Andrew Lincoln
You'd think Easter weekend might be a quiet time for TV. You'd be wrong. Easter Sunday turns out to be one of the most overstuffed nights since February's sweeps-stakes, capped by a face-off between the season finale of cable's hottest horror show and the premiere of pay cable's most deluxe epic fantasy.
AMC did not make the third-season finish of The Walking Dead (Sunday, 9/8c) available for preview, but we're already fearing the worst as the climactic showdown approaches between the Governor's troops and TV's most heroic prison gang, while failed peacekeeper Andrea swelters in the torture dungeon back in Woodbury. It's nothing new to wonder who'll live or die in this bleak post-apocalypse. But until this riveting and wrenching season, we were mostly worried about the zombie "walkers," who've taken a back seat lately to the human monsters battling for power and revenge.
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Garret Dillahunt
Oy vey. Or as Virginia Chance (Martha Plimpton) might mangle her Hebrew-isms: "Molotov! (for mazel tov)." Fox sure doesn't make it easy to say goodbye to Raising Hope as it ends its third season on a new night with back-to-back episodes (9/8c), the sort of treatment you'd normally see from a network burning off a show in which it has lost faith. Thankfully, that's not the case here. Hope has already been picked up for a fourth season, and it goes out on a delightfully deranged musical high, with Burt (the sublime Garret Dillahunt) center stage as he frantically preps for his overdue Bar Mitzvah.
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James Roday, Dule Hill
It's all screams and giggles — the screams courtesy of an insistent shrieking doorbell, while the giggles come with the territory — as USA Network's long-running hoot-dunit Psych marks its 100th episode (Wednesday, 10/9c) with a shamelessly wacky murder mystery set in a spooky mansion during a thunderous storm. It's a dark and silly night, indeed, as this Clue-inspired romp gathers colorful characters as suspects (including Lesley Ann Warren as a stuttering Miss Scarlett), while Shawn and Gus panic and mug as usual, running everyone in circles before solving the crime. Which is where the audience comes in this week, as the show goes interactive, urging fans to help decide the outcome by voting live during the episode on psych.usanetwork.com and Twitter.
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Margo Martindale and Jake Johnson
What kind of family must it be where slacker bartender Nick Miller (Jake Johnson) is seen as the responsible one? That answer becomes clear in a sporadically amusing road-trip episode of Fox's New Girl (9/8c) that takes the roomies to Chicago to lay Nick's scoundrel of a dad (former guest star Dennis Farina) to rest. The formidable Margo Martindale (Justified, The Americans) presides over the ridiculous antics as Nick's gruff but needy mom, and cable clown Nick Kroll hams it up as his emotionally volatile brother. As usual, Schmidt (Max Greenberg) hijacks the proceedings with his death neuroses, and while he wonders "What's with this open casket thing?" it's his encounter with said coffin and its contents that provides the episode's biggest laughs.
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Freddie Highmore
This is the night NBC has been waiting for all year. A rough 2013 it has been, for sure, with prime time in freefall and even institutions like the Today and Tonight shows embattled by negative PR. You might begin to think Do No Harm isn't just a bad memory, but a motto the Peacock network somehow just can't seem to live up to.
If the tide is ever to start turning, it will be on Mondays, with the return of the game-changing The Voice (8/7c) and its irresistible, instantly iconic "Blind Audition" episodes. New to the hot seats: Shakira and Usher, filling in this cycle for Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera, with NBC hoping it doesn't matter who's sitting in those revolving chairs. The show's the thing, and this has always been the best part of The Voice.
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Ben McKenzie
Send questions and comments to askmatt@tvguidemagazine.com and follow me on Twitter!
Question: This is more a commentary than a question, but what are your thoughts on Southland? Ben McKenzie and Shawn Hatosy have recently landed new pilots, so it would appear that this will be the last season of the very fine cop show Southland. Yes, the show is an ensemble and could certainly go on without the two characters they portray, but it would be a different Southland without them, even with a cast as strong as one that includes Regina King and C. Thomas Howell.
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Helen Mirren and Al Pacino
When a terrific series is truly on its game, some episodes can feel like absolute perfection. Happened Tuesday with a thrillingly entertaining and pivotal episode of FX's Justified, and the same feeling applies to Sunday's sensational The Good Wife (9/8c, CBS). It has everything: sex, suspense, surprise, humor, emotion — and as usual with this sophisticated standard-bearer for network drama, a dazzling array of guest performances.
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The American Bible Challenge
TV history, and cable's History channel, will tell you: Never bet against the Bible. While History's greatest-hits approach to The Bible (airing Sundays through Easter) continues to reap blockbuster ratings, GSN launches a second season of The American Bible Challenge (9/8c), its highest-rated game show, which could just as easily be called Are You Smarter Than a Divinity Student?
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Survivor: Caramoan - Fans vs. Favorites
When one of this season's more agreeable Survivor contestants, Dawn, tearfully declared, "I don't want to be here" during Brandon Hantz's epic and ugly tirade of a meltdown last week, I imagine she was speaking for many of us.
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Timothy Olyphant, Jim Beaver, Erica Tazel
How long has the Justified fan waited for someone to ask this question to Boyd Crowder: "Where did you get all of those teeth?" You'll likely be grinning yourself, while cringing at the edge of your seat, as the pleasures just keep multiplying — a high-octane Justified highball of great banter, tremendous suspense, clever twists and reversals — in a harrowing, hilarious and fantastically entertaining episode, so eventful you might mistake it for a season finale, but thankfully there are still two more episodes to go (Tuesday, 10/9c, FX) in this terrific fourth season.
It has all been building to this violent showdown between the forces of good (the U.S. marshals) and evil (everyone else, from Boyd's crew to an army of thugs and snipers representing the Detroit mob). The target is Drew Thompson (the great Jim Beaver), a 30-year fugitive in sheriff's clothing, currently in the marshals' custody, although they feel like sitting ducks, outnumbered and outgunned in Harlan as they calculate several desperate escape maneuvers while awaiting rescue. The episode, written by exec producer Graham Yost and Chris Provenzano, is titled "Decoy," and revolves around a series of standoffs, confrontations and subterfuges that leave few unscathed and unbloodied. Special props to Patton Oswalt as the loyal and lovably resilient Constable Bob, who even Raylan has to admit is a "tough son-of-a-bitch" by the time the dust settles, following a tense encounter outside a (metaphorically apt) high-school principal's office.
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