“Love’s Labor Lost” from season 1 of ER. Heartwrenching episode from ER’s better days.
“The One Where Everyone Finds Out” - Friends. Phoebe tries to seduce Chandler: “I’m very bendy.”
“Life of Brian” - My So-Called Life. Only ep told from Brian Krakow’s point of view, ends with the World Happiness Dance.
“Training” from season 1 of the UK Office. “Free love on the free love freeway…”
Firefly: Objects in space. I’m somewhat surprised to see it nominated twice over Out Of Gas which I thought was the more conventional episode and generally regarded as the best. The episode is so smooth and addictive - it played a while ago and I’ve had it on my tivo and I tend to fall asleep to it.
Arrested Development: Pier Pressure. Many many candidates from this show. This one is the one I recommend to AD newbies if they want to give the show a try - it’s the funniest episode you can understand without knowing the characters too much. “They’re not real cops! Look how hot they are!”
The Venture Brothers: Ghosts of the Sargasso. There may be better episodes, but this is my personal favorite. The resolution is Firefly-esque cliche busting which I love.
South Park: Scott Tennorman Must Die. So the episode isn’t through-and-through great like the rest of this list, but the ending is great.
Babylon 5: The Long Twilight Struggle. It was really difficult to pick one, as there are probably about 7 episodes that could qualify for this list. At its best, if you could forgive its flaws and age, it was a great show.
Dexter: Born Free. The series is so consistently good that it’s hard to pick one episode that stands out.
Strangers with Candy: Retardation a Celebration. You might be screaming “no no no!” but all they hear is “who wants cake?”… and they all do. They all want cake.
Firefly: Out of gas. Mentioned above, it’s definitely a worthy inclusion on the list.
The Office: Casino Night. This show has a few candidates, but this one stands out as being consistently good throughout.
Upright Citizens Brigade: Time Machine. I was apparently the only person to watch this show. Best sketch comedy of all time by far.
Just Shoot Me–Chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot pppiiiieeee.
It was like finding a Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box.
One to add to the pile:
Battlestar Galactica - “33”. The first episode of the regular series after the miniseries that kicked everything off. “33” is amazing; you really feel the fatigue of the pilots and support personnel, and when they finally get so exhausted that they screw up, the consequences are severe.
Babylon 5 - “Passing Through Gethsemane” - This is the episode I used to hook my wife on the show. A perfect episode.
Buffy - “The Body” - I refuse to watch it again, which means it was perfect the first time.
Blackadder Goes Forth - “Goodbyeee” - If you don’t tear up at this one, you have no soul.
Sienfeld - “The Contest” - I generally dislike this show, but this episode was a classic. The shots of them asleep cracks me up to this day.
Star Trek: The Next Generation - “The Best Of Both Worlds, Part One” - “Fire.”
WKRP - “Turkeys Away” - “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
I don’t know the name of the episode but the first thing I thought of when I saw the OP was the Dick Van Dyke episode where Laura reads Rob’s mail. Consistently funny throughout with a final punch at the end.
I also concur with **Company Men **from the first season of Heroes.
The Daily Show on the Monday after The Vice-President of the United States shot a 78-year-old man in the face.
One Simpsons episode that hasn’t been mentioned is Homer’s Enemy. Frank Grimes (or “Grimey” as he liked to be called) remains the best one episode character of the show.
Carol Burnett Show–Went with the Wind.
Saturday Night Live–The episode were Steve Martin did “King Tut.”
I’ll throw in a couple (three, actually) episodes of House, MD:
Three Stories - one of the best hours of television I have ever seen.
House’s Head
Wilson’s Heart - season finales for Season 4. Stunningly good.
That’s all I got. Don’t watch enough TV to get ten.
Deadwood, the entire series.
Rome, the entire series.
Band of Brothers, the entire series.
Six Feet Under, the hitchhiker episode.
Fawlty Towers, The Germans
Taxi, yellow light ep
In the order they occur to me:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Becoming”, parts 1 and 2.
Newhart, the series finale, starring Suzanne Pleshette as Emily Hartley
The Rockford Files - “So Help Me God”. Rockford goes before the grand jury, with William Daniels as the particularly obnoxious DA.
Star Trek (TOS) - “The Trouble With Tribbles”
Cheers - the one with Sam’s lucky bottle cap in season 1.
Homicide, Life on the Street - the one with Det. Crosetti’s funeral, where Det. Pembleton in his dress uniform salutes Crosetti’s coffin as it goes by.
Murphy Brown - Murphy testifies before the Senate about a leak, in a brilliant satire of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings.
Northern Exposure - the mayoral election episode.
Married with Children - the Christmas episode that mocks “It’s a Wonderful Life”, with Sam Kinnison as the angel and Al deciding that he wanted to live just to spite his family who would’ve been better off without him.
The pilot episode of David Lynch’s On the Air is the funniest half hour of television ever. Better than “I thought turkeys could fly,” funnier than Vitameatavegemin, more anarchic than Basil Fawlty’s Nazi walk. The rest of the (truncated) series doesn’t measure up (how could it?) but the first episode is truly a thing to behold.
I Love Lucy - The Freezer Episode
The Simpsons - Lemon of Troy (where Shelbyville kids steal the lemon tree)
The Simpsons - Boy Scouts in the Hood (where Bart goes crazy Broadway style and joins the Junior Campers)
Coupling - Lesbian Spank Inferno
Coupling - The Girl With 2 Breasts
The Twilight Zone - To Serve Man
Roseanne - Let’s Call It Quits (Roseanne walks out on her job at Wellman Plastics)
Looney Tunes - What’s Opera, Doc?
Grey’s Anatomy - It’s The End of the World (1)
Penn & Teller’s Bullshit - P.E.T.A.
I don’t know if I can do a Top 10, but here’s a few I won’t forget.
The final episode of Newhart - The best sitcom moment ever! I can’t believe zamboniracer was the first to mention it.
Mary Tyler Moore, Chuckles Bites the Dust - Brilliant combination of joke building on joke, leading to a perfect punchline, all absolutely in character.
MAS*H, Abyssinia Henry - An unforgettable blend of silly and shocking
WKRP, Turkeys Away - It may just be the greatest episode of all time for sheer lunacy.
The Dick Van Dyke Show, It May Look Like a Walnut - For fans of sight gags, it’s hard to beat Laura Petri sliding out of a closet full of walnuts.
Seinfeld, The Contest - Like some others, I wasn’t a big fan of the show, but this particular episode deserves its reputation.
Taxi, Reverend Jim: A Space Odyssey - To think, there’s still an entire generation of TV viewers that can collapse into laughter at the phrase “slow down.”
Cheers, An Old-Fashioned Wedding - An ensemble farce, held together surprisingly well by the deadpan seriousness of Woody and Kelly.
Those are just the sitcoms. I’d have to give more thought to the dramas.
It definitely, inarguable wins hands-down, no-holds-barred for the best unseen sight gag. Only the broadcast is heard, but the picture it forms in your mind is unforgetable.
I’m going to do just [del]five[/del] six for right now:
The Simpsons, Cape Feare
I’ve seen them all and I could pick a number of best Simpsons episodes. But I went many years without re-seeing this one, and when I did, I couldn’t believe how wild and how hilarious it was. I don’t think there’s another episode that sustains this kind of manic pace.
Arrested Development, The Immaculate Election
Bunch of possible AD picks, too, as this thread already shows. But I remember this episode as the peak of a run where the show was A++ for about four weeks in a row during the second season. I love the 2000 election parody, but my favorite part is G.O.B. and Michael fighting about which of them fired the other. It’s Marx Brothers-ish dialogue.
The Sopranos, Blue Comet
I’ve got nothing against the series finale… other than what it did for the popularity of Journey, because I loathe that band and that song… but I think this was a more dramatic episode and the ending actually sticks with me more.
The Daily Show, December 8, 2000
I once asked Jon Stewart if there was a single episode of TDS that summed up what they do best. He named this one, which was fantastic because it was the episode I had in mind when I asked the question. The Bush v. Gore ruling broke shortly before this episode aired and they obviously put it together very fast, so it’s arguably the most relevant thing they ever did, and it’s great. My favorite moment was an interview with a crab monster (Stephen Colbert) where they disscussed the possibility that Gore could appeal the Supreme Court’s ruling with the Superfriends.
The Colbert Report, October 17, 2005
The first episode. There have been funnier ones - Filliam H. Muffman still cracks me up - but this one introduced “Truthiness,” and that inaugural “Word” perfectly nailed the national political climate in a way I’ve never seen before. It was a shot across the bow and a satiric masterpiece, although, since the show is on cable at 11:30 p.m., most people didn’t notice until Colbert did the same routine while sitting right in front of George W. Bush and the Washington press corps.
The X Files, Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’
Already discussed. I admit I never saw Twin Peaks, but I dare you to come up with a more bizarre hour of TV. It’s entertaining and you can’t make sense of it. I love it.
Twin Peaks - Pilot: Any list that doesn’t evne have this is automatically wrong. So declares me, King of the World.
X-Files - Jose Chung’s From Outer Space
WKRP - Turkeys Away
The [American] Office - Casino Night
Ken Burns’ - The Civil War, any episode, but if I had to pick one, it would be the one talking about Gettysburg
Mary Tyler Moore - Chuckles
Fawlty Towers - Take your pick
The Simpsons - Lisa’s Substitue
Saturday Night Live - Buckwheat has been Shot
Futurama - Luck of the Fryrish
Babylon 5: Severed Dreams. I think this episode more than any other made it hit home for me that Babylon 5 was a limited series with a beginning, a middle and an end rather than a “wrap things up in an hour” typical TV show.
X Files: Jose Chung’s From Outer Space, for all the reasons already stated. So totally hilarious, yet still invoking pity, pathos, and tragedy. Some of the best lines of any TV episode ever: “You don’t play Dungeons and Dragons for as many years as I have without learning a little something about courage.”
Firefly: Objects in Space. Again I am jumping on the bandwagon, but this was and is one of my favorite TV shows ever and this was without a doubt the best episode of it.
Magnum PI: Did You See the Sunrise? Parts 1&2. Amazing ending. I can still picture it the first time I saw it as a teenager, and remember my mouth dropping open when the final frame froze on the flash of the 45.
Millenium: The Time is Now. Apocalyptic, mind-blowing, mind-bending season finale that should have been the series finale. Too bad they lessened its meaning with the first episode of the unnecessary third season.
24, Season 1: 11PM-12AM. A truly pissed off Jack kills the shit out of Drazen and his son, and the gut-punch ending.
Lost: The Constant. I can’t help it…Desmond is one of my favorite characters.
Deadwood: A Two Headed Beast. The battle between Dority and Captain Turner was perhaps the most brutal fight I’ve seen on TV or the movies. Epic stuff.
Deadwood: Sold Under Sin. Bullock reveals the darker side of his nature when he brutally kicks the ass of Alma’s greedy, bullying father.
The Shield: Of Mice and Lem. Heartbreaking ending.
Already mentioned:
Newhart series finale
Fawlty Towers – “The Germans”
Taxi – The yellow light episode. However, the scene that sticks out in my mind is Jim and Tony going at it over Vietnam:
Tony: “The only reason you guys got to stay home, protest and get loaded is because guys like me were over in ‘Nam doin’ your fightin’ for ya! Whaddaya say to that?”
Jim: “Thank you.”
Tony: (chagrined) “You’re welcome.”
Pure gold.
For the rest, wow. There are so many, it’s hard to choose after almost 50 years of TV viewing. I find myself having to go with episodes that play in my head over and over.
TNG – “Encounter at Farpoint”. Like a lot of Trek fans, part of me was thinking, “How can they possibly improve on TOS?” At the end of the episode, I stood up, turned to my friends, and said, “Now, that’s how a military ship is supposed to be run!” Much as I always loved Kirk, Picard became the quintessential starship captain in my eyes that day.
TNG – “Unification”. I could watch this over and over, and not just because of Spock (though that doesn’t hurt). Riker’s encounter with the piano player, the scenes with the head of the surplus depot (“He probably figures that we don’t see a lot of handsome women out this way, and someone like you will get more cooperation…he’s probably right.”), and my personal favorite scene: Data applying the Vulcan pinch to Sela, followed by Spock saying, “Not bad.”
Babylon 5 – So many to choose from, but my vote goes to “Ship of Tears”, the one where Bester’s girlfriend is captured by the Shadows and wires herself to the station. I truly enjoyed seeing Bester’s human side, however briefly.
CSI: – “Jackpot”. Doc Robins receiving the head in the box hooked me right away. The subsequent script represents CSI’s finest hour. The scene with Grissom, the sheriff, and the sheriff’s gay brother almost had me in tears (“I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”)
Hill Street Blues – Again, a tough choice, but I have to go with Howard Hunter’s first episode after his demotion and appointment as watch sergeant.
“It was hardly my choice to be demoted, Frank…but if I am to be a sergeant, this is the sergeant I would like to be.”
Blackadder – As good as “Goodbyeeee” is, I choose “Bells”, the famous Kate/Bob episode. Edmund’s scene with the doctor is possibly one of the funniest sitcom scenes ever. And I love Lord Flashheart!
Twilight Zone – “The Grave” with Lee Marvin as the bounty hunter. Scared the living bejeebus out of me!
Firefly - Out of Gas
Frasier - Niles Irons His Pants
Buffy - The Body/Hush
Futurama - the Star Trek cast one/the Bender as a God one
Doctor Who - the “Are You My Mummy” double episode shudder (Empty Child/The Doctor Dances)
The X Files - Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space” , yeah.
Fawlty Towers - The Germans/The Rebuilding one
Everwood - The abortion episode
Heroes - How To Stop An Exploding Man
Simpsons - the Sideshow Bob one with the rakes…