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, HBO’s Sunday lineup returns while Netflix enters the superhero game.
GoT Does #TBT
For its fifth season opener, Game of Thrones ventured into brand-new territory: a flashback scene, in which a very young Cersei Lannister learns some very depressing things about her future from a witch in the woods. Tweenage Cersei, it turns out, is not all that different from adult Cersei: pretty, domineering, and utterly tactless. Doesn’t mean she deserves to find out her three bastard children will all die before she does, though.
Erlich Bachman Rips the Valley a New One
This Sunday’s premiere of Silicon Valley doubled down on its vicious satire of tech culture and its accompanying bro-ness. Which is why its funniest sequence, in which T.J. Miller’s boorish entrepreneur proceeds to “neg” every venture capitalist in the valley, is also its most effective. Bachman insults his would-be patrons’ artwork, outfit choices, and logos — one “looks like a sideways vagina; I find that to be racist” — on a tear that culminates with his testicles on a table. Thankfully, this occurs offscreen, but the comic effect stands.
Hail to the Chief
And rounding out HBO’s Sunday lineup is Veep, which returned for its fourth season (and last with creator Armando Iannucci) this week. Selina is officially the President of the United States, although she’s still campaigning in the general election, and her team promptly manages to screw up her first major speech by feeding the wrong address into the teleprompter. Watching Selina spin five minutes of spectacular nothing out of “FUTURE, WHATEVER” is everything great about Veep‘s particular brand of incompetence as comedy.
Netflix and Marvel Debut as Dynamic Duo
… with Daredevil, the first of four planned miniseries with the streaming service. Daredevil has the most name recognition, and thus understandably came up first for adaptation, with Charlie Cox (best known as dashing Irishman Owen from Boardwalk Empire) as the title character. Released this week, the season’s garnered positive reviews — certainly more positive than the reception of network counterparts like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Agent Carter — and, following some controversy, is now a show with a blind protagonist that’s also accessible to blind viewers.
Louie Needs to Poop
Not the most sophisticated premise for a gag on television’s most critically salivated-over comedy, but a hilarious one nonetheless. Louie is shopping for groceries; Louie desperately needs to poop; Louie can’t find a bathroom. Daughters Lily and Jane get hysterically worked up, accosting a deli owner and a policeman before Louie simply… gives in. Louis CK’s screams of “DON’T LOOK AT ME,” reminiscent of the infamous Bridesmaids sink scene, end the episode on a high note.