Entertainment News - TV

THIS ISSUE: VMAs, The Night Of, Fear the Walking Dead, The Strain TOP MOMENT OF THE NIGHT Beyoncé Owns the Night MTV BECAUSE: She danced, she sang, she effervesced. Yes, Beyoncé slayed once again at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards, performing a Lemonademedley of "Pray You Catch Me" (dancers casually dropped one-by-one behind her); "Hold Up" (she cracked the camera lens with her signature baseball bat), "Sorry" (she's still not sorry), "Don't Hurt Yourself" (she was draped by a fur coat), and finally, "Formation" (the group formed the gender symbol for women). Beyoncé's performance was announced only a few hours before Sunday's show, but it will likely take fans weeks to recover.

The Night Of HBO WHAT HAPPENED: If you're looking for a happy ending from Sunday's The Night Of finale, keep on walking. But if you're looking for some answers and even to see Naz make it out of Rikers alive, the final installment of HBO's eight-part limited series had the right stuff. Chandra spends her vital courtroom moments calling alternate suspects Duane Reade, the undertaker, and Andrea's creepy step-dad to the stand to draw guilt away from Naz, but it's all nearly undone when she makes the decision to put Naz on the stand. His answer to District Attorney Helen Weiss' final question -- did Naz kill Andrea? -- is as damning as it is true: "I don't know." But Naz does have Box (kind of) in his corner after the detective discovers a viable other suspect in Andrea's sketchy financial manager. Following Stone's eloquent, emotional closing statement, the jury ties 6-6, ending the case in a mistrial. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: But that isn't where our time with Naz ends. We see him leave Rikers without a word to Freddy. We see him unable to return home and forgive his mother for thinking he was guilty. Finally, we see him sitting on the beach where he first encountered Andrea, smoking the drugs he's now hooked on from prison. Though Variety found it "hard to stomach [the finale's] ambiguity," they also added that its decision to return Andrea's cat to Stone in the episode's final moments helped a little: "The Night Of was frequently a funny drama, and its closing shot...went for a laugh that also felt like an affirmation of hope." Variety settled on the understanding that, to the very end, The Night Of is a show all about ambiguity and doubt: "Just like the characters, we're running after clues for what happened; just like them, we're asked to engage with a story that we ultimately don't fully understand.

Fear the Walking Dead AMC WHAT HAPPENED: Everyone on Fear the Walking Dead is finally in Mexico, but there's not a fiesta in sight. (Actually, Madison and Strand do get drunk at a hotel bar, but they're immediately almost killed by a herd of walkers, so it kind of cancels out.) Nick wakes up in the Tijuana community that's taken him in and discovers there will be some kind of ritual during which a man is sent beyond the gates to be devoured by walkers. But on a trip to collect supplies, Luciana tells Nick that the man went voluntarily: "Those near death deliver themselves to the dead." Apparently pharmacist Alejandro was formerly bitten by a walker and survived, inspiring a very specific kind of faith among his community. Alejandro believes The Children of the Resurrection -- when the dead take over and everything is washed clean, they'll be the ones left to inherit the planet. OK. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: Alejandro might be a little much, but he also might have good reason for his unique outlook: a big walker-sized chunk out of his chest suggests that he really did survive a walker bite. But TV Guide reminds us this: "We know from The Walking Dead that becoming a walker isn't just about bites: everyone is infected, and whether you die from getting chomped on or of natural causes, you're coming back." So what exactly does Alejandro mean by saying that everyone in his community has died and returned? "There seems to be a lot of sick people in Tijuana Hilltop, but did they really die? Or is he speaking metaphorically?" asks TV Guide. Questions like these might be enough to wake even Nick from the numbness he's been sporting.

The Strain FX WHAT HAPPENED: Last time we left The Strain, the Occido Lumen had been located and Nora had died trying to save Zach from being taken by the strigoi. In Sunday's season 3 premiere, we find Eph mourning that loss with buckets of liquor and a continued dedication to developing his anti-strigoi bioweapon and battling the monsters in parking garages. Fet is leading a team of Navy SEALs in a hunt for the Master. It's successful in that they find a number of the king rat muncher's emissaries, but given that a strigoi attack takes out most of their men, things don't exactly turn out in their favor. By the premiere's end, Eph is faced with an impossible choice from the Master, delivered to him via Kelly: Turn over the Occido Lumen in order to be reunited with Zach, or hold onto the big bad book and never see his son again. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING: Following Sunday's premiere, YahooTV says "The Strain has always been at its best when it's about two things: hunting down vampires and letting Corey Stoll's Ephraim swill gallons of hard liquor to either numb his exhaustion or give him the nerve to continue the hunt." And if that's the criteria, season 3 is bound to be a good one because the premiere had liquor-swilling and creepy vampire attacks in spades. Yahoo notes that "one substantial advantage The Strain has over other monster-invasion series...is that [co-creator Chuck Hogan], before his [Guillermo del Toro] team-up, was a superb writer of thriller novels (Prince of Thieves, The Standoff) and he carries that swift storytelling skill over into the scripts he writes or co-writes here." And when it comes to chasing and/or running from strigoi, swiftness is key.

One More Thing...

Rihanna Wins Big and Small MTV FOUR LETTER WORD: Drake was late to the VMAs due to traffic, but he made it in time to present Rihanna with the Video Vanguard Award. He also mentioned that the superstar is "someone I've been in love with since I was 22 years old." Gasp.