Televisualist: Neil Patrick Harris Was Otherwise Occupied

By Christopher Bird

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.

But how could this show have been cancelled? Look how many white people it has in it!

Monday

The Biggest Loser concludes. Nobody died yet! That’s a plus for this show! (NBC, 9 p.m.)

Tonight on Hollywood Game Night: Kesha, presumably in an episode taped before a judge decided that it was fair to force her to work with her alleged rapist. Perhaps her playing charades with Mira Sorvino and Taye Diggs will get your mind off that. (CTV2, 8 p.m.)

Jade Fever returns for a second season of… people who mine jade! Yep! They sure do mine them some jade. (Discovery, 10 p.m.)

TLC introduces a new theme night, and that night is, well, Fat Night. Kicking off with My 600-Lb. Life: Transformed, the new iteration of the 600 Lb Life franchise—and yes, it’s a franchise—is about massive weight loss projects of grossly obese people. However, somewhat more offensive is Fat Chance, a reality show where every episode features one overweight person trying to lose weight in three months so they can express romantic affection to someone, which is really sort of grotesque. But the T in TLC doesn’t stand for Thinking! (8 p.m. and 10 p.m. respectively)

About the Business: a new reality show about “glamorous entreprenuers” (not our typo—come on, BET) in the entertainment industry. It’s more or less an extension of the Real Housewives franchise—come on, you knew that was a franchise already—except it’s even less willing to pretend the cast didn’t spontaneously generate out of nowhere. Whether or not such honesty is a plus, we leave to you. (10 p.m.)

Tonight there is yet another Republican primary debate, and now that Jeb! is gone and most of the distraction candidates have bowed out, this will be the first time we really get to see what happens when Donald Trump and Marco Rubio really go after each other. Maybe they will both spontaneously combust! And then set Ted Cruz on fire! We can but dream. (CNN, 8 p.m.)

Clipped: a god-awful sitcom about mostly young barbers/stylists (plus George Wendt as an old gay barber) that was already cancelled in the United States last year. Man, I bet they didn’t pay a lot for the Canadian re-airing rights! Which is why you get to watch it now! (Comedy Network, 10:30 p.m.)

AMC’s put 3:10 to Yuma into its regular movie rotation lately and it’s one of those movies that seems to have fallen down the memory hole almost a decade later (“wait, Christian Bale and Russell Crowe were in a western together? Are you sure?”), which is a pity because it’s a really fine movie: good plot, good acting, good direction, good everything. (7 p.m.)

Oh look it’s the 88th Annual Academy Awards! Which this year has caused a bit of a kerfuffle because of the lack of black people being nominated for, like, awards and such. This is as opposed to the fact that the Oscars are at best an amusing side exercise that have little to do with actually rewarding film excellence but rather a specific idea of what constitutes film excellence, which in truth often doesn’t have anything to do with actual quality at all (we’re looking at you, movies with Eddie Redmayne in them, and also Crash, always Crash). And the award ceremony has also become increasingly sterile as the it becomes less about awarding excellence and more about promoting the idea of Movies As A Valuable Part Of Our Lives. So boycott it, or watch it because you want to see if Chris Rock says anything funny. Or whatever. (CTV, red carpet starts at 8 p.m., ceremony at 8:30 p.m.)