Hail to the chef

Marcus Samuelsson's team gets a boost from chef Sarah Master every Thursday on "The Taste" (7 p.m., KSTP, Ch. 5), yet another food show that suggests you can't have a great meal unless there's some sort of competition involved.

Knowing the words

Memorizing 300 hours of music lyrics probably won't get you invited to a lot of parties, but it makes you a strong candidate to be crowned "King of the Nerds" (9 p.m., TBS), which returns for a second season. Minneapolis resident Zachary Storch is the contestant with the strange lyrical catalog.

Rescue this

"Rake" (8 p.m., KMSP, Ch. 9), which is being sold as "House" as a lawyer, should be compelling since it has Greg Kinnear in front of the camera and Dudley Riggs veteran Peter Tolan behind it. But the first episode lacks the bite that Tolan brought to "Rescue Me." Let's hope that future episodes go deeper in exploring the dark side of the lead character.

Neal Justin