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, election madness takes a delightfully trollish turn and high-profile revivals and adaptations bring genre nerds out in spades.
They Want to Believe
At this point, readers have probably heard the so-so news: the new X-Files limited series is great on nostalgia and only mediocre on actual quality, at least compared to the series’ creative peak. But that’s OK, because for a few short weeks, we get to tag along with Mulder and Scully again — 13 million of us, if Sunday night’s metrics hold up in the coming month. Remember: the truth is still out there, or any number of other X-Files catchphrases slightly retooled for the new(ish) series!
Troll Them With Kindness
In what will hopefully be the last time a Fox News video ever appears on this site, Michael Moore went on Megyn Kelly’s show… and refused to brawl, instead repeatedly praising Kelly for how she’s faring in her war with Donald Trump and his supporters, perhaps the dictionary definition of the term “Team Nobody.” Proving that the best way to get to Fox News is to deny them the conflict that gets them ratings, Moore may have found the best way to get under the network anchors’ skins.
Not Your Mother’s Grad School
The pilot’s been out for a few weeks, but on Monday, Syfy aired the first and second episodes of what might be its highest-profile series in years: The Magicians, an adaptation of Lev Grossman’s popular book trilogy of the same name. Depression, levitation sex, and gruesome classroom murders all made an appearance, quickly establishing Grossman’s ethos — crudely but efficiently described as self-aware-Hogwarts-for-grownups — to the screen. Book fans should be locked in for the long haul, and hopefully some new recruits as well.
Zooey Flies the Coop
For its first half-hour sans Deschanel (but before Megan Fox!), New Girl aired an episode appropriately titled “No Girl,” bringing in guest stars Fred Armisen and presumably-booked-prior-to-9/11-scandal Steve Rannazzisi, plus extra roommate hijinks like turning the loft into a giant Airbnb to finance Schmidt’s Japanese bachelor party. It all works, proving that this late-season sitcom is a well-oiled machine that can function even without its title character (though thankfully not forever).
Rebecca Got an A in Pole-Dancing
From a plot perspective, the most important thing about Monday night’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend spring premiere was Rebecca’s under-pressure revelation that she didn’t move to West Covina for work after all — she moved there after running into Josh on the street. From every other perspective, the most important thing about the episode was the full-blown pole dance Rebecca performs on a party bus. She learned it from a (feminist) pole class she aced, because they’ll give you grades in pole dancing as long as you specifically ask them to!