Just thought of one that hasn’t been mentioned yet: Dexter season 4 finale. (The season with John Lithgow.)
Probably not “greatest ever” quality, but it was a high water mark for Dexter.
The Simpsons, “The War of the Simpsons.” Homer and Marge go on a marriage retreat:
**FLANDERS: ** Maude, God love her, sometimes underlines passages in *my *Bible instead of hers!
HOMER: (Sotto voce) Hmph! Good thing you don’t keep guns in the house!
Are we including Netflix shows?
Black Mirror - “San Junipero” It’s pretty well hyped up by now but I didn’t know anything about it when I first saw it and man, it was amazing.
Arrested Development - “Pier Pressure” This is probably the most I have laughed at a single episode of any TV sitcom.
Supernatural - “Mystery Spot” Possibly the most I’ve ever laughed at an hour drama/fantasy/horror/comedy TV show.
Cheers - I’m gonna go with the Pilot episode, “Give me a Ring Sometime.” As far as sitcom pilots go, this is the best ever. It’s so perfectly constructed, and pretty funny, too.
The Young Ones: Bambi, here it is.
4 college students who share living quarters are selected to appear on the game show University Challenge. Featuring a short musical interlude.
House: “Three Stories”
House takes over a diagnostics class for a day and presents the class with three case studies of leg pain. As House tells his story and the class gradually fills up with listeners, the class learns a lot about how to be better doctors, and Chase, Foreman and Cameron learn some important details of House’s past.
Yes, I’ll say it:
Jonny Quest: The Invisible Monster, followed closely by The Robot Spy.
The Larry Sanders Show S03E07 Office Romance. Larry and Darlene are dating. Guaranteed to screw up office politics well into the next century.
Mary Tyler Moore, “Some of My Best Friends Are Rhodas.” A rare “message” episode of the series.
Of course!
Futurama: A Fishful Of Dollars. Mom is introduced, the great gags are non-stop, and the power of compound interest is illustrated.
Frasier: Three Valentines. Funny stuff with classic Niles buffoonery.
The IT Crowd: The Work Outing. Roy at his finest ("I’m disabled!), ably assisted by Moss and Jen.
Sherlock: A Scandal In Belgravia. Classy, sexy, fast-moving and intricate. And John gets to punch Sherlock in the face.
The Honeymooners: The $99,000 Answer
Taxi: Reverend Jim: A Space Odyssey. I still laugh until I’m in tears.
WKRP in Cincinnati: Turkey Drop
Adventure Time: I Remember You. Ice King blithely singing about his own self-sacrifice and mental deterioration while Marceline, knowing the truth and crying, sings along is just heartbreaking.
Breaking Bad: Ozymandias.
This is what I was going to say. I vividly remember seeing it for the first time when I was a kid, and I wish I could go back to not knowing the ending.
I’ll also throw in the Family Guy Star Wars episode, “Blue Harvest”. I saw it the first time having never seen FG before, so I didn’t get some of the jokes involving their regular characters. But my god, was that a hilarious send-up of Star Wars. They hit every little inconsistency that’s bothered everyone about Star Wars since it first came out.
They had me in the very first scene when Peter said, by way of introducing an epic tale, “Let’s start with part 4.” But I had to actually pause to laugh at Stewie as Darth Vader presiding over a Death Star staff meeting.
Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem is by far the best thing that has ever been on television.
Absolutely heart wrenching. I love it.
Blue Harvest was great but the robot chicken star wars episodes were way better. Or at least the funny bits were way funnier even if the less funny bits were just meh.
Star Trek (TOS): Amok Time
WKRP in Cincinnati: Turkey Drop
Gunsmoke: Susan was Evil
It’s a big topic but I think that in the top 100 there are 20 or 30 seinfelds.
Black Adder would rate. The League of Gentlemen is great. The Kingdom by Lars Von Trier was a masterpiece.
For a single episode of a show, I just saw Black Mirror - “SS Callister.” It was monumental. IIRC it’s over an hour and a quarter, and is this close to being a great feature on it’s own.
South Park: either Scott Tenorman Must Die (The Fort Collins Pube Fair) or Make Love, Not Warcraft (How can you kill that which has no life?). I can’t decide. Special mention for the Imaginationland series.
Some of you dicks are not including links. Why is that?