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, Kroll Show bids goodbye to PubLizity, Oh Hello, and the Gigolo House, while Looking goes out on a definitively quieter note.
Oh, Goodbye
Nick Kroll ended his namesake sketch show on his own terms this week, bringing back his most beloved characters — cranky Upper West Siders, incomprehensible publicists, reality TV morons — for one last hurrah. It’s a sendoff that managed to do Kroll’s huge, richly textured, and dynamic universe justice, probably because the comedian got to choose the when, where, and how of his exit.
A Jessa-Hannah Bluebell Poem Is Born
Leave it to Girls to film the grossest, funniest, sweetest home birth in the age of Brooklyn mommyblogging. While Gabby Hoffmann’s howled “EAT SHIT, BITCH!” was certainly an episode highlight, the real MVP award goes to Jemima Kirke, whose Jessa gamely volunteered to stick her head underwater to look at a howling Caroline’s vagina mid-contraction. Traumatizing, yes, but also enough to convince a woman self-centered even by Girls standards she has a higher calling.
TV Journalist Resigns in Non-Disgrace
Unlike a certain counterpart at NBC, The Daily Show‘s Jason Jones has left the air voluntarily. After almost a decade as a correspondent under Jon Stewart, who will also leave the program soon, Jones left the satirical news game with a short retrospective, including his Comedy Central-sponsored outings to India, Denmark, and most hilariously/terrifyingly, election season Iran. Luckily, we still have Jessica Williams for at least a little while yet.
Looking Ends with a Buzz
We didn’t know it at the time, but this Sunday’s episode of Looking was actually its series finale, with the exception of a to-be-produced special on HBO. It’s a shame, because the show’s second season was so much better than the first, showing self-awareness about Patrick’s flaws, turning Agustín into something resembling a sympathetic human being, and letting Dom and Doris do their wonderful thing. Still, Looking ended as it lived: as a quiet study of its characters’ not-particularly-high-stakes lives as gay men in San Francisco.
Jack and Ben Hit the Big Time
Comedy Central launched its serialized, Ben Stiller-produced Big Time in Hollywood, FL this week, and the action quickly got as crazy as the state it takes place in. Stiller cameos as an actor posing as a drug dealer to help two twenty-somethings facing eviction from their parents’ house extort $20,000 from their family members, and…well, things escalate. It remains to be seen whether Big Time will join Broad City, Inside Amy Schumer, and Key & Peele on Comedy Central’s scripted pantheon, but it’s off to a good start.