What You Missed This Week: April 24 - May 1

THIS WEEK ON TV:

• Orphan Black featured an interesting, subtle scene where a woman quietly confronts Art about the limits of the legal definition of sexual assault and the way victims are treated. The quiet fury of her tone and her expression make it clear that the officers indulged in some slut shaming nonsense while she was giving her statement. It’s nothing overt, but for viewers who’ve experienced something similar, it was plenty.
• Outlander gave us some naked Jamie, and some time with his terrific sister Jenny, but also - what fresh hell is this? More rape!! Now it’s Jamie’s turn to be menaced by Black Jack Randall. Is this show still averaging one assault (or attempted assault) per episode? Because it’s starting to feeling like that’s an underestimate.

• Speaking of being tired of seeing people sexually abused and tortured, Game of Thrones looks like it’s about ready to throw my girl Sansa to the lions again. I try not to hear what happens/is supposed to happen in the books, but someone spoiled where this plotline might go and if it does, I will burn this shit down. Leave Sansa Stark Alone 2k15!! Elsewhere: the love of my life Margaery threw redwood level shade on her new mom-in-law, Podrick unlocked the friendship achievement Tragic Backstory, Brienne made me love my dead gay son even more, and Jorah was a creep, as per usual. He absolutely is going from town to town frequenting Daenerys lookalike prostitutes, and that’s nasty. Speaking of which, I feel like whoever’s got the porn parody version of themselves is clearly leading the GoT power rankings, right? That’s more street-level influence than the Lannisters have exerted in a long time.
• Mad Men featured a terrific Stan and Peggy scene (as we already discussed), as well as the Greatest Parent Teacher Conference of All Time. The episode itself had the fantastic, unique feel of a heist movie sequel in the darkest timeline. We watch the show go through all the beats of the iconic “Have a Seat, Shut the Door,” but the tone is ominous in a way the characters can’t feel. We know the show is ending. We know the battle is lost. Don tells us it’s not an end, it’s a beginning, but we’re already heading for the exits.

• The Last Man on Earth expanded its theme of male insecurity to include Todd and gave us one of my favorite comedic sex scenes since Bridesmaids. Fingers crossed that Carol and Phil Miller 2.0 make it work, but I’m not sure I’m invested enough in the show to find out.
• Perhaps the most revolutionary thing about Veep’s take on the presidential television show is how unconcerned it is with whether or not its president is a good one. Selina Meyer is so surrounded by incompetence, we’ll never know if she herself is effective. The banal insanity of our political culture overshadows any of its moving parts.
• All I want to say to Silicon Valley this week is: thank you for Jared. Thank you for him every week, but thank you most especially for this week’s Julia Roberts movie riff. “Every day here has been like a shopping spree. I’m putting on hats!!” It’s no coincidence that my favorite character on the show seems to be the only one who’s allowed to show any unmasked emotional vulnerability with other characters.
• Surprising literally no one, Bob’s Burgers continued to be heartwarming as hell. The episode itself was a wonderful celebration of enjoying things without necessarily needing to excel at them, which is a theme that is particularly close to my heart, and something I think a lot of people struggle with.
• Brooklyn Nine Nine proved there is no ceiling for Andre Braugher’s brilliant reaction acting and gave us three different ways to take care of your friends: protecting them from themselves (Terry and Jake), pushing them out of their comfort zone (Gina and Amy), and giving them a safe space and a listening ear (Holt and Rosa). The cast dynamics are this show are some of the best on any current tv comedy.

• The Good Wife made me more desperate than ever to find out what went down between Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies. How was one of the best female friendships in TV reduced to this? They couldn’t even get it together for one scene to let the characters say goodbye?? Someone needs to be held accountable for this!
• Jane the Virgin finally gave us some great sibling bonding between Rafael and his sister. I hope we get more Luisa in general, but especially more of the two of them together. On a show that’s so much about the strength of family love, it would be nice to see the love interests with some supportive families of their own.
• New Girl’s episode this week seemed mostly to be an attempt to set the stage for reunions between Schmidt-and-CeeCee and Nick-and-Jess, as well as explaining Damon Wayans’s departure. I have no problem with episodes that exist mainly to move the plot forward, but this was one of New Girl’s weaker episodes, by a lot. At least the aptly named Fawmidt is over. That felt like a lot of time devoted to a relationship the show had no interest in making us root for.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to give Ward screentime, I guess just to see whether or not I really will have a hate-fueled aneurysm. I don’t find Phil easy to root for either, and the idea of a spin-off is making me nervous, since the show is already trying to connect so many threads. If only this new show was rumored to be about Bobbi and Agent Gonzales, or Bobbi and Mack, or even Bobbi and Mike Peterson, I might be more excited, but Hunter does nothing for me. He’s a “mercenary with a secret heart of gold” trope with no distinguishing personality traits and I zone out every time he’s on screen.
• Community felt like a return to the phoning-it-in hollowness of The Gas Leak Year, and generally seemed like an extremely feeble excuse to do Star Wars. The show’s systems haven’t been quite fully operational since Harmon’s departure and this episode showed it.

• Modern Family featured some fucked up gender stuff, but also an interesting examination of the ways we try to protect the people we love. The children on this show often seem more successful than their parents, and this episode was no different. Jay’s attempt to “protect” his son from feminization was unnecessary and a complete failure, Gloria’s attempt to protect Haley from a boss who didn’t respect her both undermined Haley and coddled her, and Claire’s attempt to protect Luke’s feelings backfired twice over by hurting both Luke and Alex. The most successful attempt was Luke, who let his friendship with Manny take a hit to protect Manny’s feelings. Modern Family’s most heartwarming, consistent message may be that the next generation is always better than the one before it, though we’ll see if that holds true for the Pritchett-Tuckers, who sometimes seem to have created a mean-girl monster.
• I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy a lot but I caught this week’s episode, which I thought was unnecessarily long and tonally weird, but the entire relationship between Bailey and her husband is wonderful, and I’m pretty sure I must have possessed someone in the writers’ room and penned that Christmas scene. “You’re gonna pull the plug on me to have your with with Idris Elba?” “It’s IDRIS ELBA!!!” Same, girl, same.
• Last night’s Louie was another show that took on some interesting gender role discussion, but the breakup scene between Pamela and Louie was wonderfully done. Louie’s makeup and their roleplay as Jornetha and Peter only highlighted the emotional inequality that has been the undercurrent to their relationship all along. The punchline of the scene was the highlighted subversion a stereotype, the girl who sleeps with the guy and then gets hurt he doesn’t have feelings for her, but Louie’s always been in this position with Pamela and it’s never been about their genders. The theme of emasculation runs throughout the episode - Louie feels emasculated by the woman who beats him up, by his laughing daughters, by Pamela dumping him, but it’s not just women who threaten masculinity. Louie’s brother feels so threatened by Louie’s success that he has a mild breakdown and reveals his sperm is “dead.” Like Last Man, this was an episode of tv all about how fragile men and their idea of maleness can be.

In other big pop culture news, Blur released their first album in twelve years, but this was such a Big Deal to me that I’m going to need more time and space to deal with it, so keep your eyes peeled for a lot of feelings on that some time next week. Also, Avengers: Age of Ultron comes out in the US today, but I haven’t seen it yet and, frankly, am not sure I’m going to. There are plenty of thoughts on that elsewhere. Did you see it? Do you want to talk about it, or about anything else you caught this week? Consider the comments section your open thread for recs and discussion.

Have a good weekend everybody!