Tube Lube…What to Watch Thursday Night

What better way for me to slip back into my happy zone then to gorge myself on TV and tonight we’ve got some doozies.

NBA Draft- 6pm CST, ESPN
The NBA draft used to be the best non-sporting sporting event around. I can remember watching it every year back in the late 80’s and early 90’s because unlike football the NBA draft had real drama. Of course my fascination with the draft was largely due to the fact that the NBA was in it’s hey day. We were all looking for the next Jordan in the draft and in the meantime we enjoyed all the crazy trades that commish David Stern would shuffle out to tell us about. The NBA has more or less lost my interest in the post Jordan era but one semi successful playoff run by LeBron James and I must admit my interest has been raised. Tonight’s draft may not feature the next Jordan but it has 2 ready made superstars at the top and a bunch of intrigue around some horribly dysfunctional teams. Perhaps the most dysfunctional is my home town squad, the Minnesota Timber-pups as they attempt to trade all world and future hall of famer Kevin Garnett for…well…at this point I’m scared they’ll trade him just to trade him. Either way to see that drama play out will make for good TV plus it’s a New York crowd so that’s always fun especially when they mock David Stern.

Hey Paula!- 9pm CST, Bravo!
For the 865th time I don’t watch American Idol, but except for Sanjaya and Prince’s appearance on last year’s finale, the only reason I’ve ever been tempted to watch is to observe the crazy that is Paula Abdul. I’ll admit there have been times watching Best Week Ever and The Soup that I’ve said to myself, why don’t they just cover Paula all the time? Well from my lips to the execs at NBC Universals ears. Tonight we get Paula in her own “reality’ show. It looks to be in the same strain as Kathy Griffin’s show My Life on the D List (which is surprisingly good by the way), in that the cameras follow Paula and her assistants around as she goes from public appearance to public appearance. If the previews are an indication we’ll get Paula in all her pill popping glory as she says the darndest things and gives us plenty of physical comedy (do you think they got Paula tripping over her dog a few months back?). So is this worth watching? Hell no in fact I’m guessing those of us that do will have a special little area of TV Hell all to our own but at least we’ll have fun getting there. Oh and speaking of TV hell, if you want to see perhaps the greatest best/worst reality show of all time Bravo! is running a marathon of Being Bobby Brown this afternoon. Damn, I miss Whitney and B Brown…

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip- 9pm CST, NBC
Well here it is the final episode of the rally story of the season. The previous 3 episodes have been this show’s finest hour and tonight we finally get to see Danny, Jordan, Matt, Tom, Simon and Harriet’s horrible day/night come to an end. I’ve talked this show to death so tonight its time to sit back and see if Aaron Sorkin was able to give us any closure as these characters sail off in to the sunset.