Tonight in HD: May 19

May 17, 2012 0 Comments

SoHo Highlight: Mad Men (Sky 10, 8.40, 5.1) Don gets a visit from the in-laws and his children just as he’s about to receive a prestigious award and tries to save the Heinz account; Peggy and her boyfriend take the next step in their relationship. “There were a series of gears seamlessly interlocking in At the Codfish Ball, an episode of Mad Men that very creatively dissected the way men talk to and interact with women and women talk to and interact with each other,” said The Hollywood Reporter. “It was a nuanced play on generations that also – separately – was funny, sexy and had a very intriguing idea dropped so casually into the mix it could easily have gone unnoticed.” Time thought it “much like last week’s episode, which gave us three solid plot lines that spun around each other and converged in the last few minutes. Two of them deal with the disappointment that comes with expectations, on which the world doesn’t come close to delivering, and one is a crushing glimpse into the world of adults.” The Guardian confessed to having “a funny feeling as I watched the unlikely conclusion to the Heinz deal. I was thoroughly absorbed at the time: it was the kind of moment that Mad Men had seemingly been lacking for a while; that exhilarating thrill of watching creative talent at work.” ✮✮✮✮✮

TradeZone Gone Fishin’ (TV3, 5.30) ✮✮

Hyundai Country Calendar (TV One, 7.00) Growing garlic and lavender on just a hectare of land provides Rex Hendry with most of his income. ✮✮✮✮

ITM Fishing Show (TV3, 7.00) Bluefin for Beginners, Part 2: Matt and the team fish all day and night to help make two newbie fishers’ wildest fishing dreams come true. ✮✮✮

Ice Road Truckers (TV3, 7.30, 5.1) TV3 brightens up Saturday nights with the season-three resumption of this superior reality series and the return of CSI and House (albeit in SD). In Accident Alley, another winter storm drops nearly a foot of fresh, new snow, obscuring the truckers’ road south. ✮✮✮

Season Highlight: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (TV3, 8.30, 5.1) The CSI team says goodbye to Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) as she makes a life-changing decision. Helgenberger’s exit after 260 episodes leaves George Eads as the last original cast member. Entertainment Weekly lamented the inadequacy of her departure: “Once the FBI-black-ops nonsense was dispatched, we got what we’d come to see. Catherine saying goodbye to her team (the plot device was a job offer from the FBI), and by extension, to us. She was compelled to make a speech rife with cliches (‘how brilliant I think you are…it’s gone by too fast…the hardest decision I’ve ever made’), and once again, Helgenberger saved much of this purely on the strength of her acting commitment. It wasn’t quite the send-off Catherine and the actress who played her deserved, but it’ll have to do.” ✮✮