TNT’s Southland kicked off its fifth season on Wednesday night with the carefully crafted, intense drama that has made the show a favorite among its diehard fans and critics of crime television alike. The show picks up with the storyline several months after season four ended, offering us an intimate look at how policing changes our society—and the police. This episode’s opening voice montage was particularly haunting: We hold cops to a higher standard because we give ‘em a gun and a badge. The only trouble with that is, they’re recruited from the human race.

With American Idol withering away to obsolescence in its twilight years; The X Factor failing to take hold in the States; and The Voice plateauing into background noise, the moment is ripe for a new singing competition show to ascend to the top (or bottom) of the heap. Something brave and brash and incisive, a new popcultural watershed and bellwether.  A show that says as much about what we’d like to become as what we’ve actually become. A show that addresses directly what we (de)value most as a society; that addresses the concerns of what it’s like to be alive right now, in 2013, in America; and, mostly importantly, a show that addresses and answers the singular vital question of how much humiliation and torture an individual is willing to endure for a chance at winning, at most, ten grand.

Wow. Well, just wow. Serious business occurs in this week’s episode, and it doesn’t involve marginal progress in one of the lame stories, or a footman spilling something at dinner. No, this is about as good as the show gets, and it really is predicated on shocking you.

Here goes. In this episode, Sybil delivers her baby against the backdrop of some doctorly disagreement, before, hours later, succumbing to eclampsia and, incredibly, dying. I must say that I found this development profoundly surprising, mostly because she seems like such an odd character to kill off and because I had no prior notion that it was going to happen. While I fear that much from this third series has been spoiled by anyone who ever reads things about TV on the internet (which, by definition, includes you), I can attest to the fact that, for an unspoiled viewer, this was a shocking and momentous episode. Honestly, this is all so dark that, like a character in Glee spontaneously breaking into song, I feel compelled to break into a list. You know, to lighten the mood a little.

Trying to explain the abysmal ratings of ABC’s agreeably daft and eccentric comedy Don’t Trust the B——in Apt. 23, perhaps it’s a case of audiences taking the advice built directly into the name of the show too literally. And the name is a problem, if only because it seems to want to keep the viewer continually at arm’s length, deflecting rather than inviting with its initial “Don’t” followed by a sing-songy jumble that skirts the line between clever and obnoxious, and goes on just a bit too long besides.  It’s like it’s knowingly overcompensating for being so coy by being a mouthful, trying to be both risqué and cute, never quite succeeding either way.

This is not an episode of Season 3 that you will likely remember much of, particularly not with everything coming down the pike (oh, calm down, that’s not a spoiler). No, this is an episode that churns along well enough for the most part, and really marks a pivot-point in terms of the primary plot for the season.