At 86, Mel Brooks is still the life of the party, a consummate ham and peerless joke-spinning storyteller. "I've come to stop the show," announces the irrepressible comic dynamo as he does just that, breaking into song mid-interview and reinforcing why PBS' American Masters titled its latest must-see career profile Mel Brooks: Make a Noise (Monday, check tvguide.com listings). His brilliant career in TV (Your Show of Shows, Get Smart), the movies and Broadway makes him an overdue American Masters subject, and his unflagging comic energy keeps everyone amused — including an intrusively visible camera crew. "I'm head over heels in love with myself," Brooks says, only half-joking. read more
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.
read more"Clear!"
How many times have you heard that while watching a medical show? Now meet The CW's Emily Owens, M.D. (9/8c), who's such a magically giddy sprite of a surgical intern she can actually "Clear!" a room, just by showing up. My living room, anyway. Or any room in which she might suddenly appear, babbling in gratingly incessant voice-overs that make Meredith Grey seem a model of restraint. A more toxically cutesy, aggravatingly precious, aren't-I-adorable waste of talent would be hard to imagine.
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