‘Younger’ Returns, Sheldon Takes on the IRS, Inside ‘Wahl Street’

Fresh as ever, the rom-com Younger begins streaming its seventh and final season. Young Sheldon has a timely encounter with the IRS. Grey’s Anatomy adds social-justice protests to its COVID-era concerns. Mark Wahlberg allows cameras inside his growing corporate empire.

Peter Hermann as Charles and Sutton Foster as Liza in Younger - Season 7 Premiere
Nicole Rivelli/ViacomCBS

Younger

Season Premiere

Darren Star’s delightful rom-com returns, after more than a year’s COVID-related delay, for its seventh and final season. (For those who don’t stream, these episodes will air later this year on the show’s original home on TV Land.) Fans may discover once for all whether Liza (Sutton Foster), who lied about her age to jumpstart her career in New York publishing, will end up with dashing Charles (Peter Herrmann), who has proposed to her, or does she still harbor feelings for hipster tattoo artist Josh (Nico Tortorella)?

Young Sheldon
CBS

Young Sheldon

In an episode originally timed to coincide with Tax Day—which thanks to COVID has been pushed back a month this year—the boy genius (Iain Armitage) takes on the IRS when the agency has the audacity to accuse Sheldon of making a mistake. He doesn’t only beg to differ, he’ll do everything in his cerebral power to prove them wrong. Elsewhere in the family, Meemaw’s (Annie Potts) boyfriend Dale (Craig T. Nelson) is scheduled for a colonoscopy and begs her to join him. How romantic!

CBS

United States of Al

Chuck Lorre’s newest comedy goes to the DMV for the latest illustration of culture shock. Going to the license bureau is no fun for anyone, but for transplanted Afghan interpreter Al (Adhir Kalyan), the experience is unsettling for an entirely different reason: his instructor for the driving test is a woman—and she’s wearing shorts. Though we get that he’s unaccustomed to seeing any female’s bare legs in his home country, if Al doesn’t learn how to shift his perceptual gears soon, he may have to start riding a bike.

grey's anatomy ellen pompeo season 17
ABC

Grey’s Anatomy

We’re glad to see that Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) has awakened and left the COVID-limbo beach, though we’d be lying if we said we weren’t alarmed by the promos suggesting yet another setback in her recovery. (Let’s hope it’s a fakeout.) While some of the docs work with a patient who doesn’t believe in COVID, another hot-button issue erupts when social-justice protests take to Seattle’s streets. Phylicia Rashad, currently recurring on This Is Us as Beth’s wise mother, guests as a patient who is injured during the mayhem.

On the Stream:

  • Wahl Street (streaming on HBO Max): Being a celebrity these days is big business, and Mark Wahlberg has found entrepreneurial success in many areas. In a six-part docuseries, he lets camera inside his various enterprises, from his production company and clothing line to the F45 gym studio and Wahlburgers restaurant chain, which inspired its own reality show.
  • Spy City (streaming on AMC+): Preacher’s Dominic Cooper plays it more straight in a routine six-part Cold War espionage thriller set in 1961 Berlin, shortly before the infamous wall is built. He stars as disgraced British agent Fielding Scott, who’s sent to the embattled city to redeem himself by retrieving a defecting East German scientist. When the mission goes sideways, Scott goes rogue to smoke out a traitor.
  • The Wordmaker (streaming on Topic): Shira Haas, the breakout star of Netflix’s Unorthodox, is among the stars of an Israeli psychological thriller about a psychiatrist and professor of sleep disorders who awakens in a bar with no memory of how he got there. When he’s implicated in a murder, he turns to a Kabbalah center once managed by the charismatic leader known as “The Wordmaker,” who has gone missing.
  • Exit Plan (streaming on Crackle): Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars in what’s being described as an “existential mystery,” as an insurance investigator looking into the remote Hotel Aurora, a secretive facility where assisted suicide is provided as room service.
  • Creepshow (streaming on Shudder): In the horror anthology’s latest installment, playfully titled “The Right Snuff,” True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten and Breckin Meyer (Franklin & Bash) play astronauts on an ill-fated space mission.

Inside Thursday TV:

  • Latin American Music Awards (8/7c, Telemundo): Latin American TV star Jacqueline Bracamontes hosts the ceremony from the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Florida, with J Balvin, Karol G, Bad Bunny and Ozuna leading the nominations. Ozuna, who’s receiving the Extraordinary Evolution Award, will perform, along with José Luis Rodriguez, “El Puma,” who gets the Legend Award.
  • Walker (8/7c, The CW): Walker (Jared Padalecki) thinks a high-stakes poker game could provide new clues to his wife’s killer. But why is Geri (Odette Annable) there among the high rollers?
  • Last Man Standing (9/8c, Fox): Amanda Fuller (Kristin) directs an episode where Mike (Tim Allen) and Vanessa (Nancy Travis) are none too pleased to learn who Mandy (Molly McCook) and Kyle (Christoph Sanders) have chosen to be their daughter’s legal guardian. And Jen (Krista Marie Yu) starts working at Outdoor Man.
  • Mom (9/8c, CBS): The relationship between Bonnie (Allison Janney) and former foster-home frenemy Tammy (Kristen Johnston) has been a joy to behold in recent seasons. But when Tammy shows signs of becoming successful in her new line of work, will Bonnie be able to suppress her jealousy?
  • Fast Foodies (10:30/9:30c, truTV): The season finale of the goofy cooking competition welcomes rising comic Fortune Feimster as guest clown, tasking the chefs to find new twists on her favorite fast food: Panda Express’s orange chicken.