Every so often you have to watch a bad sitcom to remind yourself why you stopped watching them in the first place. Way back when Tony Danza ruled the Earth.
Luckily for us, NBC has gift-wrapped a preview of “Extended Family” (8 p.m., Saturday, TV-14).
The show marks the return of Jon Cryer to network comedy. The star of “Two and a Half Men” appears here as Jim, first seen freaking out because he’s overfed his daughter Grace’s (Sofia Capanna) goldfish and killed it. Sure, he can buy a new one, but this critter was an emotional support fish, purchased to help Grace through the divorce of her parents. Deep.
And he’s just getting started. In glib, fast-talking fashion, Jim explains how he and his wife, Julia (Abigail Spencer), got amicably divorced after 17 years.
How amicable? They threw a party in the same church where they said their vows and invited all their friends. Julia is as casual about this as Jim is, and between them not one word they utter sounds remotely believable.
It’s Grace, all of 13, who becomes the voice of reason here. Or perhaps rage. Only her parents would throw a party after destroying the only family she had ever known. So far, a regular laugh riot.
To complicate matters, Julia has since connected with Trey (Donald Faison, “Scrubs”), the wealthy owner of the Boston Celtics. He hired Julia as a spin doctor after he made a social media faux pas. Then one thing led to another.
It seems that everybody’s job and income is explained except Jim’s. And that’s weird because Cryer has made a very good living playing characters who are more neurotic and goofy than rich or “hot.”
So how did this nebbish land (and lose) a hot wife? To this humble viewer, that mystery is even greater than why a couple would joke about their divorce in front of their kids.
Is this something to sample on the night before Christmas Eve?
Perhaps NBC thought folks would be too busy hanging their stockings by the chimney with care to notice that “Extended Family” was even there.
— Christmas Eve weekend offers us the last time this year to binge on such favorites as “It’s a Wonderful Life” (8 p.m., Sunday, NBC), and of course, the 24-hour marathon of “A Christmas Story” (8 p.m., Sunday), unspooling on TBS and TNT well into Christmas evening.
Much like “The Wizard of Oz” (6:45 p.m., Sunday, TNT), these movies were not exactly blockbusters when they were released on the big screen. Frequent, and what some might describe as relentless, television exposure over the decades has turned them into beloved holiday classics.
It’s kind of a mystery why some films stand the test of time and repetition while other Christmas efforts are consigned to the attic of our memory with various forsaken ornaments.
Also lurking in the more forgotten corners of our nostalgia are the holiday-themed episodes of popular but long-since canceled series. Luckily for us, Crackle, the FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television) platform, has compiled a handy catalog of Christmas episodes from the shows it streams on demand.
Want to check out a young Johnny Depp in a festive setting? Look for the “Christmas in Saigon” episode (season 2, episode 11) of “21 Jump Street.”
The untitled Christmas episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” (season 1, episode 13) sees the extended Clampett clan leave Beverly Hills for the first time to return to the Hooterville/BugTussle area for a holiday feast fraught with romantic possibilities. Let’s hope there was possum pie!
The titular alien gets lost in the woods in the Christmas episode of “Alf” (season 2, episode 12). Danny Thomas tries too hard to compensate for an empty seat at the table in the “Christmas and Clowns” (season 4, episode 13) episode of “Make Room for Daddy.”
Helen Reddy and Ken Berry (“F Troop”) offer festive songs on a Christmas-themed “Carol Burnett Show” (season 11, episode 13). And a creche becomes a crime scene on the classic holiday “Dragnet” (episode 317) titled “Big Little Jesus.”
Happy holidays all! May all your Christmas memories go into syndication, with years and decades of repeats and residuals!
SATURDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
— Utah and Northwestern meet in the college football SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl (7 p.m., ABC).
— A popular singer (Tyler Hilton) hungry for a hit falls under the spell of a songwriter (Haley Sales) who had given up on her musical dreams in the 2022 romance “When Christmas Was Young” (8 p.m., CBS).
— Connecticut hosts St. Johns in college basketball (8 p.m., Fox).
— A precocious child plans a “parent trap” for her adoptive single mother in the 2023 holiday romance “Mom’s Christmas Boyfriend” (8 p.m., Lifetime, TV-PG).
— A newcomer discovers a holiday mystery built into the very blueprints of her vintage home in the 2023 romance “Mystery on Mistletoe Lane” (8 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G).
— “Planet Earth III” (8 p.m., BBC America) celebrates conservation heroes.
— “Saturday Night Live” (9 p.m., NBC, TV-14) curates Christmas sketches from past seasons. A repeat episode (11:30 p.m., NBC, TV-14) follows.
— A lonely paranoid (Joaquin Phoenix) embarks on an eventful odyssey in the hopes of returning to his mother (Patti Lupone) in the 2023 surreal horror film “Beau Is Afraid” (9 p.m., Showtime), written, produced and directed by Ari Aster (“Midsommar”).
SUNDAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
— Scheduled on “60 Minutes” (7 p.m., CBS): Sperm whales; Monkey Island; Costa Rica’s sloths.
— Left behind by his absentminded parents, a boy (Macauley Culkin) battles burglars (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) in the 1990 holiday comedy “Home Alone” (8 p.m., ABC).
— Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy star in the intense 2015 sequel “Mad Max: Fury Road” (9 p.m., HBO, TV-MA).
— Things begin to look up on “The Curse” (9 p.m., Showtime, TV-MA).
CULT CHOICE
Bickering Budapest store clerks (Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart) have no idea they have become each other’s romantic pen pals in director Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 romance “The Shop Around the Corner” (8 p.m., Saturday, TCM), the inspiration for the 1949 Judy Garland musical comedy “In the Good Old Summertime” (10 p.m., Saturday, TCM) and the 1998 Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan comedy “You’ve Got Mail,” directed by Nora Ephron.
SATURDAY SERIES
The holidays descend on “Night Court” (8:35 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
SUNDAY SERIES
“Lingo” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … Bart and Homer become sports prognosticators on “The Simpsons” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG) … Let the games begin on “Krapopolis” (8:30 p.m., Fox, TV-PG).
“Loteria Loca” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … Home alone for the holidays on “HouseBroken” (9 p.m., Fox, TV-PG) … The Griffins put their own spin on three classic movies on “Family Guy” (9:30 p.m., Fox, TV-14) … Romantic reenactors are rubbed out on “CSI Vegas” (10 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14).
