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A select viewing guide for Friday, May 18

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REALITY DC Cupcakes TLC, 7 p.m. In the mood for something sweet? Still one of TLC’s top-rated programs, this show’s premise documents the fantastically interesting lives of Sophie and Katherine, industrious sisters who run the Georgetown Cupcake bakery in Washington, D.C. As befits the accepted reality-show tradition, the sisters regularly work their family into the mix; tonight’s show finds them creating a towering Greek statue—comprised of cupcakes, of course--for their mother’s 60th birthday. The only hitch is they have to make the statue at the same time they fill cupcake orders for eight wedding receptions. Good luck, girls.

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REALITY Shark Tank ABC, CTV Two, 8 p.m. Recently renewed for a fourth season, this series is pretty much the exact same show as CBC’s Dragon’s Den, except faster, funnier and with higher stakes. In tonight’s third-season finale, the resident Sharks—including Dragon’s Den fixtures Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjavec—consider sales pitches from several slick entrepreneurs. The pitchers include a Texas man trying to sell his age-defying beauty products and two Ohio fitness trainers looking for seed money to advance their revolutionary home gym. Somewhere in-between the hustling and brutal putdowns, there’s a scheduled appearance from the rapper known as Pit Bull.

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NEWS the fifth estate CBC, 9 p.m. In a rare night of no playoff hockey, CBC fills the void with one of last season’s best outings of this sturdy newsmagazine. The episode focuses on three true-life tales of people who have gotten away with the big lie in hopes of furthering their own ends. At least one of the stories should ring familiar. Remember the “Bush Boys”? The two young men showed up in Vernon, B.C. a few years ago professing to have been raised in the woods. Or how about “The Black Widow?” The 69-year-old woman claimed she was a victim of spousal abuse in order to lure lonely men on the Internet, but turns out she was really a con artist who took their money and homes. And then there was “Mr. Nobody,” a man with a foreign accent who walked into a Toronto hospital claiming he had lost his memory. Yep, he was faking it. Linden McIntyre hosts.

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REALITY Dangerous Flights Discovery, 10 p.m. Launched a few weeks ago, this new Canadian series profiles those brave souls who make a living in the highly unregulated field of international aircraft transport. The format follows them as they hustle used aircraft to customers in far-off locales ranging from the Amazon to Siberia. The central figure is one Cory Bengtzen, a blustery ex-car salesman who launches his own used-airplane delivery business on a wing and a prayer. Bengtzen’s business hits an air pocket in tonight’s show when his pilots walk off the job and he’s forced to take over the controls.

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MOVIE Mean Girls YTV, 9 p.m. and midnight Remember the days when Lindsay Lohan actually acted in movies? In this 2004 comedy, written by Tina Fey, no less, Ms. Lohan assumes the pivotal role of Cady, a down-to-earth teen who has spent most of her life in Africa, where she was home-schooled by her zoologist parents. When her family relocates to suburban Illinois, poor Cady is shocked by the cruel high-school class system—the jocks, the stoners, the cheerleaders, et al--and is particularly taken aback by the nasty attitude of an all-girl clique known as “The Plastics” (played by Lacey Chabert, Amanda Seyfried and Rachel McAdams). Watch for Ms. Fey as a nerdy math teacher who incurs the wrath of the mean girls.

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