TV Club Classic will be there for you, with two episodes of Friends a week, through the summer 

By Erik Adams  |  May 30, 2013 | 5:00am
TV Features TV

Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Thursday, May 30, 2013. All times are Eastern.

TOP PICK

Friends (3 p.m.): TV Club Classic’s big debut week continues by saving a spot on the coffeeshop couch for one of best sitcoms of the 1990s (and, none too coincidentally, one of the most popular): Friends. In order to cross-talk her way through the show’s early days, Sonia Saraiya welcomes newcomer Joe Reid to the TV Club fold, sort of like Monica extending a helping hand to Rachel in the show’s pilot. Though we hope Joe hasn’t just left someone at the altar in order to join our little gang…

REGULAR COVERAGE

Hannibal (NBC, 10 p.m.): We know Hannibal’s been naming its episodes after dining courses this whole time, but we’d love it if “Buffet Froid” was a misspelled way of indicating that this is the episode where Dr. Lecter butts heads with tropics-obsessed lunatic Jimmy Buffett. Molly Eichel recommends that you skip Hannibal’s new signature dish: the cheeseburger with pair of eyes.

TV CLUB CLASSIC

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (11 a.m.): We warned Zack Handlen there’d be days like these / but we didn’t tell him that when the world gives him love songs for Ferengis / that Odo’d be there for him. (Wait, the plural of “Ferengi” is “Ferengi”? But that ruins this whole, elaborately constructed, Rembrandts-based joke!)

Gilmore Girls (1 p.m.): Poor Max Medina: Even someone as smart and perceptive as he is couldn’t predict the effect that a certain construction project is about to have on his wife-to-be. David Sims considers these reviews his way of building a chuppah for Gilmore Girls.

WHAT ELSE IS ON?

Eastwood Directs: The Untold Story (TCM, 8 p.m.): With any luck, this special will be followed by a series of increasingly mundane portraits of The Man Who Was The Man With No Name, specials like Eastwood Acts, Eastwood Eats, Eastwood Thinks Long And Hard About What He’s Done, and Eastwood Is.

Mike & Molly (CBS, 8:30 p.m.): And to think—only 10 days ago CBS felt weird about throwing a tornado at Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy in this season finale. Surely, the American people are ready to laugh at cataclysmic weather once more.

Renovation Raiders (HGTV, 9 p.m.): Trading Spaces re-imagined as a heist film. Home invasion can be fun—when it involves new window treatments!

Bipolar Mysteries: Where Are They Now? (Discovery Fit And Health, 10 p.m.): Is “Where are they now?” the mystery? Because this special appears to be offering its own solution up front.

Brave (Starz, 7:25 p.m.): Now that Disney has kinda, sorta, maybe put the kibosh on its glammed-up version of Brave heroine Merida, revisit the Pixar feature that does an excellent job of arguing against the entire notion of glammed-up princess. (Just don’t tell that to the people in charge of Disney’s merchandising arms.)

The Matrix (Cinemax, 7:45 p.m.): The summer of 1999 was supposed to belong to Anakin Skywalker, but then The Phantom Menace’s thunder was stolen by Keanu Reeves and his cyberpunk buddies—who eventually succumbed to their own diminishing returns after two bum sequels and a million bullet-time-abusing imitators sucked all of the fun out of Neo’s opening salvo against the machines.

National Spelling Bee (ESPN, 8 p.m.): Included as the What’s On Tonight? sports pick in order to vindicate all of those tireless word warriors who sacrifice precious childhood experiences to memorize the spelling of “geitonogamy.” (Also to assuage our own traumatic, dictionary-based flashbacks that crop up this time every year.)

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Sports Night: Potentially buried in yesterday’s Arrested Development–Freaks And Geeks combo excitement: Donna Bowman’s back on the Sports Night beat, guiding you through the show’s second season—and the dumb, dumb, dumb Dana decision that almost sinks the entire enterprise. (But, next week: WILLIAM H. MACY!)

 
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