Episode of the Week: ‘Scandal’ season 4, ‘Arrow’ season 3, ‘Scorpion’ installments battle
Before we talk about the candidates for Episode of the Week for the week of April 12, let us first recognize the winner of the CarterMatt poll from last week: With 51% of the vote, the “Afterlife” episode of “Agents of SHIELD” season 2 wins the honor for the week of April 5. Congrats to all SHIELD fans!
Now, let’s move forward with what we thought was a pretty outstanding week of TV. The one thing we should say first and foremost when it comes to this article is that there are some major spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen any of the nominated shows just yet. There are also some interesting commonalities between the candidates: Almost all of these had either death or a fear of death as a primary storyline. Also, they all have one-word titles. That wasn’t intentional by any means, but it just so happened to work out that way. (We’re surprised about a lack of “Game of Thrones” / “Mad Men,” but neither installment stood the test of time so well.)
“Arrow” 3×19, “Broken Arrow” – Quite possibly one of the best attempts out there for a show to completely fake us out. Everything from Stephen Amell tweets from months ago to the promos had us thinking that Roy Harper was dead man walking. He did almost die, but this was an innovative way to end that character’s life.
“Justified” 6×13, “The Promise” – Another great way of twisting expectations came here. Almost everyone assumed that “Justified” would end with either Raylan or Boyd meeting their demise, and while Boyd did get arrested, there was a strange comfort seeing the show end with him and Raylan looking back at their past.
“Outlander” 1×11, “The Devil’s Mark” – The series’ finest episode yet. A wonderful showcase of not only an intense trial, but also restraint on the storytellers’ part to not reveal what Claire truly decided in relation to Frank Randall and Jamie.
“Scandal” 4×19, “I’m Just a Bill” – Is character death a theme here this week? We still don’t know for sure what happened to Jake Ballard, but for now we can comment on this as thoroughly entertaining regardless. Just a great, super-intense “Scandal” episode that reminded us again how good the show can be.
“Scorpion” 1×21, “Cliffhanger” – Probably a perfect title to what may be one of the finest “Scorpion” episodes that we’ve seen to date. There was relentless action, twists galore, and some emotional stuff revolving around Walter. What’s not to love about the setup for the finale?