The Week in TV, 1/29/26

The increasing length of these columns means the fluff is going to steadily drop by the wayside. You probably don’t come here for the pithy asides, though.

Catching up

Shoresy – Though season 5 has not premiered in America yet, we were able to watch the whole thing. (When will it premiere? You’ll have to read through to the end! I buried the information somewhere in the middle on purpose.) Season 5 is focused on a touring team of EU All-Stars barnstorming North America, and after wiping out most of the competition (and their coach talking shit about North American hockey), Shoresy decides to put together his own team to challenge the all-stars, and show them North American style hockey (read, physical and violent) can still compete. That means not only getting together most of the Blueberry Bulldogs (at least the ones who already stuck around for season 4), but also the best of the other players we’ve seen them compete against, not just in the NOSHO but across Canada from the National Senior Tournament. It all works pretty well; I liked the ending quite a bit, and though stretches of the season do the same repetitive-wordplay shtick (“repetitive” in that we hear the same conversations more than once between different people), but there are some great wordplay gags (a truly impressive run by Shoresy in the fourth episode), and all in all the season is pretty good. I mean, it’s what you’ve come to expect from Shoresy by now, just with a different, further along plot than the previous seasons.

Also, for the first time in months, we watched another new episode of Futurama, “Scared Screenless.” The premise was a little trite (these kids today, and also robots, are on their damn screens too much) but overall the episode was actually pretty funny. Maybe the best of the season so far?

What’s new?

Abbott Elementary, “Mall Part 3: Heroes” – A solid wrap-up to the mall storyline, in that it might not be the funniest episode (although it isn’t unfunny— more on that in a bit), but it does actually tie together the story in an effective way. After the local paper profiles the Abbott teachers as heroes making more from less and all that… they learn that construction has temporarily stopped on the Abbott repairs. Janine has a revelation while trying to deal with a problem student by seating him next to a good student: She’s essentially punishing the good student for being a good student… which is exactly what the district is doing with the Abbott teachers! They kinda half-ass and rush the resolution after that, but that sort of plot connectiveness is something I always appreciate, and something we don’t often see from the show. And very funny: Mr. Johnson’s story, when he’s resistant to the district hiring a woman janitor (Khandi Alexander) to help cover the cleaning since the mall is so much larger than the school.

Stumble, “God Bless Heådltston” – Huh, I thought I knew how to spell the town name, but the accent mark is new to me. Anyway, one of them big tech companies is looking to build an AI data center, and Heådltston is the kind of town that’s probably been fracked to death anyway, so Courteney gets on board with bringing the data center to town so that they’ll sponsor the cheer team. Anyway, there’s a talent show, Boon getting a nice showcase with some of his abilities (hidden and otherwise), and the show continues its streak of never missing a chance for some wordplay (“Mayor Mayknott”) or using the documentary format for a good chyron-type gag (“DOCUMENTARY DISCLAIMER: Most people do not respond positively to traumatic head injuries”). And in her second recent appearance after the Halloween Elsbeth, Annaleigh Ashford guests in this one.

The inside-baseball nerd in me is still trying to figure out how the casting contracts work… because all of the six main cheerleaders (plus Courteney and Boon) are credited for every episode on IMDB, but they don’t all appear in every episode— Sally and Steven were noticeably absent this time around. Anyway, still great!

Going Dutch, “Farmer’s Mark-tet Offensive” – Katja (Catherine Tate) is back, and running for mayor of Stroopsdorf; part of her campaign is to attack the presence of the American base there. Patrick interprets this as some kind of conflict-based flirtation by Katja, which sounds insane on his part, but of course it turns out she is the same kind of insane, constantly-escalating person as he is. Meanwhile, Shah and Papadakis launch a scheme to sell lobsters so Shah can help Celeste pay off her debts… which has a few pretty good jokes but largely seems to be setting up some reasons Shah and Celeste will break up again.

The show has definitely turned up a notch in season two, with the comedy writing sharper and the jokes more frequent. Funniest line for me was Conway talking about her first girlfriend: “You’d think because we have the same parts, it wouldn’t feel like she was digging in the bottom of her purse for her keys, but…”

Animal Control, “Dragons and Dognappers” – I guess Josh Segarra’s Parker is still around— Grace is starting to worry she’s becoming a little too involved with him, which is funny mostly because it’s her trying to pretend she can deal with her back injury on her own, Ron Swanson-style. In a bit of a forced enemy collaboration plot, Templeton has had a complaint filed against him for harassment, and Frank (as his union rep, after Gary went on leave) has to defend him in his hearing. Meanwhile, Shred and Emily try to go on their first date, largely with comic hijinks over their attempts to keep it secret. Probably the best episode of the season so far? I enjoyed it, and Templeton and Daisy were better integrated into the episode than they were in the previous two.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, “Hard Salt Beef” – Dunk tries to find someone at the tourney who remembered Sir Allyn and will vouch for him so he can enter. He also meets up with Lyonel Baratheon again and joins his crew in a tug-of-war, takes Baelor Targaryen’s advice to get his own coat of arms, and has an oh-shit moment watching a joust. Another enjoyable episode, but I’d had too many beers during and after the Broncos game so my memory is pretty fuzzy on any specifics, other than one from the beginning of the episode: The show picks up where The Righteous Gemstones left off by hanging some serious dong (and I mean serious dong, I’ve seen smaller baguettes).

St. Denis Medical, “This Isn’t Bingo” – Not the best episode but still with some pretty solid moments. “It’s 1998! Ecstasy just hit the scene!” That’s from the senior health fair, where Alex is trying to educate the elderly, while Chaplain Steve is just trying to keep them entertained and engaged. (There’s an excellent, incredibly sly joke in this story, so sly I didn’t even catch it at first.) There are some very funny parts, though once again, Alex kind of acts in that weird passive-aggressive way trying to steer the fair back to health education.

Bruce and Joyce get a really good plot where Bruce accidentally resuscitates a patient with a DNR order; she has no family or loved ones, which makes the two of them start reflecting that they’re both single with no kids and not getting any younger. (Although as Bruce says, “Just to be clear, nothing will ever happen between us.”)

The Ron-Matt story I wasn’t as high on. Ron looks forward to one of the elderly patients who comes every year and brings him her homemade fudge. This year, though, she’s taken a shine to Matt, and given it to him instead. And instead of asking for some or even telling her how much he appreciates it, Ron… kinda acts like a weird asshole trying to undermine Matt, then just steals the fudge from him. Okay?

High Potential, “NPC” – This episode focuses on an esports professional who dies in strange fashion, seemingly hallucinating… and then Morgan figures out he’s been poisoned. Solid episode, even with taking a few minutes to give Karadec a personal life; there’s a particularly funny scene where Morgan gives an “As Seen on TV” explanation of the victim’s gamer chair. Anyway, the episode also involves pufferfish and fugu, although unlike The Simpsons, it doesn’t end with Larry King reading the Bible. I was pretty satisfied with this episode.

Best Medicine, “All the World’s Ablaze” – Well, this was better the last episode in part because of the appearance of Parker Young¹ as the titular Blaze, who gives an annual wilderness-safety course in Port Wenn each year (and apparently just lives in the woods the rest of the time?). Other than that, though, the plot is largely similar to what we’ve seen in the past, if not even more extreme in the dissonance. Because once again, people are getting sick unexpectedly, and once again, Martin is trying to find the source of it and prevent its spread / help them get better, and once again, they’re mad at him for it. Oh, and also he saves Blaze’s life and they don’t really appreciate that either. The story from last episode with Elaine and her mother gets a push from Martin and a resolution… but it still feels kinda thinly sketched out in how it plays out, like an early draft.

I enjoy some of the performances— Josh Segarra’s² brief appearance reminded me he’s a pretty funny character, and other than Abigail Spencer’s Louisa, the only one who seems to have any consistent affection for Martin even when Martin is trying to keep him healthy— but I think the show’s just missing the mark. I think the idea it’s going for is that Martin is a little stuck-up in that big-city way, and the townfolk are weird and quirky but ultimately good-hearted, and eventually the two learn to appreciate each other, even the differences and quirks. But the townfolk don’t come off as quirky (and certainly not good-hearted) so much as they come off as stubborn and ignorant, and then they’re consistently assholes to Martin when he’s just trying to do things like “find the cause of disease” and “stop it from spreading” and “treat his patients.”

He’s rude and standoffish and doesn’t really like people, but then, the people haven’t given him a lot of reason to like him. Every week they get angry at him for doing his job— because they’re so set in their ways that things like “food safety” and “not spreading viruses” are for those newfangled city folk— and every week he does it anyway, and then they learn nothing from it and the next week it happens all over again. I like people and I think I’d be standoffish with them too if they were treating me like this, especially if I was the only doctor in town and nobody wanted to listen to me about medical matters.

There’s a scene where Martin’s aunt tries to give him a lecture about how he’s unhappy and he’s trying to bring down other people’s happiness too, and it just doesn’t land at all. I mean, he is a killjoy, but the actions he takes as the town doctor are the exact same actions he would (and should) take even if he had the best bedside manner in recorded history. And frankly, the people seem more forgiving of his personality than you’d expect and just get pissed at him for taking his responsibilities as the town doctor seriously.

Christ, this might work better if it was a satire and pitched as, like, one doctor’s determination to bring vaccines to this town. Right now it almost plays like a town of stubborn, ignorant assholes bullying an autistic man for the crime of caring about their health.

Old favorites

I mean, I’m pretty sure I finished Fringe before last week’s article, but I am still willing to talk Fringe with whoever.

In trying to find a favorite show of mine that Mrs. The Captain’s Wife doesn’t watch already in return… I realized all I really had was Hacks. But I did finally get her to watch the first episode! Hopefully there’s enough to get her hooked; I’ll keep pressing. I had forgotten some of the details, but what I hadn’t forgotten is how the ending scene with Deborah and Ava was what really sold me on the show.

And she also felt like watching Andor again, which I’ve had plenty to say about already and will have plenty more to say once it’s time to write up the 2025 year in review.

Just ended

Shoresy ended its run in Canada, but it hasn’t even come to the States yet! It premieres on Hulu February 21.

Coming up

February will be busy with more new releases, so let’s appreciate it being a little slow for now. It’s very possible we reach a point where I’m just straight-up listing shows because I don’t have time to write more than that.

And you?

Talk to the audience?! Oh, this is always death.

1. Hey, Suburgatory is coming to Netflix soon! It hasn’t been on streaming maybe ever, so it’s a killer candidate to be rediscovered as a forgotten, hidden gem. I’ll have more to say about it closer to its actual premiere. ↩︎
2. He’s been in three shows in today’s writeup, although it’s been a while since he was on Abbott Elementary. ↩︎