The Week of September 20th in Streaming: HR Should Probably Be Involved

Network television has officially returned, which means America can once again gather around the television to watch doctors violate hospital policy, federal agents violate jurisdictional boundaries, reality contestants violate basic principles of trust, and Gordon Ramsay violate the emotional well-being of a 22-year-old line cook.

Nature is healing.

Streaming has responded with Jon Hamm negotiating with a hostage taker, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson discovering they might actually be related, and Netflix reopening Hillman College.

Here’s what’s arriving this week, sorted by how quickly someone should have called Human Resources.

Sunday, September 20th starts with American Hostage (MGM+, series premiere), starring Jon Hamm as Indianapolis radio reporter Fred Heckman, whose normal shift takes a turn when hostage taker Tony Kiritsis (Giovanni Ribisi) demands to be interviewed live on his program. Based on the real 1977 case, it also stars Mireille Enos, William Jackson Harper, and Kristoffer Polaha, and drops two episodes at once — apparently one hour of live-radio hostage negotiation wasn’t enough.

Vibe: Your afternoon radio show has received a caller. Unfortunately, he has demands.

Monday, September 21st brings Line of Fire (NBC, series premiere), starring Peter Krause in a drama about a family whose members work across the FBI, U.S. Marshals, Secret Service, and Department of Justice. This is an absolutely deranged concentration of federal employment within one family. Thanksgiving alone must require security clearance. Naturally, their professional lives and personal relationships begin colliding, because apparently nobody thought having relatives spread across four law-enforcement agencies might create boundaries issues.

NBC also launches Season 30 of The Voice the same night, while Fox returns Celebrity Name That Tune and Celebrity Weakest Link. Jane Lynch will therefore spend another season insulting celebrities who voluntarily signed paperwork agreeing to this arrangement.

Vibe: Blue Bloods, except Thanksgiving dinner has representatives from enough federal agencies to execute a coordinated raid.

Tuesday, September 22nd sends us back to Port Wenn—or, technically, its American equivalent—with Best Medicine (Fox, season two premiere). Josh Charles returns as Dr. Martin Best, the brilliant Boston surgeon who relocated to a small Maine town and discovered that being extremely good at medicine does not compensate for finding approximately every human interaction irritating. Season two gives Martin another opportunity to learn warmth, patience, and interpersonal communication. We wish the town the very best with that. Fox also kicks off its season three premiere of Doc.

Vibe: Two doctors. One has no bedside manner. The other has no memory. Please select your primary-care provider.

Wednesday, September 23rd is loaded. Brothers (Apple TV, series premiere) stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as fictionalized versions of themselves, whose friendship is thrown into chaos by an old secret suggesting they might actually be biological brothers, which is funny mainly because the real McConaughey and Harrelson have spent years publicly wondering the same thing. Two episodes drop immediately, with the rest weekly through a November 4th finale; Holland Taylor co-stars.

Vibe: McConaughey and Harrelson have finally monetized the question everyone asks them at parties.

Thursday, September 24th reopens Hillman College with A Different World (Netflix, series premiere), a sequel to the beloved Cosby Show spinoff that follows Deborah Wayne, the youngest daughter of Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert, as she begins her freshman year at her parents’ alma mater. Deborah would understandably like to establish an identity separate from two of the most famous people ever to attend Hillman. Unfortunately, she has chosen to do this by attending Hillman. Excellent start. Netflix drops all ten episodes at once.

Vibe: Your parents were campus legends and you have decided the best way to escape their shadow is to enroll at their exact college.

Friday, September 25th pulls Hondo out of retirement for S.W.A.T. Exiles (Starz, series premiere), with Shemar Moore returning as Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson after the original S.W.A.T. ended its eight-season run. A mission goes badly, and Hondo is recruited to lead an experimental unit composed of young, untested recruits who need someone capable of turning them into an actual team. In other words, CBS spent eight seasons repeatedly threatening to retire Hondo, finally retired Hondo, and television immediately went to his house and asked whether he could come back Monday.

NBC also begins Season 35 of Dateline, which remains an extraordinary accomplishment for a television program whose central thesis is essentially that you should become suspicious whenever your spouse suddenly purchases a large life-insurance policy.

Vibe: Hondo’s retirement lasted just as long as television could tolerate Hondo being retired.

Saturday, September 26th closes the week with Saturday Night Live (NBC, season 52 premiere), returning to Studio 8H for another year of sketches written sometime between Monday afternoon and several minutes before they are performed. Season 52 arrives without Chloe Fineman in the cast, beginning another annual cycle of new performers, celebrity hosts, political impressions, inexplicably elaborate pre-tapes, and one sketch airing at 12:47 a.m. that six people will insist was actually the funniest thing all night.

Fifty-two seasons is an absurd amount of television. At this point, SNL is less a television show than a municipal institution that occasionally allows Pedro Pascal inside.

Vibe: Ninety minutes of live television held together by cue cards, caffeine, and Lorne Michaels staring at someone from seventeen feet away.

Also this week:

Tulsa King (Paramount+, Monday, September 21, season four premiere)
The Voice (NBC, Monday, September 21, season 30 premiere)
Celebrity Name That Tune (Fox, Monday, September 21, season six premiere)
Celebrity Weakest Link (Fox, Monday, September 21, season two premiere)
Antiques Roadshow (PBS, Monday, September 21, special season)
Best Medicine (Fox, Tuesday, September 22, season two premiere)
Doc (Fox, Tuesday, September 22, season three premiere)
House Shock (HGTV, Tuesday, September 22, series premiere)
Survivor (CBS, Wednesday, September 23, season 51 premiere)
Wonka’s The Golden Ticket (Netflix, Wednesday, September 23, series premiere)
The Floor (Fox, Wednesday, September 23, season six premiere)
99 to Beat (Fox, Wednesday, September 23, season two premiere)
American Horror Story: 13 (FX, Thursday, September 24, season premiere)
Hell’s Kitchen (Fox, Thursday, September 24, season 25 premiere)
Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test (Fox, Thursday, September 24, season five premiere)
20/20 (ABC, Friday, September 25, season premiere)

This Week’s Hostage: Brothers

There are objectively more dramatic choices.

American Hostage has Jon Hamm negotiating with an actual hostage taker.

Line of Fire has approximately one-quarter of the federal government contained within a single family.

American Horror Story is back.

Survivor has somehow reached Season 51, meaning Jeff Probst has now spent more than two decades watching hungry people betray each other over rice.

But Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson are playing Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in a television show about Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson discovering that Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson might be brothers.

I don’t know how we are supposed to compete with that.

These are two real men who became friends decades ago, noticed that their families had some suspiciously overlapping history, realized their mothers knew each other, observed that they themselves look increasingly related with every passing year, and publicly entertained the possibility that Woody Harrelson’s father might also be Matthew McConaughey’s father.

There are federal agents this week.

There are reality contestants.

There is Hondo.

But two famous men are about to spend an entire television season investigating whether they share a father.

You are watching.

I am watching.

Someone please order the DNA test.