For the best I’d offer the epsiode of The John Larroquette Show when his AA sponsor, played by David Crosby, commits suicide, a good mix of laughs and drama.
I would say the Who/“festival seating” WKRP episode was one of the worst. The dialogue was so ham-handed, I couldn’t take it seriously even as a kid. “It’s that damn festival seating!”
Any episode of Blossom but that’s already been covered.
The Saved By The Bell where the gang go to the party with the Big Hollywood Actor and people are smoking “Pot!!!” Oh, dear! Then they cut a fake PSA with the principal’s old buddy, then NBC chief Brandon Tartikoff, and Jesse mention’s her brush in the past with the horrors of caffeine pills, probably the only attempt at continuity on the show. Nearly as bad as the No-Doze episode.
Any wedding episode of Good Times. What had that family done to be so cursed by the gods? JJ’s fiance OD’s on heroin in the bathroom just before the ceremony. When the sister gets married, they can’t even make it out of the church before her husband trips over JJ’s foot and blows his knee out ruining his potential football career (until the “happy endings all around” last episode). Then the guy guilttripped JJ about it in almost every episode after that, like that tender a knee would have stood up to any playing time in the NFL. I know the show was going for a gritty view of lower class life, but they couldn’t cut a break ever on that show.
From Buffy, season 6, Once more with Feeling. They took a normal Buffy episode and made a musical out of it, while having the singing and dancing be an integral part of the plot of the episode. Very cool, and the music was decent, too.
Beverly Hills, 90210 held a monopoly on VSE’s in the high school years. “Brenda Has A Pregnancy Scare,” “Brenda Has A Breast Cancer Scare,” “Brandon Has An Ecstasy Scare,” and the worst one of all, “Scott the Dork Has A Gun Scare and Kills Himself.”
Anybody else remember the episode in All in the Family - was it a Christmas episode? I forget. But anyway, Edith’s drag queen friend gets killed in a hate crime, and Edith is so mad at God she won’t go back to church (which is quite the big deal for Edith). Meathead the atheist has a very touching talk with her. The whole thing was very good, especially for its time, and it made me cry like a little girl. I’m not sure if it counts as a Very Special Episode, but it’s definately the best.
Worst - there was a 90210 episode all about Vietnam, where Brenda had “found a diary” which ended up being a stage prop for a play. Gag.
What about the All in the Family where Gloria has a miscarriage? I’ll never forget the ending to that one–no moralizing about how precious life and love are, or how we never appreciate things till they’re gone, just a loud-mouthed, bigoted old man dropping that enormous teddy bear and holding his weeping daughter. Wonderfully done episode. Wonderful.
widdershins, I don’t remember if it’s the same one you’re talking about, but there was a Saved By The Bell where a celebrity came to the school to shoot an anti-drug commercial, and then they kids find out he’s really a coke head. That one was pretty bad. And then there’s the one where Zack dates/likes/befriends a girl in a wheelchair to show that people in wheelchairs are “normal” (which pisses me off in retrospect now that I’m handicapped). And then there’s the one where the kids go to a party, and everyone is drunk so Screech drives and he gets into an accident. That one was a double whammy, because it tackled both underage drinking and drunk driving. We need more two-fers in VSEs. I’m sure there had to have been an episode where one of the girls gets an eating disorder, I just can’t remember it now.
I didn’t see anyone mention Family Matters yet. Maybe it’s just because no one watched it. One that comes to mind is when Urkel gets drunk at a party on a roof, and then almost (?) falls off the roof. I think there was a gang episode, but I can’t really remember it now.
Edith getting raped…forgot about that. Never actually saw it except…on a show about VSEs.
If we're counting the Simpsons, you have to throw in the Homer gets a Gun episode. Absolutely hilarious. During his "waiting period", everything that goes by on the street : Target store truck, ducks, Flanders, Patty and Selma, etc. Him telling Lisa he needs a gun to keep the King of England from pushing them around. And more funny stuff. Classic Simpsons.
Lets not forget the Silver Spoons episode where they go hunting and Ricky Schroeder ends up crying after he shoots a dear.
Sorry for the double post, but how many “date rape” episodes did 90210 do? This first one was with some cheerleader that never appeared on the show before (Lisa Dean Ryan, “Doogie’s” girlfriend, I think) who called Brenda on a teen hotline. After that, though, I don’t think there was a girl on there that did not at some point come close to being date raped.
HomerIU, there was also a 90210 episode that took place at a slumber party, in which Kelly gave a moving Very Special Monologue about being date raped when she lost her virginity. Can’t believe I know that. slinks away
We’ve got one for the “worst” column here, too. Not a single episode (although “Wrecked” would do if you wanted to pinpoint it), but Willows addiction to magic was the worst thing ever. They tried to model it to drug addiction (which didn’t work in the first place because they already had a couple metaphors for magic layting around) and tried to make it poignant or otherwise good, but they just couldn’t. Oh god, they couldn’t…
Going on the drug theme, how about ST:TNG? Two planets in a system have a special relationship. One planet is hooked on drugs another supples the drugs.
The speech Tasha gives to Wesley is just gut wrenching.
Overall, though, I think the best of the Special Buffy episodes (I’d consider any of the big, epochal ones that Joss Whedon wrote and directed to be special) was Hush. I just can’t imagine the balls it took for him, as the creator and executive producer of a show that was known for witty dialogue, to decide to do an episode where half of it would be without any character being able to speak. Yikes.
However, in the vein of Very Special Episodes that teach a lesson, there is The Body, whose lesson is pretty much that death doesn’t teach us a lesson and make us learn and grow. Death is just death. It’s real, it’s physical, it’s gross, and they did a tremendous job on that episode. It’s just hard to watch much without wanting to open an artery in a warm bath. Or maybe that part’s just me.
The Law and Order episode that departed from the usual sequence of folowing a crime through trial and showed the ways in which the various characters dealt with witnessing an execution. I believe that was also the episode that ended with the death of one of the regulars.
I’m not sure where to put the post 9/11 West Wing episode. I think it would have made a good classroom instructional tool, but as a drama episode it fell a little flat.
Diff’rent Strokes’ VSEs were quease-inducing. The molestation was bad; the one where Kimberly and Arnold hitchhiked and got kidnapped by some pervert in a suit was probably worse.
More recently, the episode of Roseanne where Darlene’s baby nearly dies, and the Conner women combine their female superpowers to make it live, was awful on so many levels you almost had to admire it.
That brings up a really irritating sub-genre of VSEs: the “special” date. Alex Rieger from TAXI has a blind date with a woman he’s fallen in love with over the phone and learns she weighs 300 lbs., but he’s not put off by her even though she has major bitterness about it. Fonzie dates a deaf girl and finds she’s normal, Zack dates a “geek girl” in addition to the wheelchair girl and finds she’s really a nice person, Jack Tripper inadvertently asks out a really fat woman who lives in the same complex as his beautiful intended and finds out she’s really cut and charming, Charlene from DE’WHINING WOMEN dates a fat guy and Suzanne a blind guy and both turn out all wonderful and stuff etc etc etc… then, after proving that all these people as well as the conjoined twins or retarded midgets or whatever other class of “non 90210” abnormality of the week people are just like everybody else and that relationships should be based on more than just superficial physical appearances, these characters ARE NEVER SEEN AGAIN!
(One funny variation on the “special date” episode, though: on GOLDEN GIRLS Bea Arthur had a date with Ubiquitous Uber-Nebbish John Fiedler , who turns out to be not only a major nerd but obnoxious [his first sentence to her during the date- “well, c’mon, I guess I gotta feed you”], but she ends up unable to break up with him not because “he’s really charming and sweet and bright” but because he gives her the most unexpectedly thoroughly great sex she’s ever had. Funny episode of a mediocre series.)
