SUNDAY, MARCH 9
BREAKING BAD
AMC | 10 P.M.
Season finale of the darkly absurd drama about a terminally ill teacher (Bryan Cranston) with a crystal-meth lab.
THE WIRE
HBO | 9 P.M.
Good night, Baltimore. The acclaimed series wraps up, for good, with a cynicism that cuts deep, sharp and clean.
MONDAY, MARCH 10
HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL
WE | 10 P.M.
New documentary series follows teenage girls and their hurdles growing up.
TUESDAY, MARCH 11
BEAUTY AND THE GEEK
CW | 8 P.M.
Start of season 5. This time the geeks compete against the beauties. It all sounds so potentially cobra-and-mongoose!
AMERICAN IDOL
8 P.M. | FOX
The final 12 perform live—can we please have bluegrass night?—and then on Wednesday begins the one-singer-at-a-time elimination show.
THURSDAY, MARCH 13
IT'S K-FED!
LIL' BUSH
10:30 P.M. | COMEDY CENTRAL
Second-season premiere introduces Lil' Karl Rove, a would-be rapper. The voice? Kevin Federline!
SATURDAY, MARCH 15
WISEGAL
9 P.M. | LIFETIME
TV movie with widowed mom Alyssa Milano falling for a handsome mobster (Jason Gedrick). Things don't work out. Shoot.
FOX, March 10, 8 p.m. ET |
DRAMA
Elizabeth Canterbury is a defense attorney with a ferocious temperament, a disregard for the rules and a serious portfolio of personal crises. She likes to drink, and she and her law-professor husband can barely keep their marriage together as they recover from an unsolved tragedy, the disappearance of their young son. This is a meaty role, and Julianna Margulies is an unapologetic carnivore as an actress. She tears into the part with her bare hands and wolfs it down in lusty gobbles. You almost want to suggest she slow down and use her napkin. She's not being terribly subtle—she makes Helen Mirren as Prime Suspect's Jane Tennison look mincingly discreet—but she's fun to watch.
Denis Leary is one of the show's executive producers, and Law has some of Rescue Me's messy emotional drive. What's unclear is how compelling the actual court scenes will be: The plot, which hinges on getting an abusive father onto the witness stand, involves a legal maneuver that's neither ethical nor remotely believable.
FOX, March 14, 8 p.m. ET |
COMEDY
Now how did actress Parker Posey wind up here, smiling through a sentimental sitcom? Brisk, brittle, stylish, she could have been stealing scenes on Cashmere Mafia or Lipstick Jungle. Instead she's playing Sarah Tompkins, a single Manhattan career woman who, learning she can't conceive, decides to use her sister as a surrogate. The sister, named Coco (Lauren Ambrose), is a sour-looking underachiever who doesn't belong (and hasn't been present) in book editor Sarah's world. But the sisters have a strong bond—the show's title refers to a fictional character Sarah based on Coco's childhood imaginary friend—and a deal is struck. It's a cute, warm concept, but it's also pretty hard to imagine Posey and Ambrose (Six Feet Under) sharing appletinis, let alone DNA.
Bravo, March 12, 10 p.m. ET
REALITY
The launch of the fourth season makes for a nice appetizer, hinting at even better meals to come as the show gets going in the Windy City. We're introduced to a tantalizing assortment of chefs, including both partners of a lesbian couple and a New Zealander who makes pizza with Marmite. My favorite moment comes when star chef and judge Tom Colicchio rules on one dish—"The bread crumbs were thick, way too thick"—with a leaden tone of doom that would cause a soufflé to collapse in tears.
TV'S HOTTEST MANLY MEN
The History Channel's Ax Men (March 9, 10 p.m. ET) is the latest reality series about guys doing dangerous work in the great outdoors. It's a trend: He-ality.
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When he's not doting on his TV family, the actor helps inner-city kids get a chance to experience Shakespeare
"Acting is a wonderful vehicle for healing and expanding your sense of self," says Tony Plana, America Ferrera's loving dad on the ABC hit Ugly Betty (returning with new episodes April 24). He's father to a vital theater program too: East L.A. Classic Theatre, which he co-founded in 1992, is dedicated to instilling that feeling in kids through Shakespeare productions performed by minority casts. Among recent shows: a mariachi Much Ado About Nothing and a zoot suit Romeo and Juliet. "We've got kids who've never gone to the beach," let alone the theater, says Plana (right, with Ferrera), 55. "They've never heard the word play."
The Cuban-born Plana, who came to the U.S. when he was 8, got his first professional stage role in 1977. "The movies didn't feel like a place I belonged," he says. "I didn't see a lot of Latinos there, didn't see a lot of role models." Now he can count himself as one. Says Ana Ortiz, who plays his oldest daughter on Betty: "I tell him, 'You better run for office.' He's like, 'I have no time. I'm too busy saving the world.'"
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
