The Week in TV, 6/1/25

We got three season finales this week, and picking the header image was tough. My first thought was to go with the most outlandish image, but they all put up good contenders. However, in the end…

What’s new?

The Rehearsal… I mean, how I could I not go with Nathan Fielder actually flying a 737? I think it says something for how much Fielder has warped my expectations of television, that my first thought was “Oh, of course Nathan learned how to fly a commercial jet for the show,” and only much later upon reflection realized what a fucking insane and idea and level of commitment that is. I mean… what more can I say about that? There are a couple of fascinating reveals of the process throughout, which also tie into the previous episode’s connection between cockpit communication and autism. And… look, there’s no substitute for watching this show. You gotta just take the ride– almost literally, in this case. I’m still thinking about it: The ending didn’t blow my mind or take me as far afield as, say, the third episode, but again I wonder if that’s because of my own warped expectations after more than a decade of Nathan Fielder’s madness. It does, however, have one pretty wild coda, and another that ties a lot of the season together in a very funny manner.

Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney came close, with John’s attempt to fight three 14-year-old boys, but ultimately that was still an earthbound event. To be clear, being earthbound did not make it any less ridiculous. Sleater-Kinney performs with Fred Armisen on drums, covering “Kids in America.” Adam Sandler, Sean Penn, and Joe Mande guest, as well as Zephyrine, a teenage babysitter of one of the crew members, because the topic of the final episode was “What Is on the Minds of Teens?” The episode had an impressive number of callbacks as well, particularly in finally getting Bone Thugs-N-Harmony on the show. Anyway, the talk show format may be dated, stale, or dying (see also the next show), but Mulaney managed to reinvigorate it in the same way I imagine Letterman did in the 80s, putting in enough interesting and off-kilter stuff to add some juice to the form. I found it very funny and worth checking out, even if you don’t get to experience it live.

Hacks had a climactic penultimate episode this season, so I was expecting this one to feel more like denouement. But in terms of images, Singapore was a hard choice to beat. After some wallowing in Vegas, Deborah decides to take Marty up on a vacation offer to Hawaii… which she then reroutes into finding a loophole in her non-compete clause that allows her to perform in Singapore. Eventually, of course, Ava gets tired of all this; Deborah’s doing old, hacky material, partying all the time when she’s not on stage, and generally seeming to be in denial of how much losing the show and being unable to perform on her own terms is eating at her. What kicks her out of it? I won’t tell you, but it gives us a good spark and kick in the pants for season 5 (which may or may not be the final season).

With those three shows ending, our schedule is now going to be dominated by animation, with Fox’s new Thursday block, and the return of another staple on Sunday…

Rick and Morty kicks off season 8 with a Matrix episode, “Summer of All Fears.” We open with Summer quite obviously in some kind of simulated universe (based on all the random characters’ dialogue about returning phone chargers), and ultimately breaking out her and Morty. Apparently the two of them were trapped for the Matrix-time equivalent of 17 years, and they want to retain their experiences and memories this time. (Summer figured out how to seize power and ultimately became, I guess, president and a tech CEO? Morty, uh, went to prison. And then it got worse for him.) I’ll leave you to discover the hows and whys of that going awry. This was a fun, engaging season premiere; it wasn’t as inventive as the best episodes of the show, but we’re in season 8, and it was pretty funny on the whole and I enjoyed seeing the idea play out.

And in that Fox block, we get Grimsburg returning with an episode where Summers has to go undercover, flipping their roles, as Marvin now has to provide support. Which he not only doesn’t appreciate the work Summers does in that role, he’s a lazy spoiled man-child who refuses to do it when required of him. Lessons are learned and all that, but it’s still pretty funny along the way. The B-plot involves Pentos trying to own a bratty student (named Khaleesi, of course) with a ridiculously convoluted plan that he ropes Stan into. It doesn’t work. A bit on the strange side, maybe not one of their best, but still pretty good overall. It did have a good enough exchange between Kang and Flute that I wrote down: “Did Summers just stand up to you?” “I’ve seen better standing up at the Paralympics. I can say that, because I’ve been to them. Because I care. And because I misunderstood what ‘murderball’ was.”

Bob’s Burgers gives us an episode where the family goes on a walk at Linda’s insistence, which splits into two plots: Linda’s new shoes turn out to be a terrible fit for her and she ends up wanting to stop; Bob has to push her in a shopping cart most of the way. And the kids, who didn’t want to go at all, now want to stay out because they’ve noticed a fifth-grader Louise is “kind of friends with” apparently stalking / spying on the gym teacher… possibly, no, definitely due to a joke the kids made that she’s taking seriously. And they need to figure out what she’s up to and talk her out of getting herself in serious trouble. Solid Bob’s.

The Great North gives us an episode where Judy is understudy at a dinner-theater production, and she finally gets the chance to fill in… but Beef doesn’t want to attend because it’s audience-interactive. Judy gets… not bad advice from Alanis Morissette, but advice she really should stay for the second half of before taking. And Wolf and Honeybee try to coach Moon into being a better beef jerky salesman for whatever not-Boy Scout troop he’s part of. Solid stuff, but I got nothing noteworthy to mention.

Catching up

We do still need to get to the final two episodes of Common Side Effects, but in the meantime, we started Murderbot, the series based on Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries series, starring Alexander Skarsgård as the titular character. I didn’t really catch the vague sci-fi outlines of the broader world, but essentially, Murderbot is a security unit assigned to protect a science expedition (I’ll leave the details of it and especially of the crew for you to discover), but unbeknownst to them or anyone else, he’s hacked his programming to gain autonomy. He doesn’t have ill intentions, but he would be wiped and recycled if he was found out, and also he would prefer watching shitty sci-fi soaps to doing his job anyway. (David Dastmalchian’s Dr. Gurathin already expresses the most suspicions of him, although he’s absent from the fourth episode.) Not much groundbreaking so far, but it’s been a pretty fun and pretty breezy watch early on. The fourth episode (the latest one, from Friday night) shows some potential for both the quality and the actual direction of the story– I think probably the best episode so far in its own right, but also the one that most left me interested in what happens next.

Falling behind

Nothing at the moment. Just things I haven’t caught or caught up on yet, as mentioned above.

Old favorites

I probably have already written about “Bart’s Inner Child” in this section, but “What up, Marge?” is such a great bit of “pointless typical sitcom dialogue” that it’s always on my mind. (The unnecessary expository follow-up after the act break when the family arrives at the Brad Goodman Something-or-Other is another great moment in this vein.) Also on the Simpsons dial this week: “Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song,” a personal favorite, and “Lisa on Ice,” where Homer is distilled into the essence of the terrible sports parent, although he’s really only the tip of the iceberg that is the Springfield mob in that one. I think Marge is the only adult we see whose behavior isn’t completely terrible.

30 Rock‘s “Mazel Tov, Dummies!” is a terrific episode. The overarching story of Criss trying to get Liz to open up and admit she does want the day to be special is lovely– and funny– and, of course, it gives us the return of Dennis and Megan, now complete with adopted son Black Dennis, whose very existence leads to pretty much all the funniest dialogue in this episode.

Another one pulled from the less-frequent classic files, we put on Home Movies‘ “Camp.” I realized afterward I meant to put on “Shore Leave,” but nevertheless, this is very funny, with our trio of kids at possibly the crappiest camp ever. Even so, I still find it so funny when the pompous counselor roasts Brendon’s writing and directing. And Rabbit Troop getting their revenge with their performance about how much the camp sucks is hilarious in that way something you wish you could’ve gotten away with doing as a kid is hilarious. And of course, I surely cannot conclude without mentioning Coach McGuirk’s lost weekend on what he thinks is a camping and beer-drinking trip only to find himself in a weird men’s encounter group. What a delightful and weird little show.

Just ended

As mentioned above, three of the year’s better shows came to an end this week in The Rehearsal, Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, and Hacks.

Coming up

I don’t know of any show release dates for a while, though our regular readers will, I assume, be pleased to know that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is set to premiere season 17 on July 9. That’s a ways away, though, so in lieu of that, I’ll point Tim Robinson fans to my review of Friendship from earlier this week (see the comments section). We usually get a new season of I Think You Should Leave every two years; no such announcement has been made for 2025 (and HBO took Robinson’s The Chair Company to series), so in lieu of that, get to the theater to see Friendship.

And you?

Your turn to tell me about your week in TV!