Critic's Corner Thursday: 'Big Bang Theory,' 'Community

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

?You get your choice of funny repeats to start your evening tonight. CBS' The Big Bang Theory (8 ET/PT) reaches back to the 2009 season for an amusing outing that finds the boys geeking out over the discovery of a precious souvenir from The Lord of the Rings.

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  By Kevin Winter, Getty Images for Twentieth Centu

  Guest-stars on The Mentalist

By Kevin Winter, Getty Images for Twentieth Centu

Guest-stars on The Mentalist

But you can have an equally good time at Community (NBC, 8 ET/PT), where the gang celebrates Troy's birthday at a bar and discovers a new side to Shirley ? while someone else spots a side to Abed that isn't actually there.

?A shark gets loose in a CSI (CBS, 9 ET/PT) repeat that also marked the departure of Liz Vassey's Wendy.

Considering Marg Helgenberger is cutting back on her commitment next season and Laurence Fishburne is leaving, losing Vassey looks like an even bigger mistake now than it did then.

?Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti) gets in trouble on The Mentalist (CBS, 10 ET/PT) when a man she's supposed to be protecting gets murdered.

It's a good episode, made even better by the terrific young actress playing the man's daughter: Kaitlyn Dever, who was so phenomenal this season as Loretta on Justified and is on the big screen now in Bad Teacher.

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