This Week's Top Three (Monday, 2/25/13 through Sunday, 3/3/13)

This is the first of what will hopefully be a weekly (at least during TV season) blog recapping the three best episodes of television each week. For the most part, this will just include dramas because I do not watch that much comedy, but occasionally you can expect to see top end Dramedies like Californication and House of Lies make the list. There will likely even be a couple Modern Family appearances.

This week's top three goes to three shows that will likely be regular fixtures in this column when they are airing. And goes to the two best networks for Dramas right now — FX and AMC.



3. The Americans, Episode 5, COMINT. As this new show consistently churns out great drama, it was clear they were eventually going to have to get a little confusing to be realistic. This episode is where they did that. In a spectacularly edited and written episode there was constant give and take between the FBI and KGB and a great in-depth looks at the main characters trying to balance their lives as "fake" Americans with being top-of-the-line KGB plants. The ending where the KGB now knows they have a mole and Phillip knows that everything Elizabeth just did was for nothing was very solid and something we can expect regularly from this show. The acting on this show is so superb that it is difficult to even notice Emmy winner Margo Martindale over the great skills of Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell. And the job Noah Emmerich does week-in and week-out as FBI star/Trying-to-keep-his-family-together husband Stan Beeman is truly Emmy worthy. There is no show on television that I look forward to more each week right now than The Americans.


2. Justified, Episode 8, Outlaw. In a major turning point for this season, Justified went from good to great and could end up finding itself in Emmy-season talk. Timothy Olyphant does not regularly get enough credit for his job as Raylan Givens. The broad range of emotions Givens shows at the death of his murderous father was simply fantastic and Olyphant delivered the anger, pain and sadness in that moment perfectly. The intrigue of this episode really kicked things up a notch also. We know next week Rayaln is going to be trying to avenge his father's murder, but will that get him off the trail of Drew Thompson long enough for Boyd Crowder to take even more power. Walton Goggins as Crowder has simply been one the best characters on television this year (and the last four years). His manipulation of the rich boys club in this episode while also sticking it to his crime-nemesis Wynn Duffy was fun to watch. The last 5 episodes of this season should be really explosive.


1. The Walking Dead, Episode 12, Clear. The Walking Dead has plenty of issues on a week-to-week basis. Sometimes it cannot make up its mind on what it wants to be, but this was not one of those weeks. This week felt like a "one-off" to some people, but it was so much more than that. It was a central episode to the evolution of Rick's character ... and it was supremely important to the likability of that character as the show's hero. In his trip back to his hometown with just his boy and Michonne, Rick could not have imagined he would run into the man who saved his life, Morgan. By having a smaller cast and such focus, it really helped make for the clear-cut best episode this season. With such focus on three central characters to the future of the show, Dead really came back around to what makes it great — not the zombies, not the bickering — the in-depth characters we grew to love way back in the first season before the cast got so large. Rick saw in Morgan what he could become if he kept pushing those around him away. He saw that being isolated, no matter how well protected, was as good as dead. The was a very clear message that at the beginning of this episode Michonne was not welcome, but needed. By the end, that reverses and it is nice to see Rick start to open up and trust again after dealing with such an emotional betrayal from his pre-Zombie infestation best friend, Shane. The hitchhiker was a brilliant metaphor to what Rick has become. There was a time during all this that he would have welcomed that guy and — cautiously — taken him in. The ending, where the guy was torn to shreds and Rick's quick face of sadness was expertly done. Hopefully, it is a change for good so we can have a hero to cheer for in this often gut-wrenching and sad show.

Honorable Mention: Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 5, Blood Brothers; The Good Wife, Episode 15, Going for the Gold.