CRITIC'S CORNER
THE MIDDLE
ABC, 8 ET/PT
TV’s most underappreciated great comedy returns with a one-hour special as the Heck family makes its way through summer to fall. Maybe this is the night the Hecks begin their break into the buzz and ratings elite — as they should, considering the quality of their show and the weakness of their sitcom competition, NBC’s loser duo of Animal Prac
tice (8 ET/PT) and Guys With Kids (8:30 ET/PT). It’s like NBC is inviting you to watch ABC.
MODERN FAMILY
ABC, 9 ET/PT
Then it’s on to TV’s most appreciated great comedy, Modern Family, which just wrapped up another deservedly dominant Emmy performance. The three-time best-comedy winner launches with Jay (Ed O’Neill, who will, one hopes, someday win the Emmy he’s due) celebrating his birthday, unaware that a new birth may be on the way.
CSI
CBS, 10 ET/PT
Old crimes dominate the later hours at CBS and NBC. You could spend two hours with a Law & Order: SVU (9 ET/PT) special that features guest shots by Paget Brewster and Adam Baldwin, but it means enduring another one of those cop-as-suspect plots of which crime shows have grown overly fond. You’ll have to decide whether that sounds better than CSI’s trip to the flip side, cop-asvictim, as D.B. leads the search for his kidnapped granddaughter.