This Week’s Top 5 TV Moments: Giamatti Plays God

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There are scores of TV shows out there, with dozens of new episodes each week, not to mention everything you can find on Hulu Plus, Netflix streaming, and HBO Go. How’s a viewer to keep up? To help you sort through all that television has to offer, Flavorwire is compiling the five best moments on TV each week. This time, Inside Amy Schumer pulls in a prominent guest star as How I Met Your Mother bows out for good.

How I Met Your Mother Winds Down

The Internet may not have been too happy with it, but How I Met Your Mother deserves a shout-out for bringing a whopping nine seasons to a close. To recap: Ted meets The Mother on the train platform; The Mother’s name is Tracy; The Mother died, and the entire series was actually a giant exercise in Ted justifying his desire to go after his ex. And his kids are totally down with it! But it was also the very last episode of a show that defied its network laugh-track sitcom roots in its early seasons. We’ll call it a wash.

Paul Giamatti Plays God

… on the season premiere of Inside Amy Schumer, as a gay deity who’s kind enough to take an interest in Amy’s recently acquired STD. Giamatti gets the episode’s best line (“I need to stop making so many white girls”) while bargaining with a fictionalized, bratty version of Schumer. Giamatti’s appearance was the highlight of a strong season premiere, including another guest appearance by Bridget Everett and a razor-sharp opener skewering the ways in which female performers are evaluated based on their looks.

Community Goes Animated (Again)

The fifth season of Community has been full of what A.V. Club TV editor Todd Vanderwerff calls “spiritual sequels,” or follow-ups to earlier, beloved episodes like the Dungeons and Dragons romp. “G.I. Jeff,” like the Rudolph-style Christmas romp of seasons yore, is a cartoon-ified journey into a character’s inner psyche. In this case, it’s Jeff, who imagines a universe modeled after his favorite cartoon while blacked out on scotch and age-reversal pills. Abed, naturally, plays a character called “Fourth Wall,” and acts as Jeff’s spiritual guide.

Justified Gets Its Groove Back

The prominent use of the word “anus” was only the half of it. Well into its penultimate season, Justified is obviously nowhere near its peak, but this week’s installment featured an excellent face-off between its two MVPs, Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins. It’s good to see FX’s chronically under-appreciated entry into the prestige drama field head towards its finale, albeit gradually, with some momentum behind it.

Mindy’s Sex Tape Leaks

That she made with Bill Hader! In a Girl Scout uniform! Opinions on this week’s double-header were mixed, but the introduction of Mindy’s own Kim K. moment is one of the ballsier comic maneuvers this uneven sitcom has pulled in a while. And “Indian BBW” was only improved by real developments in the Mindy and Danny romance… in the same episode as a porn site called Sploderzz. Bonus: read all about three very smart women’s mixed feelings on the show over at BuzzFeed.