“Top Chef”Wednesday 10pm, BravoWith last week’s stunning news that “Project Runway” is jumping ship to Lifetime (and seriously, how nuts is that?), Bravo desperately needs to keep its second-best reality competition at the top of its game. Thankfully, “Top Chef”’s fourth season is plenty spicy. Never have I seen a surlier bunch of cooks in […]

“Secret Talents of the Stars”Tuesday 10pm, CBS It’s no “Circus of the Stars,” but in these post-ironic times, it’ll have to do. A dozen or so marginally famous people will amaze and astound you, and debase themselves for your viewing pleasure, as they show off talents other than the ones that made them, well, marginally […]

“The Real World Awards”Wednesday 10pm, MTV An entire master’s thesis could be (and probably has been) written on “The Real World,” analyzing its pop culture relevance as grandpappy to the reality TV craze and its early focus on legitimate social issues facing late-20th-century youth, and then dissecting its descent into a televised Petri dish filled […]

“Battlestar Galactica: Revisited”Thursday 10pm, Sci-Fi Channel This half-hour special gives you everything you need to know about the critically acclaimed sci-fi show, conveniently airing before its fourth and final season begins next week. Countless critics (myself included) have praised “Galactica,” and it really is a fantastic show. People get spooked by the “sci-fi” banner, and […]

“The Riches”Tuesday 10pm, FXThis show is fantastic, but it stresses me out. The amazing Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver play Wayne and Dahlia Malloy, a married couple that are part of the Irish Traveler community. While fleeing their con-man tribe, they caused an accident that resulted in the death of Doug and Cherien Rich, a […]

“Human Giant”Tuesday 11pm, MTV Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer are two of the more reliably funny contributors on VH1’s increasingly inconsistent “Best Week Ever.” The two of them, along with award-winning stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari, make up comedy troupe Human Giant. Giant is kind of the next permutation of the sketch show, very much in […]

“New Amsterdam”Tuesday 9pm, Fox This supernatural cop drama was initially slated as part of Fox’s fall schedule, but it got unceremoniously dumped to midseason before it ever aired. The show has a couple things working against it, specifically a no-name cast and a fairly out-there concept. It’s like something Anne Rice would’ve cooked up before […]

“Big Brother”Tuesday 9pm, Wednesday & Sunday 8pm, CBS Due to the strike (which is over! Yay!), CBS brought back its tacky summer reality staple early this year. The twist this time around is “’Til Death Do You Part,” meaning that the players have been grouped into couples via personality tests, and then forced to play […]

“Make Me a Supermodel”Thursday 10pm, Bravo I was initially disappointed with Bravo’s latest reality talent competition. The fact that it’s being taped right now—so that America can vote on which pretty people stay or go—gives each episode a manic feel that I first found off-putting. But I’ve slowly gotten over it, and now I’m completely […]

“Jericho”Tuesday 10pm, CBS “Jericho” had one of the coolest premises of the 2006-07 season: small Midwestern townspeople struggle in postapocalyptic America while trying to figure out what the hell happened. Unfortunately, the execution was uneven and the ratings reflected that. CBS canceled the drama at the end of Season 1, which prompted a fierce petition […]