Halloween Hijinks on ‘South Park,’ TCM’s Vincent Price Tribute, ‘Tell Me a Story’ on CBS All Access, ‘A Million’ More Secrets
A critical checklist of notable Wednesday TV:
South Park (10/9c, Comedy Central): Halloween will never be the same in this cracked Colorado burg thanks to a “revolution in mobility.” (The episode is titled “The Scoots,” so let’s assume the kids are now abusing scooters.) As the wayward youth set out to get more candy than ever, the panicked adults hoard supplies in hopes of surviving a night of more tricks than treats. Chaos inevitably ensues.
House of Wax (8/7c, TCM): In a 24-hour Halloween lineup devoted to time-tested scary movies — 1942’s Cat People at 9 am/8c and 1963’s Black Sabbath anthology at 4 pm/3c are daytime highlights — Turner Classic Movies turns over prime time to October’s final “Horror Star of the Week”: the great Vincent Price. His villainous breakthrough in 1953’s House of Wax (originally filmed in 3D) leads the tribute, followed by two Roger Corman-directed homages to Edgar Allan Poe: 1961’s Pit and the Pendulum (9:45/8:45c) and 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death (11:15/10:15c).
Tell Me a Story (streaming on CBS All Access): Very loosely inspired by classic fairy tales, but seemingly more influenced by the gruesome incoherence of FX’s American Horror Story anthology, this urban fable by Kevin Williamson (Scream, The Vampire Diaries) interlocks the fates of mostly unpleasant and deeply uninteresting New Yorkers in a blur of sex, drugs and crime. See if you can spot parallels to “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Three Little Pigs” — the most obvious, with masked burglars causing mayhem — and “Hansel and Gretel.” More grim than Grimm, this hot mess may make you wish they were all just telling a different, and better, story.
A Million Little Things (10/9c, ABC): The secrets just keep spilling out in this angst-ridden drama. It doesn’t take long for news of Delilah’s (Stephanie Szostak) pregnancy to make the rounds of her friends — but who’s the daddy? They’re almost afraid to ask. This news is further distraction as Eddie (David Giuntoli) prepares to take the musical stage again, for the first time sober. And Regina (Christina Moses), ambushed by an unwelcome visit from her pushy mom (Romy Rosemont), comes to a wrenching reckoning with husband Rome (Romany Malco).
Inside Wednesday TV: Another way to get your Halloween on: Wallowing in a 12-hour marathon of fan-favorite episodes of Supernatural on TNT (starts at 8 am/7c)… PBS begins a four-week survey of Sinking Cities (10/9c, check local listings at pbs.org), profiling urban centers facing rising sea levels and extreme weather, with a look at New York City, still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Sandy in 2012… JJ (A.J. Cook) returns to her East Allegheny hometown, rekindling unhappy childhood memories of her older sister’s tragic death, on CBS’s Criminal Minds (10/9c), when the BAU looks into a local ghost story that could shed light on two people’s disappearance… IFC’s campy horror comedy Stan Against Evil (10/9c) is back for a third season, with retired Sheriff Stan (John C. McGinley) and current Sheriff Evie (Janet Varney) taking on even more evil demons after Stan traveled through time, accidentally opening a portal between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead. Don’t you hate when that happens?
