Worth Watching: Jonas Brothers ‘Chasing Happiness,’ More Music With will.i.am on ‘Songland,’ ‘Last O.G.’ Finale
A selective critical checklist of notable Tuesday TV:
Chasing Happiness (streaming on Amazon Prime Video): Maybe you heard the Jonas Brothers were back together again. (Kind of hard to miss them these days.) With uncanny foresight, or possibly genius marketing skills, a new documentary uses new footage from their early days to tell the story of their rise to stardom and what happened when Nick, Joe and Kevin decided to go their separate ways for solo careers for a while. The final act brings them back together for what appears to be a successful relaunch. Happiness being brotherhood and all.
Songland (10/9c, NBC): Also on a musical note, will.i.am is the guest artist sitting in this week with writer-producer/judges Ryan Tedder, Ester Dean and Shane McAnally to take pitches from fledgling songwriters for a possible Black Eyed Peas single. I was impressed in last week’s premiere with the collaborative process detailed in this competition show, as the visiting superstar and the seasoned producer/judges help reshape the writers’ precious creation into something that might work within the artist’s repertoire.
The Last O.G. (10:30/9:30c, TBS): With a tip of the cap to Spike Lee‘s Do the Right Thing, Tracy Morgan‘s agreeable comedy series wraps its second season with Trey (Morgan) taking on a new cause: petitioning to stop a legendary old building in his Brooklyn neighborhood from being reconstructed. Elsewhere on the block, there’s a food-truck competition, which should get his culinary juices flowing as well.
Inside Tuesday TV: ABC’s The Conners (8/7c) returns for a repeat run, starting with the season opener that found the family still reeling from matriarch Roseanne’s (the fictional version) death… Fox’s MasterChef Junior (8/7c) puts its last three kid cooks through a final round, making a three-course meal, before deciding on a $100,000 champion… Never known for understatement, Lifetime’s Dance Moms (8/7c) returns with a three-hour “event,” recapping Abby Lee Miller‘s battle with cancer in the first hour, then introducing the new kids joining the Abby Lee Dance Company in back-to-back episodes, with the young dancers vying for spots on Abby’s Elite Team… Where in the world is CBS’s action romp Blood & Treasure (10/9c) heading to next? Think Austria, where a castle may hold the secret to where Germans hid Cleopatra’s sarcophagus during WWII.