Top 5 TV: ‘Evil Dead’ Sees Starz, ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Goes Intergalactic

4. Reality Overload: Survivor (CBS)
Even the best-designed reality-TV competitions (your Amazing Races, your Top Chefs) suffer weeks where the gameplay sucks, the outcome’s inevitable, and none of the contestants say or do anything interesting. And then there are episodes like last week’s Survivor, which began with a player being evacuated due to a family medical emergency, and ended with a classic tribal council blindside. In between, the tribes went through a merge, played a slippery round of ring-toss, and endured an eating contest that had them swallowing bugs and bird-embryos. By the time the show circled back around to reassure the audience that the opening health scare had turned out okay, a lot of folks watching had probably forgotten there was ever a problem.

This season has been dubbed “Second Chance,” because the cast is made up of returning players who came up short the first time they played. (Fans voted for these contestants, which means they’re all memorable characters.) Even if nothing much were going on, it’d be both tense and touching to watch the gawky Stephen Fishbach struggle to be taken seriously, or “Chaos” Kass McQuillen revisit old grudges with her ally-turned-rival Spencer Bledsoe, or Abi-Marie Gomes test the sturdiness of alliances. But throw in some close challenges and a ton of desperate maneuvering, and this is shaping up to be one of the series’ best games in years.