and tell me about your favorite episode. One per post please.
for WKRP - the one where the Station Doctor came to town and Andy had everyone behave against type - Jennifer was a ditz. Arthur, Les, and Herb were confident and competant. Racial tension between Johnny and Venus; and Bailey wsa stoned. Love that episode.
Bar None, my favorite episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is the one where Hillary drops out of school, and Carlton and Will find out about it and make her do/say funny things during dinner. I’ve seen that episode dozens of times, and it never fails to give me full belly laughs every time. Hell I’m laughing out loud just thinking about it.
MAS*H: Several officers come to the 4077th for a “conference.” Actually a poker game. The game is interrupted by incidents involving, among others, Col. Flagg, John Ritter as a patient suffering from battle fatigue and the ever-popular Whiplash Wang. Amazing episode, hilarious from start to finish.
Roseanne, in the last season, when Dan’s mother, played by Debbie Reynolds, shows up and spends the episode trying to kill him. She’s hilarious. You can see Roseanne struggling to keep a straight face during the scene in the back yard.
Roseanne: Audrey, give me the shovel.
Audrey: NOOOO! I need this to whack him on the head and stun him!
Our intrepid hero, Martin Tupper, is filming his son with his new camcorder. In the background he catches local children’s star Uncle Bouncy getting a blowjob from a hooker in an alley. Martin is outraged that Bouncy is so blatantly getting sexed up in public, so goes to confront him with the tape. Bouncy turns out to be the biggest prick imaginable, (great scene), so Martin decides to sell the tape to his buddy Eddie’s (Maury Povich style) tv show. Rather than suffer the public humiliation, Bouncy jumps out a window to his death when the show airs. So his daughter, played by Elisabeth Shue, then sues Martin for wrongful death.
Naturally, Martin is reviled as the man who killed Uncle Bouncy, not only by the grief stricken children, but by virtually every adult in town, as they all grew up watching Uncle Bouncy.
Judith, Martin’s ex-wife, gets one of her exes (played to perfection by James Woods) to defend him at trial. Woods comes on to Judith throughout the episode in the subtly skeevy ways of a defense attorney, and Martin is convinced that his plan is to get Martin sent away so that he can have Judith all to himself.
While prepping Martin for cross, he starts tearing into him, and it is clearly personal. But he continually explains it away as just preparing him to deal with a hostile prosecutor. His escalating insults draw increasing protests from Martin, capped by Woods turning to Martin with the perfectly timed:
“Pig Fucker! <pause> Okay, that was probably over the line.”
At trial, Woods goes for the jugular on all witnesses for the prosecution in the most offensive manner imaginable. When Uncle Bouncy’s daughter takes the stand:
“Did you know your father well?”
“Yes, we were very close.” <dabs tears from eyes>
“How did he like his blowjobs?”
“What?” <pitiful crying>
“Blowjobs. How did he like them? Sloppy? Lots of hand? Teeth or no teeth?”
“I don’t know…” <openly weeping>
“I thought you said you knew him well!”
<barely chokes out through sobs:> “I thought I did but I guess I didn’t.”
I haven’t seen this episode in well over ten years, and I’m not doing it nearly the justice it deserves, but trust me when I tell you that this was the funniest goddamn hour I have ever seen.
One note is that the concensus on jumptheshark is that this show never jumped. This quote in particular rings true to me:
The first episode that came to mind was the one where Martin and Eddie smoke pot and get busted by Martin’s son. I also considered the one where Martin starts writing pornos by just ripping off the plots from classics: “Eat A Pus Rex” and “Catch Her In The Rear”. But nothing approaches the glorious perfection of Uncle Bouncy.
Speaking of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, my favorite episode has to be the one where Carlton and the sorority sisters lure Will to a cabin to pull a prank on him as revenge for “mistreating” women. The episode is funny enough, but it’s the end credits, where Will (having discovered that the whole thing was Carlton’s idea) leads Carlton to believe that he attacked Lisa with a rock and left her in the cabin. Carlton throws his hands in the air and wails “Noooo” while running outside. You see him running around the side of the house - cut to the living room where Carlton runs in, back into the kitchen, drops to his knees, executes the most hilarious bit of physical comedy I’ve seen in a long time*, then proceeds to run through various sets and finally into the audience, all while wailing “Nooooo!” at the top of his lungs. Absolutely freakin hilarious.
*He drops to his knees and drags himself through the kitchen with his hands. I can’t explain why it’s so funny, but it just makes me howl every time I see it.
Seinfeld: “The Opposite”
George is my favorite character, and this was probably his best episode.
“My name is George, I’m unemployed and live with my parents”
He wins a girlfriend because he’s “not like most other guys”, who gets him a job with the yankees after he goes off on Steinbrenner during his job interview. “Hire this man!”
The sub-plot was the funny “everything evens out for me” observations from Jerry.
I’ll second that one
Even though I’m not the greatest fan of the show, last night’s Futurama was my favorite episode: Teenage Mutant Leela’s Hurdles. Through a zany mishap at a “youthasize” spa, the crew all get doused with a burning hot tar that reverts their ages back 15-50 years. When all of the crew except for Leela attempt a harebrained fix to the problem, they mutate the tar still sticking to their DNA (or for Bender, his “robo-” or RNA) such that they keep reverting back in age, younger and younger into childhood. Eventually they stumble across the Fountain of Aging in a children’s book of tall tales, and then seek out the fountain, which they find, douse themselves in, and return to their regular ages.
The best part of the episode, which gets me laughing every time, are the regressions of the professor and, even more so, Zoidberg. The professor gets younger into a 70s disco dancer, then a giant wasted hippie, before becoming a precocious child. Zoidberg’s stages resemble lampreys, clams, anemone, coelecanth, and any other ridiculous sea creature you could think of (TV.com states “Zoidberg is a slug, then a trilobyte, then an oyster, then a lamprey, a fish, then an urchin, then a sea anemone, then finally a coral.”
Leela’s story (that she wants to go back to the sewers and relive her teenage years with her mutant parents) is a bit weak, but still pretty high caliber.
It’s also just fun to randomly scream “PAZUZU!!!”
Soap. The General was going up the stairs, pulling his dog and yelled, “pick up your feet.” OMG - that was the funniest scene I think I’ve ever seen. For those that didn’t watch Soap, the dog was dead and stuffed. and the General was serious.
This is a “crack us up” phrase in our family now. I said it to a cousin at the airport and the crowd thought we were crazy - laughing with tears running down our faces on the escalator.
Cheers John Cleese. Nothing more needs to be said.
Sports Night “Thespis”
Dana is stressing over making her first Thanksgiving dinner for her family (she’s really worried about her mother’s opinion of her home ec skills). It’s the anniversary of Dan and Casey’s first broadcast together, and Casey just isn’t as thrilled about it as Dan is, which makes Dan act like a little girl. And Jeremy convinces the staff that the ghost of Thespis is haunting the studio, because a bunch of little things keep going wrong during the broadcast. Such as Dana’s turkey falling from the lighting rig above the anchor desk (she was making a test run to see how long it takes to thaw.) And while all of the funny stuff is happening, Isaac is worried about complications at the birth of his first grandchild.
I think Sorkin really got everything right on this episode.
This will all be from memory as a test to myself, so I apologize for mistakes.
I’ll go with the Taxi episode that added Reverend Jim as a regular. He was introduce the Prior season as a one-off character to Marry Latka to a Prostitute but then came the episode where they Cabbies decided to try and get Jim a job. They eliminated every possible job except Cab Driver.
They take Jim for a drivers test.
He needs help filling out the form: What color are my Eyes, several cabbies look and Bobby says, “Elaine, do you want to take a stab at this”
Elaine looks and says in a confused voice. “Brown”
Jim completes the from and says “My Brown eyes are sure tired”
Tony says “Good, now you are ready to take the test”
Jim is flabbergasted that what he just filled out wasn’t the test.
He sits and takes the test and gets to a question he needs helps with.
Jim: “Psst, What does a Yellow light mean”
Bobby: “Slow Down”
Jim: " Whaaat…Does…a…{Checks Paper} Yellow…Light…Mean?"
Bobby Frustrated and in a loud whisper: “Slowww Down!!”
Jim: “Wwhhaaaatt…Duuuzzzzz…aaaa…{Checks Paper} Yelllll—loo…Liiiitttte…Mean?”
Jim has passed the test.
The cabbies need to get Louie to give Jim a job. It turns out Jim has slipped Louie some happy drugs. He starts singing Moonlight Bay and climbs up on the hood of a cab to go to sleep and as he is laying down the cabbies ask if Jim can have a job?
Louie in a dreamy sleepy voice: “Everybody works on moonlight bay”
Final Scene: Jim asks Alex to be his first Fare. Alex accepts.
Jim starts the cab and puts it into reverse crashing the cab into the wall of the garage.
Jim
Roseanne, when DJ is caught masturbating.
'DJ I heard you got playing with your instrument in band"
“I’m not in band, stupid!”
“DJ where are you going?”
“Dad told me not to talk about it.”
Best ever.
“The Bob Newhart Show” Thanksgiving Day episode. In Emily’s absence, Bob, Howard, Jerry and Mr. Carlin wind up getting hilariously drunk and order much much too much moo goo gai pan.
Murphy Brown, the Anita Hill spoof episide. Murphy is called to testify before Congress for refusing to divulge who leaked her some information. Eldin the house painter says (inexact quote from memory), “I was in Sears and saw you on TV. I was so enraged that I went and got some fertilzer and spread it on the floor in front of the TV. I thought it was a potent political statement. Sears disagreed. Now I’m no longer welcome where America shops.”
Another MAS*H :
The episode where the 4077th challenges the Marines to a bowling match. The subplot involved Hawkeye finding out that his dad was going in for cancer surgery. The scene between him and Charles truly established Charles as a human being:
H: We’ve been through too much to have it end 10,000 miles apart!
C: Pierce, you are fortunate that only distance is separating you. My father and I have been 10,000 miles apart in the same room! Now, my father is a good man; he always wanted the best for me. But where I have a father , you have a dad .
H: Charles, you’ve never told me anything like this before.
C: Actually…Hawkeye…I’ve never told you anything before!
In fact, Charles even joins B.J. for a little creative sabotage against the Marines (Kochner’s syndrome!).
It’s hard to pin down one show and harder to pin down one episode; this is the one I keep coming back to when pondering this very subject.
Fawlty Towers - The “German” Episode.
Enraged German Tourist: You started it!
Basil Fawlty: I started it? YOU started it by invading Chezchslovakia!!!
Almost pissed myself.
Arrested Development, season 1, “Bringing Up Buster.”
This episode includes a running joke in which a private conversation is revealed to be taking place in front of a wildly inappropriate audience–three different times. Each occurence is completely unexpected and perfectly timed.
Of course, it also contains the Cornballer. Tobias’ reaction to getting burned is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen this episode a dozen times; it still makes me howl.
Seinfeld "The Voice
-The booming jovial voice coming from Jerry’s Girlfriend’s bellybutton
I love this episode.