In Season 1 of Red Oaks, a coming of age comedy/drama, there is an episode where the main character and his dad drink a mysterious Japanese liquor and wake up to discover they’ve switched bodies, ala Freaky Friday. No other mention in the rest of the series.
WHAT??? 
Exactly! WTF indeed!
Cowboy Bebop has a one-off episode where everyone gets sick from eating “spoiled food.” They then spend the rest of the episode passed out while the ship coasts through space.
Good call. Episode first ran October 30, 1976.
They also did an episode where a clairvoyant helps them with the case of the week.
Come to think of it, a lot of 70’s detective shows had an episode with a clairvoyant.
Omg. That can’t be true.
There’s was a rape/underage ep in Gunsmoke. Blew my mind
It’s nice to think that Saturday Night Live has no baselines and always pushes boundaries, but every season (or cluster of seasons) kind of sets its own rules and sticks to them. One sketch that seemed to be just outside of all of this, in (I think) season 7, was Michael O’Donoghue’s “Nick the Nock” starring Joe Piscopo as a giant fairytale simpleton and Mary Gross as a tiny fairy and oh God I needed to take a shower after seeing it. Piscopo apparently felt the same way. O’Donoghue was fired not long afterwards.
I thought it was brilliant.
It cemented what a perfection trip Walter was on. If there were any doubts it helped define his character. It really nailed who Walter was.
Yeah, chasing a fly for 45 minutes is boring on the face of it. You need to look deeper.
It was the only episode I ever turned off before it was completed.
Exactly. The whole series is fundamentally a character study (with a side order of how to use the audience’s tendency to reflexively forgive protagonists against it). The superficial plot is an incidental vehicle for exploring those primary ideas. “The Fly” is the perfect litmus test to differentiate the audience members who understood what they were watching from those who didn’t.
Every episode of the Twin Peaks Season 3 revival (2017) was weirder than the weirdest episodes listed in this thread so far. That said, Episode 8 made every other episode of that season look like Leave it to Beaver in comparison.
“This is the water, and this is the well. Drink full, and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.”
I’m going to lock you in a room with my brother. And a laptop with a full charge.
that’s the one where after watching someone they arrested and convicited get a lethan injection Lennie s at a off-track betting parlor and meets his daughter and gets in a fight and goes off and gets smashed in a bar and the first female da the show had gets ran over running across the street trying to stop him … and jacks in a bar (might be the same bar as lennie actually)getting seriously drunk arguing law with anyone near him …
I’m not sure of the underage part you mention, but I remember a rape episode where Festus’ cousin Daisy came to visit and wanted to marry him because that’s what mountain folk do or something, and it started out as a yuk yuk episode, with Festus helping her out by finding her a place in town to stay but otherwise trying to avoid her.
But then it took a hard left turn when she got raped and Festus straight-up murdered the guy who raped her. It ended when Matt Dillon arrested him but said to Doc and Kitty, “he’ll stand trial, but there’s not a person in this town who’ll find him guilty”. Gunsmoke had a few WTF over-the-top violent episodes like that.
The Dick Van Dyke show has an episode in which a new neighbor moves in, and Rob and Laurie each try to set him up with an unmarried woman (different ones). The dates apparently go well, but the guy never follows up - Rob and Laurie find out the reason is that the guy is a wife-beater and has been advised by his counselor to avoid getting serious with anyone.
I do not remember that one. Which episode?
“The Lady and the Tiger and the Lawyer” The Dick Van Dyke Show: Episode 78: The Lady and the Tiger and the Lawyer
I don’t even remember that one, weird episode indeed.
What made that episode for me was Carlson coming in all excited (he originally didn’t want to go) about the great concert her saw oblivious to what had happened only to be told about the deaths. That is how you do exposition. And consider it came out only 3 months after the incident it must have hit home for a lot of people.