TV tonight: It's bad parent night in ShondaLand
Grey's Anatomy
ABC, 8 ET/PT
Kate Burton returns as Meredith's mother in an excellent, pivotal outing that proves this veteran series still knows how to tell a story. It's not just the way the writers use fleeting images to plant clues that pay off in surprising ways; it's how they hook into our own understanding of the frailty and flexibility of memory. And if nothing else, the episode lets us like Meredith and Derek again — and the show doesn't work as well if we don't.
Scandal
ABC, 9 ET/PT
Clearly, it's bad–parent night at Shonda Rhimes's shows. Here, Joe Morton returns as Olivia's dad in an episode entitled "Like Father, Like Daughter." You know Olivia wouldn't like that.
Gracepoint
Fox, 8 ET/PT
Sometimes, small moments can put big problems in stark relief. There are many things wrong with this Broadchurch remake, including Michael Pena's oddly affectless performance in tonight's episode. But the key to the show's failure to match the impact of the original can be found in three words from Anna Gunn's Ellie Miller: "I don't know." In the original, that seemingly ordinary admission of doubt was like a shot to the heart, because Broardchurch had firmly established the character's ties to a town she loves and her complacency about it. Gracepoint has failed to lay that groundwork — and without that emotional foundation on which to build, the drama collapses.