Best and Worst Episodes From Your Favorite TV Show(s)

Cafe Society
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Just a fun little thread inspired by this one. The challenge is simple; for a TV show you enjoy, list your single favorite episode and your single least favorite episode, and provide a one-sentence summary of what episode that was for those of us who don’t know our episode titles. Two-parters or multi-part episodes are OK, but please avoid snark like “All of Season x” or “Everything after season y”.

I’ll get the ball rolling;

The Simpsons
Best: Two Bad Neighbors (George Bush moves in across the street)
Worst: Alone Again, Natura-Diddily (Maude Flanders dies)

Battlestar Galactica (2000s)
Best: Kobol’s Last Gleaming (Roslyn’s government is overthrown, Boomer shoots Adama, Helo finds out Athena is a Cylon and pregnant)
Worst: The Woman King (Helo unmasks a racist doctor)

Battlestar Galactica (1970s)
Best: War of the Gods (The fleet meets Satan)
Worst: The Man With Nine Lives (A con man pretends to be Starbuck’s dad)

Doctor Who (Tenth Doctor era)
Best: Human Nature/The Family of Blood (The Doctor becomes human and is hunted by time-traveling monsters)
Worst: Last of the Time Lords (The Doctor pulls a Jesus and defeats the Master with The Power of Love)

Doctor Who (Eleventh Doctor era)
Best: A Good Man Goes To War (The Doctor rounds up mercenaries who owe him favors to rescue Amy’s daughter from the Silence)
Worst: The Doctor’s Wife (The TARDIS comes to life and she and the Doctor fight like an old married couple)

Torchwood
Best: A Day in the Death (Owen comes to terms with life as a zombie)
Worst: Captain Jack Harkness (Jack goes back in time and gays out with the man whose identity he stole)

Firefly
Best: Jaynestown (Jayne is a folk hero on a planet he once robbed)
Worst: Objects in Space (A scary black man takes over the ship and threatens to rape Kaylee)

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Best: The Return of Harmony (The ponies are menaced by Q - I mean, Discord)
Worst: Party of One (Everybody starts avoiding Pinkie Pie and won’t tell her why)

Aqua Teen Hungerforce
Best: The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From The Future (The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future shows up)
Worst: Frat Aliens (Frat Aliens show up)

Futurama
Best: Roswell That Ends Well (Fry goes back in time and becomes his own grandpa)
Worst: A Taste of Freedom (Zoidberg goes to jail for eating the flag)

Your turn, internet.

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The two hour episodes of the one hour shows are the worst.

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Mad Men
Best: The Suitcase (Don and Peggy pull an all-nighter)
Worst: The Summer Man (Don starts swimming and keeping a journal)

Gilmore Girls
Best: They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They? (Dance marathon)
Worst: Partings (Lorelai gives Luke an ultimatum)

Doctor Who (Ninth Doctor)
Best: The Doctor Dances/The Empty Child (The Doctor and Rose in WWII)
Worst: The Long Game (The Jagrafess)

Doctor Who (Tenth Doctor)
Best: Blink (first appearance of the Weeping Angels)
Worst: Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks (Daleks in 1930s NYC)

Doctor Who (Eleventh Doctor)
Best: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone (Weeping Angels again)
Worst: The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood (Silurians)

Community
Best: Remedial Chaos Theory (pizza delivery and alternate timelines)
Worst: Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples (Abed is Jesus for a movie)

House
Best: Half-Wit (Mentally challenged pianist)
Worst: Now What? (House and Cuddy have lots of sex)

Lost
Best: Walkabout (Locke’s first flashback episode)
Worst: Homecoming (Charlie gets a job in an office)

Life
Best: Powerless (Dani is suspicious of a guy in her AA meeting)
Worst: The Business of Miracles (Frozen dead body)

Leverage
Best: The Rashomon Job (Each team member remembers a job differently)
Worst: The Gone Fishin’ Job (The team deals with a private militia)

Justified
Best: The Spoil (Mags goes up against Black Pike at a town meeting)
Worst: The Fixer (Raylan has to find a missing informant)

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It doesn’t truly matter, but you can almost reverse those for me.
“Objects in Space” was the template for Serenity and was my favorite episode.
“Jaynestown” I’ve switched off everytime I try to re-watch it, although I’d probably put that pregnant prostitute episode below it.

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Drew’s Line is it Anyway

Best: Melissa (Party Quirks) episode or Hitler (Title Sequence) episode
Worst: David Hasselhoff

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Futurama:
Best: Godfellas.
Worst: Most any with Hubert and Hermes’ son.

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I Love Lucy

BEST: Vitameatavegimine - Lucy get drunk while filming a commercial.
“do you pop out at parties?”

WORST: The Black Eye - Lucy accidentally get a black eye and hilarity ensues as everyone assumes Ricky punched her.

8

I’d like to ammend my picks:

Best:Any episode that produced a call-back joke
Worst:Guest stars (save the Salute to TV)

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The Simpsons:
Best - when Mr. Burns fell in love with Marge and Tom Jones made a cameo. The theme, the imaginings, even Tom Jones’ song melded together beautifully.
Worst - the three-eyed fish. Yucky.

Macgyver:
Best - Mac’s homecoming to his college where he helped judge a barricade competition. Most awesome…
Worse - Pete Thornton’s son got into the wrong side. Cheese.

The Professionals:
Best - “Mixed Doubles” where a pair of anti- Bodie-Doyle squared off with the real duo.
Worse - Bodie’s death wish (the one with the dirt bikes.) I hate “human element” in an action series.

The Night Stalker:
Best - “The Trevi Collection;” Kolchack’s final kiss-off was simply brilliant.
Worse - “The Legacy of Terror;” poor introduction for Eric Estrada.

Hawaii Five-O:
Best - “‘V’ for Vaccion” I liked the grandfather best.
Worse - the cop-rapist.

The Thin Blue Line:
Best - “Kids Today” great dramaticals by Atkinson.
Worse - any episode featuring the Mayoress.

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Monty Python’s Flying Circus:

Best episode: How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away
(features the famous “Nudge Nudge” sketch)

Worst episode: The Golden Age of Ballooning
The Office (U.S.)

Best episode: Sexual Harassment
(introduction of Todd Packer, and “that’s what she said”)

Worst episode: Pilot
(tries too hard to be similar to the UK series)

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Cheers!

I honestly can’t think of a least favorite episode, but my all-time favorite is the early one where Coach’s daughter visits the bar with her sleazy fiance.

Star Trek

Best: “The Doomsday Machine.” Kirk and crew have to destroy a planet-killer left over from an extragalactic war that happened long ago.

Runner-up: “Balance of Terror.” The first encounter with the Romulans; basically a destroyer-vs-submarine tale.

**Worst: **“Plato’s Stepchildren.” Of all the third-season episodes that stank, this one was probably the worst. Kirk and Spock singing “I’m Tweedle-Dee, He’s Tweedle-Dum!” was just plain embarrassing.

Runners-up: “Mark of Gideon.” “We don’t believe in birth control, so we’re giving our young people a fatal disease to solve our overpopulation problem.”

“Is There in Truth No Beauty?” “If you don’t go mad from looking at the Medusan ambassador, you will from sheer boredom.”

“The Empath.” “We can’t decide which race to save from impending doom, so we’re going to torture you to find out if this one is worthy of it.”

“And the Children Shall Lead.” “Hmmmmm. All the adults on this planet are mysteriously dead. Let’s take their disturbed children on board the Enterprise so they can try to kill us, too.”

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Firefly

Best: Out of Gas
Worst: War Stories

Spot on.

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Babylon 5
Best: War Without End. (Time travel, and what really happened to Babylon 4)
Worst: Grey 17 is Missing. (A weird cult has taken root in a hidden level of the station.)

Star Trek TNG
Best: The Chase. (The crew decipher a code in all the sentient race’s DNA)
Worst: The ones with the Traveller. The second one is worse than the first but they are both awful.

Firefly
Best: Our Mrs Reynolds. (Mal gets “married”)
Worst: Heart of Gold. (The crew defend a brothel)

Red Dwarf (I-VI)
Best: Queeg. (A military computer takes over from Holly)
Worst: Polymorph part 2: (The crew escape from GELFs but let a polymorph on board)

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Babylon 5

Best: Passing Through Gethsemane( a monk finds he’s a mind-wiped criminal)

Worst: Grey 17 is Missing See previous post, but don’t forget the monster!

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Babylon 5
Best: Intersections in Real Time (Sheridan is interrogated after being captured by Earth forces)
Worst: Day of the Dead (People from the crew’s past come back to life, and also Penn and Teller are there)

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I think Grey 17 is Missing gets more hate than it deserves. Yes, the idea of a “lost” deck is stupid, and that monster doubly so, and the idea of bullets being fired from a steam pipe triply so…but the B plot with Delenn being named Ranger One and Neroon trying to stop her and fighting Marcus is decent.

Plus, the worst B5 episode will always be Infection.

That being said…

Babylon 5
Best: If it counts, In the Beginning. If that doesn’t count, than Endgame.
Worst: Infection.

The Simpsons
Best: $pringfield
Worst: There’s a LOT of post season 15 I haven’t seen, but of the ones I have seen, I’ll say Kill the Alligator and Run wins. A close second is New Kids on the Blecch.

Futurama
Best: Tie between Where no Fan has Gone Before, and Jurassic Bark.
Worst: Original run - Where the Buggalo Roam. New seasons: Yo Leela Leela.

Breaking Bad
Best: Full Measures
Worst: I.F.T.

Game of Thrones
Best: Baelor
Worst: The North Remembers

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No doubt about it! Those Knight Rider “season premiere movies” were one of the worst ideas in the history of the medium. Two-hour series premiere pilots are fine (and the one for the original Five-O was one of the best), but to have a movie to initiate every season seems to be stretching it.

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My all time favorite show ever is Northern Exposure. Right up until Joel Fleishman left the show.

Favorite: Joel’s uncle in NY died, and as he couldn’t leave town for some reason, Maurice tries to round up 12 Jews in the area to participate in a religious service. The final scene still brings tears to my eyes.

Least favorite: Joel and Maggie finally get it on in a barn, a clumsy and ill-advised thing to do. And a few episodes after, dealing with the fallout.

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CHiPs
Best: one where somebody has been stealing shrubs from along the side of highways. It was more memorable because of this fat pair of psychic twins that predicted all these bad things that would happen to Ponch that day, and they all came true. (Ponch called them “Madame Butterball.”)
Worst: there was one that was meant to introduce a spinoff series. It had almost nothing to do with Ponch and Jon. IIRC, the spinoff series never materialized.

The Simpsons
Best: Homer’s Enemy–Frank Grimes is tortured by Homer’s success despite his complete incompetence, and then Grimey gets killed while imitating Homer.
Worst: New Kids on the Blech–Bart and friends become a recruiting tool for the Navy.

Married with Children
Best: The one where Marcy and Jefferson entrust the Bundys to take care of the arrangements for their wedding, and the Bundys get the cheapest things possible so they can pocket the rest of the money.
Worst: Like with *CHiPs, *there was one that introduced a spinoff series. I think one of the annoying douchebags from Friends was in it.

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Finally, a Firefly fan I agree with.

Breaking Bad (seasons 1-4 cause my dish doesn’t carry AMC anymore, fuckers)
Best: Crawl Space (there are plenty of great ones but the ending of this episode blew my mind)
Worst: Fly (yup, no further excoriation necessary, that is all that happens in that episode)