Something something beet farm something something vague reference to ancestors being weird racists something something Star Trek. We’ll miss you, Dwight.

Monday

Fans of The West Wing who do not already own the entire series on DVD and are STILL waiting for the Blu-Ray edition (HURRY UP ALREADY, BLU-RAY PEOPLE) can enjoy that the show, currently airing daily on CITS, has looped around so the pilot episode airs tonight. Everybody else should just watch The West Wing, because come on already. This is an obvious starting point. (8 p.m.)

How I Met Your Mother concludes its eighth season, which has actually been sort of a rebound season for the show after a relatively lacklustre seventh. At the same time, it looks forward to the ninth (and announced-to-be-final) season. At this point it’s traditional for someone to complain that the identity of the mother cannot possibly live up to all of time spent building it up, but that argument is wrong because the show has never been, really, about the buildup to meeting someone, but rather the transition from post-adolescence to adulthood and how it can be joyful and shitty and everything else all at once. Also, we hope Sarah Michelle Gellar plays the mother when the mother finally shows up, because that would be kinda awesome. (City, 8 p.m.)

Tuesday

Golden Boy concludes its first and only thirteen-episode season. If you didn’t watch this show about a young cop who is fated to become the youngest police commissioner of New York City in history, congratulations. Many people also didn’t. At best this show is drawing Mad Men numbers, and CBS doesn’t screw around with Mad Men numbers. Frankly, the show was not a Mad Men–level show, anyway. (CTV, 8 p.m.)

So You Think You Can Dance rushes into its tenth season—so much so that the pilot episode, rather than being titled after a city as is usual, is simply titled “Audition City No. 1.” Next week, to fit in with this new “generic-ness” strategy, they’ll change the title of the show to Dancing Show, and the judges will all wear bland zentai suits. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

New Girl and The Mindy Project end their second and first seasons, respectively, and both are likely renewals despite moderately low ratings. That’s good, because if you haven’t been watching these shows this season, they’re probably the strongest back-to-back comedy block currently airing on TV (at least now that 30 Rock‘s ending has halted the brilliant Rock/Parks and Recreation block). So basically you should watch them, is what we’re saying. (City, 9 and 9:30 p.m.)

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “How I Wet Your Mother,” wherein the Simpson family enters into Homer’s dreams in order to make a lot of Inception references. (This week is not a particularly strong one for Simpsons reruns.) “In my dreams, I’m an intermediate skier!” (Fox, 11 p.m.)

Wednesday

Tonight is the final competition episode of American Idol, and the final episode where Randy Jackson will be judging the show, because, after 12 years, he has decided to take his talents (saying “dawg” and complaining that a singer is “pitchy”) to the wider free market. Also, there are probably some singers or something competing for the million dollars. Does the winner of this show still get a million dollars? We have no idea. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

Thursday

And now we come to the end of The Office, which also had sort of a rebound season this year—albeit one that worked because it transitioned more firmly into dramedy, following Jim and Pam working out the kinks in their marriage, rather than returning to the inspired lunacy that worked so well in the early years. Anyway, in many ways last week’s hour-long episode was the actual finale (as it concluded with the Office people watching the documentary of themselves that finally got finished) and now this is the “six months later” final epilogue, which is an hour long for some reason, but at least we get to see some Steve Carell, right? (NBC, 9 p.m.; there’s also a retrospective special at 8 p.m.)

Elementary concludes and…well, it’s been good? There are certainly some aspects of this show that we aren’t fond of (jumping into Moriarty with the very first sweeps, for example—it would have been nice to save that for later on, but we guess a Sherlock Holmes TV show has to hit all the points required by fans as soon as possible or risk cancellation), but the core of the show, the relationship between Lucy Liu’s Watson and Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock, works quite well (even if we still think the actors would excel in each other’s roles), and that’s the most important thing. (Global, 9 p.m.)

Friday

Star Trek: Secrets of the Universe is a special about how the science of Star Trek would work (or not). And it is airing on History Television, because why not. (8 p.m.)

The Weekend

The season finale of Doctor Who is titled “The Name of the Doctor,” and the show has been hinting all season that the Doctor’s name is the big reveal for this season, but A) who really cares and B) it’s fun because he’s just called “the Doctor,” so we’re betting they don’t actually reveal it. (Space, 8 p.m. Saturday)

In the Flesh debuted a couple of months ago on the BBC and Space is getting it now. The premise is that the zombie uprising happened, they found a sort-of-cure for zombieism that allows suffers of “Partially Deceased Syndrome” to live normal lives and prevent them from going “rabid” again, but there is understandably a lot of anti-zombie sentiment after all those massacres. Clever premise. The show itself is decent. (Space, 10 p.m. Saturday)

The 2013 Billboard Awards air this weekend, and will help us all celebrate those most under-recognized individuals: multimillionaire musicians. (ABC, 8 p.m. Sunday)

All-Star Celebrity Apprentice concludes, with Penn Jillette and Trace Adkins being the last two Celebrity Apprentices competing for Donald Trump’s approval. So, yeah, fuck all of these people, really. (Global, 9 p.m. Sunday)

Our point is that this is nerd-energy better spent on figuring out which Community timeline caused Dan Harmon to get fired.

Monday

Hey! It’s a Here Comes Honey Boo Boo marathon! You can decide for yourself if this is a bad thing or a different type of bad thing. (TLC, 8 p.m.)

Who Do You Think You Are?, the show where famous people learn about their ancestors, has inexplicably been a hit everywhere else it’s been aired, so now it’s Canada’s turn to watch our own version of the show where celebrities are staggered to learn that they are descended from real people in surprising ways. The first episode is of course focused on Don Cherry, and unless we learn that he is in fact the product of hyena interbreeding at some point four or five generations back it’s going to be as boring as this show always is. (CBC, 8:30 p.m.)

Revolution is NBC’s much-ballyhooed sci-fi-ish offering of the year, and…it’s really bad. The premise (the world suddenly loses all forms of power, and can no longer generate power, because of A Conspiracy Or Something, although guns still work because they’re exciting) is stupid. The acting is largely boring (with the exception of Giancarlo Esposito as The Fascist Baddie Person, because Giancarlo Esposito makes all things better). The plot of the opening episode is trite. What we’re saying is that this is a bad television show and NBC and executive producer J.J. Abrams should feel bad, and NBC needs to stop trying to capture the Lost lightning in a bottle because that show debuted eight years ago and ended two and a half years ago, so maybe it’s time to try something else. (CTV, 10 p.m.)

Tuesday

It’s time for the season premieres of The Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, both of which will no doubt have timely commentary on Stephen Harper’s scientist gag order, Mitt Romney selecting Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential candidate, the Eurozone meltdown, the Olympics, and everything else that happened while our topical news comedy shows were off for their usual five-month break. (CBC, 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.)

Bad 25 is a documentary celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bad by Michael Jackson, and features a lot of old video footage of Michael preparing for and creating the album. While Televisualist acknowledges the importance of Michael Jackson as a general rule and understands that these sorts of shows are both inevitable and even meritious, BET’s attitude towards the whole affair comes across to us as mercenary and even somewhat ghoulish, and makes us think of our favorite MJ song, or at least the one most appropriate for this occasion. (BET, 8 p.m.)

Hot Set follows in the footsteps of Face Off‘s “Top Chef for movie jobs” trail by being a Top Chef-like contest show for set designers. If you like seeing people fiddle around with bits of scenery, this is the show for you! (Space, 10 p.m.)

Wednesday

Survivor comes back for its twenty-fifth season, and this time the gimmick they’re advertising is the usual “old castaways return.” In this case it’s three contestants who were forced to leave the game because of injury (Russell Swan from Survivor: Samoa, AKA “the non-evil Russell,” Michael Skupin from Australia who fell into a fire pit, and Jonathan “openly hates Jeff Probst and doesn’t give a damn who knows it and is therefore the best contestant ever” Penner, making his third return to the show). However, in addition to them, this season also has former all-star baseball player Jeff Kent, Blair from The Facts of Life, several beauty pageant winners, and a guy who has applied seventeen times to play the game. So it should be fun. We hope. Survivor is a very cast-dependent game, after all. (Global, 8 p.m.)

Titanic: Blood and Steel is yet another epic miniseries about the Titanic because just one of them was not enough to make us think “hm, maybe James Cameron’s movie wasn’t long enough.” (CBC, 9 p.m.)

OLN brings back Top Shot, because there’s nothing so much fun as people shooting at targets! (9 p.m.)

Thursday

The Office commences what is now officially Season The Last (or, if you prefer, Season Two Seasons After What Should Have Been The Last, or if you are a real cynic, Why Didn’t The Show End When Jim Married Pam). (Global, 8:30 p.m.)

Parks and Recreation also returns because there is beauty in this world, yes there is. (City, 8:30 p.m.)

Friday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Mother Simpson,” where Homer’s hippie mom returns after faking her death. “Mom, I’m sorry I never come to see you. I’m just not a cemetery person. ‘Here lies’—Walt Whitman? Damn you, Walt Whitman! I hate you, Walt freakin’ Whitman! Leaves of grass, my ass!” (Comedy Network, 8 p.m.)

Look, I know everybody was all “Honey Boo Boo is the worst thing in television ever,” but I present to you TLC’s latest offering, Secret Princes, wherein four foreign aristocrats who are all worth more than King Midas go to Atlanta and pretend to be poor working-class immigrants. In other words, this is Slumming: The Series. We challenge you to be introduced to Lord Robert Jonathan Walters without wanting to punch him in the dick. At least Honey Boo Boo is likeable. (10 p.m.)

The Weekend

It’s the 64th Annual Emmy Awards! The real ones, not the Daytime Emmys that are generally only used as doorstops or Susan Lucci taunting devices. The nominees this time around are the usual suspects: your premium HBO and AMC series, a buttload of nominations for Modern Family, et cetera. But Idris Elba did get nominated for Luther, and even if he doesn’t win (and he probably won’t), it’s nice to hope. Also, Jimmy Kimmel is hosting, and ten years ago I would not have thought that I would look forward to such a thing, but here we are. (CTV, 8 p.m. Sunday)

Monday

2 Broke Girls concludes with an hour-long episode featuring Martha Stewart. What ethnicity is Martha Stewart again? Does she have one that’s amusing? Because they’ll have to make fun of that. (City, 8 p.m.)

The Voice has come down to its finals, which is really the least interesting part of any singing show, because the audition rounds are always more fun: the singers are all fresh and new and haven’t been singing karaoke at you for weeks at that point. In any case, your finalists are Juliet “rocker chick #5889″ Simms; Chris “sings operatically, which is a clever hook, but he’s not really a great opera singer, come to think of it” Mann; Tony “I used to be a Mouseketeer like Christina Aguilera and that’s my hook rather than being a distinctive or really great singer” Lucca; and Jermaine “should probably win” Paul. But who knows? Maybe America is really, really invested in making sure that Tony Lucca gets to be as famous as Christina Aguilera, who was a Mouseketeer just like him but unfairly had more talent than him and so therefore got to be famous. (CTV, 8 p.m.)

World’s Wildest Police Videos returns for another season of police officers blatantly abusing suspects, trampling civil rights and—what? Really? Sorry, it seems this show is mostly about thrilling car chases and those crazy things perps do in order to pretend that they are innocent. But that’s almost the same thing! (Spike, 8 p.m.)

Tuesday

The Voice‘s season finale has performances by Justin Bieber, Lady Antebellum, Flo Rida, and Hall and Oates, which is quite fitting for a show that seems to pull all of its musical challenges out of a hat on a weekly basis. “This week, half of you will sing Clay Aiken songs! And the other half of you will sing Megadeth songs!” (CTV, 9 p.m.)

It’s also the season finale of Unforgettable, which apparently has a strong chance of being cancelled at this point. We honestly had to check to remind ourselves what Unforgettable is about (it’s a procedural about a woman who can remember things really, really well). We didn’t do that for the cheap gag re: the name of the show. It was a coincidence. But it certainly was ironic that way! (CBS, 10 p.m.)

Dangerous Flights is a reality show about ferry pilots, who fly used airplanes to their points of sale, and this is dangerous because the planes are, well, used (with all that implies) and because they are frequently flown much farther than they are intended to fly. They probably should have named this show Will It Crash? (Discovery, 9 p.m.)

Another season finale, for Parks and Recreation, as we get to find out if Leslie Knope indeed becomes a city councillor or Paul Rudd’s Nick Newport will somehow beat her and cause her and most of the rest of her department to get fired. Or, let’s be honest, it’s entirely possible that the gun-store owner or the porn star who said she agreed with Leslie about “everything” could win, because the city of Pawnee is full of very silly people. (City, 9:30 p.m.)

Wednesday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Double Double Boy In Trouble,” where Bart plays out The Prince and the Pauper with his uber-rich double. (Okay, we’re in a bit of a fallow zone right now for quality Simpsons reruns.) “If that kid thinks I’m putting him through four years of puberty, he’s got another thing coming. Stupid kids, think I’m made of hormones.” (Comedy Network, 8 p.m.)

Thursday

The Office concludes with a whimper rather than a bang. Honestly, this season has been the worst one for this show so far; it is not that the departure of Steve Carell from the show should have been fatal, but that in his absence the show has become rudderless. A lengthy and pointless cast-split that sets half of the officevolk in Florida for a half-dozen episodes, complete with a lengthy, never-gonna-happen tease of Jim having an affair, only served to make this show seem even more lost. And, next season, Ed Helms, John Krasinski, Mindy Kaling, and Rainn Wilson are all potentially not returning (although NBC will most likely do whatever is necessary to re-up them, given that finding comedies able to perform like The Office can even in its dotage turns out to be difficult), so the show seems even more adrift. (Global, 9 p.m.)

If you’re looking for the most depressing show in the world, we think it is Slice’s Love Hunters (and, of course, the most depressing show in the world would air on Slice): it is a show about thirtysomethings trying to date using every gimmick that exists (speed dating, internet dating, matchmaking, you know it). Slice is opening this show with a mini-marathon of four episodes. Our over/under on you wanting to slit your wrists is 13 minutes into the first episode. (9 p.m.)

Friday

Fringe has been confirmed for a fifth and final season, so tonight’s season finale is not a series finale (as the show-runners were apparently prepared for). Hooray for DVD extras we will see one day! (City, 9 p.m.)

The Weekend

Survivor concludes a reasonably good season with the standard two-hour Sunday-night season finale. Although the last few episodes have become a bit rote—mostly because Kim knows what she is doing and most of the rest of the tribe is playing “maybe I can get to the finale and upset Kim”—it’s always pleasant to see a new player really grab the reins of the game and take control, because that action is what drives all of the best Survivor narratives, whether it is “masterful player cruises to victory” or “masterful player is suddenly blindsided.” Granted, the best option is always “duel of masterminds,” but that happens so, so rarely, mostly because one of the true lessons that can be learned from watching Survivor is that humans, as a rule, risk-manage very conservatively and overestimate their own strengths. We know you probably didn’t think that anything involving Jeff Probst could say anything eloquent about the human condition, but there you go. (Global, 8 p.m. Sunday, reunion aftershow 10 p.m.)

Desperate Housewives ends after eight seasons of…okay, we stopped watching about halfway through season two. We understand Dana Delany showed up at some point, though. (CTV, 9 p.m.)

Brett informs us that this is a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills being Real, which is to say drinking the blood of children in order to devour their souls. We have never been to Beverly Hills, so we're taking his word for it that this happens. It's probably a Kardashian thing.

The Comedy Network debuts Only In America with Larry the Cable Guy. We assume this is because they want to follow A&E’s example and branch out past things you might assume, from their channel name, are comedy. Probably putting another Larry the Cable Guy show on the network (we still haven’t forgiven them for Blue Collar TV) is only a stepping stone to renaming the channel “ComNet” or something so they can start broadcasting old reality shows 24-7. After all, this is a Canadian cable channel. (10 p.m.)

Tuesday

Slice airs I Love You, Man, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel’s 2009 comedy about two guys who become best friends. It did reasonably well at the box office, but deserved to do much better than it did: it’s extremely smart and manages to be touching without being cloying or romanticizing bro-hood. Plus, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are both goddamned hilarious. (8 p.m.)

If you’re in the mood for something more classic, you can always watch North by Northwest instead. This gets my vote as the absolute best of Alfred Hitchcock’s films (Psycho has an anticlimactic ending, The Birds loses direction halfway through, and Rear Window and Vertigo come close but don’t quite match up to Hitchcock’s economy of direction in this). Plus it has Cary Grant, and Cary Grant is awesome. (Turner Classic, 9 p.m.)

Wednesday

The Agenda devotes an episode to arguing whether or not Ontario can balance its budget within the next five years. SPOILER: Probably not. (TVO, 8 p.m.)

We never get tired of watching Jurassic Park, mostly because it is about dinosaurs. We are simple about things such as this. We assume you probably are as well. (AMC, 8 p.m.)

If you like golf, the 2011 President’s Cup is for you! Don’t look at us like that. Some people really like watching golf on TV. We don’t know any of these people, but we know they exist, and Televisualist lives to serve the masses. (TSN, 9:30 p.m.)

Thursday

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills returns for its second season, which actually aired several months ago. Okay, we know that Televisualist complains a lot about how Canadian networks seem determined to pretend that Canadian fans of American TV shows won’t just pirate them if said Canadian networks persist in airing them months or years after their American runs, but in this case we’re going to suggest that maybe Slice could have waited longer to air their latest instalment of the Real Housewives brand, a brand that grows less real with each instalment (since these ladies are rarely anything like “real” homemakers). They could have waited much, much longer, in fact. We would have been fine with it. (8 p.m.)

So, we’re about a third of the way through the post–Steve Carell The Office, and… it’s okay. In the way that later seasons of a sitcom can be okay. It’s not surprising, but it’s got comfort value. The slow burn on the Andy/Erin relationship is pretty old. James Spader is fun, but doesn’t really fit in with the show. That’s about all we can say for The Office: it is now the Kraft Dinner of single-camera sitcoms. (Global, 8 p.m.)

Friday

An Idiot Abroad, the Ricky Gervais–produced reality show about Ricky Gervais’ friend who hates travel travelling around the world, returns for its second season, and as before it is entertaining. It’s arguably even more enjoyably mean to the protagonist, Karl Pilkington, than the first season was, because the first season was making this guy go to places the producers wanted him to go and the new season is about fulfilling Karl’s actual travel wishes—and then screwing with that. (Discovery, 10 p.m.)

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Behind the Laughter,” the Behind the Music parody that remains a highlight of The Simpsons’ low period. “Why did I take such punishment? Let’s just say that fame was like a drug. But what was even more like a drug was the drugs.” (Comedy Network, 8 p.m.)

The Weekend

The 2011 American Music Awards this year feature performances by Chris Brown, Katy Perry, LMFAO, Maroon 5, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, and Pitbull, which is what you expect from the awards show whose winners are determined essentially by record sales. Actually, come to think, it isn’t what you’d expect if they’re determined by record sales, because old people don’t listen to LMFAO or Pitbull. Unless old people have suddenly decided to all have their midlife crisis at once. Even then, that doesn’t excuse LMFAO. (CTV, 8 p.m.)