I’d have to vote for three, in no particular order:
Seinfeld - The Chinese Restaurant. Just a revolutionary episode. It was the first episode that was literally about NOTHING. Changed television as we know it.
Simpsons - Lemon of Troy. “This is the darkest day in the history of Springfield. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the shower.”
NewsRadio - Super Karate Monkey Death Car. “Jimmy has fancy plans, and pants to match.”
Just Shoot Me’s “Slow Donnie” episode. Funniest 30 minutes ever.
The Simpsons - Lisa’s Substitute. Lisa gets a substitute (played by Dustin Hoffman, credited to ‘Sam Etic’) and for the first time in her life finds someone she can actually connect to intellectually. Her infatuation with him is paralleled with her inability to tolerate Homer’s boorishness, with one of the best climaxes ever (“You Are Lisa Simpsons”. Incredibly sweet and emotional. There’s also the subplot of Bart running for class president.
There’s also Lisa’s Wedding, where she finds the perfect man, except he won’t accept Homer… great counterpoint and equally touching (though much funnier in its vision of the future: “Don’t worry sir, I’m sure we’ll find a cure for… 17 stab wounds.”)
Just for something different, The “Target” episode of The New Avengers.
My true love are the “real” (i.e. Emma Peel) eps of The Avengers which are dazzling and delightful and any half dozen of which could qualify for this thread, but this particular show has always stayed with me as probably the most perfectly plotted tv episode of all time.
Before going on leave, all agents have to pass an obstacle course made up of targets popping out at them unexpectedly. Some are enemies who have to be killed, but some are innocents who can’t be shot. The bad guys even shoot back (blanks that leave a detectable mark). John Steed, of course, is the only person ever to have gotten 100%.
Purdey goes through before her leave and gets a spectacular 99% with only one hit.
The problem is that the bad guys have taken over the training center. The hit contains a slow-acting poison.
The bad guys get to Steed with the poison. That leaves Gambit.
For a laugh the villains place the antidote at the very end of the obstacle course. And they replace the blanks with real bullets. So Gambit has to go through the course and get the other only 100% in history or all three of them will die.
Good action and good tension ensue. Gambit succeeds, they all live, and only the forces of market capitalism could kill the show.
Taxi, when the Reverend Jim Ignitowski had to take his driver’s liscense test. The crew decided to help him cheat.
Jim: “Uh-h-h-h… What do you do when you come to a yellow light?”
The Crew: “Slow down.”
Jim: "W h a t d o y o u d o w h e n y o u c o m e t o a y e l l o w l i g h t ?
The Crew:" SLOW DOWN!
Jim: " U h-h-h-h-h huh!
W h a t
d o
y o u…"
It goes on for quite a long time.
I’ll second the premiere ep of Twin Peaks – that opening was something else, literally. Didn’t look or sound like anything ever seen on TV. People have been riffing off it for years now.
I’ll add “The Man Who Had To Struggle For Everything” ep of the Simpsons. It captured the absurdity of life in America beautifully, as driven, intelligent, goal-oriented Frank Grimes finds that everything he believes in is made total mockery of by Homer Simpson. Some great lines:
“He was injured in a silo accident and spent years teaching himself how to walk and feel pain again.”
“You have a nice house with a car and beautiful wife and lobsters for dinner! I live in an apartment under a bowling alley and over another bowling alley!”
And at the end: 'Frank Grimes, or ‘Grimey’ as he liked to be called …"
Ooooh. Great thread.
There have been many greats mentioned already, but for shows that made a shocking impression on me I have to go with two (a tie) from the late 80’s revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents when it was paired up with Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, (which also had a few lulus, though I can’t remember a specific episode). The first was one my brother and I were watching about a woman in prison who scams the gravedigger into believing that she’ll pay him a buttload of money to help her escape. The plan they come up with is that when the woman heard the bells toll (or whatever, I forget) she’d know that a prisoner had died and she’d go to where the bodies were prepared and slip into the coffin. The gravedigger would bury the coffin and then sneak back and dig her up and she’d go get her money and pay him off. They cut to the night with the bells tolling. She slips into the coffin, you hear the dirt falling on the lid. She starts laughing maniacally about how she’s going to scam the gravedigger and what a simpleton he is. She strikes a match to see who died and it’s: THE GRAVEDIGGER!
Holy shit. My brother and I looked at each other with our jaws on the floor and almost fainted with terror. We both ran upstairs to our rooms and slammed the door. We weren’t little kids either! This was when I think we were both in High School!
The other episode that freaked me the hell out was a remake of one of the classic 40’s/50’s Hitchcock episodes, involving a woman who’s raped and beaten while her husband is at work. He comes home and takes her to the hospital & police station and while they’re driving home they pass a man on the street and she says: “Oh my god! THAT’S HIM!!! THAT’S HIM!!!” The husband follows the guy to his car in a parking garage and furiously beats him to death. He goes back to his own car and tells his wife everything is going to be ok. He pulls out into traffic and the wife goes “THAT’S HIM!!!” then points at another guy “THAT’S HIM!!!” Then another guy “THAT’S HIM!!” Oh Jebus. So, so horrible.
I’m sort of surprised no one is picking the last MASH where the woman smothers her own baby. Wow. Just “wow.”
I’ll second the worth of lots of the shows mentioned above (especially Newhart’s finale and the Fawlty Towers Germans episode).
I had about settled on Tikka to Ride from Red Dwarf (or maybe Gunmen of the Apocalypse when Exapno had to mention The Avengers and remind me of the last episode of the Steed and Mrs. Peel series.
Now I’m really torn.
Aw, crap! I forgot Amazing Stories.
The episode Mummy Daddy was priceless in so far as pure hilarity.
I’ll second that!
“Chicken pot, chicken pot, chicken pot pie! Green quarter?”
There was a special on ‘E!’ about the making of that episode “Slow Donnie” a few years ago. Did you see it?
Now you’ve done it! I had those eps all safely repressed. mad: Where’s my blankie and Ativans?
Since “Whaaaaaat dooeeeees aaaa yeeeelllooooow liiiiight meaaaaan?”'s been taken, I offer another classic Taxi: Latka and Simka’s wedding. Also: Blackadder II, Beer
“My earmuffs have fallen down”
Sense and Senility from Blackadder III.
** The Fresh Prince of Bell-Air** :
The episode where Will and that other guy wind up on stage dancing to “Time Warp”.
“Time warp! Jump awn it! Jump awn it!”
The Original Twilight Zone: “A Passage for Trumpet” with Jack Klugman.
The Older New Twilight Zone: “Shatterday” Proof that Bruce Willis can act if he tries. Part 2 was "A Little Peace and Quiet"Melinda Dillon has an amulet that stops time. It ends with a Soviet missile dangling over the city and gave me a bad dream.
Amazing Stories: “Ghost Train” Where Grandpa catches the train to heaven. “Shouldn’t’ve built a house where the train comes through.”
Original Outer Limits: “The Inheritors” I fell in love with Morgan Brittany, she was so achingly beautiful.
Firefly: “Objects in Space” The monologues by the slightly off bounty hunter Jubal Early are priceless, including a terrific definition of architecture, of all things. Greatest line ever, though it was delivered by Jayne and not Early: “If wishes were horses we’d all be eating steak.” I hope the Buffistas aren’t too insulted but Joss Whedon’s work was wasted on the Scoobies. He needed some experienced adults to deliver his lines. The kids tried but…
SPOILERS, I guess…
In Kingpin the badass enforcer character Chatto has been raped while in prison. After being rescued by his drug-tycoon brother, Miguel, he’s seething with anger and a desperate desire for revenge. Miguel doesn’t know about the rape, and is being very dismissive of his brother. There’s a great moment when Miguel tells him to forget the whole thing, and an expression of pain crosses Chatto’s face that’s utterly heartbreaking.
The next episode, Chatto disobeys Miguel and kidnaps and tortures the man responsible for his imprisonment and rape. Miguel finally finds him in a warehouse, sitting in a corner, back slumped in defeat. When he looks up at his brother, Chatto says, “It didn’t make me feel any better, Miguel. I don’t feel any better.”
On OZ, only the best show of all time, Beecher and Keller (the resident jailhouse lovebirds) are having one of their periodic breakups. Keller lures Beecher into a dark place, knocks him unconscious, and ties him to a chair. When Beecher comes to, Keller proceeds to give him a sexy, yet menacing and morally ambiguous chair-dance of love that culminates in one very passionate kiss and one very confused Beecher. One of OZ’s best moments.
Another great OZ moment came from an earlier season, when Said and Adebisi are sharing a pod. In the middle of a tense showdown with the oh-so frightening Adebesi, Said squares his jaw and says, “Are you going to kill me?”
Adebisi replies, “Kill you? I want to kiss you. But because I admire you more than I desire you!”
Awesome scene.
Several years back, I’d occasionally watch Transformers: Beast Wars before leaving for school, and my absolute favorite episode was the one where the evil immortal robot (I think his name was Rampage) adopts a little malformed robot. He protects and guides his new friend, and genuinely cares for it. Unfortunately, the Maximals, who are good robots, assume Rampage is trying to hurt or abuse the little malformed robot, and try to “rescue” him. Rampage and the Maximals get into a huge fight, which only ends when the little malformed robot dies to stop them from killing each other. At the end Rampage is holding the charred remains of the only being that ever loved him.
I was wrecked for the rest of the day.
Overall, I think DS9 was the best series, but the best Star Trek episode was from (gag) Voyager. In a rare moment of brilliance, they somehow combined a great plot with an awesome villain, and some powerhouse acting in Counterpoint. Voyager is journeying through the space of these Nazi-esque aliens called the Devore who hate telepaths, and Capt. Janeway is secretly smuggling telepathic refugees onboard. The smug Inspector Kashyk is in charge of checking Voyager for any telepaths, and Janeway finds him repellent until he turns out not to be so bad after all, disagreeing with the prejudiced policy and wanting to switch sides. She offers to help him escape Devore space and some sparks fly between Janeway and the formerly-evil Kashyk.
The twist is that Kashyk really was a bad guy all along, and was just playing Janeway to find her telepaths. Then we find out Janeway was just playing him all along and that Kashyk has been caught in his own trap. In the end, as he’s leaving, he turns to Janeway and says, “For what it’s worth, captain, you made a very tempting offer.”
.:Nichol:.
My favorite sitcom episode was the aforementioned “The Contest” episode from Seinfeld. Many other episodes had better moments, but this episode was the funniest throughout.
I saw a couple of reality TV show episodes mentioned, and have to mention my favorite: the last episode of Big Brother 2.
ST:TNG’s “The Inner Light” has already been mentioned, so here’s a few of my other favorites…
The Star Trek: DS9 episode, “The Begotten,” in which Odo tries to train a developing shapeshifter, is one of the high points of the series. The ending literally made me gasp the first time I saw it.
Law & Order: Aftershock - One of the rare L&O episodes that breaks out of the usual format, this is mostly a character piece, but one with a rather surprising ending.
The West Wing: Two Cathedrals - The best episode of the series, with the very touching device of Mrs. Landingham’s spirit guiding President Bartlett through the episode, and the deeply-moving use of Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” at the end. I loved it.
“Fear of a Bot Planet” from Futurama. Funniest half hour of TV EVER (so long as you’re a geek).
The absolutely best Star Trek episode, EVER, from any of the series is “The Visitor”, the third (I think) episode of season 4.
“Homicide, Life on the Streets” had too many superlative episodes to count; People say “NYPD Blue” is high drama, they’re children.
“Time Enough at Last”, the original Twilight Zone episode starring Burgess Meridith as the nagged-to-death husband finally reaching Nirvana and losing it to an accident…absolutely brilliant.
OH! And the WKRP where ther record a spot for a funeral home…I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard before or since.