Labor Day is Made for Marathons

Forget barbecuing. Why battle bugs, heat prostration and burned burgers when you can spend your Labor Day in air conditioned comfort, racked out on the couch in front of the TV?

That’s what the cable networks seem to expect you do anyway, since they’ve planned a whole slew of TV marathons to help you wile away the last rays of summer.

• For those who want to spend the whole three-day weekend in a nostalgic stupor, VH1 Classic has lined up 80 Hours of the ’80s starting Friday at 4 p.m., and featuring an A-to-Z showcase of videos, an 80 Greatest Songs of the ’80s special, and more.
• On Sunday, AMC has a five-episode Mad Men marathon to catch you up on all of this season’s episodes, starting at 5 p.m. and ending with a new episode at 10 p.m.
• Starting at midnight on Sunday night (or is that Monday morning?) SOAPNet has a 24-hour “mega-marathon” of Beverly Hills, 90210 to help get you ready for the premiere of The CW’s spin-off.
• Moving on to Monday, USA has a Monk marathon starting bright and early at 6 a.m.
• FX has That 70′s Show all day starting at 7 a.m.
• TV Land will be showing I Love Lucy from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by a seven-hour Scrubs marathon at 4 p.m.
• A&E is offering a CSI: Miami marathon at 8 a.m.
• Hallmark has Murder She Wrote all day starting at 8 a.m.
• Sci Fi Channel will be showing Star Trek: The Next Generation from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.
• TNT will be airing 12 episodes of The Closer starting at 9 a.m., and ending with a new episode at 9 p.m.
• The Travel Channel has a marathon of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations starting at 9 a.m.
• The Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs marathon runs from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• Spike TV will be showing CSI from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• TBS is offering a 20-episode House of Payne marathon starting at 10 a.m.
• ABC Family has a My Wife and Kids marathon on tap at noon.
• Food Network has seven hours of Unwrapped starting at noon.
• BBC America will be showing a marathon of Pink Panther movies starting at 12:30 p.m. (which is what we’ll be watching in my house).

And, of course, for the traditionalists, there’s always the Jerry Lewis Telethon.

NO RESERVATIONS: No Picnics This Time

The best things about Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations…well, the best thing is probably Anthony Bourdain himself. The second best thing, however, is the way Bourdain follows food–handmade, homemade, freshly killed, pickled for years–to uncover the sociology and anthropology of a given region. You’re Uzbekistan? On the Silk Road? No wonder your cuisine is a crazy mix of cultures.

This approach is taken a little farther than usual in the episode the Travel Channel is rebroadcasting Monday (1pm Eastern). While filming in Beirut, Bourdain and team were caught up in the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Bourdain notes that they were no longer making the show they’d come to make, and instead we see them nervously planning escape routes and watching the bombing from a hotel near the embassies that everyone hopes will be safe. They’re not overreacting–we eventually see their surprisingly moving evacuation by the US military. It’s tense and scary and sad and angry, and it’s very real. It might not be through the food this time, but you’ll learn more about life under fire in the Middle East in this episode of No Reservations than you will from almost anything else you see on TV.