Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Thursday, September 25. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
How To Get Away With Murder (ABC, 10 p.m.): Oh, girl. After that New York Times article dropping “angry black woman” left and right it’s been impossible to avoid the thinkpieces about what Shonda Rhimes’ career means, or what black women are really like, or what influence Peter Nowalk had on the production. When really the important news here is that Viola bleepin’ Davis is the star of this show, and she is incredible as the standoffish law professor Annalise Keating. Sonia Saraiya had some thoughts about the pilot here, and Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya will be taking the weekly reviews starting tonight. Hers will all end with a quiz on how to get away with murder. It seems likely that the show will offer a lot of tutelage, but just in case, study up on your case law (which in this case is a whole lot of The Good Wife and Legally Blonde, because come on).
Also noted
Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 8 p.m.): Guess what season Grey’s is going into? Its 11th. Oh yes, Meredith Grey is still narrating her life over at Seattle Grace Mercy West. This is installment number one of a three-hour programming bloc that ABC is calling TGIT, or Thank God It’s Thursday. We are not sure how we feel about it, but we do hereby acknowledge its existence.
Scandal (ABC, 9 p.m.): And here’s hour two, which is going into its fourth season tonight at the new time of 9 p.m. Information on this upcoming season is scarce; Olivia Pope is gone, somewhere, far away from the clutches of the president’s grasping paws and in the arms of the handsome Jake Ballard. But will it last? It’s Scandal, so obviously it won’t. Reviews start tonight with Joshua Alston on duty, replacing our regular reviewer Sonia Saraiya for a few weeks. (In the interests of best reporting on Olivia Pope’s mental state, Sonia has also taken the opportunity to disappear off the face of the earth while enjoying a tropical beach. She’ll be back, maybe.)
Parenthood (NBC, 10 p.m.): The sixth and final season debuts tonight—the only thing of importance happening on a network that isn’t ABC, as Jason Katims’ little drama with a passionate following finds the words for its last year… by going to Vegas?! Okay, Parenthood. OKAY. Carrie Raisler is picking up this beat for this season.
Garfunkel And Oates (IFC, 10 p.m.): First-season finale. The girls deal with awkward libidinal issues, as Roki, hopped up on fertility drugs, chases after an ex-boyfriend, and Kate tries to date someone at her maturity level and ends up matched with a high-schooler.
Elsewhere in TV Club
In this week’s Expert Witness, Sonia Saraiya talks with a television prop master—Chris Call, who works currently on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and used to design all those weird Rambaldi props for Alias. They end up having a very long conversation about how terrible it would be to wrangle cats for a living, which, by the way, is a real job you could have! We do not recommend it, though.
And Will Harris brings back One-Season Wonders, Weirdos, and Wannabes with a look at George Burns Comedy Week, a show that asked “What could go wrong?” shortly before tanking in a fiery conflagration.
TV Club Classic
Battlestar Galactica (2 p.m.): Sonia Saraiya is writing about “Litmus” and “Six Degrees Of Separation,” two extremely different episodes which are a total head trip, in different directions, and therefore will require a lot of concentration that she doesn’t have right now, because as we mentioned, she’s on a tropical vacation, except she’s also sitting here writing this What’s On Tonight. We really don’t know what’s going on. This is why they frown on first-person, you know.
What else is on?
Steven Universe (Cartoon Network, 6:30 p.m.): Steven befriends a magic mirror. Hopefully not this cracktastic mirror in Snow White And The Huntsman, though:
The Great Bear Stakeout (Discovery, 7 p.m.): Grizzly bears are observed in Alaska. The Discovery Channel just like loves Alaska. They need to calm that game down. It’s getting weird.
Bones (Fox, 8 p.m.): This is literally going into its 10th season and there is just so much we don’t understand about those staid little procedurals that somehow manage to run for DECADES without us really noticing. The preview says Booth is in jail. Is that David Boreanaz? Why is he in jail? Emily Deschanel, spring him out!
Project Runway (Lifetime, 9 p.m.): “Find Your Muse,” Heidi exhorts, clapping her hands so that elves pop out of the woodwork. The elves are actually just overworked designers, their sewing hands worn to the bone by challenge after challenge. They go to look for their muses. Instead they find Muse, the band, who sings “Madness” at them. The elves sway. Muse slinks away, arm-in-arm with Fraulein herself. Tim Gunn sighs, shakes his head slowly, says: “Tim, you’re too good for this.”
Black Jesus (Adult Swim, 11 p.m.): The complex is in shambles, because of Vic and Lloyd. Which is related to the bleach thing from last week, maybe? (This had the incorrect summary when it first went live, because What’s On Tonight has a memory gap when it comes to Black Jesus. Sorry, Jesus.)
Thursday Night Football (CBS, 8:25 p.m.): The Giants at the Redskins, which is actually so disgusting to type that maybe we should asterisk it, like R*dskins, but then there’s still the ugliness of “skins,” so maybe R*******, but honestly, why even give that team the benefit of its non-copyright protected racist name? The Giants and a team from Washington, tonight, in D.C. Bring your South Park jokes.
In case you missed it
The Bridge: The second-to-last episode of the season (and perhaps the series). Originally we thought it was the season finale, and we sounded dumb. Either way, Molly Eichel is on the scene to talk about spelling “Quetzalcoatl,” which, look, is not an easy word to spell.