What’s On: ‘Gifted’ and ‘Lucifer’ midseason finales, a ‘Nutcracker’ battle, a ‘Bachelor’ preview
A critical checklist of notable Monday TV:
The Gifted (9/8c, Fox): One of the better of the too-many Marvel series cluttering TV’s various platforms ratchets up the tension in its “fall finale,” as the Strucker kids, Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White), fall into the clutches of is-he-mad-or-just-bad Doctor Campbell (Garrett Dillahunt). This puts the grown-ups, including parents Reed (Stephen Moyer) and Caitlin (Amy Acker) and their Sentinel Services adversary Jace Turner (Coby Bell), in a moral quandary. Its companion piece, Lucifer (8/7c), heads into its holiday hiatus with the aftermath of the Sinnerman’s capture.
Battle of the Nutcrackers (7 am/6c, Ovation): It’s never too early to enjoy international productions of the Tchaikovsky classic—which may explain the puzzling crack-of-dawn scheduling of the 11th annual stunt that invites viewers to sample five productions of the fabled Nutcracker ballet from across the world. The performances air through Friday, starting with Peter Wright’s staging, created for the Birmingham Royal Ballet and performed in this special by the Australian Ballet. Whichever gets the most votes will be revealed and repeated next Monday at this time.
The Bachelor: Countdown to Arie (10/9c, ABC): There’s now a countdown for this guiltiest of pleasures? More like a void, what with the early exit of The Good Doctor from this time period until the new year. In any case, this hourlong special will flash back to Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s ill-fated courting of Bachelorette Emily Maynard (now Johnson) five years ago and what’s been up since with the son and namesake of the two-time Indy 500 champ, who was dubbed “the Kissing Bandit” during Emily’s season.
Inside Monday TV: Something new for NBC’s The Voice (8/7c) as the Top 8 perform: The remaining singers team up for competitive mash-up duets. … From filmmaker Jamie Redford, who apparently has inherited the environmental activist gene from father Robert, comes the upbeat HBO documentary Happening: A Clean Revolution (8/7c), which travels the land to spotlight communities using clean energy technology to improve conditions on the planet, while also creating jobs and turning profits. … A darker story is told in A&E’s premiere of the documentary A Gray State (10/9c), director Erik Nelson’s study of David Crowley, an Iraq War veteran with fringe-politics leanings who worked for years on a dystopian movie until he and his family were found dead in 2015 in what police concluded was a murder-suicide, but became a flashpoint for alt-right conspiracy theorists. … Or you could just get away from it all with Henry Winkler, William Shatner, Terry Bradshaw, George Foreman and their comic acolyte Jeff Dye on a special episode of NBC’s Better Late Than Never (10/9c), launching a second season of the good-natured travelogue. First stop: Munich, which of course means an Oktoberfest revel, and also a nudist retreat and a Sound of Music moment in the Bavarian Alps.
