Entertainment

Drama Mama

Your weekly guide to TV’s best and worst one-hour shows

Ugh, isn’t 2012 over yet? Five dramas that are as anxious as Mama is to get 2013 started before anything else can happen:

“Parenthood” (Tuesday, 10 p.m., NBC)

 If you didn’t shed a tear over the Bravermans’ Christmas episode — a chemo-weakened Kristina (Monica Potter) went to the hospital on Christmas Eve, leaving the rest of the family to scramble to prevent the holiday from turning into a catastrophe — check your pulse.

 But the decorations will be all packed away as the new season kicks off on New Year’s Day, and we’ll return to their regularly scheduled antics, including Sarah (Lauren Graham) and Hank’s (Ray Romano) first date.

“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (Wednesday, 9 p.m., NBC)

The guests just won’t leave as “SVU’s” holiday continues into the new year.

Erik Laray Harvey takes time off from his duties as Chalky’s second-in-command on “Boardwalk Empire” to play Fin’s (Ice-T) ex-brother-in-law, who’s arrested for assaulting a priest, played by Denis O’Hare — who has not only had a previous role on “SVU” in 2000, he also played a priest on the original “L&O” back in ’03.

“American Horror Story” (Wednesday, 10 p.m., FX)

Any residual holiday feelings of goodwill toward any human will be completely forgotten by a reunion with the hopeless staff of Briarcliff Manor. Joseph Fiennes’ monsignor will finally confront the devil that possesses Sister Mary Eunice, played to delicious contempt by Lily Rabe.

But however dark this hospital from hell gets, the reason this season is superior to its first is that the craziness residing here actually provides the occasional break from horrifying death and evil — Jessica Lange’s musical number in this episode, for example, is not to be missed.

“Chicago Fire” (Wednesday, 10 p.m., NBC)

When we at last left the team at Firehouse 51, the house medics were needing to be rescued themselves after Shay (Lauren German) and Dawson’s (Monica Raymund) ambulance was smashed in the final minutes of the episode.

On top of that, Cruz (Joe Minoso) faces with the aftermath of leaving evil gang member Flaco to die in that fire.

“Nashville” (Wednesday, 10 p.m., ABC)

Mama is admittedly a sucker for the ABC recap specials that sum up a series in less than 60 minutes.

The only problem is that too often, Mama thinks she could’ve saved herself a lot of time by skipping all the filler that goes into an entire season and waiting for the summary.