It’s entirely possible that an early work by the next Atom Egoyan or David Cronenberg will screen on Wednesday night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. With the 2013 Student Film Showcase featuring the best from post-secondary schools around the country and the Jump Cuts Young Filmmakers Showcase kicking off the evening with Toronto-area high-school students’ films, the night will be a coming-out party for a new crop of talent. Judging by the polished creativity of some of the entries, it’s safe to say that young people are more prepared than ever to start telling stories on film from an early age.

According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances.

This is true: Cochran (centre) accurately defined the Monty Hall problem this season on “Survivor” and became our favourite Survivor ever for just that reason. (Because we’re nerds.)

Monday

So tonight is game three of the first-round NHL playoff series between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins. The Leafs have tied up the series at 1-1, and their win no doubt led to all sorts of Toronto notables making bets with Bostonians about the playoff outcome, all of which have been met with “yeah, we just had a bombing here, maybe next year, okay” and really, can you blame them? (CBC, 7 p.m.)

In other Toronto sports news, the Blue Jays, who are playing Tampa Bay tonight, are 11-21 and are the third-worst team in baseball and HA HA HA HA HA THIS IS WHAT BEING A SPORTS FAN IN TORONTO IS LIKE SO MUCH OF THE TIME. (Sportsnet, 7 p.m.)

If you aren’t a sports person (and given Toronto’s sports teams, that seems like a definite possibility), The Voice has progressed to the “live playoffs,” which are the first bits where viewers actually get to vote. As always, the contestants by this point are a terrifically skilled lot, and Usher and Shakira have proven themselves to be entertaining coaches/judges (we already knew Adam Levine and Blake Shelton’s aggro-bromance wouldn’t fail to be fun). So this is good. (CTV, 8 p.m.)

Tuesday

We’re going to lay odds that Constitution USA With Peter Segal, PBS’ new series about the history of the Constitution, will within two episodes cause at least four online political communities to accuse Peter Segal and PBS of bias, treason, or both. (9 p.m.)

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Mypods and Broomsticks,” which is mostly a toothless late-season Simpsons but does feature the brutally vicious introduction of Mapple to the Simpsonsverse in a scene that reminds you of what The Simpsons used to be like. “I see you’re admiring our MyCube. It’s fueled by dreams and powered by imagination.” “What does it do?” “You should ask yourself: what can I do for it?” (CFMT, 6 p.m.)

Wednesday

Karma’s A B-tch!, a show where wronged women get back at their cheating bastard husbands, is proof of two things: firstly, along with the late and lamented Don’t Trust The B—- In Apartment 23, it proves that television people really want to use the word “bitch” in show titles; and secondly, that if you just handed Slice’s network programmers a stack of old Best of the Jerry Springer Show videotapes, they would treat it like the Lost Ark. (9 p.m.)

Thursday

Community concludes yet another season hovering on the brink of cancellation but still with decent odds of being renewed simply because NBC has so few shows that have any audience whatsoever. (City, 8 p.m.)

Returning for its annual summer engagement: Wipeout. Because deep down, you just want to see people do spectacular pratfalls into swiming pools, and that is okay. (ABC, 8 p.m.)

Friday

“The One With All The Poker” is probably the first of the truly great episodes of Friends (and if you’re one of the haters who says no such things exist, you are bad and wrong). The very best episodes were either the bottle episodes featuring all six characters bouncing off one another and continually upping the ante, or the ones with the most openly sentimental endings. “Poker” has both. (TVTropolis, 8 p.m.)

Vegas comes to an end, and did anybody watch this show? We don’t even know any critics who watched this show. (Global, 9 p.m.)

The Weekend

Concluding this weekend with the usual two-hour finale-plus-reunion show: Survivor, which has presented us with an uncommonly strong season. The triple-immunity surprise play by Malcolm served up one of—if not the single best—tribal councils ever, which was immediately followed by Malcolm failing to find the second immunity idol and his immediate ouster. Shortly thereafter, when Erik found that idol and gave it (for reasons still unknown) to Andrea, Andrea decided that it was time to start blindsiding her biggest threats—which in turn caused Cochran to grow concerned and arrange her blindside, and now it appears that Cochran may be in trouble. All of this, of course, is all the sweeter because at every tribal council you get to watch poor eliminated Phillip, who is still clearly raging on the inside over being voted out, and that is delicious. (Global, 8 p.m. Sunday)

Family Tree is what happens when HBO decides to just give Christopher Guest and his buddies a TV show. There are lot of improvised scenes, a lot of Guest regulars (Michael McKean, Ed Begley Jr., Fred Willard, Bob Balaban, etc.), the eminently wise choice of Chris O’Dowd (The IT Crowd, Bridesmaids) as lead, and generally a good old time to be had by all. Recommended. (HBO Canada, 10:30 p.m. Sunday)

Oh yeah, just look at him, exuding power and intelligence like that. No way does Tywin Lannister go the way of a Gonzaga or Georgetown! (No, we haven’t read the books—why are you looking at us like that?)

Monday

The Voice returns for its fourth season, minus Cee-Lo Green and Christina Aguilera, who are both taking a season off to do other things. Their fill-ins are Usher and Shakira, and hopefully neither of them will be bad. Other than that, it’s The Voice, so you know what you’re gonna get: a singing competition show with less bad “comedy” moments than American Idol and more overall talent. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

PBS debuts 180 Days: A Year Inside An American High School, and because just any high school would not necessarily be a great documentary feature, the school in question is Washington Metropolitan High School, so the filmmakers can review the school-reform movement in depth and watch the requisite fighting young principal trying to improve the lives of her poor students. (9 p.m.)

Tuesday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “C.E. D’Oh,” where Homer becomes CEO of the nuclear power plant by freeing the canary that Mr. Burns technically named owner of the plant. Interestingly, this is one of the few “d’oh”-themed Simpsons episode titles that doesn’t refer to the “d’oh” as “(Annoyed Grunt).” “Unlike Mr. Burns, I will respect you, the working-class slob, because we are all equals! And now, as I ascend this crystal staircase to my office, I say-avert your gaze!” (Comedy Network, 8:30 p.m.)

Wednesday

Hey, did you watch The Neighbors, ABC’s sitcom about aliens living among us? Neither did we. But it’s getting renewed. The moral of this story is that there are people out there who will watch things you don’t watch. Which, come to think, explains much of television. Isn’t it amazing when we apply these little life lessons to other areas of life? Try it and see! It’s an amazing thing, we promise. (8:30 p.m.)

The Real World: Portland is in Portland, Oregon. Not Portland, Maine. This is awfully important if you spend fifteen minutes trying to find amusing facts about Portland, Maine, for a TV-column-entry-factoid sort of a thing, and then have to give up because there is quite literally nothing interesting about Portland, Maine, and then you realize it’s actually set in Portland, Oregon, and you could have just spent three or four sentences doing cheap hipster jokes for easy applause. (MTV Canada, 10 p.m.)

Thursday

1600 Penn comes to an end this week, and, unlike The Neighbors, is likely not coming back. The second moral of this week, therefore, is that TV shows that get cancelled are cancelled because they did not have enough aliens in them. (NBC, 9:30 p.m.)

Friday

This week brings the season finale of Transporter: The Series, which stars Not Jason Statham as the Transporter. Every episode of this series is the same: the Transporter has a set of rules that he never breaks, because if you’re going to be a criminal for hire you have to have rules, and then he breaks the rules anyway because of Reasons and kicks people in the face and shoots them and stuff. This is either the worst show ever or the best show ever. We are undecided. (HBO Canada, 9 p.m.)

The Weekend

Regional finals for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, AKA “March Madness” are this weekend, and as of this writing a number of high seeds have already been knocked out of the tournament early, most notably South regional division number-two seed Georgetown, which was eliminated in the first round by number-15 Florida Gulf Coast University—which was appearing in the NCAA tournament for the first time. Meanwhile, over in the West regional division, the number-three, number-four, and number-five seeds were all eliminated in the first round, and number-one Gonzaga was eliminated in the second round, so there’s still plenty of competition for the Most Awesome Underdog Story prize this year. (CBS, beginning 4:20 p.m. Saturday and continuing through the weekend)

The Bible comes to an end, suspiciously without retelling the Book of Revelations. Maybe it’ll be a DVD extra or something? Who knows. (History Television, 8 p.m. Sunday)

OH YEAH MOTHERFUCKIN’ GAME OF THRONES SEASON THREE FUCK YEAH WITH DRAGONS AND MAGIC AND NAKED PEOPLE DOIN’ IT AND EVERYTHING! **extended metal riff on electric guitar** (HBO Canada, 9 p.m. Sunday)

She really excelled in her "make music by rubbing wine glass rims" routine during the talent portion of the show.

Monday

The Voice comes to its end this week. The one indisputably good thing about The Voice is that its contestants are generally so strong that when you get down to the finalists, they all really deserve to be there. And that’s why The Voice is so much better than American Idol at this point, let alone The X Factor. This year, the contenders are Cassadee Pope (arguably the best token country singer Blake has ever coached), Nicholas David (a scraggly-looking white guy who sings like Stevie Wonder), and Terry McDermott (a Scottish rock singer who simply nails everything he’s given). All three of them are excellent singers (although we are rooting for David, because he is all scraggly-looking and that is sort of awesome). (CTV, 8 p.m.)

The CBC does its best to justify its recent budget cuts by airing all three Santa Clause movies over three successive nights, starting tonight with the first and most barely tolerable of the trilogy. We still have no idea why these movies were so ridiculously successful. Must we continue to encourage them, CBC? (8 p.m.)

Tonight, catch a sneak preview of 1600 Penn, NBC’s new sitcom about a presidential family where Bill Pullman is the President and Jenna Elfman is the First Lady and basically the pitch is “what if Arrested Development crossed over with The West Wing” and you’re not really sure if it’s going to be as good as either of those shows, but you’ll give it a shot anyway because what the hell, right? (City, 9:30 p.m.)

Tuesday

Televisualist would just like to note that, since Torontoist discussed the sorry state of the Toronto Raptors, the Raptors have won two straight. Clearly, what was required in the locker room to reignite the team’s competitive spirit was the realization that we, as a website, take them very seriously indeed. You’re welcome, Raptors! (But still fire Bryan Colangelo, please.) Anyway, the Raps visit the Cleveland Cavaliers tonight, and given that the Cavs have been awful as well, this is potentially a winnable game. Then again, it’s a road game, and our two wins have been at home…. (TSN, 7 p.m.)

It’s the super-special live finale of The Voice where somebody wins and a lot of famous people and all the eliminated contestants show up and sing at you. Could be worse. (CTV, 8 p.m.)

Wednesday

It’s the 2012 Miss Universe Pageant, for everyone who wishes it was still 1983 but with bigger numbers. (NBC, 8 p.m.)

Toddlers and Tiaras returns for a new season, because TLC’s philosophy re: Christmas is that they hate you and want you to be unhappy. (9 p.m.)

New this week: Cheer Perfection (get it? Get the pun? On “sheer perfection”? Hilarity, we tells ya) is TLC’s new docu-series about competitive cheerleaders, their coaches, and their obsessive mothers. We give it four episodes before it makes us want to murder someone, which is the over/under for TLC these days. (10 p.m.)

Thursday

This is about the right time of the season to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: late enough that it isn’t offensively early like just after American Thanksgiving, but early enough that you aren’t so deeply in the Christmas spirit that you fail to realize that the moral of the special is basically “you are worthless until you are needed by authority.” (CBC, 8 p.m.)

A White House Christmas: First Families Remember is literally a special about former First Family members telling us all how they experienced Christmas while their husband/father/brother was the most powerful man in the world. We are not sure who the target audience for this show is. It probably includes Chuck Todd, though. (NBC, 8 p.m.)

Friday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Milhouse Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” wherein Milhouse moves away and Bart has to be best friends with Lisa. “It won’t last; brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots, or Welshmen and Scots, or Japanese and Scots, or Scots and other Scots. Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!” (OMNI.1, 6 p.m.)

The Weekend

In case you missed the approximately four billion advertisements for Rita MacNeil Presents: Men of the Deeps last year, it is being rerun! Because nothing says Christmas like singing coal miners, we guess. (CTV2, 8 p.m. Sunday)

It's over! It's finally over! (Unless the results are disputed by either side, in which case it will not be over for weeks or months. But what are the odds of that happening?)

Monday

With the three dozen preliminary rounds finally done with, The Voice, current titleholder of “most convoluted singing show on TV,” finally progresses to live eliminations, in which the public finally gets to vote on who they will eliminate, as opposed to letting the judges pick forever. In any event, now each judge has a final team of five, with Blake Shelton and Adam Levine—the two who clearly have the most interest in coaching for its own sake, and also the two who clearly enjoy being on the show the most—having exceptional teams, while Cee Lo Green has his team of “unconventional” types and Christina Aguilera advances with a team composed of one brilliant singer (De’Borah) and four distaff Christina Aguilera wannabes who are not that good. Fun! (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

Franklin and Bash something season finale something nobody cares. (Bravo, 9 p.m.)

Tuesday

So tonight is the American election and basically this is what you are probably watching tonight if you are watching anything. Will the MITTROM 7.0 (and counting) finally achieve its ultimate achievement and become President of the United States, or will Barack Obama’s message of “look, politics ain’t magic, and competent and relatively honest government is as good as it gets” resound with the American public? We do not know, because despite the fact that Obama is leading in just about every poll everywhere, even in Cat Fanciers Monthly (“Which candidate do you think would be better at cat-sitting?” —Obama 90/Romney 7/Ron Paul 3), as media we have to confront the possibility that every poll on the planet is wildly biased in favour of Obama and in fact Romney’s charisma and lovable nature may triumph. American politics: it’s like watching a reality show except it really matters. (CBS and NBC start coverage at 7, CBC Newsworld, PBS, Fox and ABC start at 8, with CNN basically doing election stuff all day.)

If you are apolitical, you can watch the Raptors get pounded by the Oklahoma City Thunder. Er, we mean “compete against the Thunder.” Because the ending of this game is totally not known to us yet. Really. (TSN, 8 p.m.)

If you’re apolitical and you don’t like sports, maybe you can give Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice a try: this is your typical “Discovery Channel docu-reality show about people doing a crazy dangerous job” show, in this case portraying the lives of Bering Sea underwater miners. This sort of show is usually entertaining, so…why not. (10 p.m.)

Wednesday

The X-Factor is down to 12 finalists, and judging by the viewership numbers we bet you cannot name any of them. (“Simon Cowell” doesn’t count.) (CTV, 8 p.m.)

Ice Pilots NWT returns for another season of pretending it should be on History Television. (10 p.m.)

Thursday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” which doesn’t get aired that often in the USA anymore because it includes a Twin Towers joke (and when it does, the Twin Towers joke is often edited out). “They stick all of the jerks in Tower One!” (Comedy Network, 8:30 p.m.)

Flipping Out is back for a sixth season of pretending that it is still 2005 when professional house-flipping was a relevant thing that happened all the time and we did not live in the housing market from hell. Brought to you by Slice, the network that in many respects is still stuck in 2005. (9 p.m.)

Friday

As previously mentioned here, CTS now syndicates The West Wing on a daily basis, and tonight’s episode, “The Indians in the Lobby,” is a particular favorite because the titular characters handle the many layers of their roles so well and Allison Janney’s work with them is just splendid. Also, you get the infamous “President Bartlet calls the Butterball Hotline” sequence, which we will watch any time. “I do radio commercials for…products.” (8 p.m.)

The Weekend

Celebrating its 200th episode, Family Guy presents an hour-long special about Brian and Stewie travelling backward through time, because the show’s only chance at entertaining people for years has been to focus on Brian and Stewie (and meta-comedy about how the rest of the show kind of blows) and at least they recognize that. (Global, 9 p.m. Sunday)

In Sixty returns for a second season of documentaries about musicians who need promotion but are concerned that simply doing a new special about how great their new album is would appear crass and counter to their preferred image, so instead of just advertising they’ll get deep about how the lyrics mean so much to them. Kicking off this season: No Doubt, whose comeback album is really important to them, in fact it’s like their child, and that’s just how it is whether you buy the album or you don’t, maaaaaaan. (MuchMoreMusic, 10 p.m. Sunday)

We don't want to be accused of male gaze or anything, but...yeah, Reba's facelift? It's pretty bad.

Monday

The Voice continues to the “knockout rounds,” which are a new thing the show added this year when they decided to have twice as many people get into the semi-finals and then realized they needed another round of semi-finals—Semi-finals Deluxe, if you will—in order to knock down the competitors to a vaguely manageable number. Unfortunately, this just means they all sing some more, instead of having a boxing match or something. Knockout rounds. Whatever. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

Canada’s Worst Driver returns because, as Canadians, we can’t quite bring ourselves to laugh at Canadians doing things stupidly unless they at least have the opportunity to win prizes by redeeming themselves. Or something. (Discovery Channel, 10 p.m.)

Primeval: New World is the Canadian version of the British scientists-versus-dinosaurs series Primeval. It is set in Vancouver because of course it’s set in Vancouver. Vancouver is the place in Canada where the science fiction happens. All we get in Toronto are the high-stakes workplace dramas. There is a moral here, possibly. (Space, 10 p.m.)

Tuesday

Ellen DeGeneres receives the Mark Twain Prize for American humourists, which is sort of a lifetime-achievement award. Previous winners include Lily Tomlin, Carl Reiner, Steve Martin, Bill Cosby, and also Billy Crystal for some reason. (PBS, 8 p.m.)

More literary, and therefore more Canadian, is the hour-long special the CBC has devoted to the presentation of the 2012 Giller Prize. This year’s contenders: a bunch of books I didn’t read, sorry, because I’m the television critic and stop judging me. (9 p.m.)

Total Blackout returns to Space, because we need more of Urkel—sorry, Jaleel White—getting people to chew on other people’s butts in the dark. If you had any doubt that Space is getting “Bell-ized” to the point where it’s completely ignoring its supposed reason for existence in favour of cheap imported programming (like every other specialty channel Bell owns), doubt ye no longer. (10 p.m.)

Wednesday

Tonight is Halloween, which of course marks the Toronto Raptors season opener against the Indiana Pacers. Which they will probably lose, because the Pacers are a pretty good team and the Raptors…look, we cheer for the Raptors, and we’re glad to see Kyle Lowry and JoVal and the other new players all showing up. We even have some hopes that Demar Derozan will finally live up to his potential. But if the Raptors go .500 this year, they will have exceeded absolutely everybody’s expectations. So let’s cheer, but be realistic about it, because the Miami Heat are probably winning the next three or four championships. Seriously. The Lakers are gambling on oldness (excuse us, “experience”) and the Thunder just traded one of their most valuable players because they decided that spending money to win a championship was not really “their thing.” If those two teams ain’t beating the Heat then we sure as hell aren’t doing it. (TSN, 7 p.m.)

ABC has It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, because life is good and we deserve to have some fun. “I got a rock.” (8 p.m.)

Thursday

Performing at the 46th annual Country Music Association Awards: Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Jason Aldean, and Kelly Clarkson (wait, since when does Kelly Clarkson sing country?). Or, if you prefer, the same sort of folks who perform at each of the approximately 6,000 awards ceremonies the country music industry has every year. Televisualist is pretty sure that if we started a honky-tonk band tomorrow, by the end of the year we would have three awards just based on the law of averages. (ABC, 8 p.m.)

Friday

Last Man Standing returns for another season of Tim Allen being gratuitously sexist. Hooray! (City, 8 p.m.)

Malibu Country is Reba McEntire’s return to sitcoms! In this show, she plays a mother of two who moves to Malibu in order to restart her country-music career after she divorces her worthless husband. Not coincidentally, this is the plot of Reba, McEntire’s previous sitcom, except with country music added in. So you know what you’re gonna get, except this time around they added Lily Tomlin as McEntire’s pot-smoking mother (who, we note, would have needed to have given birth to Reba when she was 15, but whatever!) and Jai Rodriguez as A Gay Man (but admitting that gays exist is a step up for Reba sitcoms). But, really, the true pleasure of this show is watching 57-year-old Reba McEntire try to play a fortysomething single mom, which shows that Hollywood is finally trying to fake-youthen women now as well as men. Women have finally made it after all! (City, 8:30 p.m.)

The Weekend

Not quite The Simpsons rerun of the week: The Simpsons Movie is, as post-peak Simpsons anything goes, pretty decent. The jokes mostly work and the plot makes sense, which definitely makes it better than average for The Simpsons nowadays, and it doesn’t drag. So there’s that. (Global, 8 p.m. Sunday)

Yep. Zombies again.

Monday

The Voice begins its “battle rounds,” as the judges have all selected their teams and now must proceed to the winnowing-down phase. As this year’s blind auditions led to a number of moments where the judges were just outright saying “we fucked up” by not choosing certain singers, as well as the inevitable round of singers who, while competent, are not going to win this because they aren’t good enough or even as good as the aforementioned fuckups, this year’s battle rounds seem potentially less surprising than normal. But who knows? Maybe that godawful husband/wife duet Christina Aguilera picked—possibly out of spite—will surprise America! Or not. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

So CTS is syndicating The West Wing, and tonight’s episode, “In This White House,” is the one where the awesome Ainsley Hayes makes her debut. “Sam’s getting beaten up by a girl!” We never tire of that. (8 p.m.)

White Collar returns for season three, which actually aired last year in the United States and is already out on DVD, but we’re sure that Bravo has some cunning plan to make sure that Canadians don’t buy DVDs. Possibly it is the same cunning plan that prevents fans of the show from downloading or streaming the show online, which seems to be “stick fingers in ears and chant I’M NOT LISTENING over and over again.” (10 p.m.)

Tuesday

After Mitt Romney attacked PBS in the debates, Frontline presents “The Choice: 2012,” an in-depth examination of each candidate’s views on issues, policy preferences, and why Mitt Romney is a filthy liar and terrible human being unfit to be seen in public. Well, probably not that last one, because PBS is much nicer than it should be. (PBS, 9 p.m.)

We should really have some sort of template for Top Chef ripoffs. Like Ink Master, for example, which is Top Chef But With Tattoo Artists. What would go in this template? [Tom Colicchio wannabe], of course. Maybe [self-important host]? And of course [guest judge you've never heard of but is really important, trust us]. So many options. (Spike, 10 p.m.)

Wednesday

The newest “bring superheroes to TV” effort is Arrow, the CW’s completely-unrelated-to-Smallville show about Green Arrow (but definitely not the Green Arrow who was on Smallville—that is a totally different Green Arrow), except that we guess he doesn’t get called Green Arrow because…Arrow! We just like saying it with a dramatic flourish. Arrow! Maybe if we keep saying it dramatically we’ll be able to get past how charisma-less Stephen Amell is as…wait for it…Arrow! (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

Chicago Fire is NBC’s new drama about firemen who are in Chicago. Rahm Emmanuel makes a cameo in the premiere. It has nothing to do with the Major League Soccer club of the same name, and there is no swearing like there was in Rescue Me. We have already run out of interesting things to say about this show. (Global, 10 p.m.)

Nashville is, we think, probably the most ambitious pilot of the season, as it is about a legendary country singer lady (Connie Britton, aka Mrs. Coach from Friday Night Lights, who is totally awesome) who suddenly finds her status as Most Important challenged by a young, blatantly evil go-getter with no real musical talent (Hayden Panettiere). They sing a lot of country music. If they were singing pop, then it’d be just another Glee, but they’re going for a totally different demographic and one that generally does not go in for TV musicals. But it’s a really, really great pilot. We would love to see this succeed, not least because it has Mrs. Coach in it. We just aren’t that hopeful. (CTV2, 10 p.m.)

Thursday

So, with the media seemingly in uniform agreement that A) Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate and B) he also lied a shit ton but that doesn’t matter, the stakes have been raised for the vice-presidential debate. In one corner, a young, hungry, Rand-loving congressman named Paul Ryan who has shown he is not entirely comfortable lying about his deficit-enabling, poor-punching budgetary plans, because he really, really likes them a whole lot and why shouldn’t everybody, right? In the other corner, Joe Biden, who people like to mock for his gaffes—but then again, he’s also the guy who ended Rudy Guiliani being taken seriously ever again with a single sentence, so it’s kind of a double-edged sword that he wields. (American networks and CBC Newsworld, 9 p.m.)

Or instead of politicians discussing the budget you could watch actual vampires: season premiere of The Vampire Diaries. (CTV2, 9 p.m.)

Friday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “My Sister, My Sitter,” wherein Lisa babysits Bart, technically. “Simpson? Look, we’ve already been down there tonight for a sisterectomy, a case of severe butt rot, and a leprechaun fight. How dumb do you think we are?” (Comedy Network, 8:30 p.m.)

The Weekend

The Walking Dead returns for season three, and promises a lot of things that were very popular in the comic: the prison, Michonne, Shane being dead and not coming back, that sort of thing. Also, Michael Rooker’s psycho racist-hillbilly guy comes back! So that will be fun. Hopefully there will not be a lot of whining while sitting around a farmhouse, which was a large part of why season two of this show was really not very good at all. Don’t get us wrong: we totally understand that the point of zombie fiction is not the zombies, but the stories of the people who have to live in the zombie world and how they are the real monsters, et cetera and so forth. But at least do that but not in the farmhouse any more. Please. (AMC, 9 p.m.)

Were Kevin O'Leary to appear on Over the Rainbow, CBC cross-promotion would be at an all-time high! Assuming you did not, you know, reflexively throw something at your TV when O'Leary explained that Dorothy's story was "a tribute to the spirit of the entrepreneur."

Monday

The Voice returns for season three, and by now you know what you’re gonna get: a bunch of good non-famous singers; Christina and Cee Lo and Cowboy Guy and Maroon 5 Guy bantering; and Carson Daly reminding everybody that Ryan Seacrest’s job is actually really hard, you guys. The “blind auditions” begin our season, as always, and are really the most fun part of the show, so it is on, we guess. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

Men at Work has nothing to do with the classic Emilio Estevez/Charlie Sheen garbageman comedy from the early ’90s, which is a damn shame because that would be better than this painfully generic older-bros comedy. (Comedy Network, 10 p.m.)

NBC is using the Voice premiere to hype its top new comedies of the season with a sneak peek right afterward. First off is The New Normal, the comedy about a gay couple (played by a guy who starred in The Book of Mormon and the “boring lost guy” from The Hangover) that hires a sweethearted single mom to be their surrogate, which also features Ellen Barkin as an extremely bigoted senior citizen. The pilot is a bit uneven in terms of laughs, but the heart and the talent are there and it has its tone nailed down, and everybody in the TV-critic club (we get free mimosas, you know, it’s pretty awesome) is figuring that it will be this season’s breakout comedy hit. (NBC, 10 p.m.)

Following New Normal is Go On, starring Matthew Perry as Matthew Perry, because you don’t watch Matthew Perry to not see Matthew Perry, and this show gets that, which is good. Anyway, the idea here is that Matthew Perry’s TV wife recently died and his boss has ordered him to attend grief counselling, and unsurprisingly the grief-counselling group has a bunch of wacky-but-deep characters. This pilot is something of the inverse of New Normal, because while the laughs are there and the talent is there, it isn’t quite yet finding its voice. It’s not sure yet how dark it wants to be (and a comedy about grief counselling has to be at least a little bit dark), and if it wants to get laughs from silliness or black humour. But, like New Normal, it is good already and should stick around. (NBC, 10:30 p.m.)

Tuesday

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Lisa’s Wedding,” wherein a fortune teller tells Lisa’s future. A classic. “Now we’ll see what the future holds.” “The Death card?” “No, that’s good: it means transition, change.” “Oh, that’s cute.” “Ah! The Happy Squirrel!” (Did you know that the Happy Squirrel has actually become a thing in modern tarot? Well, now you do.) (Comedy Network, 8 p.m.)

Guys With Kids is another NBC sitcom, and this one is about goat farmers. No, we’re kidding, it’s about guys being dads because that is endlessly fascinating. It’s why What To Expect When You’re Expecting made 400 million dollars at the box office—no, wait, that did not happen. However, this show does have Tempesst Bledsoe in it. You remember her? From The Cosby Show? Accordingly, here is a Cosby Show–themed palindrome for you: “Lisa Bonet ate no basil.” You’re welcome. (Global, 9:30 p.m.)

Returning for season four: Parenthood. Showrunner Jason Katims spent season three trying to jam in as many Friday Night Lights alumni as possible onto the show. We support this endeavour and hope the trend continues. (Global, 10 p.m.)

Wednesday

The X-Factor was not the giant smash success that everybody expected it would be, so Simon Cowell has mega-revamped it. No more Paula! No more Nicole Sherzinger! No more announcer host guy! Instead, now we get Britney Spears and Demi Lovato as judges, and you can hear Simon Cowell praying for the trainwreck from a mile away because trainwrecks are ratings gold, we guess. We suspect, however, that there will be no examination of the possibility that perhaps people are tired of Simon Cowell. Call it a hunch. (CTV, 8 p.m.)

Thursday

It’s the finale of America’s Got Talent! This year’s finalists: a sand artist who sculpts sand to music, a team of performance painters, a dance troupe, a comic, an “earth harpist,” and a dog-trick act. No singers! For the first time in this show’s history, no singers! Truly the end of the world is upon us. The Mayans probably predicted these finalists! (City, 8 p.m.)

Glee is back, with an episode titled “The New Rachel.” However, the old Rachel is still on the show, as part of the episode will feature Rachel in New York, following her dreams, because Glee is fundamentally a show about awful, awful people, and you can’t not have Rachel in the show because she is the awfullest. (Global, 9 p.m.)

Friday

Shark Tank returns for another season of not being as good as Dragon’s Den. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

The Weekend

After CBC’s success with How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? in 2008, it was only natural that they would want to duplicate it, and Over the Rainbow, which is the same show except with contestants competing for a role as Dorothy in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz, is that duplication. If you liked Maria, you’ll probably like this. (8 p.m. Sunday)

The Mob Doctor is exactly what it sounds like! She is a doctor for mobsters but she is conflicted about it because she has no choice and this show demands many sarcasm italics! (CTV, 9 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.)

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Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin as Scatman Crothers.

Monday

On The Voice, “the battles begin” as each of the Major Singing Stars (Christina Aguilera, Cee-Lo Green, Country Guy, and Other Guy) has their team of singers assembled. Last year, this is about where The Voice started to get boring, as at this point it is just another singing competition and the hook of “they have to pick on sound alone” is dead in the water after the tryouts. But the show is relentlessly positive, which is much more nice than American Idol or The X Factor or really anything involving Simon Cowell. So that’s okay, we guess. (CTV, 8 p.m.)

Tonight’s Bachelor is the traditional “Women Tell All” episode, where the show gets approximately 50 per cent bitchier and remains about as interesting as tapioca pudding. Like, not even good tapioca pudding. The type you get at mediocre buffet restaurants. (ABC, 8 p.m.)

Tuesday

It’s Super Tuesday! Which isn’t as super as the Super Tuesday in 2008, because that Super Tuesday was 24 states (and American Samoa!) whereas this Super Tuesday is a measly 10 states. Given the last few primaries and caucuses, the general sentiment appears to be that this is the point where Mitt Romney will finally seal the deal and become the likely Republican candidate for president, which thrills everybody as much as the concept of eating an entire jar of mayonnaise with a spoon. (Did you gag when you imagined doing that? We totally did.) Of course, if Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum or both manage another round of upsets, then we could watch Mitt Romney make himself ever more dislikeable for another month or three. And that would be terrible, huh? (CNN, 8 p.m.)

We were totally surprised when we found out that Breaking In had been renewed for a second season, because, well, it was a fun, low-rated sitcom on Fox, and those generally die quickly. But it’s back for a second season, so we’re not going to complain: this show is a plucky little sucker and we’re glad to see Christian Slater in a show that is not terrible, because Christian Slater deserves to be in something good again. (Fox, 9:30 p.m.)

Wednesday

America’s Next Top Model returns for season 18 (seriously, we don’t know how this show keeps on going). This season’s twist is that half of the contestants are former competitors on Britain’s Next Top Model, which means that at some point in the future former competitors from Canada’s Next Top Model will probably go south to compete on ANTM and Tyra Banks will strive to find new ways to be witty about that. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

Revenge For Real is a news show themed on ABC’s hit soap Revenge (which is trashy, but fun), wherein real stories of murderous revenge in the Hamptons are recounted. You can skip this, unless you were one of those people who always enjoyed Unsolved Mysteries more than you should have done. (City, 10 p.m.)

Thursday

The Genie Awards happen! The show will last one hour. That is the Canadian movie industry in a nutshell for you, folks: our major awards show lasts one hour long and airs at eight o’clock. (CBC)

Friday

This week on Grimm: nobody cares! (CTV, 9 p.m.)

The Simpsons rerun of the week: “The Bob Next Door,” in which nobody believes Bart when he believes Sideshow Bob has moved in next door. SPOILER: Sideshow Bob has of course moved in next door. “Now that it’s empty, who’s gonna buy their house? What if someone moves in with two Barts? Or four teenage Barts?” (Fox, 11 p.m.)

The Weekend

Game Change is HBO’s adaptation of the book of the same name, about the 2008 American presidential election. The movie focuses on the Republican campaign, as the Democrats are all entirely offstage, and within the campaign focuses on Sarah Palin and the fact that she was completely and totally unprepared to be vice-president. Julianne Moore inhabits Palin so completely you will frequently forget that you are watching Moore and not Palin. Ed Harris’ John McCain is a less-perfect imitation, but his performance is as solid as you would expect from a Hollywood veteran. Woody Harrelson, as campaign manager Steve Schmidt, plays “Woody Harrelson as a campaign manager,” but hell with it, he’s entertaining. This is a really great movie from HBO. Don’t miss it if you can see it. (Saturday, 9 p.m.)

Bob’s Burgers returns for a second season, and although we still wish that most of the female characters on this show were voiced by actual women rather than men doing their impressions of what they think women sound like (seriously, it’s just distracting whenever a female character who isn’t voiced by Kristen Schaal says anything at all), it’s still a funny show, and a nice change of pace from the Seth McFarlane animation empire that dominates Fox. (Global, 8:30 p.m. Sunday)