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, Louie kicks off its fourth season while Silicon Valley‘s MVP wraps up his best, and last, performance.
He’s Baaaaack
It’s been two years (closer to a year than a half, but whatever) since FX’s brilliant Louie wrapped up its third season. But Louis CK’s self-imposed hiatus appears to have done him good, given that back-to-back episodes “Back” and “Model” were as strong as any CK’s ever written, produced, starred in, and directed. There’s a touch of absurdism, plenty of melancholy, and a slew of celebrity cameos, including regular poker partner Sarah Silverman and rarer faces like Todd Barry and Jerry Seinfeld. Oh yeah, and Louie punches a girl in the face.
Drag Race Finds Its Top Three
Adore Delano. Bianca Del Rio. Courtney Act. And none for Darienne Lake, a longtime straggler who was finally sent packing this week on America’s premier reality show about drag queens. That means this week will see the finale of Drag Race‘s sixth season, pitting the young queen against the funny queen against the Australian queen. Gentlemen, start your engines, and… you know the rest.
Fargo Changes the Game
It’s been unclear thus far, four episodes into Fargo‘s ten-installment limited run, just what the miniseries’ relationship is to its namesake source material. Is it a loose, long-form adaptation? A prequel? In the opening to “Eating the Blame,” we find out that the FX drama is, in fact, a direct sequel to the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece. “God is real,” Oliver Platt’s Stavros says… as he finds the money buried in the snow from the movie set ten years prior. Just six episodes left to take that reveal and run with it.
Peter Gregory Bows Out
Silicon Valley’s surprise breakout star has been Christopher Evan Welch, the little-known actor who plays Peter Thiel-esque angel investor Peter Gregory. One of the freshman comedy’s great tragedies is that Welch passed away while the first season was still filming, meaning that Sunday’s episode, the show’s fifth, was actually Welch’s last. He’ll be missed for the life he was able to give his character’s many idiosyncrasies, from his odd fascination with Burger King to the choking noise he makes upon finding out his nemesis is in the house. It’s a breakout performance cut tragically short, and one that Silicon Valley will have a hard time replacing.
RIP to Many, Many Shows
Networks have been renouncing their renewals, pickups, and cancellations this week. There’s some cause for celebration (Hannibal round three, baby!), but a few series met with premature deaths: the much-lauded, celebrity-studded Trophy Wife, for example, and FOX’s underrated military comedy Enlisted. Oh, and a little sitcom the Internet never took much of a liking to called… Community, is it?No one will mourn Mixology, though, and the world is now blessed with a sitcom called Selfie starring Karen Gillan and John Cho. You take what you can.