“Where they love, they have no desire; where they desire, they cannot love,” hospital secretary Jane quotes from Freud, and it seems appropriate that an episode predicated on debunking the Austrian psychologist should test whether love and desire can or should coexist. And, of course, there’s that eye-popping teaser at the end—signaling that Masters and Johnson are about to approach that question in a whole new way.

—Ashley Fetters

Fox

The Mindy Project, "You've Got Sext"

This episode of The Mindy Project finds Mindy Kaling doing what she does best: subverting and reinvigorating rom-com clichés. There’s the “crazy” ex-girlfriend—Amy, who Danny used to date. There’s “fake relationship becomes real”—Mindy, who is staying at Danny’s because she lost her purse, pretends to be his pregnant fiancée, “Chloe Silverado,” when they run into Amy.

And there’s also “the letter that didn’t come from who you thought,” à la Cyrano de Bergerac or You’ve Got Mail. At the office, gynecologist-bro Peter and spectacularly unhinged nurse Morgan find Mindy’s phone and end up trading escalating texts with Cliff, the lawyer from upstairs. “Your competence is a double-edged sword,” Cliff texts Mindy, at which Peter cackles, “This nerd is HORNED UP.” Morgan also makes the observation that the winky face is “like emoji porn,” which is 100 percent true. They get caught, of course, but not before Cliff confesses to a bathroom he doesn’t know does not contain Mindy that “the most exciting text I got from you was the first one.”

At Danny’s place, it turns out that “there is a sociopath here, and it’s not Amy,” as Mindy says. Danny has been leading Amy on because he’s lonely and Mindy lets him have it. Still, they’ve committed to the charade and have to see it through, so when Amy suspects they’re not really dating, the two quickly start cuddling. “Danny never looked at me like that,” Amy says, resigned. And so it begins.

I had been resisting this. Not even the supreme handsomeness of Chris Messina’s face could make me want Mindy and Danny to be anything more than bickering work friends. It was an obvious pairing and I wanted none of it. But when Danny gives Mindy that Look and adorably kisses her on the forehead to convince his ex they’re really together, he convinced me too. I’m in, damn it. Mindy knows best.

—Julie Beck

HBO

The Newsroom, “Red Team III”

Midway through its second season, The Newsroom abruptly abandoned much of what it’s become known for—like the famous sermonizing and the mawkish concern for its characters’ personal lives. And something astonishing happened: It became an absolutely riveting workplace drama.

In “Red Team III,” the seventh and best episode of the season, ACN News Night finally airs its controversial Operation Genoa report—a story 11 months in the making, which claims that U.S. soldiers used chemical weapons in a covert operation in Pakistan. In the next 48 hours, the entire story unravels; witnesses recant, reporters are discovered to have doctored evidence, and sources reveal themselves to have planted false proof to blackmail network executives. And as the whole cast suddenly puts away its cutesy squabbling and faces the sobering reality of a massive, everyone’s-fault institutional failure, their problem-solving process becomes not just watchable but enthralling. Real ethical questions are raised: Whose fault is it when reporters get duped? To what extent should anonymous sources be trusted? Do American military heroes deserve a moral “benefit of the doubt?” When should uncertain gut feelings be taken seriously, especially ones that go against the findings of meticulous research?