Sissy that walk: Drag Race crowns a queen tonight
Here’s what’s up in the world of television for Monday, May 19. All times are Eastern.
TOP PICK
RuPaul’s Drag Race (Logo, 10 p.m.): The final three have been chosen. The glitter has been cast. And from far away, in the deep, a voice cries: “Cover girl: Put your face in that walk / Head to toe: Let your whole body talk.” Tonight Adore Delano, Bianca del Rio, and Courtney Act finally spar for the title of RuPaul’s sixth drag queen superstar. This season has been, in What’s On Tonight’s humble opinion, one of the best seasons of Drag Race, and at least two of the three final competitors are some of our favorite contestants of all time. Oliver Sava will be on hand, as always, to cover this monumental finale for us. And we devoutly hope there is crying of some sort or another—doesn’t matter who cries, really.
ALSO NOTED
Warehouse 13 (Syfy, 9 p.m.): Series finale. The team contributes to a time capsule after learning that the headquarters for Warehouse 13 will be moving to a different country. This sounds like an excellent blueprint for every series finale in history.
The Bachelorette (ABC, 9:30 p.m.): The 10th season of this show begins in what we now call “the post-Juan Pablo era.” Contestants will try to get a woman to sleep with them by pretending they love her, in a sad, too-close imitation of life.
The Maya Rudolph Show (NBC, 10 p.m.): And over on NBC, the backdoor pilot for Maya Rudolph’s variety show. There will be skits; there will be music performances; there will be Andy Samberg, Kristen Bell, Fred Armisen, Chris Parnell, and some other people, like Janelle Monae. Will it be good? We really have no idea. But here’s a promo.
REGULAR COVERAGE
24: Live Another Day (Fox, 9 p.m.)
Louie (FX, 10 p.m.)
The Boondocks (Adult Swim, 10:30 p.m.)
ELSEWHERE IN TV CLUB
Genevieve Valentine takes a look at the season-long Decoy: Police Woman for One-Season Wonders, Weirdos, and Wannabes, observing:
Decoy’s 39-episode season, which began on October 14, 1957, quietly broke ground on almost every television front, one half-hour at a time. It was the first television show ever to feature a woman cop (the first to be built around a female protagonist at all); it was the first show to film on location in New York City. Its too-brief run contained a delightful mishmash of dry procedural sensibility and startling psychological drama that directly influenced later shows like the similarly titled Angie Dickinson vehicle Police Woman, remaining a prescient precedent of shows that came decades later.
Plus, David Brusie has a look at the importance of MTV’s Unplugged, which is mostly about music but is, from what we hear, a show that is also on the teevee.