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The Luck of the Fryrish - Futurama
Fry spent his life thinking his brother was a dick who was stealing his personality, when all he really wanted was to be around him. And by the time he realized it, it was too late. Having a similar relationship with my brother, this hit close to home. I keep telling myself if I ever got a tattoo, it would be a 7 leaf clover.
Scrubs, Where do you think we are?
A perfect misdirection the entire episode, us as the viewer have no idea what is happening or why Dr Cox is losing it, until it all just shatters. We experience his grief firsthand, not understanding and denying it, until the world shatters around us and reality finally forces its way through. It's perfectly done, and completely gut wrenching
The episode is "My Screw Up" (S3E14) if anyone is wondering.
I might actually prefer "My Lunch" from S5 as an episode, but they are both fantastic.
Community, season 3, Pillows and Blankets.
It's a campus wide pillow fight between two friends / armies done as a Ken Burns Civil War documentary.
Winger's critics suggest he merely improvised hot-button patriotic dogma in a Ferris Bueller-ian attempt to delay schoolwork. Winger decries the accusation as "A slanderous betrayal akin to 9/11." Later after the war, he would refer to the theory as "essentially accurate."
There are people who say: 'I don't get it, so it was a pillow fight.' To which I say: 'You weren't there.'
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Hush
The writing for this silent episode is just wonderful, and the whole cast’s chemistry really shines in their non-verbal acting
Mine is also from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, but the complete opposite of Hush; mine is Once More, With Feeling. The musical episode.
But I have to admit, the stabby stabby masturbation joke in Hush is one of the best jokes on the show.
Both excellent, but I have to put The Body at the top. I think that’s where I realized how excellent some of the actors in this show were, SMG in particular. Anya’s monologue has stayed with me in a way nothing else from tv or movies ever has. Would I rather enjoy a OMWF singalong? Yes, any day. But The Body felt like a one of a kind thing.
"I'm disabled!" Is a classic reference in my house that cannot be used in pleasant / uncultured company. It's great to see my people are out there!
I'm not the biggest Seth MacFarlane fan, but the American Dad episode "Joint Custody" is pure classic.
I really want to pick an episode of Community, but I'm having a hard time nailing down just one. There's the obvious answers like Remedial Chaos Theory or Modern Warfare. I just love the whole series. Maybe Basic Intergluteal Numismatics, The Asscrack Bandit episode, just because it's so layered it really lends itself to rewatches.
Master of None has its issues, but there's some standouts in the first season. Parents and Mornings always get me.
Someone already mentioned my top favorite (Community - "Pillows and Blankets"). So I'll have to go to my backup which is its equal.
Community - S3E04 - Remedial Chaos Theory.
Why? Because it's the quintesential Community episode; goofiness, intelligence, absurdity, slapstick. and it all exists in one package)
The Tales of Ba Sing Se from S2E15 of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
It is an incredibly poignant, albeit beautiful tableau about the loss of a child in a filler episode of a Y-7 Nickelodeon show. On top of that, the voice actor whose character is at the center of this incredibly painful story was dying of esophageal cancer during the recording and the episode ends with his in memoriam.
The IT crowd when they go to the theater. Roy gets caught in the disabled washroom and Moss gets a new job
Thats the episode I was describing in the original post :D s02E1, The Work Outing
Brilliant
The whole thing is majestic
"Blink" Episode 11, season 3, Sep 3, 2007 Doctor Who
Edge of your seat. It was so enjoyable.
I know we're being asked for our favoritE, not favoriteS, but it's too difficult to pick just one. Both of them had me unashamedly bawling my eyes out. The first (aired) is the fourth episode of the third season of Black Mirror -- San Junipero. The second is the third episode of the first season of The Last of Us -- Long, Long Time. I couldn't keep my cool during either of them or for quite a while after.
Honorable mention is the series finale of Six Feet Under. The show, by and large, I'm just not a fan of. Like, pretty much at all. But that finale. Good god.
I don't care about The Last of Us at all but I've watched that episode a few times.
It's just such a perfect love story. Regardless of your orientation or views, it should hit home.
I don't know if it's my favorite, but the first one to immediately come to mind is the episode of The Last of Us featuring Nick Offerman. It was just heartbreakingly beautiful.
Twin Peaks season 3 episode 8 comes to mind. It might not be something I want to watch over and over but it's probably the most incredible thing I've ever seen on broadcast TV. A surrealism short film in the context of a series that both has a self contained story and speaks to the broad narrative of the series. Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Nine in Nails, The Platters' "My Prayer" on the soundtrack? Amazing! Still to this day I can not believe the artistic freedom allowed by Showtime to create this. Jaw was on the floor for the entire episode. I've felt for a long time that nothing could actually be new/shocking/different on broadcast TV. This changed my mind. Nothing has even been close imho.
Star Trek:TNG, that episode where Picard has been captured and turned by the Borg.
Backstory: I've always considered myself a bit of a geek, but despite this I never watched Star Trek. From 2008 to 2012 I was working on a ship, so I needed something to watch. So I decided to start watching ALL of Star Trek, starting with the pilot, then via Kirk, etc.
Come 2010 I wad at home with my GF, and we were watching TNG together the evening before I was to fly out. And with each episode it got more and more exciting, to the point where it was 0200 in the morning and 8 had to get up early to catch a flight for work at 0900.
"OK, one more episode, and then we HAVE to call it quits for now".
Well, yeah, that was the episode that ended with the cliffhanger of Picard having been captured. I ended up not sleeping at all that night.
Firefly s2e1. Because I daydream that fox weren't a bunch of dicks every now and then.
It's always sunny in Philadelphia - "The gang cracks the liberty bell"
'Charlie Work' is up there also. just a fantastic job.. and all those long takes are icing on the cake!
Ed, Edd, n Eddy
The Eds break reality
The episode focused on the Eds breaking physics by dismantling the perspective of certain objects. At one point Ed stands on what's supposed to be a silhouette of a house far in the background, grabs the sun, and takes a bite out of it before putting it back in the sky. Eddy at one point grabs Jimmy's outline and pulls it off causing him to melt and slip down a sewer grate.
It's always stuck with me because that's where my love of learning physics came from and it exemplified a lot of the tricks artists use to convey a 3d world in a 2d animation.
Timeloops, what more can I say. They're fun.
TLDR: Main Cast of Time travelers die, but no worry, we literally have time travel, so the future send another time traveler's conciousness back in time before the team dies, the time traveler take over a skydiver that historically died and averts their host's death, then races to do their primary mission of saving the main cast time traveler team, they only got 17 minutes left. But the mission fails, then they try again, and again. For almost 10 times.
Why: Because I just love watching each iteration progress. Like, imagine if life had do-overs... But its a mission instead.
(I'm horrible at explaining things, but just watch the entirety of Travlers, trust me 😉)
MORE TIME LOOPS, what more can I say? (I almost forgot about this one, but Travelers reminded me of this)
Earth goes Kaboom, but an ancient spell reverses time for 12 hours, only 2 people, specifically 2 Magicians, remember the previous loop. So they try various spells to fix it.
Why: Its more timeloops, so fun, thats why!
S05E14 of Breaking Bad - Ozymandias.
I vividly remember watching it for the first time. I've had emotional reactions to movies and shows in the past, but not like this. This is like the immediate aftermath of everything coming to a head, and everyone's acting made the whole episode so immersive. I felt like I was there, and this was happening to my family.
::: spoiler Specifically the scene of Skylar sprinting down the street chasing Walt's car after he kidnaps Holly.. or shit, the scene where Walt is wrestling with Walt Jr. over the knife. Or shit, just the realization that Skylar and Walt Jr. have that Walt essentially killed Hank. Everything is just compounded with the immense grief of losing Hank in such a brutish, unceremonious way. :::
This is still one of my top 3 shows. I'm not good at picking favorites, but I know it's up there.
Favorite might be a strong term but definitely the most impactful was the episode or two where Bojack Horseman discussed miscarriages because I was watching through the series on a depressive streak after experiencing such a thing in my own life when I got to that part.
There's an old comedy/parody of soap operas called SOAP. SOAP is the show Benson spun oft from. It starred, among others, Billy Crystal and Katherine Helmond. Absolutely amazing show that I can and will talk about for hours.
S1e9 has a scene in which Jessica (Helmond) discovers that her husband Chester is cheating on her.
She looks to her sister and says Oh, Mary, I would faint if I knew how
It's one of the finest examples of writing, acting, direction... Everything. It's a perfect scene, so much so that it inspired me to want to write, and is the reason I decided to go for a creative writing degree.
For anyone curious, SOAP was so hated by network execs, Christian right orgs and basically all of conservative America that by the end of it's run all advertisers had pulled out except for vlassic pickles, and commercial breaks would just be pickle commercials over and over again during the break. You couldn't watch it in most areas, because locals refused to run it. It featured the first openly gay character in a major network show, a trans story (which did not age as well as it could have, but was progressive for it's time), a lesbian character, interracial relationships, suicide, race relations, crises of faith, extramarital affairs, divorce... In the 70s. It always punched up, and the black and gay characters were almost always the most clever, most witty and sharpest.
Stargate SG1 S4:E06 Window of Opportunity
Tap for spoiler
Groundhog Day, but Stargate.
Same. I didn't dare to say it, but since I'm not the only one... I also think that one is an outstanding episode and amongst my favorites. I think the SG-1 writers were crazy anyways. Mixing well-written episodes with the daily grind of almost the same plot happening just on a different planet... for like 10 episodes straight... Then some melodramatic stuff, or more a sitcom in-between. Sometimes it seems they just didn't give a f--- and the main actor wasn't available so they just made his character invisible... And they made an effort to also sometimes include story arcs, sometimes not, or portray single characters in an episode. All within a very limited and confined format... Because I think a lot of SG-1 has been cheap mass-production.
Pick between the good place season 1, 3, 4 finales.
But I don't really look at shows as by episode generally.
I can't remember the name, but for IT Crowd specifically, when one of their coworkers thought Jen died and became a vengeful ghost. I laugh whenever I watch that episode.
Over all, King of the Hill, "Pretty, Pretty dresses." First off, hilarious, second, I found it strangely touching. Bill has good people around him, even if they don't show it. Even Dale was coming around the corner in a dress to participate. I thought that was very kind. No matter how bad it gets, they don't leave him, even if they don't know how to help him.
Runner up: "Almost got 'em" from Batman the Animated Series. All the villains were talking about how they almost got Batman, only to find out Batman was there in disguise. He was disguised as Croc. I found that hysterical for some reason.
I've seen Scrubs mentioned before, so I'll go with the Doctor Who episode "Blink".
It's a weird one because the Doctor is barely in it, but the story's great and it's the Angel's first appearance.
X-Files: Jose Chung's From Outer Space
You will never laugh so hard at the X-Files.
The Russian episode of The Sopranos. Dude gets shot in the head and keeps running. They look for a long time and they never find him, throw up their hands and go "well fuck, he's probably dead." And they never mention it again throughout the rest of the series. And nothing ever happens. Legendary.
Edit: episode is called "pine barrens"
Deep Space Nine: “The Visitor”
Probably the "Flu-ouise" episode of Bob's Burgers (Season 7, Episode 1). At least I hope so, it's the only episode of a TV show I have a tattoo of (terrible photo and the tattoo needs touch-ups). Bob's is my and my wife's comfort show, we end up re-watching it a few times a year.
Flu-ouise is the show's first take on a real musical episode. Both the A and B plots are really strong. Its firmly in the show's golden age and is flanked by really great episodes too (The "Glued, Where's My Bob" two-parter is before and "Sea Me Now" is the next episode). It introduces Melty Kuchi Kopi (aka 6-pack Kuchi Kopi) and many of Louise's other toys and gives us one of the best arguments that H Jon Benjamin has with himself throughout the series.
I wouldn't say this is my favorite TV episode ever, but my favorite episode from a specific show that I don't see mentioned elsewhere: Corporate "Natural Beauty" (Season 2, Episode 3). It pokes fun at the different expectations, etc., that men and women face, particularly in the workplace.
The opening scene shows the female character going through her long morning routine, with occasional cuts to the male character repeatedly hitting the snooze button before rolling out of bed and spending 30 seconds getting dressed. When they each arrive at the office, he's complimented on his appearance, and she's told that she looks tired.
I don't know about my favorite ever, but the episode I rewatch and love the most from the last few years is the Jackie Daytona (On the Run) episode of What We Do In The Shadows. It's just perfection from start to finish. It's ridiculous, hilarious, it's endlessly quotable, and it doesn't matter how many times I have seen it- I will always be up for another rewatch. The show is great in it's entirety but that episode was just pure gold!
Samurai Jack - The Scotsman
One of the best episodes of one of the best animated series of all time.
