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Televisualist: Soccer, Bea, and De Lancie
Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.
Monday
ABC reality shows traditionally have the shittiest prizes at the end (witness The Bachelor, where the winning girl gets to be some dickhead’s pump-chump for three weeks until he dumps her for a Finnish supermodel), but High School Musical: Get In The Picture takes that to a new low: the winner gets to be in a music video that plays over the end credits of High School Musical 3. Woo-hoo. (8 p.m.)
Things You Have No Idea Why The History Channel Is Playing Them, Volume XVII: The Saint, the 1997 Val Kilmer action thriller featuring a roguish freelance spy involved in a deadly Russian caper involving fusion energy. Because as we all know, in 1997 Russia started up its first fusion energy plants, ending the world energy crisis before it ever even began. History, bitches! (9 p.m.)
Tuesday
MuchMoreMusic airs The Twenty Studliest Musicians Over 40. Original title: Pretending Our Original Demographic Still Watches Our Channel And Has A Sex Drive. (8 p.m.)
Tonight, on a new episode of Wide Angle, exploring the concept of individual carbon cap-and-trade as applied to Indonesian rainforests. Sounds interesting. (PBS, 10 p.m.)
Wednesday
It is not often one says “hey, a good episode of Star Trek: Voyager.” In fact one barely ever says those words together in exactly that order. But “Q2” is actually a good episode of Voyager, because it has John De Lancie as Q in it, and Q makes all things better. Or destroys them. (Space, 8 p.m.)
The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Homer’s Enemy,” AKA “the one with Frank Grimes.” Often considered to be the high point from where the show started steadily traveling downhill by cynics; even fans who think the show rebounded in later seasons admit that this episode marks the start of the descent into the valley. Which does not make it not funny as hell, of course, but the beginning of the show’s open recognition of Homer’s essentially selfish, dangerous nature is… ominous. (CFMT, 10 p.m.)
Thursday
Tonight is the Major League Soccer all-star exhibition game, with a twist! The twist is that instead of having forming two teams to play one another, the MLS all-stars will form one team and play against… West Ham United, who have not won the FA cup since 1980. Didja ever suspect that maybe, just maybe, the Euros don’t take that MLS seriously yet? (CBC, 7 p.m.)
No, Televisualist has not said anything yet about Greatest American Dog. It is a reality show about frigging dogs. Humans on reality shows are at least there on a voluntary basis. Enough said. (E!, 8 p.m.)
Oh my god, G4TV has live, continuous coverage of the San Diego Comic Con. I am trying hard to think of things that need to be televised less and I am failing. And I’m a nerd, people. Regular schmoes would likely be even less kind. (All day.)
Friday
Tonight on Biography: Bea Arthur. Come on, you know you’ve got to watch that. (City, 8 p.m.)
Unintentional comedy alert: Hometown Legend airs on Family Channel. The unintentional comedy portion is that this movie stars Terry “John Locke on Lost” O’Quinn as a football coach who comes out of retirement to coach high school football. Pretending that his inspirational football coach is John Locke makes this an entirely different movie. One that is entertaining! If you are slightly drunk, anyhow. (9 p.m.)