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, Jon Stewart begins his long goodbye and the Jennings demonstrate how marriage is, quite literally, like pulling teeth.
All Hail Val
On Broad City, Abbi’s Judy Garland-esque drunk-blackout alter ego came out to play this week. Ilana was, of course, devastated that Abbi was leading a whole parallel life without her, but came around eventually when Val ate her own piercing, because she is a badass. “VALBAR IS NARNIAAAAA,” indeed.
“Men’s Rights Are Nothing”
In which Leslie Knope takes on one of the scourges of our time, in the form of Chris Gethard. The episode is curiously well timed, too, considering BuzzFeed just ran a scathing exposé of real-life MRA Paul Elam. And it’s yet another example of Parks and Recreation absolutely killing its final, flashed-forward season.
Jon Stewart Says Goodbye
Stewart confirmed what Comedy Central had announced just hours before: he’s making a well-timed exit before the end of the year. The furor over his potential successor has already begun, but his early farewell is worth some attention: the show and the audience don’t deserve a restless host, he says, but acknowledges his 16 years in the chair as the honor of his professional life. Now the countdown to the farewell show, and the comparison to Stephen Colbert’s, begins.
Philip and Elizabeth Play Dentist
In an interview with Vulture, director Thomas Schlamme compared the most excruciating scene from this week’s episode of The Americans to the Jennings’ version of a sex scene (not that the show has ever shied away from those, either). Given the looks on the couple/spy team’s faces as Philip pulls Elizabeth’s tooth sans anesthesia, Schlamme is very, very right. It’s just the level of messed-up we’ve come to expect from a duo that’s debating recruiting their teen daughter to the KGB.
John Oliver Takes on Big Pharma
Last Week Tonight returned for its second season this week, after three months, and late night’s newest entrant shows no signs of slowing down. The subject of this week’s monologue was the pharmaceutical industry, particularly its shady, perk-filled relationship with doctors. The speech was pure Oliver: vegetables washed down with jokes comparing pill companies to sexually inept high school boyfriends. Burn!