BEST BETS FOR WEDNESDAY, FEB. 10, 2010

	FACES OF AMERICA WITH LOUIS GATES, JR. PBS, 8 p.m. ET (Check local listings) SERIES PREMIERE: What a wonderful idea for a series: Select and investigate the genealogies of various celebrities, then invite them on TV to listen to their family stories and surprise them with their own detailed lineages. It’s like This Is Your Life: The Previous Generations. And it’s delightful. Tonight’s opener features, among others, Yo-Yo Ma, whose family’s amazing, detailed past is a total surprise to him.
	MODERN FAMILY ABC, 9 p.m. ET This new episode, a Valentine’s Day special called “My Funky Valentine,” shows some of the things various family members will do to demonstrate their love. One standout: Julie Bowen’s Claire, who greets her husband at a hotel bar wearing a trench coat and nothing else – then, on the way to their hotel room, gets the coat belt caught in the escalator.
	AMERICAN IDOL Fox, 9 p.m. ET Finally. We’re now in the second phase of this show, where the talent outshines the ridicule. Already, we’ve met some singers whose voices and stories have touched us – and that’s after only one day in Hollywood. Tonight, Day Two. As for new host Ellen DeGeneres? She can’t be judged, herself, until the live editions start. Until then, editing can hide a lot, for good and for bad.
	FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS DirecTV 101 Network, 9 p.m. ET SEASON FINALE: Two big showdowns occur tonight, in this eventual NBC series’ third-season finale. One is Coach Taylor’s big game against the Dillon Panthers, the team he used to coach before he was fired. The other is his wife Tami, now principal of that rival school, who is being forced to apologize publicly for giving a teen some advice about her pregnancy. Will she prevail? Will he? Will this series? No matter what happens, they’re all worth rooting for – and they’ve all done their best.
	UGLY BETTY ABC, 10 p.m. ET For this series, Fashion Week is like a Christmas episode: an annual cause for celebration, thanks, and, almost inevitably, moments of unexpected tension.
	NIP/TUCK FX, 10 p.m. ET As this series counts down to its finale, the show isn’t fragmenting into alternate narratives. Instead, it’s trying to bring the surgical partners together, by sending them to joint therapy – with the therapist played by former Murder One attorney Daniel Benzali.