The Week in TV, 9/25/25

TV is a nickname and nicknames are for friends and television is a friend of mine.

Catching up

Last week’s episode of Only Murders in the Building was “Dirty Birds.” The trio manage to escape the three billionaires who arrive at the Velvet Room and then start considering them as suspects. Those billionaires bring in another set of ringers as guest stars: Christoph Waltz as a weird tech guy obsessed with longevity and with an indecipherable accent, sort of a cross between Elon Musk and Peter Thiel with a dash of Bryan Johnson; Renée Zellweger as a GOOP-style interior decorator / lifestyle brand, and… Logan Lerman, I guess that’s somebody, as as a pharma scion trying to do some good with his money. Of course, that’s their stories, and when they pick up on the podcasters maybe investigating them, they take the lead and initiate the meetings themselves… a series of one-on-ones where they convince the trio that they’re innocent and where they all have their stories straight. And, unsurprisingly, they get owned when they learn too late that billionaires are playing a bigger game than the rest of us.

Beavis and Butt-Head brings us “Nuts / Bike,” wherein Beavis buys mixed nuts instead of nachos at the convenience store and discovers the hard way he has a nut allergy, which gives us some very funny visuals of his allergic reaction (and, of course, the slow thinking of the two of them not understanding what is happening). Naturally, at the doctor, Beavis mistakes the news he can’t have nuts for… something else. They also watched Olivia Rodrigo’s “Get Him Back!”, which was a nice treat. In “Bike,” old Beavis and Butt-Head go “magnet fishing” off the bridge, and Beavis finds his childhood bike, and recalls a flashback to when he got it and Butt-Head was obviously jealous, and then someone stole it… and Butt-Head, who obviously did it, tells him Stewart did it. Beavis decides to confront Stewart… which is immediately (if temporarily) quelled by Stewart’s offer of beer and pizza, and then, of course, the truth comes out. There’s also one of Mr. Anderson’s war stories, about falling in love with a nurse during the Korean War… well, if you’ve seen any of his other pedantic and oblivious war stories, you might have an idea where this is actually going. Fun episode; the show’s still got it.

We saw the first four episodes of the new season of Futurama. They were fairly solid, with some good jokes. No real standouts, but nothing dire like the worst of the last couple of seasons. There are, unfortunately, a couple of jokes that are pretty stale at this point in time (I think we all know how much the American healthcare system sucks), and since the reboot, there’s been a worrying pattern I’ve noticed of what John Swartzwelder calls “pattern dialogue“– places the writers might have found room for a joke before where now characters just say an obvious or standard response to move things forward. Hasn’t been a thrilling season so far, but it also hasn’t been anything so bad to stop watching, and you’ll probably enjoy it if you’re a big fan of the show.

What’s new?

This week’s episode of Only Murders in the Building, “Tongue Tied,” involves the further hunting of evidence by the trio– which largely involves Oliver and Mabel meeting the help at the Arconia and pretending they’ve known them the whole time, particularly the trash man (played by David Patrick Kelly). The help is also annoyed at LESTR, the robot doorman purchased by the building in the wake of actual Lester’s death. Charles is supposed to meet with Sofia Cacciamello, but he has some other things going on that may intrude with his investigative prowess… like, uh, other forms of prowess. But the team unveils something at the end of the episode that might prove to unlock further answers, although it’s probably a fakeout (although I’m sure it will advance the plot anyway). Anyway, it’s been a pretty good season so far; I feel like the mystery is moving along plot-wise maybe better than it has since season 1, but mystery plotting can be tough to pull off.

High Potential wraps up its two-parter to start the season with “Checkmate,” as Morgan tries to get deeper into the game master’s series of crimes and clues left for her. Of course she’ll figure it out, but it’s still fun to see the process, especially to see Morgan dealing with someone who’s actually one step ahead of her and smart enough to keep her guessing. (David Giuntoli also does a great job as someone who can really pull off smiling-psychopath face.) And there are a couple of developments in Morgan’s personal life– specifically, both as a mother and with her attempts to track down Roman. These two have been a good start to the season; I’m hoping they elevate the show beyond standard procedural that happens to have some really good actors.

Falling behind

Nothing by more than a couple of days, and I don’t really count those because cramming in TV at the last second for this column is pretty low on my priority list.

Old favorites

A couple more episodes of Knowing Me, Knowing You. And then we also had to introduce our friend to Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23 and Police Squad! The former, naturally, we did with the first episode; with the latter, we decided on “Sexy People…” as the right combination of Chloe insanity and James doing James things for a first-timer. Or maybe I thought of it because we had been discussing Veronica Mars and child-June’s “damn, damn right, Harry Hamlin” line is one of our favorites from the show.

You know what’s still funny? 30 Rock, even in season 1. I know what people say about it taking time to find its footing, but it was on fire by the fifth episode.

Just ended

Nothing, really– September is full of TV beginnings but not too many endings. (Although eventually some of our cable / streaming shows that don’t follow the network model will come to an end. And I’m not putting anything that releases an entire season at once on streaming in the “Just Ended” section, because that doesn’t make sense to me.)

Coming up

English Teacher premieres tonight, and I’m not sure if Wikipedia’s dates are accurate, but it seems like they’re gonna rush through season two pretty quickly. Bob’s Burgers is set to return for season 16 Sunday night. And for those of you interested in seeing Glen Powell having a goof, Chad Powers premieres on Hulu September 30.

And you?

It gets hard to think of something funny to put in this space every week.