Televisualist: ER, Japes, and Creepy Rapes

Monday

Toronto is the villain in this week's episode of The Good Germany, which is a sitcom on the CBC about a small town called Germany (which, in its second week, boasts this sterling webpage). See, this week Toronto enters into a deal with the town to buy landfill space. Because we're all pricks in Toronto, with our "contracts" and our "paying people to do things." (8:30 p.m.)

You have seen The Godfather, right? Because if you haven't, it's on tonight. But you have seen it. Right? (AMC, 8 p.m.)

Tuesday

For some reason Space picked up Destination Truth, which originally aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S.A. (before they changed the name to "SyFy," presumably to rebrand the channel somewhat so that they would have an excuse to air more general-interest programming). Destination Truth is a show where the host goes to various countries to prove that mythological creatures don't exist. Okay, "investigate as to the question of their existence," which we all know really means "make fun of the locals." It's a dickish little show. Also, kudos to Space for claiming that a show that first aired in October of last year qualifies as "new." (10 p.m.)

The Simpsons rerun of the week: "Simpson Tide," wherein Homer commands a submarine. Despite the embarrassingly high concept, a pretty funny episode from the ninth season. "My Homer is not a Communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a Communist, but he is not a porn star!" (Fox, 11 p.m.)

Wednesday

I Get That A Lot is an April Fool's Day special wherein celebrities (well, Jessica Simpson and Mario Lopez sorta-celebrities, they couldn't afford anybody good) go do normal jobs and just pretend to be normal people doing normal things. Televisualist is not exactly sure why this qualifies as an "April Fool's" show, because from what we have seen absolutely nobody is fooled by the celebrities pretending to be lookalikes and instead it's just an endless string of "Come on, you're totally Heidi Klum! Where's the hidden camera?"-type questions. Perhaps the April Fool's is more existential, in that after this witless show is finished, the celebrities get to go back to their palatial estates and sip rare wines and get massages and do other rich person things, despite being people like Jessica Simpson and Mario Lopez. That would be a clever April Fool indeed! (SunTV, 8 p.m.)

The superfluous American version of Life on Mars airs its final episode tonight, which is just further evidence that the entire series was a joke that got out of hand. "Hey, there's this brilliant, totally self-contained British series. Let's remake it! But as an ongoing thing! Wouldn't that be wild? Shit, let's hire Gretchen Mol in a major role and see if anybody notices!" (ABC, 10 p.m.)

Thursday

ER finally closes up shop tonight after fifteen seasons (!), and Noah Wyle, Sherry Stringfield, Laura Innes, Alex Kingston, and Eriq La Salle will all make their return for a final guest appearance on the show that gave them all such meteoric careers. Televisualist knows that everybody else is making jokes about how this show started with George Clooney and ended with John Stamos, but seriously: at least people never forget who John Stamos is. What was the last thing Noah Wyle or Eriq La Salle did that you remember? And that is our point. (CTV, 9 p.m.)

Talk TV has a "Toronto Turns 175" special. Maybe someone who writes for this website will watch it, because nobody else cares. One hundred and seventy-five is not a special number, okay? It is seven-eighths of the way to an actually important number, namely 200. Seven-eighths of anything is not a big deal and will never be a big deal. Nobody celebrates their eighty-seven-and-a-halfth birthday. (CP24, 9 p.m.)

Friday

So Dollhouse is now up to episode eight, and it's still kind of bad and still very creepy. It is now all the more creepy because last week's episode made it quite explicit that the "dolls" are not there by choice but rather have been coerced into service by a large, evil-ish corporation, for whom the majority of the characters on this show work. So, really, the show could just be called Slavehouse or Rapehouse and it would still be accurate. (Global, 9 p.m.)

"I want us to be friends, Faye. And we all know that friends don't hit each other... unless they have to." Get Shorty airs on Bravo tonight, and if you have not seen Dennis Farina's performance as Ray Bones, you have missed out on one of the great comedic mobster performances of all time. (8:30 p.m.)