Thursday
The plane! The plane! The Featured Pick!
Fantasy Island (Sci-Fi, 10am) comes to make all your dreams come true for five hours in the middle of the day. Except that dream about the superintelligent golden retriever and your fourth-grade teacher. It’s the Malcolm McDowell version, which is even weirder than the original. In the 1pm episode, “A man with an obsessive-compulsive personality gets his fantasy mixed up with a woman’s; Mr. Roarke (Malcolm McDowell) turns an unhappy guest into a baby In another episode, a man falls in love with a dolphin. Maybe that golden retriever thing will show up after all.
Today’s Picks
It’s the end of the first season of Babylon 5 (Sci-Fi, 6pm). So I’m guessing plot threads get tied up, scores get settled, and all sorts of unexpected complications show up.
NBC is running the pilot episodes of its Thursday night lineup. So if you tune into Friends (NBC, 7pm), and see that Ross’s wife has left him to become a lesbian; and that Rachel has left someone at the altar, that doesn’t mean the series has lapped itself. Will and Grace (NBC, 7:30pm) features an unexpected marriage proposal for Grace; and ER (NBC, 8pm) features two hours of people who aren’t on the show anymore. I assume that NBC is trying to recapture the glory days of Must See TV, but I think a better way to do that would be to put on some new shows that are, you know, good. Because I don’t see why putting the pilot episode of Friends in prime time is going to generate appreciably better ratings than it gets in syndication. Maybe they’re just preparing us for their Writers Strike plans, where they just air whatever they had seven years earlier. Which would mean that we’ll have to prepare ourselves for Jerry Seinfeld on the cover of Entertainment Weekly again.
Gilmore Girls (WB, 7pm) is also a rerun. It’s the parent-teacher night, where Lorelai tries (without much success) to break up with Max. And Paris starts turning into a sympathetic character, to the consternation of the audience.
Survivor (CBS, 7pm) is, of course, not a rerun. Although I bet they’d get pretty good ratings if they just kept showing the episode the one where Jerri got voted off. There’s rain problems tonight, because some clown built the camps in a dried-up riverbed. And one flash-flood later, it’s no longer “dried-up”.
I know what happens on WWF Smackdown (UPN, 7pm), but I’m not going to tell you. If you watch it, you’ll find out. Hint: it involves guys with big muscles.
Big mustaches rule the old west in Tombstone (Showtime, 7pm).
Back-to-back episodes of CSI (CBS, 8pm) start with a new one about an infant kidnapping, followed by the episode with the stolen painting. Watch for the ear-print. Then, if your need for investigation isn’t yet slaked, you can watch Secrets of Forensic Science (TLC, 10pm), where a killer is identified through the bite marks on the victim’s body. Ick.
If you have a deep need to see behind the scenes of things, you have several competing options. You can go Inside Pro Wrestling (E!, 9pm); you can see Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed 4 (FX, 9pm) with the Masked Magician; you can watch Mitch Pileggi Exploring the Unknown (Family, 9pm); or you can study the Ancient Puzzles (Discovery, 9 pm) of Egyptian codes and pyramids. It’s a big night for things you’re not supposed to know.
Sports Night (Comedy Central, 9pm) has the usual two Thursday episodes, and as usual, Comedy Central has picked a nearly random order. “Kyle Whitaker’s Got Two Sacks” and “The Reunion” are in the right order, but they were supposed to come before last week’s “A Girl Named Pixley”. That’s not really that far out of order, but I wanted an excuse to say “Pixley”. Pixley Pixley Pixley.
If you have a high tolerance for Tom Green, he’s on The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 10:35pm). If you’re thinking that Letterman might put a lid on Green’s antics, remember that Letterman’s show gave Chris Elliott a job for years.
The Tonight Show (NBC, 10:35pm) has Troy Aikman and NYPD Blue’s Kim Delaney.
Conan O’Brien (NBC, check your local listings) has Renee Zellweger (pimping Bridget Jones’s Diary, Chris Titus (pimping Titus, and Inside the Actor’s Studio’s James Lipton, creeping everyone out.
Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher (ABC, check your local listings) has June Lockhart, Rep. Butch Otter, Larry Miller, and Anastacia. Personally, I would be thrilled to be represented in congress by a man named “Butch Otter”, and I applaud the good people of Idaho’s first Congressional District for their taste.
The Peabody-winning Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 10pm) has Ed’s Tom Cavanagh. Tune in for goofy-looking fun!
