1) “The Simpsons,” 8 p.m., Fox. Even now, in its 34th season, the show manages to change. Previous years had “Treehouse of Horror,” with three offbeat tales; that will be here next week, but first is a fresh twist — “Treehouse presents” a take-off on Stephen King’s “It.” Homer and other teens fight a killer clown (shown here) … then return 27 years later, to try again. The Homer/Marge romance is flipped, in a tale that’s too gory for some viewers, but great fun for many.
2) “House of the Dragon” season-finale, 9 p.m., HBO, rerunning at 10:01, 11:02 and 12:05. The start of the season was dominated by epic prequels. The “Lord of the Rings” one ended Oct. 14 on Amazon; now this “Game of Thrones” one (also on HBO Max) concludes. They’ll be back next year; meanwhile, we can try other big projects, like “Shantaram” (Apple TV+) and “Interview With the Vampire” (10:03 p.m. today, AMC, also AMC+).
3) Sports overload. Our choices range from baseball stars to tiny skaters and giant football players. Skate America (3 p.m., NBC) has the finals for women and free dance. Baseball has the Padres-Phillies at 2:30 p.m. ET on Fox Sports1 (barring a sweep) and Astros-Yankees at 7 on TBS. And football goes on all day, concluding with the Steelers (2-4) and Dolphins (3-3), at 8:15 p.m .ET on NBC.
4) “Magpie Murders,” 9 p.m., PBS. Last week’s opener had a grumpy author plunge to his death. That left two problems – figuring out if this was murder (with lots of logical suspects) and finding the final chapter of his novel. Over the next five, intriguing weeks, we’ll trace both the fictional case in his book and the real one. That follows an OK “Miss Scarlet and the Duke” at 8, with Eliza hired to work an art-theft case that police are also probing.
5) ALSO: There’s another 9 p.m. finale, at the same time as “Dragon.” This one is “Power Book III: Raising Kanan,’ on Starz. Also, some Halloween-time tales are family-friendly: The Disney Channel has “Under Wraps 2” (2022) at 7 p.m.; Freeform goes from “Ghostbusters” films at 9:30 a.m. (1984) and noon (2016) to “Monsters” ones at 7:25 (2001) and 9:30 p.m. (2013). In between are “Beetlejuice” (1988) at 3:10 and “Hocus Pocus” (1993) at 5:15.