Last week, Twin Peaks: The Return finally made room for one of the original series’ central figures: Audrey Horne, played by Sherilyn Fenn. We waited until Episode 12 of the new series to see her, and see where and with whom Audrey ended up with after all these years. And now it’s Episode 13, and there’s truly no telling who might be showing up this week. Spare moments of Twin Peaks: The Return have matched the appealing oddness of the original, but we still are in search of a satisfying primary plot – and explanations for lots of what we’ve seen so far. Like, how did Audrey escape the explosion when she had chained herself in protest to an ultimately blown-up bank in the end of the original Twin Peaks? Oh, well. Since Kyle MacLachlan’s Dale Cooper was trapped in some alternate Black Lodge reality at the end of that show, with an evil doppelganger taking his place possessed by the spirit of Killer Bob – and since, 13 episodes in, we still haven’t gotten back to the “real” Cooper yet, what right do I have to complain? If there’s one thing about which David Lynch is consistent, it’s inconsistency. For example: All season, Twin Peaks: The Return has been televised Sundays at 9 p.m. ET – but beginning tonight, it moves back an hour, to 8.

Syfy’s Sharknado franchise is the Pet Rocks of modern TV. There’s no explaining how an idea this basic, and this stupid, ever got this popular. Yet here it is, with a rabid social media following that keeps these tongue-in-cheek, teeth-in-mouth shark movies coming, each more intentionally absurd than the last. Ian Ziering and Tara Reid continue to star, and a bewildering array of guest stars make cameo appearances, usually as some type of instantly devoured shark victim. One thing about Sharknado 5 that’s worth applauding, though, is its sloganeering. Not only is Global Swarming a clever subtitle, but this latest Sharknado outing has an unbeatable tag line it’s using on promos: “Make America bait again.”

This week’s installment is called Terrorism Hits Home – yet it also focuses on terrorism abroad, and how it finds its way to U.S. targets and operations. One terrorist introduced in this decade, and covered in The Nineties, is Osama bin Laden. More on him in future decades…

The episode shown tonight was pirated and leaked online a few days ago. But I didn’t see it, so whatever otherwise top-secret intrigues occur in tonight’s episode, they’re still secret to me. But I have a feeling, just from the promotional photos that were released officially in advance, that Daenerys Targaryen probably won’t be having a terrific time.

SEASON PREMIERE: Season 5 of this strong Showtime series promises to start very dramatically, with a death in (or around) the family. But it also begins by introducing this year’s season-long guest player: Susan Sarandon, playing a movie executive whose needs, and enemies, pull Liev Schreiber’s problem-fixer Ray Donovan back into the Hollywood world where we first met him. For Sarandon, it’s another dazzling TV role, right on the heels of playing Bette Davis on FX’s Feud: Bette and Joan. Like her co-star in that excellent FX miniseries, Jessica Lange (who played an equally unforgettable Joan Crawford), Sarandon has decided that TV is where the best roles are these days – for women, and especially for more mature women, but basically for everyone. For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower. 

So John Oliver does a segment on a lawsuit-happy coal executive, Bob Murray, after which Murray obliges by suing Oliver. Now the ACLU has filed an amicus curiae brief with the court, on Oliver’s behalf. Oliver may not be able to discuss this at any length on tonight’s show – it is, after all, a case in active litigation – but hey, perhaps he’ll raise someone else’s hackles with tonight’s show. At any rate, he gets to talk about a lot… including a grand jury.