV douchebags taken care of, just sayin'), hulking freckle Danny Bonaduce pulled a WWE-worthy move and tossed Survivor assclown Jonny Fairplay face-first to the floor, sending him to the hospital sans teeth and blood. Finally, Bonaduce has contributed something to society, although Kanye West felt slighted for not receiving a Piledriver.

What The Only TV Column That Matters™ is watching tonight:

Pushing Daisies (ABC): Debut of the fanciful new series from the folks behind Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me ... so it's probably already been canceled.

The Bionic Woman (NBC): Jaime learns to use her new powers, while everyone else wonders why the guv'ment didn't give her a personality upgrade.

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC): Tranny trouble is a-brewin'!

South Park, The Sarah Silverman Program (Comedy Central): Cartman has Tourettes; Sarah joins an anti-abortion group. Let's all go to Hell, shall we?

Killing Time

Big Shots Thursday 9.27 (ABC) Series Debut: They’re four alpha-male corporate execs but, damn it, they have feelings, too! Big Shots was apparently shooting for Sex and the City With Dicks, but just wound up with dicks. Watching metrosexual power-players whine about relationships, kids, office politics and golf just makes The Only TV Column That Matters™ long for the days of AMC’s Mad Men that much more: bang a secretary, pour a bourbon, light a Lucky and shut the fuck up already.

Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy Thursday 9.27 (ABC) Season Premieres: Betty’s still ugly, but the interns are now real doctors. Scary.

CSI, Without a Trace Thursday 9.27 (CBS) Season Premieres: Sara’s gone missing, then the Trace team searches for Shark.

My Name Is Earl, The Office, ER Thursday 9.27 (NBC) Season Premieres: Full-hour premieres for Earl and The Office, while ER enters its 57th season.

Moonlight Friday 9.28 (CBS) Series Debut: If you still miss Angel or even Forever Knight, there’s a new crime-fightin’ vampire with a heart of gold in town; this one sleeps in a freezer and looks a lot like The Shield’s Alex O’Loughlin. That’s about all there is to report, because Moonlight has undergone several cast, script, showrunner and title changes (previous names: Twilight and Crime-Fightin’ Vampire With a Heart of Gold) since CBS first picked it up; could be all sock puppets and show tunes by the time it gets on the air.

Ghost Whisperer, Numb3rs Friday 9.28 (CBS) Season Premieres: So many boob and math jokes, so little space.

Las Vegas Friday 9.28 (NBC) Season Premiere: Nikki Cox is gone, but Tom Selleck has arrived. Doesn’t seem like a fair trade.

Dexter Sunday 9.30 (Showtime) Season Premiere: At the end of Dexter’s excellent first season, our Serial Killer With a Heart of Gold had finally eradicated Miami’s Ice Truck Killer (who’d turned out to be his own brother, who was dating Dex’s stepsister to get to him … you had to be there) and all seemed relatively right in Dexter’s sorta-wrong world—so why so down at the onset of Season 2? A month later, it’s more bowling than killing: “My life’s been all Jekyll and no Hyde.” He’s not only off his vigilante game, but his freaked-out sis has moved in with him and his girlfriend suspects he may have framed her douchebag ex-husband and sent him back to prison (which Dex did—the guy wasn’t quite evil enough to murder). Then there’s the discovery of the bodies of his previous villainous victims—and Dexter can’t even carry out a nice, relaxing kill. Sheesh.

Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters Sunday 9.30 (ABC) The housewives enter their 60s, and I still hate Brothers & Sisters.

American Dad Sunday 9.30 (Fox) The Smiths go on vacation, which can’t end well.

Brotherhood Sunday 9.30 (Showtime) The best Rhode Island mobster drama since Family Guy returns to fulfill your Sopranos-free life.

Cavemen, Carpoolers Tuesday 10.2 (ABC) Series Debuts: Yes, Cavemen is the new sitcom based on those Geico insurance ads, so it already has a built-in audience of people with 30-second attention spans. Now, it’s 30-minute comedic allegory for racial and class divisions … yeah, sure, they’ll hang with it. Except that the first version of Cavemen’s pilot sucked harder than Allstate, so ABC sent it back to be “reworked”—a phrase on par with, “Let’s make this commercial 1,000 percent longer! With other commercials in it!” As for Carpoolers: If you liked the underrated/under-watched Sons & Daughters (Fred Goss stars here), you’ll probably wonder why no one brought that back instead of watering it down and moving it into the commuter lane. I know I did.

Pushing Daisies Wednesday 10.3 (ABC) Series Debut: Then again, sometimes networks take too big of a chance with something that might have even been difficult to pitch on cable: Pie shop owner Ned can bring the dead back to life with one touch, but a second sends them back Dirtnap City for good—helpful for solving murder cases with his private eye buddy (doesn’t everybody have one?); not so much when he revives his childhood sweetheart. Pushing Daisies comes from the creator of Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, and shares their offbeat tones of sweet romance and dark humor—and eventually, probably a DVD discussion group on Amazon.com about brilliant-but-canceled shows. Catch it while you can …

South Park, The Sarah Silverman Program Wednesday 10.3 (Comedy Central) Cartman struggles to reach the new Wednesday-night offensiveness bar set by Sarah Silverman, who joins an anti-abortion group and then performs an anal abortion on Steve. Good times.

You Know, the Mormons ...

No, I didn’t watch Part 1 of the PBS Frontline documentary The Mormons tonight. Why? First, it’s on PBS—think I have it blocked on the cable. Second, living in Salt Lake City, I hear plenty about the LDS Church, anyway; don’t really need another four hours of it, thank you. Besides, you can learn everything you need to know in a mere 22-minute South Park episode (Season 7’s “All About the Mormons,” from 2003). But, if you’re still curious, here’s an exclusive clip from the documentary:

Winner & Losers

The Winner Sunday 3.4 (Fox) Series Debut: Rob Corddry (The Daily Show) is a 32-year-old video-store clerk who still lives with his parents and tells his 14-year-old pal (!) things like “I am not looking forward to doing your mom.” He’s also going get rich and win back his high-school sweetheart, or something—the story’s not important; the setup is. Unlike Fox’s recent attempts at multi-camera-with-audience sitcoms, The Winner is almost weird enough to work as well as actual funny Fox-coms from yesteryear (that would be the ‘90s, kids). The premiere episode is also loaded with enough sex jokes (including the mid-season’s second happy-ending Korean massage) to raise hackles at the ever-righteous Parents Television Council, which is more than enough reason to hang in for the show’s mere three-week run.

Dice Undisputed Sunday 3.4 (VH1) Series Debut: VH1’s work of rehabbing believed-dead celebrities is never done, hence a reality show based on Andrew Dice Clay, the comedian who’s been “banned for life” from MTV since 1989 (lucky him) and is supposedly unemployed and/or retired (not true—he’s still making bank in Las Vegas, but you can’t sell a “comeback” show with that). Now, Dice has book, an album and a Sirius radio show in the works, and no way in hell he can do it all without a camera crew and a colorful posse of morons dogging his every move. Thanks, Danny Bonaduce—thank you very fucking much.

The Class Monday 3.5 (CBS) Season Finale: No series has been screaming “I’ve changed! Really! Please love me now! Pleeeaaase!” louder than The Class, which began the season as a high-concept (OK, mid-concept) comedy about rarely-intersecting groups of characters, only to be hastily remodeled into Friends … with a few parts left over (where’d the news lady and her gay husband go?). Surprisingly, it’s still funny and holds together well—too bad more people are watching CBS’ craptastic Rules of Engagement. Don’t expect The Class to return, or hack TV critics to refrain from typing “Class dismissed!”

The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll Tuesday 3.6 (The CW) Series Debut: Technically, the title is The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll. Also, this is technically the absolute last thing The Only TV Column That Matters™ is going to say about The CW until the network kicks this skankfest to the curb and brings back Veronica Mars. Synchronize watches, and … go!

The Wedding Bells Wednesday 3.7 (Fox) Series Debut: The three Bell sisters inherit a wedding planning business after, how ironical, their parents divorce—no, it’s not a reality show, but there are still Bridezillas galore. Remember ABC’s wedding-happy Big Day? No? It was only a month ago! Anyway, The Wedding Bells is more of the same romantic-comedy fluff, with a dash of that Fox “edge” and the bonus cred of an actual Movie Star (Meet the Parents/Fockers’ Teri Polo) in the cast and one-time power producer David E. Kelley’s name in the credits. After tonight, it’s also moving to Fridays, where no one will ever see it again.

South Park Wednesday 3.7 (Comedy Central) Season Premiere: The new 11th (!) season is going to have to be damned good to top the 10th, which gave us the death of Chef, Al Gore’s ManBearPig, Satan’s ultimate Halloween party, the war on Family Guy, the real 9/11 culprits and the Detroit Red Wings beating the hell out of Stan’s pee-wee hockey league, among other tragedies. With everything that happened in February pop culture alone, should be easy …

DVD
Killer Drag Queens on Dope C’mon, do you even need to know what it’s about? OK, fine: Ginger (Alexis Arquette) and Coco (Omar Alexis) are hit-men who dress like women and do lots of drugs. Want more? Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (Welcome Back Kotter) as “Mr. Fly,” and roller-derby action. KillerDragQueensOnDope.com

The Return Sarah Michelle Gellar in another moody, confusing horror flick—but Buffy’s not blonde this time, which totally changes it up. Visions of a murdered woman (herself? Spooky!) point SMG to Texas for answers, but all she finds is more bad lighting and whispering kids. Boo! NBCUniversalStore.com

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny The reason it bombed at the box office: Sneaking a bong into the megaplex is problematic. For the rest of us who know Tenacious D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) is the greatest band in all of rock, The Pick of Destiny is simply a well-researched, irrefutable documentary. Suck that, Al Gore. NewLine.com

More New DVD Releases (Feb. 27) Conversations With God, Dog the Bounty Hunter: Season 3, Dreamland, Girlfriends: Season 1, A Good Year, Reno 911: Reno’s Most Wanted, The Rockford Files: Season 3, Stranger Than Fiction

BROADBAND
The Winner Why wait for Fox to premiere Rob Corddry’s slacker sitcom when you can watch the first four episodes online right now at FamilyGuy.com? (The series is executive-produced by Seth MacFarlane and created by his bud Ricky Blitt.) Or buy all six on iTunes? Hell, Fox is going so whole-hog “multi-platform” with The Winner, they’ve probably already posted the whole series on your MySpace page. Go ahead, check.