“Expose” from Lost (AKA the Nikki and Paolo episode). I LOVE this episode. It is like in my top 5 episodes of the show ever but EVERYONE else hates it with a passion. I like the change of POV; I like how it weaved its way through the past seasons of the show; I especially like the dark, Alfred Hitchcock-esque ending. Just great all around but yet it gets held up as an example of the terrible mistakes the show made at times.
“The Zeppo” from Buffy. This one isn’t as universally hated as the previous one but most fans don’t like it. I liked it a lot. I find it hilarious how it made fun of the cliches the show was obviously completely aware of and how the “real” episode takes place mostly off screen and we just watch a Xander story that takes place around the edges.
“Genesis” from Star Trek TNG. Yes, the science is ludicrous but who cares?! The crew turns into Monsters! The episode is a lot of fun and has some great moments: the shuttle approaching an askew Enterprise, Picard turning jumpy as he slowly devolves, Crusher getting a face full of acid. It also has some excellent make up effects and great atmosphere.
This is the one I immediately thought of when I saw the thread title. I wouldn’t say it’s in my top five favorites, but I liked it a lot. I’ve never understood the hate it gets from rabid *Lost *fans.
I know a lot of people who hate “The Omega Glory” from “Star Trek TOS” but I always liked it. Alright, it does end a little sappy with Shatner, a good Canadian boy from Montreal, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, but he is trying to get the Yangs to extend human rights to the Yangs. And the captain of the Exeter does stray from the prime directive but you can argue that he thought it was for a good cause…to ultimately extend
the human life span. And Morgan Woodward does have one of those great lines with “We killed thousands, and still they came.I drained six phaser banks, and still they came”
Yeah, I thought it bordered on being a popular episode. I love it.
My wife and I like a lot of the X-files episodes that feature John Dogget heavily(the guy who kind of replaced Mulder). Especially the ones he has in season 8.
Battlestar Galactica’s “The Woman King”. Honestly, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I don’t remember why fans hated it so much almost unanimously, but I enjoyed it because it was Helo-centric and Helo was my favorite character.
I hated the Yangs episode, but one I liked that everyone else hates is Spock’s Brain. It was such an amusing mixture of cheese and sexism. It showed that men, when denied the civilizing influence of women, are incapable of creating a society more advanced than living in caves and BBQing deer over a fire. It had Scotty saying something along the lines of “Those Women canna built that vessel, that takes pure engineering brilliance”; poor Scotty, I guess the ratios haven’t improved in the future. And it ended with Kirk’s mouth saying that the Woman and the Men could learn from one another, while his eyebrows said that they would learn to bone.
Even better was the toy that every kid will want this Christmas: a Zsu Zsu Spock. Too bad that YouTube doesn’t exist in the future, because I would love to see McCoy making Spock dance to Single Ladies. Finally, this episode gave Spock and McCoy plenty of opportunities to snipe at each other.
The “space hippies” episode of Star Trek TOS. Yeah, sure, there is a lot of 1960s silliness in there, but in between the silly scenes, the script does raise some pertinent questions about leaders and followers, and the rights and responsibilities of each.
In one scene, Dr. Sevrin gives an order which will have the side effect of massacring the crew of the Enterprise. Chekov’s girlfriend hesitates, but she accepts Sevrin’s explanation, and she obeys. The purple-haired guy knows full well that Sevrin is lying, but he obeys anyway.
I’ll throw in with “The Train Job”, the second pilot (and first episode aired) of Firefly. While generally considered one of the lesser installments, I think it establishes the frontier vibe of the show wonderfully; the pre-credits saloon sequence alone is all sorts of awesome, the train heist is well-realized, and the ep ends with one of the most-beloved moments of the series:
Mal kicking Niska’s henchman into the engine.
I will admit it works a bit better as a second episode; I still have no idea why the suits at Fox turned down “Serenity”, the original pilot.
On The Simpsons, everybody seems to hate the episode “The Principal and the Pauper.” It’s the one where Principal Skinner admits that he’s really Armin Tamzarian. It’s not necessarily one of my favorites, but I still think it’s a decent episode.
Fans hated N&P for sure, but I’m not convinced they hated the episode where they met their demise. I would think the opposite - hated N&P finally get killed off; surely that would make it a fan favorite.
Really??? I had the impression that this was one of the quintessential episodes people suggested to others new to the series.
This is also one of my favorite episodes, why do you think it’s despised by fans?
It’s clear, either you and I just have very similar taste, or you don’t have a good idea of how episodes are perceived.
Now, the episode (“Threshold?”) of Voyager where Tom Paris and Janeway turn into lizard might be fan hated, and I enjoyed it, because despite the amazing quotient of stupidity, Paris and Janeway having lizard babies together is worth whatever ludicrous premise necessitated it.
I dislike it even though it’s a well written and interesting episode. I started getting sick of Xander’s inability to “man up” throughout the series and I think it starts with this episode. Buffy has super powers and Willow gets magical powers but Xander is still afraid of old bullies by season 3? I know the series was flying high on girl power, but come on? I am decidedly in the minority here I suspect.
I didn’t mind A Night in Sickbay from Enterprise. Seeing horny Archer unable to contain himself around T’Pol was hilarious.
Also from Enterprise, I loved Regeneration, aka the Borg episode. The only thing that doesn’t work for me is how many successful shots they manage to get in with phase pistols, which the Borg should be fully immune to. Other than that, it made the Borg pretty menacing again after Voyager thoroughly emasculated them.
I also liked the two-parter that explained the Klingon forehead problem. The sequence with Trip climbing a rope between two ships was one of the coolest things ever shown in Star Trek.
“Why didn’t you just abduct Dr. Soong?”
“We tried… he was heavily guarded.”
This one for me as well. I loved it when I first saw it (for all the same reasons as you, even) and was shocked to later discover the hatred in which it is generally held.
Bwuh? After “The Body” and “Hush”, isn’t “The Zeppo” held up as the best episode of Buffy ever by pretty much everyone?