We’re giving Ryan Murphy’s return a three-rec salute, albeit one that recognizes his American Horror Story franchise is the ultimate hatewatch. As this one is subtitled 1984, expect a lot of spandex, Culture Club, and Orwellian double-speak. Well, since it’s Murphy, more likely Bauhaus or Ministry. Also, as Katherine and Brad both note below, using the loaded year 1984 may be a bit of a fake-out and the more relevant reference from the year may be Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter. The action even takes place at a Summer camp.

KATHERINE’S PICK:
American Horror Story: 1984 [FX, 10p]
The ninth season of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s anthology series returns with series regulars Emma Roberts, Sarah Paulson, Billie Lourd, Cody Fern, Leslie Grossman, and John Carol Lynch return. Newcomers include professional skier Gus Kenworthy. Teasers indicate the season is heavily inspired not by Big Brother but gorefest slasher films of the early ’80s.

BRAD’S PICK:
American Horror Story: 1984 [FX, 10p]
It’s back! This season we are going to back to the ’80s as the show focuses in on a slasher killer. If you know anything about AHS you know that this will be deeper than your average Friday the 13th sequel.

JASON’S PICK:
American Horror Story: 1984 [FX, 10p]
Last year, I finally made it through a whole season of this fascinating, infuriating show. Slasher films of the 1980s may just be the perfect setting for a show which toes the line (and so delicately) between love and hate.

ALSO ON TAP TONIGHT:

• Newly minted NBC late (late) night host Lilly Singh brings her act to an earlier evening showcase for one night with A Little Late With Lilly Singh: The Primetime Special.
• If you dig BTS, and wonder if your excitement extends to all entertainment Korean, new K-Drama When The Camellia Blooms makes its debut today on Netflix. While, as with indie rockers alt-J, triangles are usually K-Dramas’ favorite shape, this one goes the Mamma Mia route as our heroine is confronted with three men.
• On the 13th season debut of WWE NXT on USA, Roderick Strong battles the Velveteen Dream for some sort of belt, presumably. That’s what I love about wrestling, we get older, but the names stay the same (that is to say, wonderful).
• On the woefully overlooked Comedy Central low budget South Side (from the Salahuddin Bros and Diallo Riddle, all of whom star in the show), the theme tonight is meatballs, which got us hungry. So we had an eggplant parm.
• We’ll leave you with some excellent titles from shows we rarely cover. On tonight’s House Hunters on HGTV, (a program that’s been on so long our hyperlinked trailer is from a pre-9/11 era) we have “A Texas-Sized Downside” as a couple looks for a smaller house that still is the dimensions of your average New Jersey mall, and on Travel Channel’s Mountain Monsters, the AIMS gang sets its site on “The Cherokee Death Cat” and we’ll just leave that there.