With “The Walking Dead” back in the grave for a few months, what’s a sci-fi/horror geek to watch to get them through the lonely holiday season?:
“American Horror Story: Asylum” (Wednesday, 10 p.m., FX)
If last night’s episode didn’t drain any holiday spirit youmay have had still possessed — Ian McShane’smurderous, sodomizing Santa Claus turned Christmas into everyone’s worst nightmare —next week’s installment comes with the ominous title “The Coat Hanger,” promising enough nightmare-inducing gore to get you through to NewYear’s as the entirely too-hot monsignor (Joseph Fiennes) discovers another convert. Mama grudgingly finds the second season of this ghoulishly outlandish series more entertaining than the first.
“Syfy 20th Anniversary Special” (Monday, 9 p.m., Syfy)
Celebrate with this channel as former and current stars recall the transformation from the Sci-Fi Channel, which leaned heavily on Spock and classic movie reruns, to its grammatically questionable current name that allows it to completely ignore the science fiction genre and feature less “Battlestar Galactica” and more “WWE.” Mama’s hoping for a special tribute to those iconic Syfy original movie villains Sharktopus and Dinocroc.
“Christmas Twister” (Sunday, Dec. 16, 9 p.m., ION)
Set the DVR now. Everything about this disaster movie screams “so bad it’s good,” but Mama’s favorite part was the press release that described leading-man Casper Van Dien as a “weather scientist.” Do you mean a “meteorologist”? It doesn’t really matter, as the former “Starship Troopers” hunk spends most of his time working his biceps instead of his brains, rescuing his family after a funnel touches down in Texas.
“Rizzoli & Isles” (Tuesday, 9 p.m., TNT)
So what’s sci-fi about this series? Nothing typically, unless you count the nerd fantasy pairing of Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander as a sexy crime-fighting duo. But this week the virtual world and the real world collide, resulting inamurder for Jane and Maura to investigate.
“Torchwood” (Friday, midnight, Starz)
Every Friday night, all the hard-core “Torchwood” fans can relive the most disappointing season of this series, what with the character assassinations of just about every character so they could be shoved into the poorly written plot. But for the rest of us who’ve never watched the alien Captain Jack, played by the delicious John Barrowman, you can enjoy an excellent performance from Bill Pullman as the “reformed” death-row inmate who escaped his sentence on the day nobody died.