Sleepy Hollow starts up, surprising us by not being a complete clusterfuck

By Emily St. James  |  September 16, 2013 | 6:30am
TV Features TV

Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Monday, September 16. All times are Eastern.

TOP PICK
Sleepy Hollow (Fox, 8 p.m.): Did you read David Sims’ extremely positive review of this one in our new TV Reviews section? (Come to think of it, did you just check out our new TV Reviews section? There’s some great stuff in there!) Then you’re as surprised as we are that this show—about a time-traveling Ichabod Crane who has a showdown with a machine gun-wielding Headless Horseman—is actually wildly entertaining. Zack Handlen will be there with the weekly reviews, and you’re going to like the cut of his jib. ZACK HANDLEN’S GRAMMAR CORNER: Bodies are decapitated. Heads are disembodied.

REGULAR COVERAGE
Adventure Time (Cartoon Network, 7 p.m.): Finn taps into some of his repressed memories, and hopefully, they’ll help him find a way to survive the onslaught of new shows that will begin trickling in tonight. Oliver Sava is so glad this show won’t conflict with the new season of Dancing With The Stars.

Regular Show (Cartoon Network, 7:30 p.m.): Look, we’re not going to lie: We need to get a few thousand more readers to this show soon if coverage of it won’t be canceled. Alasdair Wilkins wants to know how you don’t want to watch a show where the main characters go out to get burritos. Exciting!

Under The Dome (CBS, 10 p.m.): Secrets of the Dome will be revealed in an episode that hopefully concludes with one of the characters saying, “It was an oblong sphere-like object all along!” Scott Von Doviak will be happy to no longer have to deal with all the missed opportunities. Until next summer.

TV CLUB CLASSIC
Justice League (1 p.m.): Batman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman travel back in time to the Old West, where they will hang out with some of DC’s biggest Old West heroes. Presumably, they’ll also help Doc Emmett Brown travel back to the future, or Oliver Sava is going to be very upset with them.

TV CLUB CATCHUP
The Middle (ABC Family, 11 a.m.): If you’ve never watched this show but want to get caught up, here’s the perfect chance, as ABC Family will be airing eight hours of the show today. Let your DVR eat them all up and check out the show’s first season, which isn’t as good as it got but is still pretty solid sitcom stuff.

WHAT ELSE IS ON
Bones (Fox, 8 p.m.): Another year, another season of Bones. Even though the stalwart crime procedural has lost most of its story engines and is slumping in the ratings, everything else on Fox is doing even worse, so it seems likely we’ll have seasons beyond the ninth one that begins tonight. Bones forever!

Dancing With The Stars (ABC, 8 p.m.): A stripped-down and ready-to-rumble version of what was one of TV’s most popular shows just a few years ago begins a new season, complete with Valerie Harper, Bill Nye, and Snooki. That all goes along with the show airing just one episode per week this fall. Hurrah!

Million Second Quiz (NBC, 8 p.m.): Sonia Saraiya makes her long-promised drop-in on the show today to let you know just how this all works and whether it’s worth watching. We’ve never spent a million seconds doing anything, so we’re thankful to Sonia for taking the bullet for us. Good work, everyone!

Siberia (NBC, 10 p.m.): Meanwhile, Dennis Perkins drops in on the season finale of this, which we’ve come to really enjoy for its sheer preposterousness. Who will be eaten by the Russian wilderness tonight? The answer is that probably everybody could be, and we would find it all the more entertaining.

Sunrise (TCM, 8 p.m.): This silent classic about a country couple that decamps for the city is one of the finest films ever made, and it’s our number one pick if you’re only going to watch one movie tonight. Many of the shots remain absolutely stunning to this day, and its love story is beautifully concise.

Les Miserables (HBO, 9 p.m.): Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen this movie, the end of it is pretty much like the scene from the very end of Lost. That’s sort of like a double spoiler alert, isn’t it? Anyway, this is worth seeing just to hear Russell Crowe bellow like a bear who’s been somehow taught to sing.

Monday Night Football: Steelers at Bengals (ESPN, 8:25 p.m.): We’d say something intelligent about how the Steelers and Bengals both came up short in week one and now will try to save some face against each other, but we’re still bummed about the dissolution of our beloved 49ers. Sob!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Breaking Bad (Sunday): We mean, did you see that episode?!?!?!? That Donna Bowman watched it and was still able to craft coherent sentences about what happened is the biggest shock of the day for us, just narrowly beating out a lot of what happened in this hour. She’s a consummate pro, she is.

 
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