On Sunday night at 10, TV's most under the radar excellent series, Starz's basketball comedy Survivor's Remorse, concludes its third season. (A fourth has already been ordered.)
Though the show always danced around the line between comedy and drama, this season has been a bit darker than the first two, opening with the death of Mike Epps' Uncle Julius (all to free Epps to star in the since-canceled Uncle Buck), putting M-Chuck (Erica Ash) into therapy to deal with her anger issues, and even a story about female genital mutilation in African cultures that managed to never come across like a lecture.
The finale is perhaps the show's most serious episode yet, as M-Chuck grapples with learning that she was conceived through gang rape, while Reggie's estranged father tries to make amends for all he did during his drunken earlier years. Along the way, the episode (written and directed by Victor Levin) gives everyone in the cast at least one great moment to shine (if this were the kind of show the Emmys was aware of, RonReaco Lee would have a hell of a submission with the scene where Reggie meets with his dad), and, like always, makes the heavy material and the lighter stuff feel like it all belongs in the same show.
Case in point: Chris Bauer, who's been outstanding all year as team owner Jimmy Flaherty, who himself has never quite found where the line is between being boss of the team and friend to the Calloway family. In the finale, he's involved in one very serious and lovely scene where M-Chuck tells Jimmy about the rape, and then in a much goofier one, embedded above, where Jimmy reaches out to his favorite local reporter with a question.
Glad this one's around for a while still.