MONDAY
MAY 12
2014

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Fox, 9:00 p.m. ET

Last week’s miniseries relaunch hit all the right notes. It brought back the best characters (Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer and Mary Lynn Rajskub’s Chloe), established power figures (William Devane as the new President) and female leads (the returning Kim Raver and the new-to-24 Yvonne Strahovski), and made smartly relevant plot points involving drone strikes and Internet spreaders of government secrets. The momentum is strong, too, so here comes hour number three of Jack’s newest (and, eventually, shortened) very bad day.

 
  
 
 

HBO, 9:00 p.m. ET

This new documentary presents mostly everyday people who talk of losing their mothers at a young age – hence the show’s title – and how that affected them. There are some celebrities, too, who speak candidly and movingly of their own private early losses: Jane Fonda, Rosie O’Donnell, Molly Shannon. But there are very few male voices here, which is a missed opportunity. Perhaps I expected more from this particular program, in both context and impact, because my own mother died when I was 10. So I’m not only a viewer of The (Dead Mothers) Club – I’m also a member.

 
  
 
 

PBS, 10:00 p.m. ET

This new documentary by Jason Osder is an archival study of a literally incendiary moment in Philadelphia history. It’s the moment when Philadelphia police, in a standoff with members of the radical urban group MOVE, surrounded the group’s West Philly townhouse to evict them – and when the MOVE members refused, the police dropped an “incendiary device” on the roof by helicopter and, as was admitted afterward, “let the fire burn,” resulting in 11 deaths, including those of five children. Osder doesn’t conduct any new interviews for this Lens report. Instead, he scoured archives to find, and put together, footage from the period, shown on live local TV stations as the standoff built and climaxed. I was a TV critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer then, and watching it on television was one of the most unbelievable live stories I ever covered. Check local listings.

 
  
 
 

FX, 10:00 p.m. ET

Last week’s double dose of Louie should have erased any fears that Louis C.K. may have lost some edge during his long hiatus. If anything, he’s returned more refreshed, and refreshing, than ever. (Who else would have concocted the plot twist in last week’s second episode that turned a one-night stand into an emergency room visit?) So strap in and enjoy the ride, because two more fresh episodes are shown tonight.

 
  
 
 

NBC, 10:01 p.m. ET

SEASON FINALE: We now know that Berlin, in the context of this show, is a person, not a place – and specifically, is the person who has had Red [James Spader] in his sights for a while. All the people on “the Blacklist,” as well as some of the people around Liz (Megan Boone), Red’s off-again, on-again agency handler, are stuck somehow in Berlin’s spider web. Tonight, series producer Jon Bokenkamp promises “a game changer,” but the series already has changed the game for NBC, and helped drag the network out of its multi-year ratings slump.

 
  
 
 
 
 
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David Bianculli

Founder / Editor

David Bianculli has been a TV critic since 1975, including a 14-year stint at the New York Daily News, and sees no reason to stop now. Currently, he's TV critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and is an occasional substitute host for that show. He's also an author and teaches TV and film history at New Jersey's Rowan University. His 2009 Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour', has been purchased for film rights. His latest, The Platinum Age of Television: From I Love Lucy to the Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific, is an effusive guidebook that plots the path from the 1950s’ Golden Age to today’s era of quality TV.