For me, even though it was the first episode, the most memorable:
“I accidently slept with a prostitute last night”
followed by,
“Leo’s daughter’s third grade class, huh?”
Sigh. It was never the same after Sam left…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow in the AV room, with the three little pigs cartoon on the blood-smeared TV in “Prophecy Girl”
Firefly: “Darn.” kick**fwoompshhhh
Friends- “They don’t know that we know that they know” etc.
Cheers- The Albania song.
MAS*H: The scene where Radar brings the news about Henry to the operating room.
Dick Van Dyke Show Alan Brady, Alan Brady sung by the cast
Mary Tyler Moore Chuckles the Clown
Twin Peaks Leland/Bob revealed as Laura’s killer, then murders Maddy
Brady Bunch Marcia gets the football in the nose
Time Tunnel Landing on the Titanic
Dallas J.R. gets shot
All in the Family Archie flushes toilet
Carol Burnett Carol comes down stairs of Tara wearing a curtain rod
MAS*H: Radar coming in to tell the OR that Henry Blake was shot down.
WKRP: Les Nesman’s live coverage of the Thanksgiving’s station event:
“Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement!”
Barney Miller: “Mushy mushy mushy”. The episode where Wojo brings in some Hash Brownies by mistake. It has interesting effects on the cops. Especially Yemana & Fish.
This is another classic line from the show:
Yemana: Then Fish runs in the alley and he leaps over us like one of those, what do you call those things in Africa that run and leap in the air?
Detective Ron Harris: Slaves.
Night Court: “I am pond scum?” “Yes, you ARE!!!” When Bull wins a game show.
Cheers: No, not the Jeopardy one, but the one where Cliff is trying to correct his behaving like a jerk and has the electrical shock unit. Towards the end of the show, Carla gets hold of the remote.
All in the Family: Edith’s accident with “a can of cling peaches in heavy syrup”.
I Love Lucy: “Vegemitaminamate”
Burns & Allen show: When George would step out of the set and address the audience. (Okay, I know that was every show, but it was basically the same scene and the best part of the show.)
Honeymooners: “Who is the composer of Swanee River?” “Ed Norton?”
I checked, this was “The $99,000 Answer” and the 18th episode of the TV series The Honeymooners. Ralph practices to be on a game show to win $99,000.
Dick Van Dyke show: Laura Petry sliding out of the closet on thousands of WALNUTS.
This is from the classic “It May Look Like a Walnut” episode. Think Twilight Zone as comedy.
Star Trek: Tribbles dropping on Kirk’s head, apparently being thrown with some force by the stage hands.
Twilight Zone: Poor Burgess Meredith breaking his glasses when there was finally “Time Enough at Last”.
Simpsons: In “Bart the Daredevil” when Homer takes Bart’s Skateboard and jumps the Springfield Gorge, “I’m going to make it!”
Northern Exposure: The Piano Fling set to The Blue Danube.
from “Burning Down the House”. Same episode also has a classic reference to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in relation to the original plan to fling a cow with the Trebuchet.
Finally the greatest moment of sitcom history:
Taxi: “What does a Yellow Light mean?” from the episode where Reverend Jim gets his license.
Jim
Now reading the thread, I will borrow these four.
Carol Burnett: Carol comes down stairs of Tara wearing a curtain rod
Mary Tyler Moore: Chuckles the Clown
Seinfeld: ‘No Soup for you!’
Petticoat Junction – The opening scene with the girls skinny-dipping in the water tower.
(That is the only thing I remember from the show, thanks ** UncleRojelio**)
South Park—Special Olympics episode when Timmy is trying to tell Mr Mackey that Jimmy is using steroids
WKRP–the consultant episode when Venus is robbing Johnny in the bullpen
MASH–the surrealistic episode. I think it was called Dreams. The scene where Hawkeye has lost both of his arms and is left to float in the rowboat amidst all the discarded body parts.
SSG Schwartz
I’m late to the thread, and I thought of several of the ones y’all have mentioned. I love the walnut episode of Dick Van Dyke. “Would you like two for breakfast, dear? They’re awfully small…”
My contribution will be a Law and Order:SVU episode. It was the one where a Russian girl comes to America to go to school, but is intercepted by a predator, who kidnaps her and brainwashes her to be his torture toy. He has a wife and a little girl. The wife has been replaced as the toy by the new girl. They have the man arrested at the precinct, and he laughs and says they’ll never find her.
They finally find her locked in a coffin-like box under the bed, where she says, “I was quiet! I was quiet!” I think she’d been under there several days.
Chilled me to the bone.
St. Elsewhere: The crusty old doctor moons his corporate boss.
Twin Peaks: Agent Cooper relishing his pie, or the delectable Audrey twisting a cherry stem into a knot.
*
Hill Street Blues:* Sgt. Esterhaus’s admonition at morning roll call, “Let’s be careful out there!”
*
The Twilight Zone:* We see that the beautiful woman is surrounded by piglike people; to them, she’s the ugly one.
The Bob Newhart Show: The group therapy session gone awry.
*Newhart: * “I’m Larry, and this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl.” Or the great final scene.
The X-Files: The humanoid who lives in the sewers. Or the wish-granting genie rolled up in the rug.
MAS*H - The end of the first Charles episode, where Hawkeye discovers that the snake he had put in Charles’s bed had been returned to him, and he yelps, and Charles calmly tells him, “shh…Mozart.”
Simpsons - The casino episode, where Homer freaks out at first mention of the bogey man, and then Marge comes home to find the house turned into an anti-bogey man bunker.
Futurama - “The winner is # 3 in a quantum finish!” “No fair! You changed the outcome by observing it!”
Desperate Housewives - When Lynette breaks down after having been taken kids’ ADD medicine in order to overachieve, and the others are comforting her, assuring her that they had tough times raising their kids as well…and she cries, “Why didn’t you tell me it was hard for you, too?”
Lost: The final scene of the first season, where Locke, Jack and Kate are staring down into the newly-opened hatch.
Night Court: The episode where a Japanese businessman dies in the courtroom, and the corpse is entrusted to Bull to wheel around in a wheelchair. A kid switches the electic wheelchair on, and Bull loses it, leading to the following exchange:
South Park: The end of the “Woodland Christmas Critters” episode - “and they all lived happily ever after, except for Kyle, who died of AIDS two weeks later.”
Designing Women, season 1 episode 2, the Beauty Contest with Julia going off on a pageant girl for making fun of Suzanne. The whole rant is classic but here is a snip.
The one I always remember is
“Alright Gob, I’m kind of impressed. How did you make the yacht disappear?”
“Well, Michael, a magician never reveals his I sank it!!! Or, at least I think I did.”
More Star Trek ones:
TOS: “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
TNG: “THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS!”
DS9: “Computer…delete entire log entry.”
Oh, yes. Well-chosen. May I add:
TOS: “What do you know? I finally got the last word!”
TNG: “I will feed him.”
DS9: “Why don’t you just shut up and shoot him?”
VGR: “When it comes to time-travel conundrums, my advice is to not even try… but don’t take it from me, take it from yourself.”
So I’m trying to think of a good one for The Office (American version). And while it’s a fantastic show, no one moment is sticking out for me.
Any thoughts?
(I’ve watched all 4 seasons live, and am now half way through season 2 on DVD).
(Perhaps the funniest single moment, in my DVD re-watching, is when Jan is running a woman-in-the-workplace seminar, and talking about sports metaphors, and Kelly, apparently totally innocently, asks here what it meant that she and Michael got to second base, which is already pretty damn funny, and then Kelly turns and winks at the camera. Totally out of nowhere, and a great example of something that would only work in a pseudo-documentary format. But that’s just a particularly funny moment, not something that emblemizes the series for me…)
Law and Order: Original - A husband and wife are killed by the mafia, and the only witness is their elementary-aged daughter.
The DA and ADA are talking at the end of the show, and the final two lines are something like:
“The little girl’s uncle picked her up from school today.”
“She doesn’t have an uncle.”
Was that the one where Will Sasso was a moron in a wheelchair, and, when he can’t think of a third wish the Genie looks meaningfully down at his wheelchair, gives, him a look, and he says, “Ooooh! I wish I had a solid gold wheelchair!”?
-Joe
Oh, yes, the most excellent *Torrents of Greed * episode. Schiff’s reaction is priceless.
In an otherwise mediocre show, the “Donny” episode is some kind of perfect storm of brilliance. F’ing hilarious.
Freaks and Geeks - When Lindsay spends all afternoon listening to the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty; or when Daniel plays Dungeons and Dragons with the guys.
Northern Exposure - What Exit? mentioned “the fling” which was great but I always think of the flashback episode in which the story of the founding of Cicely (by a lesbian couple) is told.