'Chuck' recap: The leftovers were better the first time around

Timothy Dalton was going to hold this episode of "Chuck" together with his teeth, if he had to, and, in the end, he was the element that did the most to keep the whole enterprise from falling apart. "Chuck Versus the Leftovers" wasn't a bad episode, but it offered a bad case of ... of, well, the leftovers, as many of the major plot points were either things the show has harped on endlessly this season -- like Ellie not wanting Chuck to get back into the spy game she doesn't know he's back into -- or basic plots the show has returned to again and again and again -- like the idea of the bad guys taking over the Buy More. Heck, the episode's major pop culture references were all to "Die Hard," and the show has made jokes about that movie many times, but, most notably, in the last Christmas episode the series did, "Chuck Versus the Santa Claus."

Now, "Santa Claus" is still my favorite episode of the series, so if the show has to emulate an episode, I don't mind it choosing that one. And "Die Hard," of course, is one of the all-time great movies to watch at Christmas that has very little to do with Christmas (a list that also features that other '80s classic, "Gremlins"). Plus, it's not as though the episode has very much to do with the holidays at all. Heck, it's more of a delayed Thanksgiving episode. There are certainly original elements here, but the overall effect is very much like loading up a plate with stuff you just enjoyed at Thanksgiving dinner and tossing it in the microwave. Everything still tastes good, and it's ultimately satisfying, but a lot of that comes from your warm memories of the original meal, rather than any particular excitement from reheating that meal.

But then there's Dalton. I was interested to see what the show's producers would do with Dalton when his casting was announced, but I have to admit I didn't expect anything this terrific from the show or the actor. Every time the show hands Dalton's character, Volkoff, a silly plotline -- like Volkoff being in love with Frost all of this time but apparently never doing anything about it or Volkoff demanding he get to know Frost's family over late Thanksgiving dinner -- the actor makes even the goofiest things the character does feel vaguely threatening. And the writers, who've written a fair number of goofy bad guys in the past, largely rise to the challenge of writing for Dalton. The threat to kill Jeff and Lester in this episode, something that could have been played for more laughs than it was, feels less like comic business and more like an actual threat, making Morgan's journey through a long list of "Die Hard" references that much more exciting.

Much of the time when a show lands a major guest star for a several-episode arc, that guest star is mostly just there to cash in the checks. They'll come in, say a few lines, maybe drop a few references to whatever made them famous, then head home and roll around in their giant money bin, Scrooge McDuck-style. While the show has had a few groan-inducing moments in these regards with Dalton and Linda Hamilton (whose "come with me if you want to live" wasn't nearly as witty as anyone thought it was tonight), both the series and the actors seem fully committed to this story of constant double-crosses and a deadly former British agent who went rogue. Hamilton, as Chuck's mom, alias Frost, is playing the emotional beats of the "is she good or is she evil?" storyline so well that the fact this has been done many times before is less irritating. And Dalton, as mentioned, brings such a solid note of pure evil to the proceedings that waiting to see what he'll do next is a lot of fun.

And, goodness, does this episode need that element of shock and surprise. Because just about everything in it has popped up on "Chuck" in one form or another before. Now, a show in its fourth season is obviously going to repeat itself from time to time. That's fine. But it's a problem when the return to things that may have worked at one time is as blatant as it is here. Volkoff trying to get into the holiday fun, including playing charades, just wouldn't have worked without Dalton there. Since he is, it's a lot of fun, but it can't stop the nagging sense that the show has done this and done it better before. Similarly, Morgan trying to retrieve the gun taped to his back in a ridiculous dance was the comic highlight of the episode, but it didn't negate the fact that we've seen the Buy More fall many times before and this particular crisis wasn't as interesting as those.

And that's to say nothing of the episode's most original element. (If, indeed, the basic idea of the characters discovering a new piece of technology planted by Chuck's father isn't one that the show hasn't turned to too many times, as it may very well be for some viewers.) The idea that Ellie would have a secret spy gift bequeathed to her by her father was a good one, but after we spent last week trying to guess a password, we spent this week ... trying to guess a password. And the reward at the end of the tunnel? Chuck got re-Intersected, something that needed to happen sooner or later but feels sort of abrupt happening in the way it does. I suppose an argument could be made that the Intersect that pops into Chuck's head at episode's end was meant to be another software upgrade, but it really does feel like the parents Bartowski planned this whole thing out decades ago, and that strains believability.

On the other hand, warmed-over "Chuck" is still "Chuck," just like Thanksgiving leftovers are usually delicious. I think the tone of this review makes me sound angrier about the episode than I actually was. I had fun with what was going on onscreen, even if some of it felt a little lazy. The moments that made me genuinely unhappy (like, say, Volkoff demanding to meet Frost's family) were few and far between, and for every moment that the show has turned to again and again, there was one that was brand new, like Mary having to tell Volkoff that Chuck was her son, not just some spy she was refusing to kill for some reason. Normally, the ratio of new to old is skewed more toward the new on "Chuck," and while that balance was off in "Leftovers," it didn't mean that what was there didn't offer its own enjoyment.

Some other thoughts:

• -Awesome got a lot of nice little moments here, like guessing "The Bourne Identity" at charades shortly after Chuck did or handing Chuck the laptop and excoriating the guy for getting involved in the spy game again.
• -For as much as I enjoyed Morgan's little dance, I did sort of wonder why Volkoff's lackeys didn't just shoot him. I get that he's a regular and we're supposed to? believe that the lackeys were so confused by what he was doing that they momentarily took leave of their senses, but it did diminish the danger of the story just a bit.
• -That's it for "Chuck" until January, but looking at the schedule, I don't think we'll have a ton of reruns. There are 14 episodes left, which means we'll probably take a few weeks off here and there, but we should be all new for much of the spring, which is impressive, considering the show only got a 13-episode order at first. And though the show fell to its lowest ratings ever last week, I continue to think it's likely to get at least a short fifth season. NBC has so many problem spots that it seems unlikely they'll take away a solid, stable performer, even if that show tends to get very low ratings. That doesn't mean you should stop writing letters or buying Subway sandwiches or anything, but I do think the show is in a stronger position, perversely, than it has been in years.

--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

Photo: Capt. Awesome (Ryan McPartlin, left) isn't too happy when Chuck (Zachary Levi) gets him back in the spy game. (Credit: NBC)

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'Chuck' recap: Sarah Walker will have her revenge

"Chuck" has a relatively large ensemble, but the name of the lead character is right there in the title. It'd be hard to do an episode of "Chuck" without the main guy around to keep things humming, yet the series sets up as a challenge for itself to do a virtually Chuck-less hour of the show. What it ends up with is a very good episode of "Chuck." At the end, it maybe avoids some of the stakes it set up a little too neatly, and the comic relief subplot doesn't amount to much, but there's a real sense of these characters as people who care about each other in this episode, as all of the CIA gang decides to rescue Chuck from the Belgian before the Belgian can get the Intersect and do awful things to our hero. It's an episode full of great Morgan lines, some nice moments under pressure from everyone in the crew, some appropriately creepy dream sequences, and Yvonne Strahovski kicking people in the face.

If nothing else, in fact, this episode cements Strahovski's ability with a fight scene. There are a bunch of them, and she makes every one feel more than believable. Indeed, they're downright visceral. Sure, we've known that Sarah can fight before this (and that Strahovski can fake-fight), but in this episode, that gets taken right up to the next level. This is a woman who's not about to consign her boyfriend to death, particularly when she finds out he was about to propose. Sarah's fighting skills have a tendency to get a little lost in the shuffle on the show, so this is a great episode to remind us all that she's probably the best one in the whole gang when it comes to fisticuffs. In particular, that fight against the champion in Thailand, the fight she very well could have died in, has a thrilling quality to it that some of the action sequences this season have lacked.

But it's not just a series of highlights of Strahovski's fighting ability, oh no. She also gets to look pensive when she sniffs Chuck's work shirt. She gets to show how far Sarah has come in overcoming her fear of relationships when Morgan tells her about Chuck's proposal plans. She gets to play the single-minded determination of a woman on a mission in all of the scenes where she gets closer and closer to finding out where Chuck is. She even gets to be downright terrifying in the scene where she threatens to poison the informant to death with ammonia, should he not explain to her where Chuck is right. Now. It's all good stuff, and it's all stuff Strahovski plays with absolutely smashing presence. This is a woman who's been wronged, and she's intent on reversing that wrong. Sure, Casey and Morgan are great in all of this, too, but the real best in show here is Sarah, who hasn't had a showcase like this in quite some time. Indeed, this might be Strahovski's finest work in the history of the series. (She even gets to be silly and sexy as Chuck's dream Sarah.)

Speaking of Chuck's dreams, the poor guy is hooked up to some sort of hallucination machine, designed to prompt the exact right combination of elements that will allow him to finally flash again, so the Belgian might take the Intersect and (presumably) simply rid himself of Chuck. To Chuck's credit, nothing gets him to flash, even when the dream adds Sarah leaving him, Ellie trying to pressure him, and the gang at the Buy More laughing maniacally on TV monitors. Now, I'd say that the episode probably set up some stuff it should have paid off by the suggestion that bits and pieces of Chuck's memory were being erased, since it seems a little too easy to have the power of Sarah's love thwart advanced neurobiology. But on the other hand, I don't terribly want to see a bunch of episodes where Chuck stumbles around trying to remember who everyone in his life is, so this is all probably for the best. I am impressed that the show continues to deprive him of the Intersect and that it returns to the idea that he makes a good, worthwhile member of the team, even without his special brain tricks.

Over in the B-plot, Ellie finds the secret laptop that was hidden under her dad's old car, but she has to go to the hospital for a 36-hour shift, which means Awesome is the one who gets to try to figure out what it is. At first, he can't even turn the thing on, but once he provides free medical testing for the entirety of the Buy More staff (seemingly), they figure out a way to get it on ... at which point he needs a password he doesn't know. Fortunately, Ellie knows exactly what it should be, and after she plugs it in, the screen flashes white and ... something happens. Ultimately, this whole storyline feels like kind of a tease and such obvious comic relief that it's a little irritating, but it's always fun to see Ryan McPartlin do things that don't involve his on-screen wife, so it's hard to get too upset, particularly when the main storyline is so engaging.

All in all, most of the pieces on "Chuck" were working perfectly tonight. I tend to watch this show on a Slingbox on delay, so I can zap the commercials if I want to, but I'll often use those commercials to write a few paragraphs about what I've just seen or something like that, the better to pull these pieces together quickly. Tonight, however, I couldn't wait to see what happened next. I was fast-forwarding the commercials as quickly as I could. If nothing else, that suggests that "Chuck" has found its groove thoroughly again. I don't know if the show will ever be as good as Season 2 again, but it's at least cranking out a fun, suspenseful ride every week, and that's something to be very thankful for indeed.

Some other thoughts:

• --Looks like Chuck will already be celebrating Christmas next week. Man, Chuck gets around fast, doesn't he?
• --Oh,? right, the perfect proposal thing. On the one hand, I much preferred this to the stupid, "Chuck holds up a ring that just happened to fall at his feet" thing from earlier this season. On the other hand, I do wonder just why the show seems to be rushing the relationship between Chuck and Sarah. I know that they've been together for roughly a year of show-time (right?), but it sure seems like they're rushing. They can't be together for even a season before getting this serious?
• --Nice touch: The doctor going through Chuck's iPhone to figure out the people to introduce into the guy's hallucinations, then reading off the names to the slumbering Chuck. Though it did make it seem a little sad that Chuck only has friends who are in the regular cast in his contacts list.
• --I'm not normally a big fan of torture scenes. They're too easy as a plot device (especially after "24," which came up with about every variation on the ticking bomb scenario it could think of), and there's often little thought paid to the idea that maybe the one being tortured has more to gain by NOT talking. But I did think the one in tonight's episode was good, particularly because the pain Sarah described sounded genuinely horrifying, enough to believably make the guy talk.
• --The week in quotes, all Morgan Guillermo Grimes edition: "I think that's kind of international incident-y." "I overshare to connect. I'm a connector!" "Tonight, I ride in the back."

--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

Photo: Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) will kick you in the face if you make her unhappy. Fact. (Credit: NBC)

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'Chuck' recap: Scared yet?

After two episodes filled with pretty exciting, emotional twists, "Chuck" seemed to be getting back to basics with a solid, if not spectacular hour, that then redeemed itself with another gut-punch of an ending. The central idea of the episode -- Chuck has to remove the psychological block his mother placed on the Intersect at the end of the last episode by trying to send every inch of his body shivering with the fear of death -- was a pretty good one, and I liked the way the episode tied this in to a more prosaic fear of death, the fear that you'll die and realize you haven't really accomplished anything meaningful or even interesting with your life. Rob Riggle was a lot of fun as the psychological expert called in to help Chuck dislodge the block, and Summer Glau had her moments as the latest Greta (though she was underused). And, as mentioned, that final act was terrific.

So what didn't work? Well, the idea that the block on the Intersect was caused by Chuck's love for Sarah was fairly groan-inducing. I get that as long as she's around, he's never really going to be scared of death because she'll be there to pull him up and out of the fire, but it felt like the latest of the series' attempts to introduce needless drama into the relationship between the two, as if it doesn't know how to write for a happy couple that, nonetheless, has the occasional difference of opinion. This plot point led to one really good scene -- where Chuck and Sarah argued about whether or not he needed her help on his European adventure -- but most of it felt forced, the kind of cheap, pop psychology that can work on a show like this but often comes off as the writers trying to toss needless complications into the mix.

Similarly, the story with Jeff and Lester stalking Greta around the Buy More, getting closer and closer to finding out her secret and then having Casey call her off from slaughtering the two doofuses was amusing enough in places, but it also felt almost too slight with the weighty stuff going on in the other storyline. There's no way that Jeff and Lester could ever be in any serious danger (or, indeed, even know they were in serious danger), so too much of the burden of the story fell onto Casey and Morgan, who were mostly spectators to the whole event. Sure, Jeff and Lester rarely listen to reason, but if anyone could get them to, it would be the Morgan and Casey tag team. Thus, the decision to make this a storyline where the two ultimately sided with Jeff and Lester over Greta felt kind of regrettable. It doesn't help that the whole Greta thing has turned out to be a bust, just another element in a show that didn't need another element. It's nothing but an excuse for glorified cameos from actors who might give the core audience a few chuckles. (And, heck, I'll admit that when Summer Glau and Adam Baldwin -- who were in that spaceship thing together, don't you know? -- were on screen together for the first time, I got a chuckle out of it.)

Yet so much of this story is dependent on the cliffhanger that it's probably best we jump to that next. Chuck and Rye (the Riggle character) discover that the diamond they've been sent to retrieve contains vital U.S. intelligence (of course it does). So they abscond with the diamond, then figure they can make a clean sweep by capturing the bad guys, including one played by Richard Chamberlain. However, Rye's counting too much on Chuck being able to dislodge the block and turn the Intersect back on, as when the group gets in an enclosed gondola, Rye and Chuck find themselves handily outnumbered, and Chuck soon finds himself dangling high above the Alps, trying not to plummet to his doom. Rye seems to have things taken care of, but he's soon shot through the heart and heading for the ground, for good measure. And that's when Chamberlain's character offers Chuck a hand up. He knows Chuck's the Intersect, and he wants what's in his head. Cue sad montage.

Now, granted, this is the unofficial start of a two-parter, so next week's episode could redeem some of what didn't work in this episode. And if there was a "Chuck" fan that didn't get chills when Sarah, Casey, and Morgan vowed to get their friend back, Sarah against orders, no less, then they're probably not a real "Chuck" fan. But the stuff on the way to the finale had some potholes. As an example, that sequence where Rye locks himself and Chuck in the vault holding the diamond, initiating a security protocol that drops the temperature well below zero (in Celsius!), seems like it's going to build to something far more exciting than it actually does. Instead, Rye just enters the combination to turn off the security protocol, offering up the equivalent of "just kidding." The episode is full of false jolts like this, moments designed to get us on the edge of our seat that then have the tension immediately abated. And while I liked Riggle in the role, there were a few too many moments when he seemed to be deadly serious that were then undercut by a joke or two. It's part of the show's structure, but it rarely feels this jarring.

Then again, there's so much good in the episode that it feels weird to quibble about some of the smaller things that didn't work. Granted, nitpicking is kind of my job, but I was as anxious to see another episode of "Chuck" at the end of this one as I ever have been. After starting out Season 4 with quite a few episodes that just didn't seem to have any momentum to them, the show has gotten a nice kick in the pants ever since the Casey-centric episode just before Halloween, and if the resolution to the team getting Chuck back is as good as the build-up we got in the final moments of this episode, then next week just might be one of the show's best episodes ever. And if that's the payoff, then a few small bumps along the way aren't going to seem as terrible.

Some other thoughts:

• --The scene between Casey and his daughter felt especially tacked on in this episode. The actors always sell these little moments, but with everything else going on, it didn't feel like we needed the drop-in to remind us that Alex exists.
• --Someone on my Twitter feed mentioned that they didn't think they would have noticed the Greta thing, if not for TV reviewers and the buzz surrounding the show. And, come to think of it, the show has mostly underplayed the notion that all of these people have been named Greta. So maybe for people who don't pay attention to all of the minutiae about the show, this is just a long string of bizarre cameos.
• --I'm still not sure what the lengthy and not particularly funny montage of the doctors trying to get Chuck's Intersect unsuppressed was supposed to be about. It sure took up a lot of time.
• --"Whoa! That sounds like candor!"
• --"These are our ... sort of ... friends."

--Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

Photo: Summer Glau (pictured with Joshua Gomez) does NOT like that you took the last brownie. (Credit: NBC)

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"Chuck" Let's recap: Scary monsters and super miracle

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When “Chuck” is at its best, it’s a show about how its characters’ job –- trying to keep ahead of the bad guys in the international world of espionage –- conflicts with its characters’ personal lives. It’s one thing for Chuck and Sarah to argue about how they’ve never had a real conversation about their relationship or something. It’s another thing for Sarah to directly cause the event that rips apart Chuck’s family yet again. My favorite episode of the show is still “Chuck vs. the Santa Claus” from back in Season 2, and that episode features the famous moment where Chuck sees Sarah kill a man without blinking. He’s a bad guy. The world of “Chuck” is better off with him out of the picture. But it’s still a hard thing for a goofy guy like Chuck to see the girl he’s in love with do. The show is better when it pits its light, frothy comedy side against its hard-boiled action side.

To be fair, I wasn’t sure “Chuck vs. the Aisle of Terror” was going to get to this point. And that’s fine. It would have still been an enjoyable episode of the show without that gut-punch of an ending. There were plenty of things to chortle at here, and I was impressed with the show’s ability to create a spooky episode while remaining vaguely true to its family-friendly trappings. Plus, the Buy More action dovetailed with the spy action in a way that any viewer should have been able to see coming from a mile away –- once you introduce the concepts of Jeff and Lester building an “aisle of terror” and a neurotoxin that makes people see scary hallucinations, you KNOW the show’s going to mix those two elements somehow –- but in a way that was still largely satisfying. Plus, Robert Englund, as always, makes a great bad guy.

Here’s what’s up. After being gone from Chuck’s life for years and years and after being off the audience’s radar for several episodes, Chuck’s mom returns to his life again in the form of a phone call. Given that Chuck’s mom is played by Linda Hamilton, who is awesome, and given that most of the season’s promotional materials focused on Chuck’s search for her, it’s been a little disappointing to have so many of this season’s episodes be business as usual. But to the show’s credit, once Mama Bartowski’s back on the scene, it wastes no time in kicking the plot into gear. She wants to meet Chuck alone. Chuck brings Sarah as a tail. That’s all well and good, as Mom tells Chuck about the neurotoxin and the man who developed it (Englund). But at the meet-up where Chuck will abscond with the neurotoxin and take it safely into CIA hands, his mother plugs him in the chest. Now, he’s wearing a bulletproof vest, but this is still one of those things you bring up in therapy.

But wait! Mom says it was all part of a setup. She’s been infiltrating the bad guys for years, at the behest of the CIA, and she just did it to keep Chuck and Ellie safe. Now, it’s off to hiding again with her, though Chuck finally persuades her she should see Ellie one last time and explain just what was up all these years. Ellie, for her part, has been dealing with her husband’s mother (the sadly underused Morgan Fairchild) and wishing she had her own mother to talk to in the buildup to having her own baby. So, of course, she’s thrilled to finally see her mother, even if it is for one last meeting.

But this is “Chuck,” so you know there’s going to be more. Casey discovers that Chuck’s mom’s file wasn’t deleted by the CIA, as she claims. It was removed after she went rogue. The CIA has been after her for year to figure out just what she’s up to and which side she’s playing for. Fortunately, Chuck and Ellie are meeting with their mother and Sarah just happens to know –- via her girlfriend powers –- where her boyfriend and his mom are meeting. And this leads to the emotionally fraught ending, where Chuck races over to save his mom from the men dragging her into a van, pulls off the mask covering one of the men’s faces and reveals … Sarah. Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski make the most out of this moment, as does Sarah Lancaster as Ellie, sitting sadly, waiting for a mother who’s being dragged into a van just outside.

On “Chuck,” the show will often mute a lot of the emotional impact of these events, the better to make sure that everything is rolling along happily enough. So I won’t be surprised if in two weeks’ time Chuck has completely forgiven Sarah and Casey, and Ellie and her mother are braiding each other’s hair. But this is the best emotional moment “Chuck” has had in a long time –- maybe since Season 2 –- precisely because it remembers the show works best when the spy world and the personal world are put in conflict. The idea that Chuck’s mom’s allegiances can’t be wholly pinned down isn’t the most original one. She’s basically a femme fatale, and if you want to see the ultimate TV version of this story line, you could just rent Season 2 of “Alias.” But I’m hopeful that the writers give Hamilton more to do in the weeks to come and that she, Levi and Lancaster get some hard-hitting scenes about how much she’s hurt her kids.

Over in the Buy More subplot, things weren’t quite as exciting, but there was still plenty of fun to be had. Morgan, sensing that the store needs something a little more for Halloween, enlists Jeff and Lester to set up the titular “aisle of terror,” which will consist of monitors displaying everything Jeff -– the scariest person anyone on this show knows –- finds scary. What Jeff finds scary isn’t terribly unsettling. It includes old people, interspecies relationships (depicted by a baby chimp hugging a baby tiger) and babies in costumes. (“Is it a baby? Or is it a snail?!”) Somehow, the juxtaposition of these images together becomes unsettling, especially when narrated by Jeff. Are these images, combined with the neurotoxin that makes things seem spookier than they are, enough to fell the evil mad scientist? Do you even have to ask?

The first few episodes of this season of “Chuck” felt like the show running in place while figuring out how it was going to move forward. There’s still an element of that to this episode, where the neurotoxin story line was a fun Halloween treat but little more. Yet the last couple of episodes have started to dig more into the way that Chuck has been damaged by his mother leaving him, and the emotional payoffs have been all the richer for it. So long as the show can remember that what makes the emotional stuff work is how it ties into the spy stuff, I’ll be on board.

Some other thoughts:

• --I get that the show’s budget is not insanely large, but the scenes where Chuck was stumbling around under the influence of the neurotoxin at the Buy More and freaking out at prop spiders and crows you could get at a Target were not the series’ finest moments.
• --Was this the first episode of the season to feature all of the credited cast members? Or did I miss one?
• --As I’m sure you heard, NBC picked up “Chuck” for not just the back nine but the back 11, making this the show’s longest season yet, at 24 episodes. I guess there’s something to be said for low-rated consistency on a network having a disastrous fall.
• --"This is exactly why I don't see scary movies, and I stick mainly to the PG-13 region."

-- Todd VanDerWerff (follow me on Twitter at @tvoti)

Photo: What's scarier than the guy who first played Freddy Krueger, Robert Englund? (Credit: NBC)

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Highlights from Monday: "Chuck" on NBC

24 October 2010 |? 8: 05 pm pm

Click here to download TV listings for the week of 24 to 30 October in PDF format

Weekly TV lists can also be downloaded here

TV movies this week

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NIGHTMARE: Robert Englund guest stars in a new episode of "Chuck" at 8 pm on NBC. ?

SERIES

Gossip Girl: Jenny (Taylor Momsen) is attempted to venture into Manhattan by chance do meet Tim Gunn "Project runway" renamed in this new episode (9: 00 a.m. KTLA).

Treatment:Season 3 opens, recently divorced Paul's (Gabriel Byrne) attempts to deal with his fear can develop Parkinson's disease (9 h HBO).A second new episode follows at 0930.

American restaurant:This new series follows Rick Dale - restore "pawn stars" - go - to guy and his crew, which includes her young son as they perform a restoration of Las Vegas-based company that detects, restorations and "upcycles" cool objects ranging from Cadillac Coke machines (9 h history).A second new episode follows at 0930.

Thintervention with Jackie Warner:Customers back for the final season series of weight loss (10 h Bravo).

Weeds:In this episode new Nancy (Marie-Louise Parker) is with an old pal (Richard Dreyfuss) (10 p.m. ShowTime).

Life buried:The guys Chase Robert Pattinson in a club and try to get a lock of hair in this new episode of the series non (10: 30 a.m. MTV).

Dead Set:This bizarre series begins its course on the expulsion of night on a series of fiction "Big Brother", but as cast members are interviewed, zombies begin to attack (Midnight IFC).

PROMOTIONS

Supership Nazi:In this special new experts break down the events leading up to the naval battle that has sent the Bismarck "ship unsinkable Hitler", rendered at the bottom of the ocean nine days after the ship is at sea (6-9 pm National Geographic).

Great escape: revenge on the Gestapo:This extraordinary new profiles of RAF team who worked for the remains of Hitler Reich to continue the Gestapo members for the murders of 50 men escaped from a POW camp in what became known as "" the great escape"(7-10 pm National Geographic)."

SPORTS

Hockey:Kings visit (5 h VS) Minnesota Wild.
Football:The Giants in New York, visit the Dallas cowboys.(5: 30 ESPNU).

Photo: Jordin Althaus / NBC

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