I just got Apple TV so I am catching up on shows I couldn’t watch before. One is Mythic Quest about an MMO company and the fifth (or so) episode just blew me away. It had nearly no connection to the show itself (until the very end) and was basically a short film about a couple who develop a video game. It was really well done and worked as a self contained story in and of itself.
It reminded me of Blink from Doctor Who which remains the only episode I have seen of that show all the way through and was so good I have watched it three or four times over the years.
There was also the episode of The Last of Us with the gay couple and a bunch others but I don’t want to name everything.
I enjoy when shows stretch themselves this way. What are some other examples of these types of episodes?
The famous one that jumped to mind was the Family Ties episode where after Alex’s friend has died in a drunk driving accident, he goes to a shrink. Its basically a one act play (even staged as one) that requires no knowledge of the show in order to understand.
I’d say the Red Dwarf s3 episode Marooned. It is essentially a two-hander between Lister (last human alive) and Rimmer (a human hologram brought back to ‘life’ to keep Lister sane). They crash land on an uninhabited planet in a snowstorm and have to try and survive until their crewmates rescue them. Only half an hour long (as was standard) but works so well as a self contained short film. It is not only hilarious (it’s my all time favourite episode), but perfectly encapsulates the two characters. The dialogue is so sharp, there’s not a single wasted line, and has arguably the actors’ best performances too. And it’s got the best ending to an episode ever, just to top it off.
Really, I’d say any well written episode of a TV show could qualify for this. Especially in the old days before television series were multi-episode story arcs.
How about in “All in the Family” when the Bunkers had Thanksgiving with a draft dodger and a friend who had lost a son in Vietnam? Powerful stuff.
Community has a number of these types of episodes. All of the paintball episodes could essentially be standalone 22 minute action movies. The Goodfellas/Fried Chicken and the Pillow/Blanket Fort episodes as well as all the Halloween episodes could stand by themselves as well. They had a lot of other, for lack of a better word, ‘themed’ episodes, but they were more connected to the show than what I think the OP is looking for. But, I’ll note, that all the episodes, including the paintball and Halloween episodes, were canon. Within the context of the show, those events still took place.
If you haven’t already seen it, you might try Community.
The You’re the Worst episode “Twenty-Two” focuses almost entirely on a day in the life of secondary character Edgar, a traumatized Iraq War veteran. Even if you know nothing about the rest of the series, it’s a surprisingly accurate and moving depiction of PTSD.
I have watched Community in full several times now
For the thread I was talking more about episodes that require no knowledge of the show and often but not always feature outside characters. In the old days they were sometimes back door pilots but in the last few decades of prestige TV it was more the shows were just stretching themselves.
Another example of what I mean would be admittedly a very deep cut but in the 90s there was a short lived spin off of the X Files called Millennium and they had an episode where it was just four Demons sitting in a coffee shop telling stories of souls they tried to steal. It was very random and almost like an anthology show episode in the middle of an episodic series.
The “Fishes” episode of The Bear. You don’t have to know anything about the show or characters to appreciate it as a fantastic display of a dysfunctional family holiday gathering. It’s clear why it got Jamie Lee Curtis an Emmy.
Another You’re the Worst episode that’s its own story is titled LCD Soundsystem. There’s a bit of tie to the boyfriend not doing his writing, but the stalking story and the follow-up is heartbreaking.
Ignoring backdoor pilots (especially ones where the main cast only appears at the beginning and/or the end) which really are mini movies, I woiuld suggest:
Magnum PI, Home From The Sea. Magnum gets dumped from his surfski in open ocean and treads water for the whole episode. it’s all about him dealing with the situation, and his father. There’s no crime, no investigation at all. He never even talks to anyone else, except the shark. All the background you need is provided in flashbacks (actually this episode was the first mention of most of this) so it does stand alone. Magnum covered some of the same ground in Solo Flight, but it seems redundant, if not derivative.
Riptide, Home for Christmas. In a departure from the series format, the two lead characters go on reserve duty and escort a dead soldier home for burial. A mystery does come up, but you don’t need to know they are private eyes or live on a boat or anything to follow along.
WKRP Turkey’s Away. While some knowledge of the characters helps, pretty much everything you need is right there. Plus you get one of the funniest episodes!
Maybe TNG The Inner Light. A Picard-centric episode that takes place almost entirely in Picard’s head. Possibly also Remember Me, but I think you need to know too many other facts.
The “Subway” Episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets is a great example. Detectives Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) respond to a man, John Lange (Vincent D’Onofrio), who has become trapped between a subway train and the platform. As Pembleton forms an unexpectedly intimate connection with the critically injured man, Bayliss works the platform crowd searching for a possible suspect. The episode focuses on their emotional and investigative struggle as time runs short.
Oh indeed yes! That’s the only episode I have watched, so I agree.
It is a lot like the forgotten Emergency!-esque show Rescue 77 episode The Wedding, where they respond to a newlywed couple trapped under a YUGE beam with the husband suffering tamponade due to the compression. He’ll OK now, but he’ll die as soon as the pressure is released. The one rescue is almost the whole episode, and you don’t need to know anything about the show.
Moonlighting, “Atomic Shakespeare”. For those not familiar with it, the episode is simply a bastardized version of “The Taming of the Shrew” starring the cast of the show. No explanation, no follow-up, just Shakespeare as filtered through the show’s sensibility.
