What's on Tonight for December 21

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (CBS); Identity (NBC); Smallville (CW); Ugly Betty (ABC); 'Til Death/The War at Home (FOX); Wicked Wicked Games (MyNet)

9 pm: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS); The Office (NBC); Supernatural (CW); Grey's Anatomy (ABC); The O.C. (FOX); Watch Over Me (MyNet)

10 pm: Shark (CBS); My Name is Earl/Scrubs (NBC); Men in Trees (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8 pm: French & Saunders Christmas Celebrity Special on BBC America. (11 pm ET)

The comedy duo that originally dreamed up Absolutely Fabulous (that would be Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders) return for this Christmas special, which aired in the UK in 2005. Let's get celebritied up!

9-10 pm: The Office.

It's a full hour of the best comedy on television: The Office. If you missed the third season Christmas special ("A Benihana Christmas"), written by the talented Jen Celotta, last week, here's your second chance to catch it (or, hell, watch it again). Dunder-Mifflin ends up split down the middle when an argument among the members of the Party Planning Committee leads to two office Christmas parties. Meanwhile, Michael gets dumped by Carol (and right at the holidays too!) and invites the menfolk of Dunder-Mifflin to down their sorrows.

10 pm: My Name is Earl.

It's a repeat of the first season Christmas episode ("White Lie Christmas"), in which Earl tries to make up for years of bad Christmas presents to Joy, while Randy and Catalina compete to see who can keep their hand on a car in a competition and Joy pretends to be married to Earl in order to pacify her supposedly racist parents.

10:30 pm: Scrubs.

Finally! Scrubs is back on NBC's schedule, where it belongs. And on tonight's repeat episode ("My Lunch"), Carla and Elliot suspect Todd of being gay when they learn that he's lied about all his sexual conquests while J.D. doggedly pursues lunch with Dr. Cox only to have his dream meal shattered by a former patient. Ah, J.D., will you ever learn?

10 pm: Afterlife on BBC America.

It's the fourth episode of the supernatural thriller Afterlife, starring Leslie Sharp and Andrew Lincoln, on BBC America. On tonight's episode, Alison searches for a job. Which is difficult because of, you know, the dead people she keeps seeing.

Comments

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

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What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season ...

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In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj...

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