Your weekly guide to TV’s best and worst one-hour shows
Unless you’re into marathons of every TV variety, you can pretty much skip the tube until Sunday, when TV attempts to overload the airwaves with dramatic fireworks to cap the holiday weekend :
“Army Wives” (Sunday, 10 p.m., Lifetime)
The wives are taking up arms themselves following the beach house invasion that put Denise (Catherine Bell) and Claudia Joy (Kim Delaney) in peril. Thankfully, they didn’t let Denise go all Dirty Harry on the invader without consequences: her guilt over killing the crazy and Claudia Joy’s distress at not being able to defend herself exemplify why this daytime-at-night drama is worth watching.
“Falling Skies” (Sunday, 9 p.m., TNT)
Mama admits it: She was so disappointed by the second half of this alien invasion’s freshman year, she didn’t bother tuning in for the new season’s premiere. But boredom with the regular dramas tempted her to try again, and she’s glad she returned to the mother ship. (Mostly) gone are the long, meandering conversations with dumb characters, replaced with a scary Skitter fight in every episode. Toss in an interrupted smooch between Tom (Noah Wyle) and Anne (Moon Bloodgood) and a few schmaltzy family moments, and we have ourselves a bona fide action show.
“True Blood” (Sunday, 9 p.m., HBO)
If you had told Mama last year that her favorite part of this vampy soap opera would be Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) and Tara (Rutina Wesley), she would’ve told you to go fang yourself.
“Longmire” (Sunday, 10 p.m., A&E)
The cases are predictable enough to make “Law & Order” look cryptic and the extras in this show are so bad, Mama finds herself rooting for their untimely deaths. However, if you can outlast all that to get to the quiet dramatic scenes between Robert Taylor’s title character and the outstanding Lou Diamond Phillips, you’ll be rewarded with the inner workings of a relationship not commonly shown, between a US lawman and Native American. As the series winds down toward its August finale, Mama could only hope that the series will shift the focus from the sheriff’s station to the reservation, which is consistently a lot more interesting and less predictable.
“Talking Dead” (Sunday, 9 p.m., AMC)
Missing the zombie spectacle? Oddly enough, so is Mama. Despite a lackluster second season featuring a lot of farmhouse (in)action, “The Walking Dead” pulled it out in the finale to leave Mama wondering if they’d find salvation or just a lot more trouble in the lights just over the hill. There’s a marathon of the first two seasons starting Saturday at 11:30 a.m., and you can get a sneak peek of Season 3 tonight during this special.