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Joe Mantegna and Gary Sinise, courtesy PBS

There really aren’t that many good reasons to be hanging around indoors watching TV on a holiday weekend, but they do exist.  One of them might be sharing some great music broadcast from Washington, DC, in honor of the service men and women who have given their lives.  You know – the point of this particular holiday.

The National Memorial Day Concert will be broadcast on PBS, live, Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.  Those of us in other time zones will have to check our local listings.  Joe Mantegna and Gary Sinise will host.

The other reasons include a desperate need to vegetate with the marathon of your choice.  Almost every cable channel has some marathon or other going on.  While I do not support hours of mindless TV viewing as part of the usual course of life, I have to concede the occasional day in front of the tube has its place.

Maybe it’s been raining steadily for the past week, the kids are on the ceiling with stir-craziness and if you have to eat another Big Mac while they run around the MickyD’s play yard, you are going to go starkers.

Maybe one of the kids has a broken limb and needs to stay down to heal and she’s gone through all of her picture books and beaten everybody at Candyland so many times no one will play with her.

Maybe you and/or your partner has a solid case of the flu or some other bug and you physically can’t supervise the young ‘uns, or just really want to be left alone.

Well, as I pointed out, the good thing about holiday weekends is all the marathons on.

Boomerang, for example, will be airing a Teen Titans cartoon marathon from noon to midnight on Monday (5/31).  Yeah, there are violence issues, so you may want to keep an eye on the kids through this one.

The soon-to-be-gone SOAPNet will be featuring Beverly Hills 90210 (the original 1980s one) from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m, also on Monday, with special emphasis on guest stars who later rose to fame, such as Matthew Perry, Eva Longorria and Fergie.  Again, not great for the younger kids, but may be worthwhile for you and the teens.

Brooke Elliot and Margaret Cho, Courtesy Lifetime

And, finally, one of my favorite series, from Lifetime, Drop Dead Diva.  They’ll be airing Season One from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday (5/30).

There are some issues with sex talk, but the show tackles so many great issues head-on and does it in a way that’s funny and delightful.  Season Two starts next week, so catch up on what you missed.

Courtesy National Geographic Channel

GULF OIL SPILL

Friendly Rating: More for teens and adults, but okay for younger.

Safety Rating: Some bleeped language.

Quality Rating: It’s decent reporting and told relatively well.

Special airing on the National Geographic Channel at 10 p.m.

To call the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico anything less than a colossal fiasco would be understating in the extreme.  Since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded then sank, nothing has gone right for anyone connected to the whole mess.  And there will be environmental consequences for decades, if you go by past experiences with oil spills.

What the special does is cover the first 36 hours after the first explosion, and it does so letting the events unfold in the telling by those who lived it.  And it seems pretty complete, too.  About the only thing missing is any commentary on the future viability of offshore oil drilling.  But while it’s easy to point fingers at Nat Geo’s ownership (which is Fox Broadcasting), one can also make the argument that such commentary is beyond the scope of what this special is about.

All in all, it’s decent.  I did get the squirmies early on.  But overall, it’s done well and moves appropriately without getting too icky, for the most part.

WOW!  New YouTube…

Okay, it’s not that new.   Phil Lord and Chris Miller made this as a fake commercial back in 1998 and posted it to YouTube.com earlier this month.  My kid sent it to me last week and I couldn’t resist.

Three reasons it’s here – one is that I’m experimenting with getting video clips on this site and have finally found one way to do it.  Alas, it won’t work with most network clips – but then they have a lot invested in folks not downloading them.

The other reason is that the clip, itself, is hysterical, but has some interesting meat to it, whether you’re looking at issues of how we advertise action figures and the violence implied there or gender issues, or even the history of literature.

And finally, as the lines blur between delivery systems – lots of folks are watching traditional television programs on their computers, we’re seeing YouTube clips on various shows – may as well point up some of the better stuff online as well as what’s coming through your set-top box or rabbit ears.

So, does this work for you?  Let us know in the comments box.

Courtesy Fox Broadcasting

ALSO JUST IN –

Fox announced this morning that it has picked up Glee for a third season – even though season one hasn’t finished yet.

Granted, Glee – about a group of high school losers who band together to sing and dance in a competitive show choir somewhere in the Midwest – is one of the few bright spots of last fall’s TV season.  And, technically, this says Fox has a lot of confidence in the show.

But just because they picked the show up for a third season doesn’t mean it will actually air a third season.  If show producers Ryan Murphy, et. al., get cocky this next season and screw the show up (like that’s never happened before) and the ratings take a massive dive…  Well, nothing is ever guaranteed in the world of TV.

We hope it will air.  We hope Murphy and company will keep the show on track and keep it good.  In the meantime, Glee fans can enjoy a small celebration.

Tomorrow night, the show will feature music from flavor of the moment, Lady Gaga.  Then two more episodes and the first season is in the books, with the complete first season DVD to be released on September 14.  Yes, the first half of the season was released on DVD earlier this year.

So, given some of the mature content on the show, do you let your kids watch Glee?  Are the messages of acceptance and being the best you can be strong enough to over-ride the teen pregnancy story and other mis-behavior?

Join the discussion.

Jamie Hynneman and Adam Savage, courtesy Discovery Networks

THIS JUST IN -

Discovery Networks just sent around a press release announcing that Mythbusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hynneman should be blowing things up in the name of science for a good while longer yet.

According to the release, the guys have signed a multi-year deal to co-executive produce their show Mythbusters.  They’re also involved in a deal to develop other shows for Discovery Networks with BermanBraun – the production company formed by former TV executives Gail Berman (late of Fox); and Lloyd Braun (late of ABC).

If it hadn’t been for Shark Week, Mythbusters would have been Discovery’s break out show – the one that makes people sit up and start watching.  Kind of like what Emeril Lagasse did for the Food Network, lo these many years ago, and, come to think of it, what Say Yes to the Dress did for TLC.   As it is, Mythbusters is the network’s longest running series.  It started in January 2003, and that’s a healthy run for any show.  So while there’s a multi-year deal to run the show, that doesn’t mean for sure that it will keep running.  But it does make a continued run more likely.

Which it great because I think the guys (and gal Kari Byron) do – you should pardon the expression – a bang-up job.