Tonight's TV Hot List: Monday, Aug. 17, 2009
The Closer
The Closer
9/8c TNT
A little close-up on The Closer: The crime-time show begins closing its seasonal string of episodes (the summer finale airs next week), and Sosie Bacon, thespian daughter of Kevin Bacon and series star Kyra Sedgwick, continues her guest-star arc tonight. Brenda, while playing kiddie sitter to rebellious niece Charlie (Bacon), must snoop when a shooting on a school parking lot results in one person's death and another's critical wounding. Landing squarely in the middle of the case: none other than Charlie. Meanwhile, gruff but lovable Provenza is ready for a big life change. — Dean Maurer
Glenn Martin, DDS
8/7c Nickelodeon
There's a new dysfunctional animated family on the block: the Martins. Dad Glenn (voice of Kevin Nealon) is a dentist who wants his family to bond more, so he packs them up in an RV and takes them on the open road. In the series premiere, Glenn decides the best way to combat his family's overuse of technology is to experience the simple life by living among the Amish. Much to his chagrin, his family adapts to Amish ways better than he does. Catherine O'Hara and Judy Greer also provide voices. — Jennifer Sankowski
House
8/7c Fox
House is a patient tonight, but that's not what makes this episode from March so unusual. In fact, it's only a plot device to get him next to the real patient of the week, an injured bicyclist named Lee (Mos Def) who can't move or talk or communicate in any way. The docs treating him think he's comatose, but the patient in the next bed (that would be our antihero, House, who was hurt in a motorcycle mishap) has other ideas. Much of the episode is told from Lee's point of view: You see what Lee sees. — Paul Droesch
Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi
9/8c HBO
Ian Olds, the director of this 2009 film, won a Best New Documentary Filmmaker Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, but it must have been a bittersweet acceptance. His subject, an Afghan named Ajmal Naqshbandi, paid the ultimate price for his work as a "fixer," or someone who assists foreign journalists with translation and making contacts. Naqshbandi was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was murdered by the Taliban in 2007 after being kidnapped along with an Italian reporter and their driver. — Joe Friedrich
Weeds
10/9c Showtime
Following the birth of her son with Esteban, Nancy's extended family gets even more extensive when Esteban's daughter, Adelita (Seychelle Gabriel), shows up. And she arrives with an entirely different set of complications for her stepmother to contend with. This sends Nancy to prison for a head-to-head with Guillermo (Guillermo Diaz), who makes a most unusual request of her in exchange for his help dealing with "her little problem." — Ray Stackhouse
