Worth Watching: Dinner with the Shepherds on ‘Grey’s,’ ‘Discovery’ Prepares for Battle, a Magic Camcorder on ‘Twilight Zone’
A selective critical checklist of notable Thursday TV:
Grey’s Anatomy (8/7c, ABC): Guess who’s coming to dinner? It’s an uneasy homecoming for Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) when she heads to the East Coast with Link (Chris Carmack) for a spinal surgery — and they get roped into a very Shepherd family dinner courtesy of Nancy Shepherd (Embeth Davidtz). Joining them at Nancy’s home: sister Kathleen (Amy Acker) and momma Carolyn (Tyne Daly). Where’s Derek’s other sis, Liz (Neve Campbell)? Maybe we’ll find out. But something tells us they’ll be digesting more than food at the table.
Star Trek: Discovery (8:30/7:30, CBS All Access): With the impervious A.I. known as Control in hot pursuit, all aboard Discovery have some tough decisions to make regarding how to keep Control from getting, well, control of the sphere data. As usual, Michael (Sonequa Martin-Green) finds herself in the stickiest situation, leading to an emotional episode that might as well be titled “The Long Goodbye” as they consider destroying their ship, then taking an even greater leap of faith as they prepare to face off with Control’s fleet.
The Twilight Zone (streaming on CBS All Access): A classic Zone device of a magical machine — in this case an old-school camcorder that plays back events that haven’t quite happened yet — is wedded to a topical theme of #blacklivesmatter in the first-rate allegory “Replay.” Sanaa Lathan stars as a mom trying to drive her son (Snowfall’s Damson Idris) to college — but the camcorder keeps showing horrible outcomes of the young man’s encounter with a racist cop (Glenn Fleshler). Can she avert an all too familiar fate for her son?
Inside Thursday TV: For those going through The Walking Dead withdrawal, Netflix offers up the new series Black Summer, starring Jamie King as a mom braving a zombie apocalypse to be reunited with her daughter… Jake (Andy Samberg) and Amy (Melissa Fumero) celebrate their first anniversary on NBC’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine (9/8c) the only way they know how: by working, spending their special day in a hospital guarding a comatose perp… TV journalist Elizabeth Vargas partners with A&E for the new investigative series The Untold Story (9/8c), previously A&E Investigates, opening with “Hunting JonBenét’s Killer: The Untold Story,” which seeks yet new leads to the unsolved murder of JonBenét Ramsey. The report features a new interview with John Ramsey.
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