Episode

Huell Howser, the host of the public television series "California's Gold," left behind a wealth of material when he donated the entire 18-season run of his state travelogue series to Chapman University in Orange County. And as noted fans of Howser commemorate the host's passing on Sunday at age 67, their memories can now be backed up with video assistance. On KCET's website , the channel that aired "California's Gold," comedian James Adomian, who did a killer Howser impression for Funny or Die and the "Comedy Bang Bang" podcast, recalled his favorite episode as the "Firefall.

NEW YORK - John Oliver will have the crab cakes - but that's all, thanks. In a private dining room at HBO's plush headquarters overlooking Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, a waitress in a crisp black uniform asks the 37-year-old comedian if he'd like anything else - perhaps some soup or salad? He declines with a polite insistence that suggests he's not quite used to all the luxurious trappings. Then, as soon as the waitress leaves the room, he launches into a riff about possibly sinister deeds going on behind the scenes at HBO. "I don't know what happens here," he says, "This is, like, unsettlingly nice.

ABC Family will make history tonight, airing an episode of “Switched at Birth” completely in American Sign Language, with subtitles for hearing viewers. It's something the network says has never been done before on scripted, mainstream television. The show is about two Kansas City teens who were accidentally switched in the hospital as newborns and raised by one another's family. One of them, Daphne (Katie Leclerc), is deaf, and the show is comprised of deaf, hearing and hard-of-hearing actors.

Very few shows could pull off a homage to the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman without seeming exploitative, sensational or culturally carnivorous. Only one could do it in the middle of an episode dealing with a bunch of missing anthrax and Garret Dillahunt as a dairy farmer. Two years ago, when CBS premiered the crime-procedural "Elementary," the decision to make Sherlock Holmes (played by Jonny Lee Miller) a modern-day recovering addict seemed equally canny and risky. Holmes is indeed literature's most famous and enduring druggie - in Nicholas Meyer's "Seven-Percent Solution" none other than Sigmund Freud helped him kick the coke habit.

"Glee," the occasionally topical high school musical series, aired an episode on Thursday night that could have been ripped from yesterday's headlines. The topic: a school shooting. In the episode, titled, "Shooting Star," one of the students of McKinley High School, a girl with Down syndrome played by Lauren Potter, brings a firearm to the high school where it discharges, putting true fear in the hearts of the students. Though there have been several incidents of school shootings in recent years, the timing of the episode nearly four months after the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was too much for the parents of that town.

- Lena Dunham finally moved out of her parents' house last year, buying a modest, one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn Heights. It's her first place all her own, full of pillows and trophies, located on the top floor of an old building where Dunham is surrounded by elderly neighbors, people the 27-year-old creator and star of the HBO comedy "Girls" calls her "emotional demographic. " "I love them," Dunham says, "though some of them are constantly consternated with me coming home at 10 p.m. They think you're a hooker if you're out past 9:30.

"The Price Is Right" has been around in its current run since 1972. When that 40-year run has had just two hosts and very few changes in format, it's time to shake things up. And Thursday's episode attempts to do just that by adding kids. Everybody likes kids, right? The first-ever "Price Is Right" kids episode, led by current host Drew Carey, aims to introduce the time-tested game show format to a new generation of possible "Showcase Showdown" dreamers. That doesn't mean that the adults are completely off the show, of course.

The fourth episode of NBC's serial-killer drama "Hannibal" scheduled to air next week has been pulled because of concerns over violence in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and other violent incidents. Bryan Fuller, who created the series, asked NBC to pull the episode, which featured guest star Molly Shannon as a woman brainwashing children to kill other kids. The fifth episode of the drama will air in its place. Clips from the fourth episode will appear on the website along with an introduction by Fuller explaining why he felt the content might be too disturbing.

Fox Broadcasting on Tuesday yanked a recent episode of "Family Guy" from websites after edited clips of the animated series appeared to portray a bombing, mayhem and deaths at a Boston Marathon. Fox pulled the episode, which was titled "Turban Cowboy," from fox.com and the Hulu online video site, which Fox's parent company News Corp. co-owns.  Fox has no immediate plans to air the episode again, a network spokesperson said Tuesday. The episode originally ran on the broadcast network in March.

Jerry Seinfeld took questions about the landmark comedy series "Seinfeld" on Reddit on Monday. Fans who tuned in to ask the comedian questions on the site's Ask Me Anything forum were talking Soup Nazi, George's voice-mail song, the episode that was never made and more. Here are some highlights: 1. The scrapped "Seinfeld" storyline "There was one episode where Jerry bought a handgun," Seinfeld said. "And we started making it and stopped in the middle. " The episode was scratched after the read-through -- "trying to make that funny ended up being no fun. " 2. When Jerry met Larry The first time Seinfeld became acquainted with series co-creator Larry David was in 1975 when David was leaning on the fender of Seinfeld's car: "I actually was eavesdropping on him talking to another comedian, and I wasn't even in comedy yet. But he was leaning on my car in front of the Improv....

BEIJING -- The latest installment of NBC's hit drama “The Blacklist” was deleted Wednesday from all major Chinese video-streaming websites that carry the popular TV show, marking the second time an episode of the program has been pulled from mainland portals after featuring Chinese plot elements. Chinese video websites such as Youku, Tencent and Sohu all carry American TV shows as part of their regular licensed streaming offerings. “The Blacklist” has been among the most-watched shows on such websites recently, attracting millions of views.

Things get small - really small - in this week's episode of " Cosmos ," which tackles the unseen universe at the atomic scale, from the teeming ecosystem inside a single dewdrop and the intricate machinery inside a plant's cells, to the subatomic particles at the heart of a giant exploding star. Carl Sagan famously observed that we are made of star stuff, but that star stuff in turn is made of atoms - the fundamental building blocks of nature - and there are more atoms in the human eye than there are stars in the known universe, according to our host, the Collection of Atoms Known as Neil de Grasse Tyson.

As Han Solo once said, it's not wise to upset a Wookiee. So it's probably good news for all involved that Peter Mayhew, the 7-foot-3-inch British actor famous for playing the hairy hero Chewbacca, is now set to reprise his role in the highly anticipated sequel "Star Wars: Episode VII," according to the Hollywood Reporter . Mayhew played Chewbacca, Solo's trusted co-pilot, in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, beginning with "Episode IV: A...

Customized TV Listings are available here: www.latimes.com/tvtimes Click here to download TV listings for the week of April 6 - 12, 2014 in PDF format This week's TV Movies SERIES Star-Crossed Roman (Matt Lanter) invites Emery (Aimee Teegarden) to celebrate a holiday with his family in this new episode. 8 p.m. KTLA Dancing With the Stars Julianne Hough is a guest judge this week. 8 p.m. ABC Bitten In the season finale, Elena (Laura Vandervoort)

If you thought the Louis CK episode of “SNL” was weird and dark, you ain't seen nothing until you've watched the Anna Kendrick episode. Just kidding. this weekend's show, with Pharrell Williams as musical guest, was as harmonious, lighthearted and girly as one would expect from the “Pitch Perfect” actress, serving as a spring palate cleaner between CK's episode and next week's, which will feature Seth Rogen as host and undoubtedly some pot humor and James Franco references.  Not only was last night's episode musical, it was downright Disneyfied, with Kendrick performing a parody of “Belle” from “Beauty and the Beast" during her monologue, enchanting everyone at the show (except for Lorne Michaels)

If you like your “Saturday Night Live” episodes weird and a little bit gross, then last night's installment was for you. Host Louis CK brought his own brand of humor to the show, that is say, a mix of anarchic, perverted and the tiniest bit sweet, wrapped up in the guise of a regular middle-aged guy. The highlight of the episode was CK's monologue, where he went from riffing on how irritating First World people who claim to be “starving”...

It wasn't enough for "Breaking Bad" to win the Emmy as best drama on Sunday. It had to go and set another ratings record too.  AMC's drama about a dying chemistry teacher who turns to the drug trade delivered a series-best 6.6 million total viewers with its next-to-last episode, according to Nielsen.  This despite intense competition that included the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards on CBS, a Chicago Bears-Pittsburgh Steelers game on NBC and...

Fox had no way to get rid of Paula Deen (unlike Food Network), and, like it or not, she'll appear on this week's episode of "MasterChef. " A source close to the show said executives considered a variety of options, including not airing the episode, but none were realistic. Another option would have been to try to edit Deen out of the episode, but that would have disrupted a key stage in the competition to find the best home cook in America, the source said. (An example of how deeply involved she is in the episode, which is the second of two back-to-back episodes airing Wednesday night: Deen helps determine who will be among the final four.)

The producers of "The Good Wife" pulled off a creative shocker for sure. But a ratings coup it probably wasn't. As virtually everyone with a data connection knows by now, CBS' legal drama stunned fans on Sunday with the sudden death of a major character. We're not going to reveal who died or how, but if you don't know and have no care of spoilers you can read all about it here or here . The episode drew 8.9 million total viewers, according to early numbers from Nielsen.

Thanks for the nightmares, Shonda Rhimes.  As alarmingly commonplace as murder is on “Scandal,” it's rarely ever depicted as gruesomely or disturbingly as it is in the closing minutes of Thursday's episode, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” Shot in the back as he runs away from Jake, James lies in the street experiencing what is very clearly a slow and painful death. But his assassin, rather than leaving him there to suffer alone, shows some mercy. Jake sits calmly by James' side, soothing him as he expires.