A few quick thoughts on a week when, in my neck of the woods, it was too hot to do much of anything but stay in and watch TV. Under normal circumstances, a dip in a pool would be just the thing, but leave it to America's Got Sideshow Talent to ruin even that image. Metaphor of the week: a 50-year-old daredevil taking a high dive into a shallow kids' pool. That's Talent in a nutshell: Shallow and all wet. And yet popular, in the greasy junky way of the onion blossom booth at the county fair...
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Inside the Actors Studio (Tuesday, 8/7c, Bravo)
James Lipton welcomes the cast of a modern instant classic, ABC's Modern Family, to the stage for an interview that includes questions tossed to the characters each of the stars plays. So while Actors Studio celebrates the careers of Ed O'Neill, Sofia Vergara, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet, we'll also hear from Jay and Gloria, Claire and Phil, and Mitchell and Cameron.
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Inside the Actors Studio (Monday, 7/6c, Bravo)
Even in those moments when it succumbs to fawning self-parody, there's something about James Lipton's craft/career-focused Q&A's that I find irresistibly endearing. (May have something to do with my nostalgia for what Bravo was like before all of those heinous Real Housewives took over the network.) This week, this marginalized show — notice how it airs outside prime-time parameters — welcomes its first-ever graduate from the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University. Said successful alum being Bradley Cooper, beloved by TV fans for his work on Alias but now busy with a film career including The Hangover, Wedding Crashers and the new Limitless opposite Robert De Niro.
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Lie to Me
8/7c Fox
Cal and Co. pull double duty as they return from their six-week holiday hiatus with two episodes, airing back to back. First up: A rich friend of Cal's daughter whose father is in a pricey mental hospital thinks something fishy is going on, so Cal gets himself committed there to snoop around. But Cal might not be just acting crazy. Paula Malcolmson (Sons of Anarchy) plays Cal's late mother in a hallucination sequence. Then a wealthy woman hires the Lightman Group to check out her new young boyfriend (Sam Page). There's something fishy about him, too. — Paul Droesch
Read on for previews of the BCS Championship Game, Inside the Actors Studio, Piers Morgan's Life Stories, Cake Boss: Next Great Baker, Men of a Certain Age and The X Life.
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Glee
8/7c Fox
With Rachel and Finn in Splitsville, and Will clearly heartbroken about Emma and Carl's quickie wedding, New Directions might need a little Christmas as the show heads into its winter's nap. (Tonight's holiday-themed show is the fall finale.) True, the kids did advance to Regionals last week, along with the Warblers (so we'll still see a lot of Kurt when new episodes resume next year), but the overall vibe could be better. And, of course, there's a Grinch to contend with at McKinley High. You can imagine who she is. — Paul Droesch
Read on for previews of Inside the Actors Studio, College Basketball, Minute to Win It, In Treatment, Detroit 1-8-7 and Warehouse 13.
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