Katie Stevens of 'American Idol'

Credit: FOX

9:00 p.m. ET. Sorry, "American Idol. There's really no way you can make last week's elimination of Lacey Brown seem shocking or dramatic. Then again, I guess it's easier to find "dramatic, climactic" music than to find "sleepy, anticlimactic" music.

9:01 p.m. But there *are* stakes tonight. Whoever gets sent home will miss out on the tour, will become this season's Alexis Grace. I still feel a little sad about Alexis Grace, in case you can't tell.

Who's going home? Find out after the break...

Titus Welliver returned to 'Lost' this week as the Man In Black, and he brought a whole bucketful of the heebie jeebies with him.

Credit: ABC

Who is that handsome devil in that picture?

"Lost" writers Melinda Hsu Taylor and Greggory Nations had one of the most difficult jobs in the entire history of the series tonight, and they more than rose to the occasion.  Before I pressed "play" on my DVR this evening, I actually hesitated.  This is one of those episodes we've been waiting to see for quite a while, and as much as I was looking forward to it, it also made me sad.  This really is the home stretch now.  In two months, it will all be over.  No matter what we think of the answers we're getting, we are getting answers, and for a "Lost" fan, that's almost disconcerting at this point.

Richard Alpert was first introduced to the series in "Not In Portland," way back in season three of the show, and little by little, he's taken focus as one of the most significant characters of the entire series.  Until this episode, though, just how significant was unclear.  If you're one of those people who still complains that the show is more question than answer, tonight must have knocked you for a loop, because it was pretty much answer from start to finish.  It also broke the formula that this season has followed.  Instead of a flash sideways to the alternative timeline we've followed all year, we returned to the simple flashbacks that were such a staple of the series in the first few seasons.

 Didi Benami of 'American Idol'

Credit: FOX

Welcome, friends, to another two-hour "American Idol" Tuesday.

This Tuesday (March 23) night was originally a Teen Idols theme, but it was changed at the last minute to the far-more-nebulous Billboard #1s theme. I have no idea what that means, but it's sure to be generic, since it encompasses any top hit in any genre dating back to 1958 [Billboard Hot 100 only].

While the theme is gone, Miley Cyrus, who dates back to 1992 or so, remains on-board at tonight's mentor. She's sporting the most makeup for any "American Idol" mentor since Verdine White.

Miley's also the first guest mentor to give all of her advice in blue jean short-shorts since Quentin Tarantino.

On to the performances, after the break...

 Annie Wersching of '24'

Credit: FOX

It’s been two solid weeks in a row for “24,” ladies and gentlemen. With a show such as this, it’s hard to have a series of episodes of wildly erratic quality: since it’s so plot-driven, the show’s about as good as its story. To date, the story of Season 8 has been wildly unfocused while feeling painfully familiar: we’ve gone from an assassination attempt to a coup to a nuclear attack while moving through four or five possible Big Bads. All this while employing the usual tricks and trades that the show employs in order to take a 5-6 hour story and turn it into 24 hours of prime-time entertainment. 

Roughly halfway into this season, has “24” finally found its narrative stride? The jury’s still out. Tonight did feature some tense scenes with Jack, some classic Chloe O’Brien, finally turned the season’s weakest link (the Dana subplot) into…well, you’ll see in the full recap, after the break...

 Brent and Caite of 'The Amazing Race'

Credit: CBS

 In its lesser moments, "The Amazing Race" has been prone to being geographically irrelevant. All too often, teams fly thousands of miles around the globe, arrive at one of the world's most remote, most exotic locations and then teams are asked to bungee jump or to swim a few laps in a pool. They're asked to do things that could pretty much be done anywhere on Earth without any variation in the task or the outcome.

 Eric Stoltz and the Zoey-Bot of 'Caprica'

Credit: Syfy

Fans of “Caprica” are almost universally also fans of “Battlestar: Galactica.” Not all, but most. So when I tell you that everything has happened before, and will happen again, you have more context for the speech than simply Amanda’s utterance of it last week. What tonight’s episode, “Ghosts in the Machine,” sought to demonstrate was just how one iteration of one stage of the neverending cycle started to pick up speed. Both Daniel and Joseph spent this episode looking for their daughters, fully unaware of how much they are fueling the fire of the younger generation’s imminent revenge. 

As yes, I use the phrase “fueling the fire” intentionally. Between Zoe’s pathological fear of it to the invocation of Prometheus in New Cap City, the episode foreshadowed the fire the will engulf the Twelve Colonies in the near future. But that’s a tale for another time. Let’s focus our recap on the here and now, shall we? 

[Full recap of Friday's (March 19) "Caprica" after the break...]

Jonathan is on one of the lower scoring teams this week, but is he going home?

Credit: Lifetime

Okay, I’ve finally figured out that Lifetime, home of the woman in peril/menopause/a tawdry extramarital affair with the underage but ripped pool boy movie, is not entirely trustworthy when it comes to promos. But, even after seeing and scoffing at the ridiculously over-the-top plug for this week’s “Project Runway” (“But NO ONE is prepared for what happens NEXT, bah dah DUM!”), I’m still excited to see this episode. After all, it’s a team challenge, and if there’s one thing we know about “PR” is that this is a certain recipe for the kind of passive aggressive sniping, angrily thrown pin cushions and weeping/high-pitched screeching that makes reality television so much fun but sucks eggs in real life. But good news, this isn’t real life (or at least it isn’t ours), so let the hysterics begin!