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, political dramas and cyber-thrillers are on their way out, while trashed comedians are on their way in.
The First Rule of Times Square…
… is that Times Square is never, ever empty — except in Wednesday’s Mr. Robot finale. Closing out a phenomenal first season, the episode followed the breakdown of both society as we know it and our hero Elliott Alderson, culminating in a sight more terrifying than all the Christian Slater freakouts in the world: a Sephora devoid of people. Can’t wait to see what Sam Esmail has in store for us next year!
David Simon Writes Us a Tragedy
Per the Fitzgerald quote that inspired the title of his new miniseries, Show Me a Hero. But while Nick Wasicsko may not get a happy ending, many of the city’s public housing tenants who have new homes thanks to him do, and the series itself closes out with a positively tear-jerking funeral montage. Wrapping up a three-week run in between HBO’s summer and fall Sunday schedules, Oscar Isaac’s latest star turn left us ready to barricade ourselves with some Springsteen and a box of tissues.
Booze + Comedians + Television Budget = ???
Christopher Meloni! Tony Hale! Justin Long! Jenny freakin’ Slate! Drunk History is a reliable source of A-plus comedy cameos, and the third season premiere of Derek Waters’ web-series-turned-actual-series was no exception. You know the drill — alcohol, true stories, and silly reenactments — but that doesn’t make the final product any less enjoyable.
Hipsters Seek Drug Lord
It’s the VICE News parody we’ve all been waiting for. Even though VICE is doing real journalistic work — the kind that gets its reporters imprisoned by the Turkish government — it’s high time someone parodied millennials’ need to have their vegetables wrapped in a hip, aesthetically relatable package. Thank God for Bill Hader and Fred Armisen,thank God for Documentary Now!, and thank God for “DRONEZ: The Hunt for El Chingon.”
“Well, Actually…”
Jordan Peele’s knack for impressions continues to know no bounds. In this week’s “420 Special” of his and Keegan-Michael Key’s sketch show, he applies it to Neil Degrasse Tyson — specifically, Neil Degrasse Tyson’s ability to get out of trouble with his wife using his signature explanations of the universe and its wonders. The Cosmos-style visual effects are spot-on, helping to pass off typical absentmindedness as an application of, say, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.