“Hair Battle Spectacular”
Tuesday 10pm, Oxygen
I’m not sure what else you need to know on this one. It’s a new reality show about hair battles, and apparently it’s spectacular. What’s a hair battle, you ask? It’s when people take hues and build them into completely outrageous follicular sculptures. Cynicism aside, a good hair battle is pretty amazing to watch. The bafflingly popular Brooke Burns hosts the competition, in which 10 hair artists going by names like “Minista,” “Fingaz,” “Tsunami,” “Cajmonet” and “Malibu” (“American Gladiators” called—it wants its codenames back) take on a variety of cracked-out hair challenges in the hopes of winning $100,000. So basically it’s “Shear Genius” but intentionally ridiculous.
“Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff”
Sunday 10pm, Comedy Central
The Comedy Central roasts are a reliably good time (the William Shatner one is legendary), and given the Hillshire Farms gift basket of cheesiness David Hasselhoff has offered the world over the past 30 years, there is plenty of material for the comics and ex-co-stars to rib him over. “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane serves as Roast Master, corralling a veritable Who’s Who of has-beens and never-weres just aching to spew their bile, including Pamela Anderson, Jerry Springer, George Hamilton, Hulk Hogan, and comics Greg Giraldo, Whitney Cummings, Lisa Lampanelli and Jeffrey Ross. I actually feel for them: Where you do even start picking on The Hoff? “Knight Rider”? “Baywatch”? His “music career”? His embarrassing personal scandals?
“The Big C”
Monday 10:30pm, Showtime
Laura Linney becomes the latest critically acclaimed film and stage actress to leap to the comforts of the small screen with this new dramedy about a middle-aged school teacher whose terminal cancer diagnosis forces her to completely rethink her life. Linney plays said woman, Cathy, who learns of her illness when the series picks up, but is reluctant to disclose it to anyone, even as she makes major changes. She’s kicked out her selfish, immature husband (Oliver Platt) and has started to figuratively kick the ass of her bratty son. Meanwhile she’s embraced other, stranger characters like her embittered elderly neighbor and her spitfire of a student (played by Gabourey Sidibe, Oscar-nominee for Precious). And of course she’s wrestling with an attraction to her brutally hot young oncologist. Interesting premise, but how long can they stretch it?
