What’s on TV Thursday: ‘Scandal’ and ‘Blade Runner’

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Olivia Pope returns to the White House, and “The Good Place” continues in the Bad Place.

What’s on TV

SCANDAL 9 p.m. on ABC. What a long, lustful, murderous, twisty road it’s been. Shonda Rhimes’s smash hit soap enters its seventh and final season with Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) firmly in command at the White House, as the chief of staff to her enemy-turned-ally President Mellie Grant. In this episode, Olivia works to avert an international incident, and a pregnant Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes) struggles to nab her consulting firm’s first client. A new episode of “How to Get Away With Murder,” also from Ms. Rhimes, is at 10 p.m.

BLADE RUNNER (1982) 6:30 and 11 p.m. on Syfy. “Blade Runner 2049” arrives in theaters this week to mostly excellent reviews, but it will be hard pressed to match the influence and acclaim of the original. Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, based on a Philip K. Dick novel, forged a new vision of postmodern dystopia: “The map of our collective dream world was permanently redrawn,” A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times this week. Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, a grizzled, world-weary cop who takes on an assignment to hunt down a group of androids in 2019 Los Angeles; Mr. Ford imbues the murky technological landscape with warmth and emotional depth.

THE GOOD PLACE 8:30 p.m. on NBC. This sitcom’s first season ended with a major twist: Eleanor’s heaven wasn’t so heavenly after all. The second season has so far been a series of reboots that happen every time Eleanor (Kristen Bell) or one of her compatriots realizes she or he is in the Bad Place. (“The Bad Place version of ‘The Good Place’ proves it’s still able to surprise, while staying rooted in ideas that make it more than the sum of its twists,” James Poniewozik wrote in his review in The Times.) In this episode, the group struggles to make a decision in the face of the diabolical Michael (Ted Danson).

What’s Streaming

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CLIVE DAVIS: THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES on Apple Music. Aretha. Bruce. Biggie. Whitney. The music mogul Clive Davis played a major role in the careers of these superstars, and many more. (Aretha Franklin called him the “greatest record man of all time.”) This documentary, which opened this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, traces his career from his championing of rock ’n’ roll at CBS in the 1960s to the creation of his own record label, Arista, in 1975, through his mentorship of Whitney Houston and her tragic downfall.

SUPERMANSION: DRAG ME TO HALLOWEEN on Crackle. Get in the Halloween spirit with the League of Freedom, a superhero group led by the crabby, aging Titanium Rex (voiced by Bryan Cranston). In this special, the stop-motion gang faces off against “seductive ghosts, angry demons and evil dentists.” The voice cast also includes Keegan-Michael Key and Lake Bell.

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