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 week, Review ties up its first season and Veep hits the Best Coast.
Review Rounds Up
Comedy Central has hit it out of the park with its freshman comedies this year: first Broad City and then Review, Andy Daly’s excellent take on being a life critic. Last night saw the conclusion of Review‘s first season, in which Daly’s Forrest MacNeil takes a crack at “Quitting, Last Day, [and] Irish.” The nine-episode outing winds down with (spoiler!) Forrest’s probably-sincere resignation, leaving at least a minor cliffhanger for fans going into round two. We know Daly/MacNeil will be back, though, even if the premise might require some tweaking.
Don Makes a Not-So-Triumphant Return
For a guy so into personal reinvention, Don Draper is oddly attached to Sterling Cooper & Partners, the ad firm that placed him on paid leave and still wants nothing to do with him. Joan, Bert, and Jim Cutler can’t buy him out without bankrupting the company, though, so they devise some draconian terms designed to drive him away: no drinking, no talking with clients alone, no doing anything without the thoroughly mediocre Lou Avery’s say-so. Roger wants him back and Don wants in again, though, so he accepts his co-partners’ terms without a second blink. Let the incredibly tense brainstorming meetings begin.
Selina Lands in Silicon Valley
In an episode that puts the Washington satire firmly in the territory of another HBO Sunday comedy, Selina Meyer’s fledgling campaign for president brings Veep to the California campus of Clovis, a company founded on the premise that “people want to work with us more than they want to be paid.” No offense to Mike Judge, but Armando Iannucci’s 20 minutes of tech culture evisceration is as potent as all four episodes of Silicon Valley that have aired to date. Under fire: ageism, nonsensical business models, and space-age toilets that Amy’s left to flush because Selina can’t figure out how.
Supernatural Hints at a New Show
It’s called “Bloodlines,” and Supernatural took a break late in its ninth season to air what’s known as a backdoor pilot. The spin-off soft launch spends barely any time with the mothership’s main characters, introducing us instead to the cast of its successor show. The premise? Chicago’s underworld is actually controlled by Five Families-style factions of creatures, from stalwarts like werewolves and vampires to huh?-inducing newcomers (what is a “ghoul,” and how is it different from a ghost?). Approaching the end of its ninth season, Supernatural likely isn’t long for this world, but the CW’s already busy laying the groundwork for what comes next.
Game of Thrones Throws Out the Playbook
Game of Thrones is an adaptation of a book series, and an unfinished one at that. So a dramatic deviation from the plot of its source material was hardly what fans, including this one, expected from Sunday night’s “Oathkeeper.” Not just one deviation, but two: the intriguing glimpse into the world of supernatural icemen the White Walkers, and a boring detour to a pack of rapist mutineers at Craster’s Keep. The latter at least promises Bran and Jon a little more to do (and a chance at a reunion) in the coming weeks, but as many have pointed out, book readers like myself can no longer sanctimoniously warn others what’s coming next. Plot twist!