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, the CW gives viewers its latest featherweight teen drama and a few much-missed characters come back to Boardwalk Empire and Homeland.
Margaret Thompson Returns
For like ten seconds, but still. She’s actually moving on pretty healthily from her failed marriage/murdered lover/emergency abortion trifecta, living with her brother in Brooklyn and putting her kids through school with an office job. She agrees to have coffee with Nucky in Penn Station, but she shuts him down as soon as he mentions the death of Eddie Kessler, making it clear she’s 1000% done with the gangster-bootlegger mob wife phase of her life. There’s a solid chance that means we won’t be seeing much of her again, but if that’s what it takes for Margaret to get a happy ending, we’re not complaining.
And So Does Nicholas Brody!
Who is currently in Caracas, Venezuela, in an abandoned office building given over to the city’s seedier elements and under the care of a pedophile “doctor” after getting shot in the stomach. He’s also balding, and possibly on the verge of a heroin addiction (courtesy of said caretaker, who’s basically holding him captive). But it’s the first time we’ve seen him in all of Homeland‘s third season, so it’s still good to check in on everyone’s favorite terrorist even when he isn’t doing so hot.
Tatiana Maslany Comes to Parks and Rec
In between juggling six different roles on Orphan Black, Maslany found the time to show up on Parks as Tom Haverford’s latest love interest, a Doctors Without Borders member interested in vaccinating Pawneeans against the “petri dish of weird diseases” that plagues the chronically unhealthy town. She’s a significant step up from Mona Lisa Saperstein, not least because she gets Tom to pull off a godawful British accent for a good ten minutes. Jenny Slate will be sorely missed, obviously, but Maslany’s sweet Dr. Nadia looks like she’ll be just as much a counterweight to Tom’s vices as Mona Lisa was an enabler.
Reign Introduces Us to Sexy Mary, Queen of Scots
And sexy Nostradamus, and mean Catherine de Medici. The CW’s latest teen drama is a pseudo-historical, maybe-possibly-supernatural exploration of what it’s like to be a young hot person in charge of medieval Scotland. Apparently, it goes something like this: grow up in a convent, then meet your gorgeous fiancé and his slightly gorgeous-er brother, then quickly become embroiled in Courtly Intrigue. Basically, it’s the Gossip Girl replacement and Vampire Diaries supplement we don’t need but don’t really mind having around, and it has the possibility to be awesome provided you’ve consumed a healthy amount of red wine beforehand. DVR away!
American Horror Story: Coven Brings Together the Baddest Witches
For all of Ryan Murphy’s faults (and there are many of them!), I am willing to let nearly all of them slide as this week’s episode of American Horror Story: Coven provided two of the most glorious TV moments of the year, much less the week. First, there was the ingenious notion of putting Jessica Lange and Angela Bassett in a Ninth Ward braiding salon, allowing the ladies to spar about which coven — the white witches from Salem or their voodoo counterparts from down South — is stronger. And then, we got to watch Lily Rabe as Misty Day groovin’ along to Stevie Nicks. Can we get Misty to sing a tearful rendition of “Silver Springs” before the end of this season, please? — Tyler Coates, Deputy Editor