Ashley Dupre on 20/20 and other TV Highlights

MONDAY Nov 17

TV Newser hears rumor that for one night only, Arianna Huffington will be subbing for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. (9 p.m.)

First she got frisky with Turtle on Entourage. Now Jamie-Lynn Sigler is causing a stir on How I Met Your Mother. The Sopranos figlia will guest-star as one of the “Woo Girls,” a bevy of single beauties who like to party. (8:30 p.m.)

Was Einstein a Soviet spy? Did he almost become the president of Israel? What hair product did he use? This History Channel tells all, and in the process debunks some myths about his involvement with the Manhattan Project. (9 p.m.)

TUESDAY Nov 18

PBS’s Independent Lens series, which bills itself as “a film festival in your living room,” has been stellar so far. (If you didn’t see last week’s Lioness, about female combat vets, absolutely get the DVD.) Tonight’s installment follows three teenage filmmakers from the Swinomish Reservation in Washington State as they document the destruction a pair of 1950s-era oil refineries are wreaking on their community. (10 p.m.)

New reality show Brothers to Brutha premieres on BET. The Harrell brothers, “from the moment they could walk and talk down the streets of South Central Los Angeles…were singing, dancing and determined to make it to the top. Now that their R&B group Brutha is signed to the Island Def Jam Music Group, the chance to truly put the family name in the spotlight has finally arrived.” No pressure! (10:30 p.m.)

Paul Simon will appear on The Colbert Report. We love, we love, we love. (11:30 p.m.)

WEDNESDAY Nov 19

Nobody brings the crazy like Tyra. Wednesday’s 11th season finale of America’s Next Top Model promises “the most painful” judging yet. We can only hope it’s because Tyra stubbed her toe. (CW, 8 p.m.)

And Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison discusses her latest book, A Mercy, with Tavis Smiley on PBS. Morrison, who famously called Bill Clinton “the first black president,” beautifully chronicles a time “before slavery was equated with race,” says New York magazine. (check local listings)

THURSDAY Nov 20

Girl-crush Sarah Vowell talks Pilgrims past and present on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. The patron hipster of American Studies has a theory that the famously chaste Puritans were actually just bookworms. (NBC, 12:30 p.m.)

Steve Martin plays an eccentric businessman named Gavin Volure on 30 Rock, but all we can picture is him making out with Claire Danes. Away, demons! (NBC, 9:30 p.m.)

FRIDAY Nov 21

This week’s do-not-miss: On 20/20, Diane Sawyer lands the first televised sit-down with Eliot Spitzer’s ultimate undoing, 23-year-old prostitute Ashley Alexandra Dupre. (ABC, 10 p.m.)

If you miss hearing about what’s going on in Alaska, tonight is the season finale of the Discovery Channel’s Toughest Race on Earth: Iditarod. Russia or bust, baby! (8 p.m.)

SATURDAY Nov 22

On a new installment of Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work, get a glimpse of the hidden world inside Buckingham Palace, and find out what the queen actually does all day long, other than stare icily at Camilla over her royal gin fizz. (PBS, check local listings)

Finally, what happens if you ignore Tiki and don’t go green? The Sci-Fi Channel gives us their own post-apocalypse spin on Waterworld with the original film, Lost City Raiders. Set in the (not-so-distant?) future, melting polar ice caps have shrunk the earth’s land mass. The remaining population is stuffed into overcrowded megacities—but a group of underwater heroes emerge. You may recognize one of them as Ian Somerhalder, the sextoy from HBO’s Tell Me You Love Me. He’ll save the planet with his amazing eyebrows. (9 p.m.)

Nicole Ankowski has lived in Ohio, Oakland, and on the high plains of South Dakota, but is now proud to call Brooklyn home. She wrote for alternative weekly papers in the first two states, and tried to learn Lakota in the last. (The vowels can be tricky.) She just earned her MFA in Creative Writing and has been published in Beeswax literary journal. She is unable to resist good writing or bad TV.