Wednesday TV in Review: Chelsea, Face Off, Middle, Harry and much more

Face Off Knock knock. Who's there? Chelsea. Chelsea who? No, make that Chelsea why? The response to the question posed in NBC's squalid new sitcom Are You Currently There, Chelsea? (8:30/7:30c) is "not necessarily.Inch According to late-evening spitfire Chelsea Handler's potty-mouthed party-girl memoirs - but shedding the Vodka in the title because that could be, you realize, offensive - this smutty but toothless misfire puzzlingly reduces Handler to some supporting role: what mousy, whiny born-again sister towards the imaginary Chelsea, performed with that '70s Show's Laura Prepon having a one-note husky-voiced crassness that develops stale lengthy prior to the first scene (inside a women's jail cell) finishes with Glee's Us dot Marie Johnson leering at Chelsea. That is maybe the only real sexual advance Chelsea spurns. As lengthy as she will be on the top. Which she mentions a great deal. The smarmy and incessant innuendo is much more deafening compared to laugh track, but regardless of how low it stoops, still it lacks the zing and bite of Handler's cable antics. Inside a twelve months of so-far-dreadful new network comedies which has incorporated ABC's Arrange It and moves onto CBS' ineptly offensive Take advantage of on Thursday, Chelsea has got the distinction to be the one which should include a go of penicillin. The only real upside: It is a good match the equally puerile Whitney, by developing a simple-to-ignore block on Wednesday, releases NBC's Thursday selection for that return of 30 Rock (though at the fee for Community, unfortunately). Anybody with taste or self-regard is going to be watching ABC's Wednesday comedies anyway (more about that later), therefore if we are lucky, before lengthy whenever we search for Chelsea around the schedule (though why would we?), it really will not be there. Want more fall TV news? Sign up for TV Guide Magazine now! Not Only ANOTHER Good Looks: The changes on Syfy's fascinating competition show Face Off (10/9c) aren't your usual TV refurbishments. Unless of course, I guess, you usually imagined to be converted into a film monster. This addictive series, coming back for any second season, is much like Thing of beauty while using body like a canvas which are more macabre extremes of imagination. Participants really are a funky number of artists skilled in special-effects make-up, creature creation and sculpture, body painting and so on. Beauty is incorporated in the eye from the beholder, likewise the terrible and fantastic visions they execute in each challenge, once we watch the procedure unfold from design and sketches to toning and conforms to application to crowning glory-ups. The outlet round, created by the appealing host McKenzie Westmore, takes the gamers in the Universal Galleries backlot (home of numerous popular monster) to Hollywood Boulevard, using the elimination "Spotlight" challenge including the reinterpretation of the movie and literary classic: The Wizard of Oz. Namely, the scarecrow, container guy, cowardly lion and wicked witch. Symbols from the greatest order, and as the saying goes on shows like The American Idol Show, the aim is to ensure they are their very own. Plus they do, with decidedly mixed results - the container guy appears to actually stump them - but scarecrows are infamously frightening objects, and at the disposal of these craftspeople, they become something so fearsome in visage it might send Dorothy Gale to Kansas inside a heartbeat. Other large news for reality fans: Tonight may be the "restaurant wars" episode of Bravo's Top Chef: Texas (10/9c). Do you know the odds meat is going to be around the menu? In Which The FUNNY IS: Whether it's Wednesday, it should be on ABC, starting off with another inspired episode from the Middle (8/7c), by which we discover the Hecks coming back in the funeral of ancient Aunt Ginny - the episode is devoted to Frances Bay, who died last September at 92 - by having an extended scene of family banter within the vehicle that ranks one of the show's finest and funniest. When Frankie describes the idea of bereavement food, that "you are not designed to prepare" when you are sad, Brick pipes up, "Are you currently sad constantly, mother?" Score. Frankie is really sad, though, when she stops to consider how rapidly the year progresses and just how the household rarely stops to acknowledge the main key events. One particular milestone happens later within the episode, as Poor Sue (Eden Sher) becomes aware she might have a follower around the wrestling team. A real boyfriend? Aunt Ginny could be so proud. Suburgatory (8:30/7:30c) welcomes Cougar Town's much-skipped Serta Byrd, who's killing time such as the relaxation people until ABC finally agendas the blasted show already. He plays an undercover narc in school befriended by Tessa, who assumes he's gay - which still does not stop sad-sack Lisa from crushing on him. And Tessa's only some of the one out of her family jumping to conclusions, as George assumes Dallas' invitation to create her boutique is an additional type of seduction. (The way in which she eats a blueberry, who are able to blame him?) Within the episodes not provided readily available for preview, Modern Family (9/8c) puts Mitchell and Cam a measure nearer to their next adoption, because they talk with prospective birth moms and then try to keep their awesome (have fun with that) and there is a guest-star alert on Happy Being (9:31/8:31c), as Dave's father (Michael McKean) turns up together with his new girlfriend, who is actually Penny's mother (Megan Mullally). GOING APE: "Why Question Lady?" This is the question posed on NBC's Harry's Law (9/8c) being an psychologically unstable client (Smallville's Erica Durance) is charged with crude vigilantism after she assaults abusive husbands while putting on the classic super hero drag. Why indeed. This qualifies like a classic in-joke, mentioning to Law creator David E. Kelley's unsuccessful make an effort to revive Question Lady for NBC, probably the most well known unaired aircraft pilots in a long time. (It is actually a sight to behold.) The episode's other subplot involves a higher-functioning runaway zoo ape on whose account Harry (Kathy Bates) attempts to argue the problem of "personhood." Hey, he's a minimum of as credible as the absurd human creatures about this show, using its cloying mixture of the shateringly serious and also the quirkily precious. The maudlin storytelling helped me wish to digital rebel like Caesar in Rise from the Planet from the Apes. I am more intrigued by tonight's scenario for NBC's Law & Order: Special Sufferers Unit (10/9c), apparently inspired through the interactive off-Broadway phenom Sleep Forget About (also featured lately on Gossip Girl). The crime of the day involves a rape that happens mid-performance, using the audience (in masks) thinking it's area of the show. Fisher Stevens visitors because the play's director, who most likely wasn't striving for your degree of realism. Sign up for TV Guide Magazine now!