What is the single best episode of any TV series that you have ever seen?

Cafe Society
141

Twin Peaks when Laura’s killer is revealed. From the point where Cooper and the Log Lady are bathed in the strange light and the Giant says “It is happening again” to BOB’s reflection in Leland’s mirror, this was surrealism at its finest.

Are You Being Served? had many great episodes, my fave is What a Tangled Web with this great exchange:
Peacock: “I then checked to see if there was any current in the battery.”
Young Mr. Grace: “I thought the currants were in Grainger’s ears.”
I guess you had to be there.

142

I’m tearing up just thinking about it. This was a beautiful, amazing episode. I never want to see it again.
:frowning:

143

Although I’m an avid Buffy and Angel geek, and think that there are a great deal of other shows that have produced stellar entertainment, the most emotional for me is from B5. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as disturbing as Intersections in real time, which is the episode from late in S.4, where Sheridan is being tortured in order to break him so he’ll give in and make a public statement, saying he was wron all the time.

It’s scary, because it’s the true face of evil, far away from the evil we normally get served through the tube.

B5 is truly profound story telling.

144

Since it’s been five months since I submitted my “best ep,” I think I can go for another. :slight_smile:

The episode of the Simpsons where Bart sells his soul and Moe opens his restaurant. I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet. Also great was the one where Lisa gets headgear and there’s a strike at the power plant: “So we’ll march day and night by the big cooling tower/ They have the plant but we have the power.”

145

I opened this thread specifically to nominate “Passing Through Gethsemane” from Babylon 5, but there have been so many other good shows mentioned that I dunno anymore. I just want to rewatch them all!

I don’t believe that anyone’s mentioned the Homicide episode with Robin Williams as the husband of a woman killed in a mugging; I know RW is not everyone’s cup of tea as a dramatic actor but the look on his face when he’s holding the gun was just devastating.

146

Blackadder Goes North:
Blackadder on trial for shooting the carrier pigeon.

Wonder Years:
The series finale.

South Park:
Scott Tenorman must die. Creepy to the extreme.

147

“Passing Through Gethsemane” from Babylon 5.

148

The Practice - “Neighboring Species”

The stem cell research case. Eugene has long been my favorite character on that show.

The West Wing - “Two Cathedrals”

I liked this one so much, I waited all summer for the rerun. My cable went out that wednesday afternoon and I was absolutely distraught that I missed the replay.

Friends - “The One with the Rumor”

This is the episode where Brad Pitt guest stars, and Joey tries to finish a turkey. I love this episode.

Seinfeld - “The Voice”

This episode is hillarious. Kramer gets an intern, Jerry speaks out of a womans bellybutton and must choose between a voice and her, and George’s employer wants to get rid of him. My sides ache after this one.

Smallville - “Rosetta”

This is the episode starring Christopher Reeve. I’m not sure why I enjoy this episode so much, but I certainly do. When season 2 DVD comes out, I’ll buy it, watch it, and be able to give a more detailed answer.

149

Put me squarely in the “Two Cathedrals” corner. I’ve been watching the West Wing since it’s been airing from the beginning on Bravo, and I was a mess during that episode. From start to finish, it was just so affecting. It’s so rare to find a show that’s done so intelligently–I was really glad to see that they didn’t translate the Latin that the president yells in the church. Partly because you totally got the gist of it from the whole scene (and partly because I thought, “Someone online probably translated this, if I really need to know what he said.”

Also, “Phase One” from Alias. I’m catching up on this series, too, and the whole hour was just one big “WTF?” My mouth was open the whole time–I couldn’t believe everything that happened in the space of one show.

150

The A-Team, “The Road to Hope.” (Murdock as revivalist, Hannibal tells a gorilla joke while digging his own grave.)

151

What’s Alan Watching? Pilot 2/89 that was never picked up.

HS age kid lives in front of the TV, channel surfing all day.
A Dave Sheffield, Barry Blaustein, Eddie Murphy, Geprge Carlin pilot which received the National TV Critics Award in 1989.

Paraphrased dialog:
Protesters @ a prison carrying “Free James Brown” placards interiewed by a reporter.

Reporter: “Why James Brown? Wouldn’t your time be better spent fighting for the release of Nelson Mandela?”

Protesters: “Mandela? We take care of out own, let the Italians worry about him.”

The PBS Documentary: Television - Narrated by Edward Newman?

I know it’s cheating a little, but the episode that covered TV comedy was hysterical. Clips of the funniest stuff ever shown on the tube.

Most memorable:
A clip of SCTV’s Battle of the PBS Network Stars - A boxing match between

Fred Rogers (with King Friday & Daniel the Tiger in his corner)
vs.
Julia Childs (who between rounds gets water from a turkey baster & kicks the crap out of Mr. Rogers)

152

Oh, I’d forgotten all about that All in the Family Christmas episode! What a great Edith episode! I cared so much, I was crying when she refused to go to church. (And hell, I’m a secular humanist.)

153

Much as I’d like to, there are too bloody many GOOD episodes of TV out there. Here are a few of my favourites, but I don’t think I could pick just one.

“The Gift”, season 5 closer for Buffy. I literally cried out “No!” when she went off the tower, and spent a good half hour alternating between crying and staring in shock. “Becoming, Part II”, “Hush”, “Once More with Feeling”, and “The Body”, of course. All gut wrenching episodes.

“Z’ha’dum”, the season 3 ending for B5, mostly for the look on Sheridan’s face as he confronts Anna, his feelings for who she was, and his repulsion and grief for what she’s become. “The Hour of the Wolf”, the next season’s opening episode, where Ivanova tries to pick up the pieces after Sheridan goes to Z’ha’dum. Several other B5 episodes already mentioned, including “Passing Through Gethsemane” and “Sleeping in Light”.

Many MAS*H episodes, including the “interview” episodes (the one where Father Mulcahy talks about watching the surgeons warming their hands over the wounded soldiers’ opened bodies is mind numbing), “Abyssinia, Henry”, and the one where the entire episode is done from the wounded soldier’s point of view.

The “wrap-up” movie for Homicide, the scene where Bayliss confesses to Pembleton that he murdered the drug dealer/murderer who got released on a technicality. And then G dying after all.

And, just so no one gets the idea that the only kind of TV show I like are the gut wrenchers, almost any episode of “As Time Goes By” and the Victorian Christmas special for Black Adder III (I think), where Edmund gets a glimpse of the possible futures, a la Scrooge, and then winds up telling Queen Victoria herself off.

Lots more in mind (Cagney & Lacey, Quark, When Things Were Rotten, Xena, etc.), but I’ve gone on long enough.

154

I’ve never seen an episode of any TV show that comes anywhere near Futurama’s “The Sting.”

155

Is that the “You have to wake up” episode? i forgot about that one, another awesome episode.

156

For my money, the finale of “Newhart” is the most ingenious and funny episode ever written. His entire Vermont inkeeper existence had been a weird dream, as he wakes up in bed with his wife from his previous sitcom, “The Bob Newhart Show.” I laughed for what seemed like hours. For those into Newhart’s comedy, this was absolutely quintessential. It smacked a bit of “The Wizard of Oz,” but it can be forgiven because it was so damn funny.

157

Star Trek:DS9 - “In the Pale Moonlight” To save the Federation, Sisko makes himself an accessory to murder. His conscience notwithstanding, he realizes that if he had it to do all over again, he would.

158

Star Trek:DS9 - “In the Pale Moonlight” To save the Federation, Sisko makes himself an accessory to murder. His conscience notwithstanding, he realizes that if he had it to do all over again, he would.

damn smilies!

159

What, Innocence can’t get any love from the Buffyites? This is the episode that made this little show about a blonde girl fighting vampires into the best show on TV. One of the greatest things about Buffy was that the status quo was not maintained. The relationships you thought you knew at the beginning of the episode could be drastically changed by the end, and this episode was chock full o’ that. No one escapes this episode without significant scars, and the romantic relationships that exist at the start (Giles’n’Jenny, Buffy’n’Angel, and even, to an extent, Drusilla and Spike) have collapsed by episode’s end. This is the best capsule episode of the themes of the entire stretch run of Buffy. Plus, of course, this was the episode in which everyone found out that Oz was a cool guy and not some freak with a strange obsession with Willow.

160

I think her name was Shidaym.:slight_smile:

Most of the episodes that first sprung to mind have already been mentioned- Miami Vice’s “Out Where the Buses Don’t Run”, the episode of Just Shoot Me where David Cross plays Elliot’s “slow” (in all the right ways) brother, The Jose Chung X Files, and the aforementioned Coupling episode.

I’ll two of my own- the flashback Taxi episode and we the origins of all the people, especially Preacher Jim. And an episode of the old new Twilight Zone (episode name unknown) where a stranger gives a struggling couple a box with a red button and a promise of money if they press it- but if they do, someone they don’t know will die. The ending is easy to see coming if you’re used to the typical ironic twists of TZ, but as a kid I was pretty shaken up by it.