THE PERFORMER | Jennifer Connelly
THE SHOW | “Dark Matter”
THE EPISODE | “Everything Beautiful, Everything Terrible” (September 11, 2026)
THE PERFORMANCE | Trying to keep one’s marbles while traveling through alternate realities can be a struggle, and in the latest “Dark Matter,” we witnessed the dire toll it’s taken on Daniela. After being forcibly uprooted from a life the Dessens loved, the family found itself on the run yet again from assorted dangers closing in. In their new, new life, Daniela was still fearful of being found out, and during a routine trip to the DMV, Jennifer Connelly forced us to feel that fear. Merely staring at the back of a stranger’s head — a man she worried was another Jason — was enough to make her eyes go wide, and we could visibly see her lingering sense of unease and the nerves coursing through her body.
The actress held the tension throughout the entire hour on her face, in her body language, and even in her speech after accidentally burning dinner. But when Jason forgot their safe word one night, Connelly turned up the heat as Daniela struggled to catch her breath and reach for a gun. Luckily for him, he eventually remembered or she might’ve had to bust a cap in him.
When Jason’s obsession with the box became all-consuming, Daniela’s final straw broke. After Jason suggested the possibility of not destroying the box, Connelly’s eyes began to water. And when she pieced together that Jason had been lying to her about his true intentions, her body stiffened. The actress’s emotions went haywire, as hurt, exhaustion, and anger took over and she tried to explain her frustrations. Though husband and wife eventually rebounded from their lovers’ quarrel, Episode 3 gave Connelly the proper platform to showcase her tremendous firepower. — Nick Caruso
Scroll down to see who got an Honorable Mention shout-out this week…
HONORABLE MENTION: Brett Goldstein
As Roy Kent, Brett Goldstein typically gets to express one emotion: gruff annoyance. But this week, as Ted Lasso & Co. rang in the new year, we got to see two very different sides of the former Greyhound: chemically assisted and all-natural elation. The grin that washed over his face when he first laid eyes on Jamie Tartt making “an absolute tit of himself” at his vodka launch party was already something special. Then House of Pain’s “Jump Around” took hold, giving us the best 30 seconds of “Ted Lasso” Season 4 as Roy gave in to the moment and joined Jamie on the dance floor, culminating in the shattering of his bum knee and a mad dash to a literal house of pain — the hospital. There, Kent was administered “the good stuff,” resulting in a version of Roy we’ve never seen before: completely uninhibited. At this point, it wasn’t so much what was written on the page as Goldstein’s delivery — playing with his oxygen tubing like a child with G.I. Joe dolls, greeting his girlfriend with an exaggerated “Hello, doctor!” then following that up with a “Wasssup!” to Jamie. And somehow, it was all rather… charming? Which speaks to Goldstein’s sharp comic instincts. — Ryan Schwartz
Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in the comments!