TV: Five shows worth watching tonight: May 10
Your select viewing guide for Thursday, May 10
COMEDY The Office Global, 8:30 p.m.; NBC, 9 p.m. Memo to staff: TV’s favourite workplace sitcom will undergo some major staffing changes following tonight’s eighth-season finale. It’s already confirmed that Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly, is leaving to star in her own Fox sitcom. Also departing are James Spader (Robert) and, possibly, Paul Lieberstein (Toby). Tonight’s closer sees a last-ditch attempt by Andy (Ed Helms) to reclaim his former manager position at Dunder-Mifflin. His cover: Dwight (Rainn Wilson) setting up a photo studio to offer free family portraits for employees.
COMEDY The Big Bang Theory CBS, CTV, 8 p.m. Nothing wraps up a successful TV season like a last-minute wedding. The fifth campaign of Big Bang Theory was the highest-rated in the program’s history, with an average U.S. audience of 17-million U.S. viewers and three-and-a-half million Canadians watching each week (that’s roughly one-tenth our population, by the way). Tonight’s season-closer finds the adorable lovebirds Howard (Simon Helberg) and Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) announcing they want to get hitched before he blasts off into space on a NASA mission. The bad news is that planning the wedding falls to Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon (Jim Parsons). Real-life NASA astronaut Mike Massimino guest stars as himself.
DRAMA Person of Interest CBS, CITY-TV, 9 p.m. And now it’s the mysterious Mr. Finch’s turn. Last week’s chapter of this hit rookie drama enlightened viewers on the personal history of the sullen ex-CIA operative Reese (Jim Caviezel), but tonight’s episode reveals some interesting details about his benefactor, the enigmatic genius Finch, played by former Lost regular Michael Emerson. The truth spills forth when Finch’s crime-predicting computer spits out the name of a suspect embroiled in a dark government conspiracy. In the process of investigating the man’s motives, Reese uncovers the startling reason why Finch invented his ominous machine in the first place.
DRAMA Awake NBC, Global, 10 p.m. Launched mid-March, the offbeat crime drama is one of several network series currently “on the bubble,” in TV parlance, which means the show’s renewal or cancellation is a 50-50 proposition. The show’s premise casts the sturdy English actor Jason Isaacs as police detective Michael Britten, who recovers from a horrific car accident to discover his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) survived the crash but his teen son Rex (Dylan Minnette) perished. But when Michael goes to sleep, he enters an alternate reality where his wife died and his son survived. In tonight’s new episode, Michael has a disturbing dream affecting his ability to switch back and forth between the two worlds, which draws the attention of not particularly charitable police captain, played by former ER regular Laura Innes.
MOVIE Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story Showcase, 11 p.m. Although Vince Vaughn has been conspicuously absent from the big screen in recent memory (in part because he married a Canadian realtor and is a new father), there was a time when he was one of Hollywood’s most bankable names. In this 2004 comedy, he’s perfectly cast as the affable slacker Pete, who runs a grungy gym called Average Joe’s. Right across the street is his main competition – the gleaming fitness facility Globo Gym, owned and operated by the fanatically buff White Goodman, played by Ben Stiller. The inevitable showdown occurs when Pete’s gym is threatened by foreclosure and the only way to raise the money is to challenge White to a winner-take-all game of dodgeball, the vicious sport normally reserved for high-school gym class. Cameos by Chuck Norris, David Hasselhoff and Canada’s own William Shatner.