What episodes of TV did you find to be the best in 2018?
I liked:
The Magicians - “Be The Penny” Oh my goodness, was this hilarious. Penny is dead/disembodied, can hear everyone talk about him now he’s gone. Meanwhile, he tries to learn how to possess objects from another dead guy. Biggest laugh all year. Here is a clip.
X-files - “Rm9sbG93ZXJz” OK, so this was ludicrous, but a lot of fun. Scully and Mulder interact with evil technology all because Mulder won’t tip a machine.
Nightflyers - “The Sacred Gift” They find another ship with only women aboard, including a famous scientist. Things…go wrong. Check it out.
The 100 - “Damocles Part 2” No way to talk about it without spoiling it, but it was great.
I watch so much TV, I am sure I missed many things. I’ll add more later. What episodes did you think deserved attention this year?
House of Haunting Hill - “Bent-neck lady” I can’t say a word about this other than you need to watch the show up to this point for it to really reveal how great it is.
Even if you’re not a fan of the show, S7 ep1 of Last Man Standing is worth watching the first five minutes of.
Back story: Last Man was canceled last season on ABC (Despite having excellent ratings). Over the summer break, it was picked up by Fox. And boy, did the writers have a field day on ABC.
Bojack Horseman, “Free Churro.” It started off with me groaning about a gimmick episode, but ended with me thinking that was one of the funniest, most heartbreaking, well-written well-preformed shows I’ve ever seen.
The final episode of ‘The House on Haunted Hill’ is just an absolute tearjerker. It might be literally the best anything of 2018. If you haven’t seen it, you really don’t know how beautiful and perfect it is.
The aforementioned ‘Bojack Horseman’ S5E06 ‘Free Churro’ is also excellent.
I agree form a pure entertainment value. But I have much respect for the concept and execution of the Janet(s) episode.
The Bent-Neck Lady definitely also deserves a mention from the Haunting of Hill House.
Not sure how many other new shows I watched this year. Glow. I guess the best episode of that was The Good Twin, where they actually did a whole Glow episode with vignettes and skits and stuff.
Legends of Tomorrow: “Here I Go Again” - Zari is stuck in a time loop (or as she called it Hedgehog Day). She can only get out of it if she can stop the Waverider from blowing up.
The Flash: “Enter Flashtime” - Barry, Jessie Quick, and Jay Garrick team up to stop a nuclear bomb, which has already gone off.
Penny is the biggest ass on the show, so anything that makes him uncomfortable is hilarious. And Penny was really, really uncomfortable in this one. But I can name three other episodes from the same season that I think are better than this:
“Six Short Stories About Magic” - Six different segments told from the point of view of six different characters, each with their own agenda that doesn’t necessarily completely agree with that of the others. The characters and events interweave; we’ll see something that happens in one segment that is unexplained until we see it happen in another segment. The standout is Harriet’s story. Since she is deaf, the entire piece takes place in utter silence. A great bit of storytelling.
“All That Josh” - Musical episodes aren’t for everybody, but I like them if they’re well done. And this was exceedingly well done. Check it out: https://youtu.be/UyK3FyvXcGA
“A Life in the Day” - The best episode of the season, I think, and probably of the whole series thus far. Quentin and Eliot have to solve an impossible puzzle. They keep trying and trying and trying…
It starts off with the church announcements but quickly devolves into Joe excitedly telling everyone about his new favorite song, “Baba O’Riley” and how it got to be his favorite song.
The Haunting of Hill House, though not above criticism, is quite possibly the best TV (so to speak) show to come along in decades. And Episode 5 is when it picks up steam.
It was a great season, certainly Magicians best season. I put Be the Penny higher because it caught my wife and I so off guard, we were weeping with tears.
But, yes, I definitely loved A Life in the Day. It was amazing in a totally different way. I like that instead of eliminating everything that happened(such a cliche)…they remember all of it. Makes it more satisfying to me.
I’m back and have thought of another. My favorite new show this year was Altered Carbon, though I had a hard time picking out an episode since it todl one story. However, I do have one if you want a sample and don’t mind a bit of confusion. Check out:
**Altered Carbon **- “Force of Evil” - Takeshi Kovacs is captured and tortured. It was a great episode and well worth checking out. Might suffer from some small confusion in some of the points, but I think you can get the gist of it if you want to test the show.
Oooh, I loved it. In my top 5 of the year, maybe even top 3. Not the top of the last decade and not my favorite show of the year. Still, a great new show.
Season 2 of Westworld certainly didn’t hang together as well as Season 1, but it had a few good episodes. Another one is “Kiksuya”, about Akecheta and the Ghost Nation, told mostly in Lakota. There’s also “Vanishing Point”, which is the Man in Black’s backstory.