Must-watch premiere week episodes

After a surprisingly impressive summer that gave us a much-improved second season of “True Blood,” continued excellence from “Burn Notice” and a slew of guilty pleasures (hello, “Big Brother” and “Design Star”), the new fall television season has a lot to live up to – especially after the disaster that was the 2008-09 season.

We previewed all the newbies in last week’s massive fall television guide, so this week it’s all about those returning favorites that are doing big things during the unofficial premiere week. If you’re new to the column or simply forgot, this is how things go: each week, I’ll provide you with two programs I think are must-watch in the coming week and two programs that are DVR-worthy. Basically, I do all the work so you don’t have to.

What to watch

SHOW: “House”
EPISODE: “Broken”
WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday on FOX
For the first time in the program’s history, “House” airs as a two-hour event-type episode. Though last season struggled to find the right balance between medicine and relationship drama, this effort, which will depict House’s (Hugh Laurie) time in the mental institution he checked himself into at the end of the finale last year, looks to be fantastic. House and Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) are the only members of the regular cast that will appear here, so expect an excellent examination of their relationship as House’s psyche continues to break down.

SHOW: “Dollhouse”
EPISODE: “Vows”
WHEN: 9 p.m. Friday on FOX
After barely surviving cancelation due to porous ratings last season, Joss Whedon’s buzzworthy program about humans with imprinted memories returns – with even more buzz. Whedon produced a burn-off, after-the-fact episode on his own dime that never aired on FOX last spring, but foreshadowed where the show could lead if it survived.

Now, those of us unimpressed by the first handful of episodes are ready to be amazed. Thankfully, Echo (Eliza Dushku) and Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) are working together in this one, and the plot should move quicker with Whedon playing with house money.

What to DVR

SHOW: “Dexter”
EPISODE: “Living The Dream”
WHEN: 10 p.m. Sunday on Showtime
For Dexter (Michael C. Hall), the battle between his personal connections and private desires has always brought him much stress. But this season, things are going to get worse, because Dexter cannot really stalk and kill a criminal when he’s busy wiping his newborn baby’s bottom. Though last season took a little longer to build, Season 4 of this Showtime hit looks tremendous thanks to the addition of John Lithgow as the newest mass murderer and the return of Keith Carradine’s awesome Agent Lundy.

SHOW: “How I Met Your Mother”
EPISODE: “Definition”
WHEN: 8 p.m. Monday on CBS
While “The Office” and “30 Rock” get all the mainstream love and critics have fallen in love with “The Big Bang Theory,” “How I Met Your Mother” remains the most consistently enjoyable comedy on television. It is what it is – a traditional sitcom about friends – but no one does it better. Neil Patrick Harris’ Barney Stinson is one of television’s best characters, and here Barney begins his relationship with Robin (Cobie Smulders). The events should make him more rounded than Dwight Schrute or Tracy Jordan could ever be.

Rant of the week

Kudos go out to the “True Blood” writers and producers for creating one hell of a second season, but for also ending it on a more subdued note. After one of the craziest, most intense and most thoroughly entertaining string of 11 episodes, the program’s finale delivered on every level – but ended much quieter than most of us probably expected.

Showrunner Alan Ball and his staff (plus the awesome casting choices of Alexander Skarsgard and Michelle Forbes) helped “True Blood” make marked improvements in year two, taking what was little more than another somewhat compelling artifact in the vampire craze through season one and turning it into a quality program that is enjoyable for those of us who don’t swoon over everything with fangs.