So we're in that dead time of the TV season when there's really not much on. Everything seems to be a repeat on the networks (not just prime time but game shows and talk shows during the day, too) or your favorite show isn't on at all.

There could be a silver lining in all of this though. Since your favorite shows are in repeats or aren't on, why not take this opportunity to watch a show you've never seen before? For example, tonight's CBS comedy lineup of How I Met Your Mother, Accidentally on Purpose, Two and a Half Men, and Big Bang Theory are all repeats, so why not check out House if you've never seen it before? Sounds good in theory (big bang or otherwise), though I'm not sure if people think like that with their TV show watching.

• Spike is showing Bad Santa all night.
• TCM is showing Sherlock Holmes movies all night.
• Fox Movie Channel is showing Home Alone all night.
• At 8, FOX has four new episodes of 'Til Death.
• NBC has Saturday Night Live: A Very Gilly Christmas at 8.
• MyNetwork TV has a new Smackdown! at 8.
• USA has Elf at 8.
• ESPN has NBA Basketball at 8, the Clippers vs. the Suns.
• WE has two Christmas episodes of Golden Girls at 8, then two Christmas episodes of Hope & Faith and two Christmas episodes of Girlfriends.
• Nickelodeon has a Christmas episode of iCarly at 8.
• At 8:30, PBS has a new NOW, then a new Bill Moyers Journal.
• At 9, The CW has Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.
• Lifetime has Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage at 9, then two Christmas episodes of Will & Grace and a Christmas Frasier.
• At 10, Nickelodeon has two Christmas episodes of The George Lopez Show, followed by a Christmas episode of The Nanny.

Check your local TV listings for more.

After the jump, the late night talk shows.

Merry Christmas! In this pre-holiday podcast, Brad Trechak and Jason Hughes join me to talk about our favorite holiday episodes (think Festivus, folks), as well as the following:

• Brittany Murphy's death and how it caused NBC to pull a SNL Weekend Update bit from a few weeks ago,
• It's David Tennant's last days as Doctor Who, and we talk about his popular run and what's in store for his successor, Matt Smith,
• What TV-related items you can buy with the handful of gift cards you received during the holidays,
• How we might be watching TV during the next decade. Will the 30th season of The Simpsons be available telekinetically?
• Ask TV Squad, Comment of the Week, our picks of the week, and more!

Run time is 1:14:14.

You can listen to the podcast below, or download from here or by subscribing to our RSS podcast feed. It is also available via iTunes. Feel free to leave us feedback in the comments or drop us a line at tvsquadpodcast [at] gmail [dot] com.

As usual, the music at the beginning and end of the podcast is "Life" by Justin Trawick. Note that we recorded the podcast on Monday, and my pick of the week -- Jay Thomas on Letterman -- has already aired. Huh. I figured they'd wait until at least Christmas Eve for that one.

Every Christmas, on the same Late Show episode where Dave and Jay Thomas try to knock the meatball off of the Christmas tree, Paul Shaffer does his impersonation of Cher singing "O, Holy Night." He didn't do it last night on the show, but he did do it, and CBS has it as a web exclusive.

By the way, Thomas didn't even get to throw a football last night. Dave knocked the meatball off before he could even get a football in his hands.

[Watch clips and episodes of The Late Show and other shows at SlashControl.]

Everyone enjoys A Charlie Brown Christmas (you do enjoy it, right?). But what if a certain late night television host was inserted into it? Let's take a look!

He's not sure which network the special is on this year (and he calls it It's A Charlie Brown Christmas), but animated Dave is amusing. They should make a web series featuring him.

[Watch clips and episodes of The Late Show and other shows at SlashControl.]

You know those video yule log's you can watch every Christmas on WPIX or On Demand? Well, Conan O'Brien has one this year too, available at ConanYuleLog.com (or just watch it below).

It's ho-ho-horrifying (and not particularly funny after about 20 seconds).

No, that's not something dirty, it's a holiday dish that Martha Stewart cooked last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. You might know it as "that cookie thing that's shaped like a tree and has sticky stuff on it."

[Watch clips and episodes of Late Night and other shows at SlashControl.]

• At 7, ReelzChannel has a new Hollywood Dailies with new contributor Richard Roeper.
• 8, FOX has Carrie Underwood: An All-Star Holiday Special.
• ESPN has the MAACO Bowl, BYU vs. Oregon State.
• At 9, ABC has a new Scrubs, then a new Better Off Ted.
• Discovery has a new Dirty Jobs at 9, followed by a new Ghost Lab.
• History Channel has two new episodes of How The Earth Was Made.
• BBC America has a new Britain's Missing Top Model at 9.
• Comedy Central has four Christmas episodes of South Park starting at 9.
• At 10, Syfy has a new ECW.
• A&E has two new episodes of Paranormal State at 10.
• Also at 10: HBO has a new Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.

Check your local TV listings for more.

After the jump, the late night talk shows.

This new Target Christmas commercial makes me uncomfortable. The people playing the parents are great, but there's something about the mom's smile that makes me think this Christmas Day isn't going to go well at all.

One thing that doesn't quite make sense: this television is kinda big. Why does the husband seem shocked by what it is? Didn't he see the package under the tree beforehand? And if the wife hid it from him until the last minute, she must think she did something wrong too.

On the fifth day of Christmas, TV gave to me ... five cancelled shows ...

Every new season, a network will cancel a show (at least) that a ton of people like. Of course, every year the networks cancel shows that nobody likes. The five shows on this list include a little of both. Feel free to list other shows in the comments, but these are the five that stood out to me in 2009.

1. Guiding Light. I had to put Guiding Light at number one. You can't put the cancellation of a show that was on every weekday for 72 years at number three or number five. It just wouldn't be right, even if the show did limp to its end. The longest-running soap opera (and one of the longest-running shows on TV, period) started on radio in 1937 and switched to television in 1952 (it was actually on both radio and TV for a while). The last episode aired in September.

Snoop Dogg dropped by Martha today for her annual "Christmas Cookies" show. They made brownies together, though there is one ingredient that Snoop really wanted to put in the brownies but Martha didn't have on the table. She had vanilla though.

They could be the next great comedy team.

Maybe I'm 12 years old, but this sketch always cracks me up. It's Alec Baldwin in a classic Saturday Night Live Christmas sketch from years ago. It was one of the sketches shown last night on NBC's A Very Gilly Christmas.

Funny, it's almost as if it's not Baldwin introducing the sketch, it's like Jack Donaghy is introducing it.

I'm not sure if this is up there with "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas," but last night Martin Short entertained viewers of The Late Show with the song "Don't Commit Suicide on the Holidays." He even gives a little wink and nod to Dave about what he went through this year.

[Watch clips and episodes of The Late Show and other shows at SlashControl.]

Big Love was nominated for several Golden Globe Awards the other day, and now HBO has released this new promo/holiday greeting. I don't know if Harry Dean Stanton says "Christmas" to me though. The new season premieres on January 10.

[via Brandfreak]

I'm not quite sure how old this commercial is (I know it's been running for at least a few years now), but it's becoming a new Christmas classic. I like green bean casserole, but this ad has always freaked me out a little. A tree that's not only alive but has a taste for green bean casserole (and can open a window)? It's like a Christmas movie made by the people who did The Day of the Triffids.