The best new TV shows this week arrive with the first full week of October, from the return of Abbott Elementary and a new Carrie remake to the next saga in the Avatar universe, Seven Havens. TwilightRoom’s TV Weekly recap for October 5 - October 11, 2026, covers the latest episodes from everyone’s favorite shows over the past seven days, making sure you’re fully caught up and ready to hit play on everything worth watching in the week ahead.
1. Ted Lasso Season 4 Ep. 9
89/100 – Apple TV – Season Complete
Lasso closes out a polarizing fourth season with a finale that understands itself and its own delivery far better than audiences have been willing to give it credit for, landing an ending that reframes everything that came before it. The episode moves between Keeley’s viral promo selling out Nelson Road for the Lady Greyhounds’ final match, Roy accepting the Chelsea job while quietly terrified about becoming a father, and a shareholders’ war in which Zelda’s secret share grab collapses before Mae’s will hands Rebecca the two percent she needs to control the club. Ted’s resolution is the quietest and best thing here: he finally tells Henry the truth, looks at his father’s Salesman of the Year plaque, and chooses an assistant manager job under Alice rather than another position at the top. It is a fantastic landing for a season we will endlessly defend, and “change is good” is exactly the right note to walk out on.
2. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 18 Ep. 9
86/100 – Hulu – Next Ep. October 12 – 6:00 PM*
It’s Always Sunny delivers the best episode of the season, tapping back into the specific brand of comedy that makes this show so amazing and arriving as a real return to form at exactly the right moment. The gang takes over Frank’s youth baseball team and proves genuinely good at running it, right up until the pursuit of winning sends them completely off the rails. Dee gets smuggled onto the roster through a loophole built on sexism and the real-world scandals of kids playing outside their age brackets, becoming the team’s MVP before destroying her arm entirely. Meanwhile, Coach Bob’s cheerful volunteer energy curdles into something far more sinister, and the children become collateral damage in what somehow counts as the gang’s tamest interaction with kids to date. The cold open alone is one of the season’s strongest, and the whole episode is an ideal setup heading into next week’s finale.
3. Abbott Elementary Season 6 Ep. 1
85/100 –Hulu/CBS – October 14 5:30 PM
Abbott Elementary returns with one of its best premieres ever, a genuinely hilarious episode that moves pieces around the board and adds new faces to the staff while setting up what looks like a great sixth season. Gregory steps into the assistant principal role and immediately clashes with Ava over how to get air conditioning into the building, landing them on a golf course to pitch the superintendent directly. Then Gregory discovers that the teacher hired to replace him is an AI, leaving him working both jobs. Katy Mixon’s Elsa Hardaway arrives as Melissa’s new rival and takes her first-floor classroom, a standoff Melissa only wins by weaponizing Hardaway’s crush on Morton. Meanwhile, Janine commits to turning her room into a jungle getaway over everyone’s objections except Mr. Johnson’s. Jacob’s playground sponsorship scam and Barbara’s fake hit-and-run round out an episode that finds comedy in every corner of the school without losing sight of the characters who make it work. where every single storyline lands, and the new additions slot in cleanly enough that the season already feels like it has somewhere to go.
4. Slow Horses Season 6 Ep. 4
85/100 – Apple TV – October 13 – 9:00 PM
Slow Horses delivers one of the saddest episodes in the show’s history, the kind that lands with real weight because it kills off someone the series has spent years quietly making us care about. JK Coe dies in an arcade bathroom knife fight with Jim while River and Sid are busy arguing outside, and River arrives far too late to do anything but find him, a death made worse by how preventable it feels. From there, Jane pulls Sid out of her car mid-call with Diana, who orders a trace only to ignore it, abandoning Sid entirely once Rasnakov demands her in exchange for calling off his assassins. Lamb’s thread runs cleaner, with the Reece Nesmith gambit at the Camden Shake Shack finally clearing Frank of any involvement in his agents’ deaths and pointing the trail back toward Cantor and Harkness instead. With two episodes left, the anticipation for what comes next has become absurd.
5. Carrie
83.2/100 –Prime Video – Show Complete
Carrie was an interesting development as a new version of a story that has already been told well once, but Mike Flanagan was most definitely the man for the job, updating it to a modern setting with social media so seamlessly that it never once feels like a gimmick layered onto a 1974 novel. Chris running a fake “Carrie Red” Instagram account to spread compromising material, Margaret eventually starting her own account, and the hidden cameras, livestreams, and claimed deepfake recording all slot into the story as naturally as anything King wrote. Summer H. Howell turns in another great Carrie performance, and the writing around her is what really pushes this into one of the best new shows of the year. Flanagan’s rewrites of the leads are the smartest thing here, with Samantha Sloyan’s Margaret played as fiercely protective rather than purely abusive and Carrie herself written as wide open and trusting instead of guarded, and the expanded mythology of a sisterhood of telekinetic women gives the eight episodes somewhere to go that no previous adaptation bothered with. The final prom night is not handled nearly as well as in the original film, with the rigged vote and the pig’s blood staging landing softer than in De Palma’s version, but the aftermath is handled quite well by contrast, as the rampage spreads into Chamberlain and Adelaide’s cult reveals itself. That makes this a really nice complement to both the novel and the older film rather than a replacement for either or an unnecessary remake.
6. The Challenge: Cutthroat Season 42 Ep. 11
83/100 – Paramount+ – October 13 – 12:00 AM
The Challenge turns in the best episode of the season, built around one of the coolest decisions the show has ever produced. Orange edges out Gray in Feed It Through, a blindfolded communication puzzle with TJ running most of the course sightless, giving Tori control of the Arena and the power to choose both her team’s competitor and the opponent. Rather than send Michele into an elimination she correctly reads as purely physical, Tori volunteers herself despite already having a guaranteed spot in the final. It puts a captain in the pit for the second time this season and makes her sacrifice genuinely meaningful: she risks everything to protect the mental asset her team will need later. She then passes on a Cara Maria rematch to face Anna Leigh in Back Up Off Me, a single-round, back-to-back shoving war. Anna Leigh fights hard to stay in it, but Tori grinds out the win and keeps Orange’s six intact.
7. The Traitors: New Blood Ep. 5
83/100 –Peacock – October 15 5:00 PM
The Traitors: New Blood is solid and well made for most of this episode, with a round table that actually delivers as Abby L.’s thin accusation sends Sherry out while Jay’s condescending spiral turns him into the most suspicious player in the castle without him ever landing a point. Unfortunately, the poisoned apple mission and the murder-in-plain-sight twist are where it comes apart. Joe fumbles his way through juggling the apple, having an obviously secretive conversation with Katie, tossing it at Morgan, and then eating it himself while insisting there is nothing to see, a sequence that gives the Faithfuls far too much for free. Tomica offering Victor an apple straight out of the fridge only compounds the problem, and closing on a drawn-out graveside ceremony without resolving who is actually gone makes the final stretch feel like withholding rather than building suspense. Nevertheless, New Blood has been a solid season so far, and one shaky mission does not undo the strength of what came before it.
8. MobLand Season 2 Ep. 4
83/100 – Showtime – October 16 – 12:00 AM
MobLand delivers a great episode with one of the most action-packed conclusions the show has given us yet, capping another solid entry in a season that keeps building pressure rather than releasing it. Harry spends the hour cleaning up: steering the police investigation into the yard explosion toward a gas-leak explanation, staging a robbery to muddy the trail, and taking Finch to a remote spot and hanging him once he realizes Kavanagh has already cut him loose and his supposed file on the family never existed. The family politics are just as sharp, with Conrad blaming Kevin, Harry, and Kat for making the Harrigans look vulnerable while Maeve quietly feeds his aggression, and Harry turning Seraphina from a traitor into his own source rather than punishing her for working with Kat. Then Conrad throws Harry’s entire information-first strategy out the window by walking into Cooper’s gathering alone and telling Frankie’s people that if they want a war, they will get one—exactly the note this show should be ending an episode on.
9. Treasure Island
82/100 –MGM+ – October 18 7:00 PM
Treasure Island jumps into the time slot after a wonderful end to MGM+’s A Tale of Two Cities, with a souped-up version of a classic story that has always been one of my favorites, and while I am not all the way in yet, I am pleased with how this handles the beginning. The premiere opens on Billy Bones stealing the map from Flint’s chest with Silver already on his heels, then settles at the Admiral Benbow, where Bess and Jim scrape by on bets that exploit his near-perfect memory. The twist of having Jim memorize the map before Bess burns it is a smart change that ties the treasure directly to the two of them rather than to a piece of paper anyone could steal. David Oyelowo’s Long John Silver is immediately the best thing here, even on limited screen time, genuinely frightening despite the missing leg as he bludgeons a patron and beats down the soldiers sent to arrest him, and the parrot announcing his arrival somehow works as unsettling rather than silly. Tom Sweet plays Hawkins well opposite Hayley Atwell, and the hour ends with Smollett introducing the Hispaniola’s new cook, putting Silver in close quarters with everyone at exactly the right moment. That suggests this is moving at the pace it needs to become another great entry for MGM+.
10. Dark Matter Season 2 Ep. 7
82/100 – Apple TV – Next Ep. October 15 – 7:00 PM
Dark Matter brings the complexity and the actual science fiction back here as the show looks to pick up the pace after slowing down considerably over the last two episodes. “The Pyramid” earns its title by introducing a scaled-up version of the Box capable of moving trucks or entire groups of refugees between worlds, powered by an absurd amount of nuclear energy and limited to twenty-minute windows. It is built from technology harvested across the seventy-four worlds Leighton’s team has been charting for trade. Charlie’s thread in the Corridor finally has some shape to it too, with Laurel explaining that successful travelers anchor themselves to a remembered person and Charlie betting everything on the brother he lost as a kid, while Daniela leaves a note that Jason never sees and enters the Box to find Charlie. The best stretch is Jason dealing with MacNamara by spiking his whiskey and locking him in the Box, immediately followed by Jason 2 knocking on his door—the kind of escalation this season has badly needed.
11. Avatar: Seven Havens Ep. 1 - 3
81.3/100 – Paramount+ – October 16 12:00 AM
Avatar: Seven Havens gets off to a rough start across this three-episode release, and the animation takes a bit of getting used to, but once the premise locks in and the twins find each other as the two halves of the Avatar, the show picks up, and the charm is already strong enough to get me excited for more. The setup is a genuinely bold one, dropping us two centuries after a Cataclysm that Ellora blames entirely on Korra, in a society where the Avatar is treated as an enemy of the world and the Brigade recruits Benders on the premise that the city is better off without one. Pavi, an unregistered street kid who turns out to be able to Airbend as well as Earthbend, and Nisha, raised in secret by Captain Karthik with most of her memories gone, are strong opposites, with Pavi wanting a family far more than a destiny, and the moment their bending together triggers memories of their shared childhood is where the show finally finds its footing. Episode three is comfortably the strongest of the batch, with the Order of the White Lotus reveal, Jae’s recruitment, and the sisters calming a rabid creature by singing a song they both remember from their mother, a moment that earns their decision to train as Avatars on their own terms right before the masked warriors appear.
12. Survivor Season 51 Ep. 3
81/100 – Hulu – Next Ep. October 15 – 5:00 PM*
Survivor turns in one of the most hilarious quitting stories the show has ever produced, highlighting an episode that otherwise feels a bit ordinary for the third boot of the season. Rob, having already failed to get himself voted out at Savu, falls back on a foot injury the cameras never once showed and a sudden case of missing his family, a story he keeps adjusting until medical finds a tiny cut and everyone from Eric to Jeff openly concludes it is sour grapes from a man who got outplayed. Carter’s accidental permanent mutiny to Toka is the other highlight, since he never actually chooses it and only ends up stranded because Toka destroys the oars holding the advantage before he can get to one, and the boat leaves without him. The rest plays out fairly routinely, with Savu taking the puzzle challenge despite being down four bodies, and Lewis, Kilby, Thien An, Carter, and Jenna quietly flipping Devin’s plan into a 6–5 blindside on Patt.
13. JAY-Z In 8 Ep. 7 & 8
81/100 – HBO Max – Series Complete
JAŸ-Z In 8 closes out an interesting, well-crafted documentary that functions more as a conversation than anything else, and a really good one at that. Episode seven works best when it abandons the catalog-breakdown structure entirely for a forty-five-minute stretch of Jay and Rick Rubin talking through loyalty, betrayal, talk therapy, and the backstory behind “Dead Presidents II.” The smaller admissions land just as hard, including Jay saying he is more self-conscious in the studio than Beyoncé and tracing the Kanye tension around “Big Brother” back to entitlement and the overlap between “Beach Chair” and “Homecoming.” The finale goes somewhere considerably heavier, moving through “The Story of O.J.” and “No Church in the Wild” before arriving at “Legacy” and the story of learning in his early thirties that his paternal grandfather, a preacher, had fathered a child with his own daughter, a revelation that shook his faith and that he has since worked to approach with empathy. Ending on the argument that rap is a foundational American art form deserving real cultural respect is the right place to leave it, and Rubin’s refusal to turn any of this into a conventional music documentary is what makes the whole thing work.
14. Tougen Anki Season 2 Ep. 2
81/100 – Netflix – October 16 – 7:00 AM
Tougen Anki rebounds from a slow start to its second arc with a solid new episode that shows exactly how far the students have come since season one, delivering their growth through genuinely impressive animation. The episode devotes most of its runtime to Homare’s backstory, a brutal stretch the adaptation pushes even further than the manga: her father pressures her into selling herself, her sister Sumire stabs him and dies for it, and Homare awakens as an oni to behead him herself, with Shiki’s reaction carrying the emotional weight on the other side of it. The fights against Nekosaki and Innami are where the growth really registers, with Jin appearing out of nowhere, Innami’s walls bouncing pressure around the field, and the studio leaning much harder on hand-drawn work and much less on CG than it did last season, even if a few movements still slide. Burning through roughly five chapters instead of the usual three while the plot finally starts organizing itself makes this a big step up.
15. Brothers Ep. 4
81/100 – Apple TV – Next Ep. October 12 – 9:00 PM*
Brothers has been getting reactions that are far too harsh for what it actually is: a series that is simple by design and wonderfully comedic in tone, though episode four is easily the weakest entry so far. “The Band” pushes the half-brother mystery almost entirely into the background in favor of a pure sitcom premise about whether the McConaugheys should trade on their fame, with Matthew rejecting Gwen’s movie-star campaign package in favor of his father’s Texan values and refusing to pull strings for Clara’s Little Shop of Horrors audition. The bruised-ego fallout sends him and Woody to Wyatt’s coffee shop disguised as an anonymous musical duo, with Matthew performing in an Australian accent, which is genuinely the funniest material the show has produced but also amounts to a twenty-minute runtime spent on a bit. Olive’s DNA hunt going nowhere because Matthew is hairless and obsessively clean is a good joke, but Woody pocketing the prosthetic nose at the end is the only plot movement in the episode, and the back half needs something to turn things up a notch.
16. War Ep. 2
80/100 – HBO MAX– October 15 – 6:00 PM
War had a considerably more promising first episode than this one, but the writing here is still solid, and the acting is good enough to keep us hopeful that this could become a great new show. Episode two drops into mediation, which the show correctly treats as a fact-finding exercise rather than any real attempt at settlement, with Morgan opening at seventeen million up front and half the assets minus one property before Carla laughs it off and counters at a hundred million with a retirement age fifteen years further out. Dominic West and Sienna Miller are both very good in roles that deliberately refuse to make either character sympathetic, and the Cathcarts side gets the best material, with Smallwood casually asking whether Morgan is confident he will live that long and Morgan letting slip that his company is worth far more now than when the prenup was signed. Johnny playing both rooms is the most interesting thread, routing a twenty-thousand-dollar NDA payment to Flora’s mother so it cannot be traced back to Taylor & Byrne, then getting caught on tape telling Serena it went through, which hands Morgan’s team real leverage going forward.
17. Youth Episode 5
80/100 – HBO Max – October 18 – 2:00 PM
Youth turns in a decent little vacation episode that isn’t the step up I had hoped for but still holds enough quality to keep the show in good rather than great territory. The Ibiza trip puts everyone in uncomfortably close quarters, with Alex and Ruari bonding over a game of Heads Up that leaves all three couples looking foolish, while Lorcan eventually turns on Alex and blames her for making their son too soft. The Patrick material is where the episode actually works, between Ruari confiding in him that his father has stopped asking about his life and his slow drift toward Alex over a shared cigarette and a sunrise they fall asleep in front of, with Cara finding them and Patrick walking off without knowing Alex heard everything. Frank’s heart attack on the anniversary boat party is a cheap place to end an episode, but it earns Patrick’s admission that he regrets not trying harder with her, and Alex quietly noting he has said that before is the sharpest line of the hour.
18. BELOW
79.8/100 –Netflix – Show Complete
Below is Netflix’s new limited series, and it draws eerie comparisons to Widow’s Bay almost immediately. It’s a six-episode slow burn set in Snook’s Arm, a dwindling Newfoundland town where decades of government resettlement have hollowed out the population and the residents are voting on whether to abandon the place entirely. Josh Hartnett plays Calvin, a survivor of the childhood barge disaster the prologue opens on, now harvesting ice for a vodka distillery and renting out his house on Airbnb since the fishing industry collapsed, and it is a committed performance, though it comes with an odd accent that never quite settles. The mystery itself builds well as the iceberg appears offshore, a resident vanishes, and a flamingo’s remains turn up before Mackenzie Davis’s zoologist starts digging into a foul block of ice, but some genuinely weird needle drops keep puncturing a tone the show otherwise works hard to maintain. Overall, this is good, and if it weren’t sitting in the shadow of a better mysterious island show working different angles of horror and mystery, it might have ranked higher, but here we are with some fun performances, Charlie Heaton’s near-catatonic Wade among them, and a creature the show is smart enough to keep withholding.
19. Haunted Hotel Season 2
79.7/100 –Netflix – Season Complete
Haunted Hotel returns from a middling first season last October, and I was honestly surprised by the comedic step up the show makes here, a second season that feels lived-in and well done rather than still figuring out what it is. Katherine running the Undervale with Ben and Esther works far better now that the ghosts and monsters filling the place have become a functioning ensemble instead of a rotating gag, and Eliza Coupe, Skyler Gisondo, Natalie Palamides, and Jimmi Simpson’s demon-trapped-in-a-kid Abbadon all land more consistently than they did a year ago. Will Forte’s Nathan carries the season’s one genuinely substantive thread, as the truth about his death brings him no peace at all, and the writers follow that honestly through to a conflict over moving on that would mean leaving his family behind. It’s more weight than this show needed to take on, and it handles it better than expected. Natalie Morales’s Shayna is a strong addition who disappears far too early, and the season won’t blow you away, but it will absolutely give you a simple, comedic adult animated watch for spooky season.
20. American Hostage Episode 5
79/100 – MGM+ – October 18 – 6:00 PM
American Hostage has a more defined style here, but the story again feels slowly paced and needs to get moving. The police turn up the heat in Tony’s building to wear him down, which gives the episode its best material as he puts Dick Hall on trial in his own living room, taking a hammer to the coffee table to keep order while running through every grievance, from the foreclosure to the man’s sports coat. Giving Dick a point of view for the first time is the smartest decision here, showing a man who could not carry his mortgage without income and genuinely believed he was just doing his job. His on-record apology having no effect on Tony says more than another standoff scene would. The immunity document Tony nearly signs without reading turns out to be completely bogus, and with a sharpshooter now positioned on the roof across the street, Fred’s growing disillusionment at being handed a fake deal to sell is the one thread that actually feels like it is building toward something.
21. The Drop: A Snowfall Saga Ep. 5
78/100 – Hulu – Next Ep. October 13 – 6:00 PM*
The Drop lands its best episode yet with a tale of the past that is genuinely well made but still poorly acted and written, which has been the recurring sentiment here for most weeks now. “Homecoming” opens in 1950 with Gerty at fifteen, pregnant, her condition announced from her own father’s pulpit before she is thrown out of both the church and the house—an experience that becomes the origin of every controlling instinct she has carried since. The bulk of the hour takes place in 1974 during Rochelle’s final weekend home, torn between an audition for Sparkle and a marriage to Maurice that Gerty pushed her into at sixteen. The truth Lamar finally learns is that his mother stabbed Maurice in self-defense during a drive into the hills after he put his hands around her throat, leading to the crash that killed them both. Big Daddy stabbing a high neighbor in the kitchen is the one present-day beat that actually hits, and Wanda refusing to accept Gerty’s blame while accusing her of repeating the exact behavior that broke Rochelle is the sharpest writing the show has managed, even if the performances around it still cannot carry the weight the material is reaching for.
22. The Amazing Race Season 39 Ep. 2
77/100 – Hulu/CBS/Paramount+ – October 14 – 9:30 PM
The Amazing Race turns in yet another basic episode that has not convinced me this season will rise above what the show has been for years now. The teams move from Vancouver to Madrid for a leg built around tomato piles, charcuterie boards, and identifying Spanish landmarks, which is about as safe a template as this franchise has. Ali Krieger and Joanna Lohman take it comfortably, with Michelle and Matthew Patterson right behind them on the strength of his history knowledge. Cody and Jaime burning the Express Pass this early to skip the Detour and dodge a station backup is the only strategically interesting decision in the hour, and Dafina and Saran losing over an hour inside a museum after leaving the Roadblock near the front is the only real drama. Katie and Charlotte go out after the tomato clue puts them behind and a train carries them seven stops in the wrong direction, which is a perfectly fine elimination for an episode that never asks anything new of anyone.
23. American Horror Story Season 13 Ep. 7 & 8
75/100 – Hulu – Next Ep. Octoberr 15 – 7:00 PM*
American Horror Story keeps sliding further down our lists this season, as the narrative and the acting here feel largely incoherent even while the show throws everything it has at the screen. Episode seven is a straight siege as the Coven defends Miss Robichaux’s from the Cortez Devils, which means Madison getting stabbed by Jeffrey Dahmer before Morwena revives her, Queenie mirroring Dahmer to death, Mallory sending Richard Ramirez back in time to be beaten to death by a mob, and Coco using glucose-sensing to take out the Zodiac Killer, a sequence of events that is somehow both relentless and completely weightless. Fiona’s return and her reanimation of March’s own victims to dismember him should be the season’s biggest swing, but instead they land as another set piece in a show that has stopped connecting any of them. Episode eight at least has direction, with the serpent inside a reanimated corpse pointing to Satan and Queenie volunteering for an eternity at Chubbie’s Fried Chicken so Papa Legba can bring Marie Laveau back, but Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates deserve material that holds together, and the Jessica Lange tease for next week now feels more like a rescue attempt than a reward.
