FRIDAY, JULY 20
Set for Life (ABC, 8 p.m. ET) Series Premiere. Jimmy Kimmel shows his face around ABC a bit more as he hosts this seven-episode new game show that could really have some contestants set for life. Each contestant has the chance to win monthly paychecks for up to forty years. The game doesn't require skill as there are no trivia questions to answer. The contestants just have to know when to stop in order to battle it out for the highest monthly check possible.
The Last Day of Summer (Nickelodeon, 8 p.m. ET) Premiere. Jansen Panettiere (The X's) stars as nervous tween Luke Malloy, who is dreading the start of middle school until a Groundhog Day-style plot turn has him reliving Labor Day over and over again in this original Nickelodeon movie. Luke is freaked and desperately tries to set things right, but the day won't stop repeating itself until he faces his fears, which include performing onstage with his band, skateboarding with a super-cool high school kid, confronting a notorious middle school bully and acknowledging his true feelings for the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, tween-aged television critic Maya Motavalli says Last Day of Summer is a bummer. "It got really boring after awhile because it just kept repeating the same stuff over and over again," Maya reports. "For example, when the movie started, the kids were in a tent and one of them farted and all the animals around him fainted. It was a forced-but-sort-of-funny laugh the first time, but around the ninth time or so it got really annoying. This was basically the entire movie. Also, the ending was bad. (SPOILER ALERT!) The kids enter a talent show and sing a song with their band Steel Monkey, but the song sucks. It's hardly High School Musical material. It sounded like a song from The Naked Brothers Band, thrown together at the last second to the point where they didn't even have a song. Though I didn't like this movie at all, I did feel like I could relate to the parts about middle school. I remember being freaked out about going to a new school where I wasn't sure if there'd be bullies waiting to beat me up when I went to the bathroom. This movie kind of brought that alive. But I don't think this movie will be a hit." - Maya Motavalli
Trick My Truck (CMT, 9:30 p.m. ET) Season Premiere. The truck makeover team is back, but they're upping the ante this time. Instead of just renovating semi-trucks, they're moving on to tow trucks, pick-up trucks, and even an ice cream truck. In one episode, trucker Dale Hayden has his truck revamped into a tribute to his mother who recently died from breast cancer.