culture
Televisualist: Only 360 Years Until the Saturday Night Live 400th Anniversary Special
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.
“Man, I could totally slap any person here that I wanted to. I am the king of slaps.”
Monday
Ascension debuted back in December on American television, but the CBC has chosen for some reason to have its Canadian debut two months later, as Canadian networks do. Anyway, the upshot of having Canadian debuts two months after the American debut is that we know if it’s good or not, and Ascension is middling to okayish: fun concept (murder mystery on a “generation ship” traveling through space), decent actors and effects, but the characters are paper-thin and the dialogue boring. (9 p.m.)
Tuesday
Kate Plus 8‘s season finale focuses around Kate’s “most memorable moments,” none of which will presumably involve her ex-husband who used to be in the show. (TLC, 9 p.m.)
Wednesday
Every year The Middle has a Valentine’s episode, and every year their theme remains the same: Valentine’s Day sucks and it’s basically forced on everybody by generations’ worth of coercive marketing. Which is why The Middle is a fun show. (ABC, 8 p.m.)
Thursday
People made a lot of fun of The Slap when its trailer aired during the Super Bowl, on the basis that it seems kind of silly to have an eight-episode miniseries based around a guy slapping a kid once. But the Australian miniseries from which it was adapted was actually quite good, and they’ve lined up a pretty amazing cast (Peter Sarsgaard, Uma Thurman, Thandie Newton, Zachary Quinto, Brian Cox). So maybe this’ll be good and inspire people to have “Slap parties,” which sounds to us like a grand accident waiting to happen. On the other hand, maybe it’ll be just like when American TV people said, “Hey, let’s remake Broadchurch exactly the same, except in America.” (NBC, 9 p.m.)
AMC has a sorta wolf theme going tonight, airing first Teen Wolf (7 p.m.) and then Cujo (9 p.m.), and yeah, okay, maybe Cujo is actually about a rabid dog, but we’re just trying to link up canines that are scary, except that Teen Wolf isn’t scary at all, so who knows, maybe the thematic link is all in our heads.
Friday
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown is one of the stronger Peanuts specials, if only because it is among the most merciless (Charlie Brown has to celebrate getting a used valentine out of pity because that is as good as it is going to get for him). On the other hand, A Charlie Brown Valentine, following immediately after, is the first Peanuts special produced after Peanuts creator Charles Schulz died. You can tell because it teases Charlie Brown winning in the end, which completely misses the point of Charlie Brown’s existence as a character. (ABC, 8 p.m.)
The Weekend
The NBA All-Star Weekend is here, just in time for Valentine’s Day (?). On Saturday night, you can watch All-Star Saturday Night, which will feature the skills competition for guards, the Rising Stars game for rookie and sophomore players, the three-point shootout, and the dunk contest (i.e., the reason to watch NBA All-Star Weekend). (TSN2, 8:30 p.m. Saturday)
On Sunday, you can watch the Toronto Raptors’ own Kyle Lowry start for the Eastern Conference team in the All-Star Game itself. (TSN, 8 p.m. Sunday)
If you aren’t interested in celebrating Valentine’s Day weekend with basketball, perhaps Saturday Night Live is more your speed? On Saturday, you can first catch a Valentine’s Day special (NBC, 10 p.m.) before watching the very first SNL ever, starring George Carlin as the host (11:30 p.m.). They’re airing the very first SNL because this is the 40th anniversary season of SNL, and the 40th anniversary special is going to be packed with guests and old clips from when the show was funny. Fun fact: Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe, who were the centrepiece of a joke about how they were both younger than SNL itself on the 30th anniversary show, are now 37 and 40, respectively. It’s funny because time marches on relentlessly and now there are whole SNL sketches where the entire cast is dead! (8 p.m. Sunday)