Raising Hope (8pm, Fox) - Sabrina is arrested at a protest for civil disobedience, but her two-week sentence in jail is made even worse by a prison attendant name Rikki (Katy Perry, right) who claims they're old friends.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter (8:30pm, Fox) - I thought this got canceled, but I guess it was just resting because it's back after a break. Tonight, Annie (Jaime Pressly) tries to set a good example for her slack daughter by returning to school at a local community college. A much better bet at 8:30 would be ...

Cougar Town (8:30pm, ABC) - Bobby falls for Travis' photographer professor (Sarah Chalke, "Scrubs") and Laurie begins a romance via Twitter with a soldier in Iraq. This episode was directed by Courtney Cox.

Jane By Design (9pm, ABC Family) - In the first season finale, Jane prepares for Fashion Week but she may have to bail on her coworkers since Ben knows about her secret.

Breaking In (9:30pm, Fox) - In the Season 2 premiere, Oz has to sell Contra Security, but Cameron, Cash and the gang aren't sure what to make of the unhinged new boss (Megan Mullally).

Southland (10pm, TNT) - Lydia and Ruben probe the death of a nanny and the children who were under her care are missing. Also, John corners Tang about coming free about last week's shooting.

Justified (10pm, FX) - A shocking murder puts Raylan in a very tight spot and forces him to face past mistakes. Meanwhile, Boyd clashes with Harlan's corrupt sheriff.

RALEIGH -- Katy Perry wants it all, critical respect and dance-club credibility to go with massive popularity. But most of all, she seems to want dessert.

Tuesday night brought Perry's "California Dreams" roadshow to the RBC Center, and it was a confectionary affair all the way around. The stage was done up with lots of pinks and pastels, and the show's overall vibe was something like "Alice in Wonderland" crossed with "The Wizard of Oz" -- except the road to redemption was the Candyland board game rather than a yellow brick road, and the promised land was out in the land of "California Gurls" rather than Kansas. The show also had elements of Cirque du Soleil, princess fairy tales, super-hero fantasies and, of course, cupcakes.

"I wanna hear you scream if you love caaaaandy," Perry cooed early on. "It's gonna be a sweet night."

Massive-spectacle pop-diva tours are nothing new, of course, and Perry is following a well-traveled course charted by Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera and good ol' Madonna, among many others. But she has her own spin on it with a good-girl-next-door-gone-bad image, plus the candy obsession. That's not surprising, given that Perry's most recent album came with a candy-scented compact-disc booklet.

In keeping with her dance-cred aspirations, Perry tried to turn the RBC Center into a disco with her opening acts. DJ Skeet Skeet was up first, spinning a half-hour of high-energy dance mixes. Then came Swedish dance-pop singer Robyn, who somehow danced despite wearing impossible shoes with four-inch-thick soles.

As for Perry, she initially appeared in red shoes reminiscent of Dorthy Gale. The show opened with a film clip noting that she had "dreams covered in sugar, candy and cream," setting up an elaborate storyline that seemed to involve Perry chasing her cat through a surreal landscape (and also becoming feline herself at one point).

Naturally, there were costume-changes -- lots and lots of costume changes. Perry variously came across as a wide-eyed ingenue, super-hero, Playboy bunny and lounge singer, running through a dizzying array of outfits. That hit a quite-funny peak toward the end of the show during "Hot N Cold," a sleight-of-outfit demonstration that had Perry making a series of how'd-she-do-that onstage costume changes. Just for good measure, she came out for the encore with a prominent feature of her anatomy done up like two Hershey's kisses.

The performance was a shade too cutesy at times and it did feel overly long at two hours, padded out with a bit more yackety-yack than necessary. The unplugged covers of current hits went on longer than it needed to, with a few too many aw-shucks "Southern" references, and the selections were hardly revelatory. Rebecca Black's "Friday" still sucks even if played on acoustic guitars, just in case you were wondering.

With all the dancing, lasers and pyrotechnics swirling around, there were times when music seemed secondary. Perry's voice wasn't bad, although she warbled mightily off-pitch during the opening "Teenage Dream." But when she just sat and sang on "Not Like the Movies," it was quite good.

Other highlights included "Hummingbird Heartbeat," "Pearl" and "Californina Gurls" because, let's face it, catchy's catchy. So eat dessert first -- the future is uncertain.

david.menconi@newsobserver.com or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat or 829-4759

New to the concert calendar, California gurl Katy Perry, who is hitting the road this summer on a 41-city U.S. tour. And she'll get to Raleigh early on -- date number five happens June 14 at the RBC Center. Ticket details are still to come. Tickets go on sale at noon on Saturday, Jan. 29.

Cats 101 (8pm, Animal Planet) - This is the episode featuring Homer the Blind Cat. Should be good.

Sharktopus (Syfy) - An original Syfy movie starring Eric Roberts as a military scientist who develops a monstrous shark-octopus hybrid, which goes on a killing spree on the resort beaches of Mexico after the mechanism that controls the beast is accidentally destroyed. Sounds entirely plausible.

Maternal Obsession (9pm, Lifetime) - A new Lifetime movie in which Jean Kelly plays a child-obsessed counselor who plots to take the baby of a teenager (Kristen Prout) after the girl comes to her for advice on adoption.

Saturday Night Live (11:30, NBC) - The 36th season of SNL opens with Amy Poehler (right) as host and the banned-by-Sesame-Street Katy Perry as musical guest. SNL has a few new faces this year: Vanessa Bayer, Paul Brittain, Taran Killam, and Jay Pharoah.

It's also a great night to catch up on some repeats you may have missed earlier in the week, CBS is showing "Hawaii Five-0" (8pm) and "Blue Bloods" (9pm), and NBC is showing "The Event" (8pm) and "Chase" (9pm) and "Law & Order: SVU" (10pm).

Singer Katy Perry recorded a cleaned-up version of her song "Hot N Cold" for "Sesame Street" recently, but your kids aren't likely to see it -- at least not until they're old enough to Google.

After a video of Perry's duet with Elmo hit YouTube, parents complained about her revealing outfit and now "Sesame Street" has announced they will not air the performance on the show. Watch what your tots can't by clicking below.

A representative of Victoria Beckham has confirmed to BBC News that the former Spice Girl is replacing Paula Abdul as judge on "American Idol."

For one show, that is. 

This could be a signal that "Idol" wants to keep the four-judge format, but fill the fourth spot with a rotating list of guests judges.  

Beckham, a fashion designer, is married to soccer star David Beckham. 

UPDATE: READ BELOW!

Regarding my Katy Perry-Beth Ditto column (which I thought was kinda positive) yesterday:

"Craig,
I have to tell you I found your Gossip/Katy Perry piece straight up depressing. Beth Ditto is actually widely known as being a queer advocate and a feminist--she's been iconic for that for a solid 5-6 years. I know this in part because I was the Gossip's publicist for their first few records and she has been out and vocal about it since the bands inception. I would say she is the best known queer female icon in independent music, period.

Also, in your article, the way you write about KP's body (boobs in the lede--c'mon, man!) and that every single time you describe Beth you mention her weight--how little you talk about the music or their actual skills or charisma--you might want to consider how discouraging and depressing that is for young female musicians who might be anxiously reading the story because they love Katy Perry or are anxious to get their hands on whatever info they can about women making music. I am on a book tour right now for my book, 'Girls' Guide to Rocking,' which is for girls 8-16 who are interested in playing music and starting bands. Every night, after the reading I spend about an hour talking to these young girls, and you cannot imagine the impact stuff about weight and appearance and how it is written about--women musicians looks being criticized and not their music (i.e. not being taken seriously, not being treated in the same way as their male peers)--how that makes them view the music world, how discouraging it is, what a road block that feels like as a 15 yr old girl who is not Katy Perry hot and wants nothing more than to rule the world from her drum kit.

I am sharing this with you in hopes that you will, in the future, consider the implications of how you criticize female artists."

--Jessica

I’ll never understand why the result show needs to take up an hour because the part everyone wants to watch only takes about two minutes.
Maybe they just like to make me listen to music that I normally would not.

The show opens with a few cast-members of “The Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” to tell us how the American Idol desk is on its way to the Smithsonian Museum. I am super pumped about the release of this movie so I do not mind that they are in the way of me finding out the results.

Even a slinky Herve Leger dress almost seems a little tame for signer Katy Perry, who typically is wearing bright colors and funky dresses onstage.

But here she is, dressed to kill at the Bondi Blonde's Style Mansion, which Perry attended Monday night.

While I'm not terribly crazy about the dress (although I do admire anyone who can pull off a Herve Leger) are the bangs and chic long bob.