1) “Saturday Night Live,” 11:29 p.m., NBC. For the third straight week, the show has a skilled comedy pro as host. The season opened with comics who sometimes act (Chris Rock and Bill Burr) and great results. Now comes Issa Rae, who received Emmy nominations this year for both a comedy series (“Insecure”) and a sketch show (“The Black Lady Sketch Show”). It’s her first time at “SNL”; Justin Bieber (shown here) has his fourth time as music guest; in one, he doubled as host.
2) “Halloween” (1978) and “Eli Roth’s History of Horror,” 8 and 10 p.m., AMC. The “Walking Dead” channel keeps reminding us that Halloween isn’t all kid stuff. It has “Tales of the Crypt” films at 6 and 8 a.m., followed by five “Halloween” sequels. Then comes the original, a low-budgeter that was superbly directed by John Carpenter. Afterward, Roth spends an hour with movie monsters.
3) Halloween lite. Mostly, though, cable prefers a family-friendly Halloween. Freeform has the original “Ghostbusters” films at 12:35 and 3:05 p.m., then follows with more, leading to the oft-repeated “Hocus Pocus” at 7:45. The Disney Channel has Mickey Mouse and “Toy Story” specials at 9 and 9:30 p.m. Even Syfy joins in, with “Madea Halloween” movies at 4:30 and 6:55 p.m.
4) “The Masked Singer,” 8 p.m., Fox. Here’s a quick rerun of Wednesday’s hour. That’s followed by last week’s “I Can See Your Voice.” NBC also has game-show reruns – “Weakest Link” at 8 p.m. and “Ellen’s Game of Games” at 9.
5) Sports overlap. The baseball playoffs continue (if needed) at 4:30 p.m. ET on Fox Sports1 and 7:30 p.m. ET on TBS, setting up Tuesday’s start of the World Series. But mostly, this is college football’s day, peaking with a big one – Alabama and George, ranked No. 2 and 3, at 8 p.m.ET on CBS. ABC’s day includes top-ranked Clemson at Georgia Tech at noon and North Carolina (No. 5) at Florida State at 7:30 p.m.