TV: Five shows worth watching tonight: Feb. 7
A select viewing guide for Tuesday, Feb. 7
COMEDY Glee Fox, Global, 8 p.m. ET/PT Ratings have been steadily sliding – in both Canada and the U.S. – for this once-popular comedy/musical series in its third season, so bring on the pop-culture guest stars! Tonight’s new episode features the nineties top-40 oddity Ricky Martin as the night-school teacher Mr. Martinez, who breaks out the tight pants to instruct the New Directions glee club in a Spanish singing assignment. In other news, Rachel (Lea Michele) unwisely breaks the news of Finn’s (Cory Monteith) marriage proposal to blabbermouth Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Mercedes (Amber Riley), who has her own romantic entanglements to navigate.
DRAMA NCIS Los Angeles CBS, Global, 9 p.m. ET/PT Apparently time moves at an accelerated pace while working for the government. Although this successful spinoff of the sturdy NCIS series is only in its third season, tonight’s episode finds the hotshot agents Callen (Chris O’Donnell) and Sam (LL Cool J) celebrating five years together as partners. To mark the occasion, they go undercover to investigate the disappearance of a diplomatic service van that was transporting a mysterious package from the U.S. State Department. Canadian actor Currie Graham guest stars.
COMEDY Raising Hope Fox, CITY-TV, 9:30 p.m. ET/PT Still the danged funniest half-hour on Tuesday nights (sorry, but that’s how people on this show talk), this sophomore sitcom regularly shifts the spotlight away from the central storyline of single dad Jimmy (Lucas Neff) and onto his even more dysfunctional parents Burt (Garret Dillahunt) and Virginia (Martha Plimpton). Like tonight, which finds Burt fretting about filing his taxes and Virginia looking for a new business venture. Her solution: Reading tarot cards, which becomes a scary proposition when her predictions begin coming true.
REALITY Canada’s Handyman Challenge HGTV, 10 p.m. ET/PT More Canadian than a double-double at Tim Hortons, this series is explained entirely in its title. The concept features homegrown TV makeover experts Mike Holmes (Holmes on Homes), Scott McGillivray (Income Property), Bryan Baeumler (Leave It to Bryan) and Jillian Harris (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition) counselling and judging a group of contestants vying to become Canada’s best fix-it person. In tonight’s show, the eight finalists form four teams to construct bunk beds. The true test comes when the losing team receives a surprise “face-off” challenge: wall-painting against their former partner, with the loser sent packing.
MOVIE Cujo AMC, 10 p.m. ET; 7 p.m. PT Described by Stephen King as a “big, dumb slugger of a movie,” this thriller scared the wits out of moviegoers back in 1983. Taking considerable liberties from King’s original novel, the film stars Dee Wallace as Donna, a frustrated Maine housewife who brings her young son along when she takes her ailing car to a mechanic living on a nearby farm. Bad move, as it turns out, since the mechanic’s Saint Bernard, named Cujo, has been infected by a rabid bat and has become a massive, slobbering killing machine. Note: The movie has a happier ending than the book, but it’s still pretty unpleasant.