Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
Fox has an excuse for not joining the other major broadcast networks in televising the final presidential debate this year: It has another final contest to televise. Specifically, Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, which the San Francisco Giants forced by beating the St. Louis Cardinals last night and evening the series at 3-3. Tonight, both teams will throw everything they have at one another to try to survive this final do-or-die game. Then, on Wednesday, the exhausted winner will face the well-rested Detroit Tigers, who last played on Thursday when sweeping the New York Yankees, in Game 1 of the 2012 World Series.
AMC, 8:00 p.m. ET
I know, it’s a week early – but as Halloween TV treats go, this 1978 John Carpenter movie is one of the true classics. Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence star – along with Carpenter’s point-of-view direction. And between scares, do the math: Next year, this influential horror film will be 35 years old.
Syfy, 8:00 p.m. ET
SEASON FINALE: Season 2 ends with the Alpha team attempting to take on what could be considered the Beta team: Stanton Parrish and his bad guys. But Stanton doesn’t have one of Alpha’s new secret weapons: Summer Glau as Skylar.
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Watch the sparks fly, romantically as well as comically, as Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn square off in this 1942 screwball comedy about newsroom rivals – one a sportswriter, the other a columnist. Newspaper folks, a vanishing breed, love this movie, and we shouldn’t be alone.
Various Networks, 9:00 p.m. ET
By most accounts, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won the first presidential debate, and President Barack Obama won the second. So here comes the third and final one, which may well be a tiebreaker of sorts. The subject is foreign policy, and the moderator is Bob Schieffer – whom I interviewed in 2008, the last time he moderated a presidential debate. For more, see this vintage, but still appropriate,
Bianculli’s Blog.