The Travel Channel throws out its normal schedule today to honor its headliner, Anthony Bourdain as he approaches the 100th episode of his "No Reservations.
The celebration includes a day of reruns, with two new episodes in prime-time.
"What Were They Thinking," at 8 p.m., is a retrospective of the last five years of the show, which combines, travel, food and Bourdain's observations on the places he's sharing with viewers.
It's been an innovative show, a documentary series that uses techniques like animation and black and white film and Bourdain's finely-honed ear for the English language to travel the world.
The 100th episode airs at 9, as Bourdain hits Paris. Here's a sample:
"Reality" TV takes no holiday: Believe it or not, there are plenty of new episodes of TV shows on the broadcast networks tonight, despite the Labor Day holiday:
- ABC has two hours of "Bachelor Pad" at 7 on Channel 12, followed by "Dating in the Dark."
- CBS has mostly reruns, except for a half-hour preview of its fall shows at 7:3 p.m. on Channel 58.
- NBC has two hours of "America's Got Talent" at 7 on Channel 4, followed by "Dateline NBC."
- PBS' "History Detectives" wraps up its season at 8 p.m. on Channel 10.
Eating in Milwaukee: Travel Channel replays the 2003 Milwaukee episode of Rachael Ray's "$40-a-Day" at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Ray visits The Safe House, Miss Katie's Diner and Three Brothers in the seven-year-old episode.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
