NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: Part 3 of 3. If you can fight fire with fire, why not fight auditions with auditions, and judges with judges? In an effort to try and blunt tonight’s season premiere of Fox’s
The X Factor, NBC has added a third installment to this week’s multi-night season premiere of its own celebrity-judged musical competition series,
The Voice. (And for Simon Cowell's thoughts on
The Voice's blunt efforts, see Ed Bark's
Uncle Barky's Bytes.)
Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: Part 1 of 2. For its second season, X Factor grand pooh-bah Simon Cowell has retained fellow host L.A. Reid, but otherwise cleared the decks to make room for two new female judges: young singer and tween TV star Demi Lovato and former pop-princess icon, Britney Spears. As kids, both Spears and Voice judge Christina Aguilera once co-starred on The New Mickey Mouse Club. Now their career paths cross again — this time as prime-time TV rivals.
DirecTV Audience Network, 9:00 p.m. ET
SERIES FINALE: It all ends tonight: The legal case pitting Patty (Glenn Close) against Ellen (Rose Byrne), the intricately interwoven story threads, and this ambitious, wonderful series itself, which began on FX in 2007 and ends tonight, five years later. Trust this excellent show to leave to final stones unturned, and to live up to the exhaustive, sinister threat of its VLA theme song: “When I get through with you / There won’t be anything left.”
PBS, 9:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s entry in the epic Wagnerian opera focuses on the Wotan clan — specifically, on Wotan’s daughter, the original warrior princess: Brunnhilde, played by series co-host Deborah Voight. Check local listings.
Showtime, 9:00 p.m. ET
SEASON PREMIERE: James Brown, Cris Collinsworth and Phil Simms are back for another new season of this long-running series, kicking off again (so to speak) after the NFL teams completed their first official week of the 2012 pro football season.