Teenagers, and not Coolio, rule the roost

Is America running out of has-beens? Our pop-culture past has been strip-mined so thoroughly that we’re beginning to exhaust our supply of Pauly Shores. This brings us to “Coolio’s Rules” (9 p.m., Oxygen), the latest imitation of “The Osbournes.”

As he explains, Coolio wasn’t around to raise his four teenagers, so now he has returned to teach them a thing or two about life and get on television, to boot. You quickly get the impression that while Coolio was on the road making music and being a player, his offspring have been watching a lot of reality television. This keeps them a step ahead of dear old dreadlocked Dad.

¢ “Frontline” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) offers a sobering look at the foreign-policy challenges for the next president. It’s all about Afghanistan. Or, rather, it’s all about the growing boldness of the Taliban and allied insurgents, forces that appeared to have been swept away some seven years ago.

“Frontline” takes a glum view of current strategies in the region but reserves its most unsettling scenarios for the end, when experts discuss the possibility of the Taliban destabilizing Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons.

¢ On a similar note, “Independent Lens” (9 p.m., PBS) offers “Dinner with the President,” a filmmaker’s chance to sit down with former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf over a meal and discuss the many challenges facing his nation, torn between tribal factions, its alliance with the United States and its fear of encirclement by neighboring India.

¢ Today’s new DVD releases include “The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection,” containing all 80 episodes, completely remastered and uncut. Made from 1929 to 1938, these Hal Roach shorts aired on television for decades. Millions of kids watched these black-and-white comedies repeatedly, delighting to their ancient musical score and committing the strange vaudeville-influenced dialogue to memory.

Criticized by some for reflecting racial attitudes of a bygone era, the “Rascals” shorts were among the only television shows to air during the 1950s and 1960s in which black and white characters appeared together as equals and friends. In fact, it was one of the only shows in which black characters appeared at all.

The “Rascals” were not so much about race as class. There were rich kids and middle-class kids, but some of the characters were quite literally beggars.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Linus explains his unique take on the holidays in the 1966 special “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” (7 p.m., ABC).

¢ “Nova” (7 p.m., PBS, check local listings) explores the revolutionary field of fractal geometry.

¢ Cuddy feels maternal on “House” (7 p.m., Fox).

¢ The kids go apartment hunting on “Gavin and Stacey” (7:40 p.m., BBC America).

¢ A suspect’s faulty memory must be put to the test on “The Mentalist” (8 p.m., CBS).

¢ Mike catches leeches on “Dirtiest Jobs” (8 p.m., Discovery).

¢ Kids grow up too fast on “Fringe” (8 p.m., Fox).

¢ A child vanishes from a mall on “Without a Trace” (9 p.m., CBS).

¢ An AIDS case has a strange source on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (9 p.m., NBC).

¢ Eli and Jordan squabble on “Eli Stone” (10 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).