MONDAY
SEPTEMBER 17
2012

BIANCULLI’S BEST BETS

 

Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET

SEASON PREMIERE: As we pick up the story, Brennan (Emily Deschanel has been on the run for three months, hiding from everyone including Booth (David Boreanaz) — and she’s blonde. But before the season-opening hour is up, all that will change.
 
  
 
 

NBC, 8:00 p.m. ET

The blind auditions continue. NBC has stretched them out to almost absurd lengths this year — but why not? They’re the best part of the show — as well as the secret weapon in maintaining supremacy over Fox’s The X Factor.
 
  
 
 

Encore, 8:00 p.m. ET

Part 1 of 6. Encore launches its miniseries revival with one of the best: NBC’s 1980 masterpiece starring Richard Chamberlain, based on the novel by James Clavell. Toshiro Mifune and Yoko Shimada co-star, in this fascinating, refreshingly intelligent story of a 17th-century British sea captain whose ship is beached off the Japanese coast — and who finds himself at the mercy of an utterly alien society and its seemingly unfathomable rulers. Watch the first 20 minutes, and I guarantee you’ll be hooked for the entire six parts.
 
  
 
 

NBC, 10:00 p.m. ET

SERIES PREMIERE: The biggest name behind the scenes here, J.J. Abrams, generates the biggest hopes for this series, but its pilot is much less than a Lost-like slam dunk. For one thing, Tracy Spiridakos’ teen heroine is an arrow-wielding toughie straight from The Hunger Games. For another, even in a show with such a high concept at its core — the power goes off, and never comes back on — the notes of incredulity are deafening. When she goes to find her uncle in the blacked-out city of Chicago, he’s literally the first guy she meets. Suspending disbelief isn’t enough. You have to slaughter it. For a full review, see Ed Bark’s Uncle Barky’s Bytes.

 
  
 
 

Showtime 2, 10:00 p.m. ET

One of my son Mark’s favorite spider-web movies — and, I have to admit, one of mine, too. And it’s amazing, after I introduce my film history students to the choreographed insanity of Busby Berkeley, how many of them mention the drug-trip bowling-alley sequence in Lebowski as a modern nod to something they didn’t know existed. Dude!

 
  
 
 
 
 
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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.