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 round, Scandal tackles #BlackLivesMatter in a heart-wrenching police brutality plot.
Scandal Takes on #BlackLivesMatter
The title of “The Lawn Chair” comes from the wrenching act of protest Brandon Parker’s father commits after the death of his 18-year-old son at the hands of a police officer: he sets up a lawn chair over his child’s corpse, shotgun in hand, and demands the officer come forward. Olivia initially takes the cops’ side, gets viciously called out by a community activist, and Scandal goes where most network dramas don’t dare — straight to the heart of America’s ugliest, and most shameful, national trauma.
The Gang Breaks Keegan-Michael Key
The most impressive thing about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is that it manages to feel new even in Season 10, which is almost unheard of in a sitcom. This week’s “The Gang Goes on Family Fight” had me rolling with laughter, as Dee tried her best to be raunchily sexy, Dennis had a full-blown meltdown, and Charlie was, well, Charlie. But some of the best moments came from Keegan-Michael Key’s increasingly frustrated performance as the show’s host, all but giving in by the episode’s end. — Pilot Viruet, TV Editor
Patrick and Kevin Give It a Shot
This week’s episode of Looking, in which Patrick, Dom, and Doris travel to Modesto for the funeral of Doris’ father, is gorgeous and sad and another strong entry in the show’s dramatically improved second season. But once they return to San Francisco, Patrick learns that his boss has finally done the deed and left his fiancé. Kevin may not be perfect, and Russell Tovey may have gotten into hot water for his iffy comments on effeminacy and gay identity, but it’s hard not to get caught up in the big payoff of a season’s worth of tortured romance.
Saul‘s Talking Toilet
I promise I’m not trying to be that person who only writes about toilet scenes (is that a person?), but there’s really been a surge in exemplary defecatory TV/film these days: after Cronenberg wowed us with an… explosive scene in Maps to the Stars, Vince Gilligan may have topped it with a scene in the last episode of Better Call Saul, “Jello.” As Saul makes his way through an increasingly absurd round of prospective clients, he comes to the seemingly normal household of a well-mannered young father. This well-mannered father has a well-mannered invention that he wants to patent. It’s a large, deformed lump lying ominously under a tarp. For a second, we wonder what grotesque horror he’s about to unveil, but then he lifts it up for the grand reveal — and it’s just a toilet. Attached to the toilet, however, is a tiny motion censor/speaker. He explains that while parents can potty train through positive reinforcement, toilets tend to be a little more stoic. So, all Chappie-like, his invention, the Toilet Buddy, gives the lifeless receptacle a voice and seeming personality: one that says things like “Gosh, your so big,” as it detects the girth of individual turds, and could just so happen to double as a voiceover in gay porn. — Moze Halperin, Associate Editor
Kirk Steele, Man on a Mission, a C** Mission
What you see above is Abbi Jacobson’s Broad City boss, Trey, humping an inflatable orca for a frosted-tips porn site on Christmas Day, 2004. (Other props include a pool noodle and two beach balls. Also, he quotes The Mask.) Someone give Paul Downs an Emmy already for his commitment to the role.