What’s On: A Death in the Family on ‘Mom,’ and HGTV’s ‘Flip or Flop’ Expands to Las Vegas

Mom (9/8c, CBS): One of the highlights of last season, as dramatic as comedic, was the introduction of Ellen Burstyn as Bonnie’s birth mother, Shirley, a reunion clouded by their troubled and distant past and the revelation that Shirley was dying. Never one to shy from unsentimental reality, Mom does not spare Shirley, and in the wake of her death, Bonnie (Allison) and Christy (Anna Faris) learn she has kept a very big secret from them.

Flip or Flop Vegas (9/8c, HGTV): The hit franchise presents its inevitable first (but not the last) spinoff, starring the new team of MMA fighter and contractor Bristol Marunde and wife Aubrey, a real estate agent and designer. Together, they’ll go into some of the desert city’s most challenging fixer-uppers to flip them into desirable properties.

Scandal (9/8c, ABC): Will Huck (Guillermo Diaz) survive what looked like an almost fatal shooting? That’s the most pressing question as this cartoonish conspiracy thriller deals with fallout from the latest ludicrous shocker. The episode is titled “Dead in the Water,” but that may only be referring to the show’s credibility. Time will tell.

Inside Thursday TV: There’s awkwardness in the workplace at NBC’s Superstore (8/7c) when Glenn (Mark McKinney) invites all of his kids to the store, and Jonah (Ben Feldman) gets a crush on his 25-year-old daughter. … Showtime’s disturbing docu-series Dark Net (10/9c) returns for a second season, taking viewers into a real-life Black Mirror plumbing the depths of our digital obsessions. The opener introduces us to Harmony, a pioneering artificially intelligent sex robot. … Tensions rise within the newly formed teams of CBS’s The Amazing Race (10/9c) as the next destination of Sao Paolo, Brazil, beckons.