Laurel’s TV Picks

Best Bets

Series premiere of Friday Night Lights (NBC, 7pm)
New Gilmore Girls (CW, 7pm)
Season premiere of Veronica Mars (CW, 8pm)
Season finale of Eureka (Sci-Fi, 8pm and 11pm)
New Nip/Tuck (FX, 9pm, 10:02pm)
New Boston Legal (ABC, 9pm)

News & Notes

Find this site useful? Make a donation in support of it. Just $5 from each of you would mean a lot to me (though if you can’t or don’t want to make a donation, that’s cool. And if you want to give more . . . of course that’s cool too). I’ve gotta pay for the redesign, after all.

Times listed on this page are for the Central time zone, please add an hour for Eastern/Pacific.

Primetime Grid

Featured Pick

Veronica and Wallace start college on the season premiere of Veronica Mars (CW, 8pm). In a non-shocking development, Mac and Logan also are attending Hearst College with Veronica. Hooray for Mac being a regular this season! Veronica lives off-campus with her Dad, we meet Wallace and Mac’s roommates in this episode. You gotta love that one of the classes Veronica is taking this semester is Criminology.

I honestly don’t really want to say much else as this show is all about mysteries, after all, and I hate giving people spoilers when they don’t want them. If you are watching the show or holding out to watch the show later on DVD, I won’t be spoiling you here (at least not intentionally). If I post quotes from the show, they’ll be fun quotes that don’t reveal any major plot points.

At the start of the fall season two years ago, I picked this series as my favorite new series and I’m still smitten with the show. I even liked season two better than season one (unlike many, from what I’ve read). I’m a little concerned that this season they plan to do shorter story arcs to make the show more accessible, but I have faith in Rob Thomas and company that the show will continue to rock. I can tell you that I’ve seen the first two episodes of this season and so far, so good. Great episodes and I can’t wait to see what next.

Seasons one and two are available on DVD if you haven’t seen them– I can’t recommend them highly enough. If you haven’t seen previous seasons, this season might be a little confusing, but not too much– but some key plot points of previous seasons are mentioned that you really wouldn’t want to learn about if you haven’t seen previous seasons and intend to see them some day.

The season premiere of Veronica Mars airs tonight at 8pm on the CW following a new episode of Gilmore Girls. If you counted on reruns later in the week last year, those may not be happening this season (check your local listings, it doesn’t look like they’re happening in my neck of the woods the way they did last year). Remember that if you had a “season pass” on your TiVo or had some other regularly scheduled recording on another DVR for the show when it aired on UPN, you may need to adjust your settings or created a new season pass to record the show on the CW. [You can use this link to tell your TiVo to record this show, assuming you have a TiVo that works with TiVo Central Online.]

Primetime

Series premiere of Friday Night Lights (NBC, 7pm; airs again on Wed & Sat; also on USA on Thursday). Kyle Chandler stars as a high school football coach in Texas who is starting his first season as head coach. Check out my fall preview to learn more about this show and hear what I think of it (based on viewing the first two episodes).

Lorelai focuses on cheering up Rory on Gilmore Girls (CW, 7pm). Complications presumably ensue when Rory talks to her Mom more about what happened between her and Luke and after their big fight, etc.

The team searches for a missing Navy lieutenant on NCIS (CBS, 7pm). Gibbs is back, yay! This episode will be streamed on CBS.com after it airs.

Baseball: American League Division Series: Detroit Tigers at New York Yankees (FOX, 7pm). Most FOX shows won’t have new episodes again ’til the very end of October and early November because of FOX coverage of baseball postseason play.

Season premiere of Veronica Mars (CW, 8pm). It’s today’s “featured pick” (see above).

Logan: “Guess who I saw on campus today.”
Veronica: “Some girl gone wild? As I understand it, it happens all the time at college. I’m on the verge of it right now.”
  from the “Welcome Wagon” episode of Veronica Mars

The team tries to rescue two other servicemen who are pinned down by a sniper on an intense episode of The Unit (CBS, 8pm). I’ve seen this one and liked it a lot. One thing to keep in mind if you have a number of shows on at this time that you’d like to watch: CBS tends to air reruns of their shows a lot more than any of the other networks, so with any luck you’ll have other chances to see this episode of The Unit. Plus it’s not as important to see episodes of this show in order as it is with many other shows.

Brooke Shields guest stars on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC, 8pm; airs again on Sat 10/14 at 10pm). The step-daughter of a police officer is murdered, Goren and Eames check out her “party scene”.

Season finale of Eureka (Sci-Fi, 8pm and 11pm). I’ve really enjoyed this show and hope it gets another season (odds seem good given it’s done so well for Sci-Fi, but I don’t think any announcement has been made yet).

Rosie O’Donnell guest stars as a lottery winner who wants Julian to do some work on her on Nip/Tuck (FX, 9pm, 10:02pm; also airs on Friday and Sunday; runs 62 minutes). And Kimber continues to influence Matt.

Leslie Caron and Charles Shaughnessy (of The Nanny) guest star on Law & Order: SVU (NBC, 9pm; airs again on Sun 10/15 at 10pm on USA).

Ivan (Tom Selleck) wants to invalidate his post-nuptial agreement and asks his ex Shirley (Candice Bergen) to work for him; further complicating things is the fact that Ivan’s wife is represented by Alan Shore (James Spader) on Boston Legal (ABC, 9pm).

Bobby and the crew steal an empty armored truck on Smith (CBS, 9pm).

Late Night:

Dennis Miller on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 10pm and midnight).

Andy Dick, Keith Olbermann, Brazilian Girls on The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 10:35pm).

Helen Mirren, B.J. Novak, Jet on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (NBC, 10:35pm).

Rebroadcast of last night’s new episode of Weeds (Showtime, 11pm).

Martin Scorsese, Harland Williams, the Decemberists on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:37pm).

Maura Tierney, David Cross on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 11:37pm).

(Full late night listings available from Sue Trowbridge, there’s a link in the sidebar at TVPicks.net).