Shonda Rhimes presents... Thursday night!
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.