Laurel’s TV Picks

Best Bets

Series premiere of The Middleman (ABC Family, 7pm and 11pm)
Season premiere of Weeds (Showtime, 9pm, 10pm)
Series premiere of Secret Diary of a Call Girl (Showtime, 9:30pm, 10:30pm)
Alfred Molina, Salman Rushdie on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 11:37pm)
Ann Curry, Mario Batali, the Lordz on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:37pm)

Recommended Reruns

Bones (FOX, 7pm)
Gossip Girl (CW, 7pm)
The Big Bang Theory (CBS, 7pm)
How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 7:30pm)
House (FOX, 8pm)

Daytime

“Miracle Sextuplets, Twins Reunited: Super Siblings” on a rerun of Oprah (syndicated, check your local listings) from April 2007.

Featured Pick

Season premiere of Weeds (Showtime, 9pm, 10pm).

When we last left Weeds, Nancy Botwin had made sure that her house would burn down along with the rest of Agrestic/Majestic and intended to hit the road to start a new life with her family. This episode picks up not long after the final scene of last season, with Nancy and her family on the road trying to figure out what to do next. They end up heading to the home of Andy’s grandmother near the beach somewhere near San Diego. Meanwhile, the DEA has Celia in custody and starts rounding up others for questioning.

I’ve seen the first two episodes of this new season of Weeds and I like what I’ve seen so far. This is really a reboot for the show. Nancy is now embracing the fact that she is a drug-dealer and her kids know what she does and that it’s a rather big part of their lives. They’ve left behind Agrestic and the people there and move closer to the Mexican border, which will play a part in the work Nancy does this season with Guillermo. Conrad and Heylia are nowhere to be found in the first episodes and are no longer series regulars, though I imagine it’s possible they could turn up in future episodes. So far Doug and Celia and others from Agrestic are on the show, but it’s unclear how this will all work in future episodes.

Albert Brooks joins the cast as Andy’s father, who doesn’t much care for Andy nor for Nancy as he thought his son Judah should’ve married someone else; he apparently hasn’t had much contact at all with his grandchildren over the years, until now. Brooks is fabulous, of course, and isn’t just playing the typical sort of Albert Brooks character that you might expect.

Episodes of this show always leave you wanting more and that’s the case with the first two episodes of this season. I can’t wait to see upcoming episodes and what happens next and take that as a good sign that this show hasn’t (yet) made a wrong turn. They’ve made some big changes to the show, which is risky, but I’m still as hooked as ever.

The season premiere of Weeds airs tonight on Showtime at 9pm and 10pm; it will air on Showtime and other Showtime channels quite a bit this week. The last two episodes of last season will air on Showtime tonight at 8pm and 8:30pm before the debut of the season premiere.

Seasons one, two, and three of Weeds are all available on DVD. If you follow that link, you’ll find that Amazon currently has seasons one and two on sale for $15 each.

Primetime Grid

Primetime

Baseball: Red Sox at Phillies (ESPN, 6pm) followed by Baseball Tonight (ESPN, 9pm or so).

Series premiere of The Middleman (ABC Family, 7pm, 8pm, 11pm; also airs on Sunday at 9:30pm and next Monday at 6pm). This is a goofy new science fiction series based on the comic book by the same name. Javier Grillo-Marxuach wrote and created the comic and is executive producer and showrunner for the TV series based on it; he’s worked as a writer and producer on a lot of TV series including Medium, Lost, Jake 2.0, and The Chronicle. If that list of shows doesn’t intrigue you and make you want to check out this show, we must have very different tastes in TV! I’ve seen the first episode and I thought it showed promise, though it was rough as first episodes so often are; it was still fun enough that I want to see more episodes. It’s lightweight summer cable fare, when we could use some of that (even though thus far it’s nowhere near as good as Eureka or Burn Notice or Psych or anything like that). The regular timeslot for this show will be Mondays on ABC Family at 7pm and 11pm. I could blather on about the premise and what it’s all about, but the official website for the show is really nifty and does a better job of giving you the flavor of the show than I could. The first episode is also available for free from iTunes (there’s a link from the show’s webpage) if you can’t wait to watch, don’t get ABC Family, or prefer to see it that way.

New episodes of Master of Dance (TLC, 7pm and 10pm, 7:30pm and 10:30pm).

Rerun of the episode of Army Wives (Lifetime, 9pm) that debuted last night.

Brennan, Booth, and the team investigate the death of a soccer Mom who was blown up in her minivan in this rerun of Bones (FOX, 7pm). And Brennan visits her father in prison. Second episode of this past season.

Chuck wants to invest in a club and (in an interesting twist) Blair ends up dancing there in this memorable rerun of Gossip Girl (CW, 7pm). Things certainly got more interesting with this episode.

Chuck: “Where’s Nate?”
Blair: “I think we just broke up.”
Chuck: “What?”
Blair: “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to escape. That’s what this place is for, right?”
  from Gossip Girl

Raj’s parents set him up on a blind date and he’s actually able to talk to her, only she shows more interested in Sheldon in this rerun of The Big Bang Theory (CBS, 7pm).

Leonard: “Do you really need the Honorary Justice League of America Membership card?”
Sheldon: “It’s been in every wallet I’ve owned since I was five.”
Leonard: “Why?”
Sheldon: “It says keep this on your person at all times. It’s right here under Batman’s signature.”
  from How I Met Your Mother

New episodes of these shows on HGTV tonight: Designed to Sell (HGTV, 7pm and 11pm), Hidden Potential (HGTV, 8:30pm and 12:30am), and House Hunters (HGTV, 9pm and 1am).

Ted has difficulty catching a flight to interview for a job in this rerun of How I Met Your Mother (CBS, 7:30pm). Which is cause for a bit of backwards storytelling, of course.

Barney: “I’ve ridden the subway twice, end to end, I’ve seen where it turns around. Ted, you don’t ever wanna see where the subway turns around.”
  from How I Met Your Mother

If you’ve forgotten how the last season of Weeds ended or missed those episodes, Showtime rebroadcasts the final two episodes of last season (Showtime, 8pm, 8:30pm) to prepare you for the season premiere.

The candidates compete to correctly diagnose a wheelchair-bound man in this rerun of the third episode of House (FOX, 8pm) from this past season. House also does some experiments on himself.

House: “Is he a Vulcan? If no, what makes Nimoy bleed green?”
  from House

The nature of high-school debate teams brings out a “win-at-all-costs” attitude from competitors on Resolved (HBO, 8pm – 9:30pm).

New 90-minute episode of Nashville Star (NBC, 8pm).

A lawyer fights off an intruder who sexually assaults and stabs her, a farmer’s arm is caught in a harvester, and a school principal fights off a crazed man to save her students on I Survived (Biography, 8pm and midnight).

Charlie’s girlfriend doesn’t want to be seen with him in public in this rerun of Two and a Half Men (CBS, 8pm).

Mike looks back at the jobs he’s done that help clean up the environment on Dirty Jobs (Discovery, 8pm and midnight). Rerun of an earlier episode (“Animal Barber”) at 7pm and 11pm.

New episode focusing on “Cozy Cuisine” followed by a rerun of the “Comfort Foods” episode of Unwrapped (Food Network, 8pm and 11pm, 8:30pm and 11:30pm).

New Jon & Kate Plus 8 (TLC, 8pm and 11pm).

Season premiere of Weeds (Showtime, 9pm, 10pm). My featured pick today, see above.

The players roam through the streets of Santiago in their underwear begging for clothes on a new episode of The Mole (ABC, 9pm). Um . . . okay.

Mike and the team attack a pigeon infestation, Oliver pays the price for a skunk removal on a new Verminators (Discovery, 9pm and 1am).

New Legally Blonde (MTV, 9pm, 10pm).

Billie Piper, best known for playing “Rose Tyler” on Doctor Who, stars in the series premiere of Secret Diary of a Call Girl (Showtime, 9:30pm, 10:30pm). This is a British series that has aired already in the UK, which has been purchased by Showtime to air there as well. The series is based on a blog and book by a real call girl in London. Piper plays a woman who works as a prostitute because she enjoys the sex, money, and lifestyle it affords her; her family and friends think she’s a legal secretary who works nights. This is, obviously, a show with adult subject matter, frank situations, sex, and nudity. Tim Goodman calls it “watchable fun” and that’s what it is, if you like this sort of thing and don’t have a problem with the subject matter and/or type of show it is. I imagine a whole bunch of people (geeks among them) will tune in just to see Piper in skimpy outfits (and partially nude) talking frankly about sex.

Late Night

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

Kenneth R. Miller on The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 10:30pm and 12:30am).

Mike Myers, BMX record breaker Kevin Robinson, Adele on The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS, 10:35pm).

Anne Hathaway, the winner of the U.S. Open, Amos Lee on The Tonight Show (NBC, 10:35pm).

Alfred Molina, Salman Rushdie on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (CBS, 11:37pm).

Ann Curry, Mario Batali, the Lordz on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (NBC, 11:37pm).

Rerun of Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC, check your local listings).

Penn and Teller, Katy Perry on Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC, check your local listings).