What to Watch This Week: May 14 to May 19

From Netflix to documentaries to reality TV, we round up our top 10 shows to watch this week

 

1. NCIS: Los Angeles – Sunday, May 14, 8 p.m., Global & CBS | Season Finale

Agent Hanna’s arch-nemesis Khaled resurfaces and kidnaps his wife Michelle (guest star Aunjanue Ellis), forcing Hanna to go rogue. But that doesn’t mean his team won’t be there to back him up; and this time, Khaled’s going down for good.

 

2. The Black Dahlia – Monday, May 15, 10:55 p.m., ENC2

Back when Josh Hartnett? was still an A-lister, he starred alongside Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank and Aaron Eckhart in this 1940s-set murder-mystery from Brian De Palma. Hartnett and Eckhart play two L.A. police officers probing the grisly murder of a Hollywood starlet (Toronto’s Mia Kirshner).

 

3. Chicago Fire – Tuesday, May 16, 7 p.m., Global & 10 p.m., NBC | Season Finale

The stakes are always going to be high on a series revolving around big-city first responders, but in this week’s fifth-season finale things are primed to explode; maybe even literally.

When Firehouse 51 is called to an out-of-control warehouse blaze, the entire squad finds itself in peril; and on the ever-sizzling personal side of things, Casey and Dawson are at it again when Dawson’s father (Daniel Zacapa) overstays his welcome and Casey is distracted by his first responder’s bill. Meanwhile, Mouch makes a big decision about his future, and Hermann shares a special moment with a little boy in need. Watch for guest star appearances?by Chicago Cubs fielder Kris Bryant and ace pitcher Jake Arrieta, along with NBC sportscaster Mike Tirico. Wait, does this “out-of-control blaze” blow all the way over to Wrigley Field?

 

4. Tracy Morgan: Staying Alive – Tuesday, May 16, Netflix

Given Tracy Morgan’s well-publicized near-death experience, has a comedy special ever had so apropos a title? At this point in his career, it’s virtually impossible to talk about the comedian without mentioning three things: 1) Saturday Night Live, 2) 30 Rock and 3) the fact that he almost died in a traffic collision in June 2014.

Morgan’s experience was an undeniably traumatic one—he broke a leg, a femur, his nose and several ribs, and he experienced a severe brain injury—but if he couldn’t laugh about it, he wouldn’t be a very good comedian now, would he?

“If I don’t make fun of the accident, I’ll cry about it, and I’d rather laugh,” Morgan told AXS.com back in October, and he’s been doing his best to make good on that.

Yes, his first post-accident appearance, which took place on the Today show, was a serious one, but since then he’s been making jokes, including during his opening monologue when he hosted SNL in 2015. (“People are wondering, ‘Can he speak? Does he have 100 per cent mental capacity?’ But the truth is, I never did. I might actually be a few points higher now!”)

With Staying Alive, his first standup special since the accident, Morgan will be talking about how his outlook on life, career and mortality have changed as a result of his close encounter with the Grim Reaper. He’ll also be discussing his physical therapy, which involved having to learn to walk again and led to him falling for his physical therapist. Was it romantic, or did he literally fall? Tune in to find out!

 

5. Food: Delicious Science – Wednesday, May 17, 7 p.m. & 12:30 a.m., WTVS; 10 p.m., KCTS | Series Premiere

A three-part series traverses the globe to explore the things we eat from a cellular perspective, showing how our meals change during cooking, how they provoke good and bad biological reactions in our bodies and how they got into our diets in the first place thousands of years ago. You’ll never look at a bowl of Kraft Dinner the same way again.

 

6. Greys Anatomy – Thursday, May 18, 7 p.m., CTV & 8 p.m., ABC | Season Finale

Thirteen seasons in and we’re impressed that this medical drama still has so much ?story to tell. Not only that, but it continues to unfold its episodes ?in some pretty neat ways. This season alone there were a couple? of standalone instalments that felt like mini-movies, such as the one with the hellish flight that Riggs and Grey found themselves on, or the episode featuring Jackson’s jaunt into his painful childhood alongside April. Then of course there was the ongoing drama between Bailey and Webber, when Webber was all but relieved of his teaching duties, Alex’s potential jail time and poor Maggie’s whole ordeal with her mom. To say it’s been a busy year would be a definite understatement.

This week, it all comes to a close with the finale, and judging by season-enders past, we’re pretty worried. We’ve seen superstorms, plane crashes and hospital shooters, but this year, rumour has it that Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes is going for something a little more fiery for her finale. The cryptically named “Ring ?of Fire” episode may indeed see a terrible fire rip through the halls of the hospital; but what we know for sure is that a “dangerous patient” will be on the loose in the halls of Grey Sloan Memorial, while two key relationships will also be in peril. Given Rhimes’ penchant for killing off leading characters (after McDreamy, just about everyone is on the table, right?), coupled with the fact that a certain cast member has signed on to a new HBO drama (no spoilers), the hospital could be a little short-staffed when the show returns for a 14th season next fall.

Here’s hoping that we’re reading too much into things, and our freshly purchased stockpile of Kleenex was all for naught.

 

7. Scandal – Thursday, May 18, 9:01 p.m., ABC | Season Finale

Season six hasn’t been lacking for intrigue—mostly thanks to a vicious new enemy that’s backed Liv, Mellie and the gang into a corner while putting at least one Gladiator into the ground. In the two-hour finale, Liv tries to keep Mellie safe before her inauguration, while Fitz makes some unexpected moves in his final hours as president.

 

8. Masterchef: Junior Edition – Thursday, May 18, 8 p.m., CTV2 & Fox | Season Finale

In a two-hour? finale, the final four becomes the final two via an elimination that employs the world’s most popular meats; then, Wolfgang? Puck and Martha Stewart help judge the championship challenge: a three-course meal from scratch.

 

9. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt – Friday, May 19, Netflix | Season Premier

In Kimmy Schmidt’s first season, she slowly but surely found her place in the outside world, which is no small task when you’ve been living in a bunker ?for a significant chunk of your life. In her second season, she decided to get educated and picked up her GED. Now that? it’s season three for our Kimmy, she’s going to college, but that’s not all: based on the trailer Netflix released a few weeks ago, it also looks like we’re going to be graced with?a guest appearance from Jon Hamm reprising his role as Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne, the svengali who convinced her that the apocalypse was nigh. Oh right, and he also married her back then, so he’s now looking for a divorce. That could work to Kimmy’s advantage, though, because it looks like romance may be in the air for her. Elsewhere in her universe, Lillian and Bobby are breaking up, and in addition to looking for work, Titus is also looking for his cheating construction-worker boyfriend… and he’s got a bat, so the boy better watch out!

 

10. American Masters – Friday, May 19, 7 p.m., WTVS & 9 p.m., KCTS

Julia Child may have wound? up with a higher overall profile, but when it comes to TV chefs, you should never forget the first person to hold that particular profession: James Beard, ?who—in addition to being the host of the first cooking show ?on television in 1946—was,? as it happens, the man who introduced the aforementioned Ms. Child to New York. American Masters explores Beard’s life and career, including his participation in the farm-to-table movement, his status as “America’s First Foodie” and how he changed America’s dinner tables.