The final episode of China Beach.
The scene of the woman observing her daughter with the man she considers her father brought up all the guilt and regret and loss of innocence some of us felt for our part in the war.
And Dana Delany showed someone who had the strength to persevere
My usual nom in this category is the Australian show Frontline’s episode “The Siege”.
But I’ll also nominate these
Homicide: LOTS - The Ep where Pembleton wrenches a confession out of a guy he knows is innocent, just to show G that he can.
The West Wing episode where Bartlett has to decide whether or not he should commute a soon-to-be executed Prisoner.
American Gothic - Final episode. Lucas Black was one of the finest child actors, period.
Friends: The One with the Video[?]. Back when the show was funny, and people actually cared about whether or not Ross and Rachel would get together…
Cracker - The Old Woman in the Attic.
Ren and Stimpy - Space Madness…
I’ll go further and point to William Christopher’s segment where, as Father Mulcahy, he describes how, on cold mornings, the surgeons warm their hands over the open wounds in the patient they are working on. Christopher’s performance was nothing short of brilliant as he chokes up while describing the emotional impact of this. Perhaps the single finest moment of series television ever.
I’m late for getting my kids from school fronm reading this whole thread so just quickly -
the inner light
a uk drama with Martin Clunes as a funeral director falling in love (title escapes me) where he visits an old lady up to her death. I turned to my wife and said, ‘That’s the single most affecting hour of television I’ve ever seen’
what’s it called?
Anyway - any dvd execs should read this thread, bundle some of these shows on one (or three) discs and release
"THE SDMB FINEST MOMENTS IN TV "
there are so many here ive never seen
Is there no vote for 6 feet under? just watched the first series on dvd thought it was great.
William and Mary.
Did anyone else watch the episode of Spooks (which aired in the US under some other name – maybe MI5?) where they were doing a simulated emergency exercise? I was on the frickin’ edge of my seat throughout. Gripping stuff.
good gosh, all that and not one mention of ‘Freaks and Geeks’!
Possibly one of the finest TV eps I’ve seen was the one where Bill confesses his allergies in class to the sympathetic (and cute) teacher. spoilers from here on
The ‘cool’ kids don’t believe Bill and think he’s sucking up, so one kid (henceforth refered to as ‘Kid’) puts peanuts in Bill’s sandwich during lunch. Bill eats them unwittingly and goes into anaphilactic shock (sp?) and almost dies.
Sam and Neil wait for something to happen outside Bill’s hospital room (they discuss Bill’s possible death and joke about how funny it’d be to have Bill as a ghost friend, like a 1970’s sit-com, they then realise this is their friend they’re talking about and he MIGHT die, and that’s not really as funny as it sounds!).
Meanwhile Sam and Bill’s mums comfort each other (Bill’s mum confesses she thinks Bill’s unusually large number of allergies come from her smoking when she was pregnant with Bill, Sam’s mum confesses she dropped Sam on a concrete patio when he was four months old and put a hairline facture in his skull). They both seem to be taking this very well, even faced with something really bad possibly moments away.
As the boys and the mums wait for something to happen, the Kid (who put the peanuts in Bill’s sandwich) arrives with his very pissed-off dad (his dad is angry that his son could do something like this). Dad makes kid apologise to Bill’s mum and then to the comatose Bill- this bit and the ending always make me cry, and makes my wife laugh at me, cos ‘it’s only TV’. (she reckons I’m such a wuss).
The kid is sorry he did that to Bill, but (paraphrasing all this) he is also angry that Bill never gave him the time of day. Kid likes comic books and science fiction too, but back when they were in the fourth grade Sam, Bill and Neil wouldn’t let him into the group. So Kid moved on to other circles and really wants to be part of the geeks’ group, but doesn’t know how to be friends with them. as Kid leaves, Bill sits up and admits he’d heard the whole thing and was pretending to be asleep so he could see where Kid went with this. Bill admits he never knew Kid liked this stuff, and hey, why doesn’t he come with them to the local sci-fi convention that saturday? so kid says he’ll try and make it.
We then cut to family stuff and then the end of the episode where the Geeks are waiting for one of the kids’ mums to drive them to the convention. They’re all in starwars costumes (Sam as Luke Skywalker was so cute, and so appropriately early '80s, Neil is Yoda, and equally cute, if not moreso) . Kid rides up to the curb on his bike, he can see the geeks but they can’t see him. The emotion on his face at this point is amazing- he wants to be there, cos he loves this stuff too, but he’s also developed this whole ‘cool’ persona and can’t bring himself to admit that he wants to have fun with these geeks. He looks at them and finally says to himself, ‘I can’t… I can’t do it’ and rides away.
fade to black, roll credits.
This might not seem like an amazing episode i nmy decription, but it resonates for me on SO many levels. I have the peanut allergy (albeit not that badly) that STILL prompts stupid pranks and uncaring comments. I’m also very much a product of the whole geek thing and comics, and the toys, and the tightknit group of slightly dorky friends, and the being abstractly but not actively bullied by those who don’t comprehend who you are or why you like something different…
Not a great episode, but another good moment where Sam is trying to impress a girl he’s with and Sam’s dad says something about, ‘if you want those micronaut toys you’ll have to earn the money yourself!’. I’ve NEVER heard micronauts referenced on TV, even when they were popular! (and I collect toys to this day, fortunately my wife didn’t pass judgement on that… too often!).
And the DVD set is due out early next year! WOOOOOOO!
Since this thread has risen from the dead, I’ll nominate another:
“Heart of Ice,” from Batman: The Animated Series.
Anyone who’s seen it knows why it deserves to be on the list. Anyone who hasn’t seen it is missing 22 minutes of non-kiddified heart-wrenching pathos that blows away the notion of cartoons as a medium solely for children.
(Too bad the basic premise got bastardized and raped for the Batman & Robin movie. Ignore the crappy clone and go with the original, folks)
rjung, wasn’t that episode revisited in the Batman:Subzero animated movie as something of a sequel? (To similar effect, although some of the pathos was lost as the story stretched out to animated feature length).
There was a Mr Freeze episode in the Batman Beyond series that continued the Freeze mythos and was similarly heart-wrenching. Not watched it in ages- I know what I’ll be watching tonight!
Yup, Twin Peaks for me. First episode probably (although it’s all as good really) - TV has never been better before or since, haunting, beautiful, funny, horrific, actually terrifying in parts, clever…perfect casting, that soundtrack…people above have said it all and more.
Other great tv episodes:
The Northern Exposure one, where Joel and Maggie have sex, and Maggie blocks all memory of it from her brain :).
Blackadder IV, ep. 6: one of the most powerful pieces of anti-war television I’ve ever seen, made so precisely because it was by such a broad, sarcastic show.
If we’re all picking Buffy episodes, then I’d go for Innocence - it encapsulated exactly what was great about Buffy, and I think it was the moment everyone really noticed what it was. The metaphor of Angel literally becoming a different man was inspired.
The first Timmy! episode in South Park.
The rave episode from Spaced.
League Of Gentlemen Christmas Special. A comedy show that decided to dispense with jokes, and make a horror feature.
the “China Beach” episode “The World” was one of my favorites another one was from the reality show “On Scene: Emergency Response” with the truck accident victim and the shootings and a beating in Belfast those were packed with some drama like the helicopter medic doing the iv on the truck accident victim and the panic over the shootings in Belfast or Dana Delany as nurse Colleen grieving over her fathers death i was lucky to have both on tape
I love these new threads.
Tapestry : STNG
While I love the B5 and DS9 episodes mentioned, Tapestry keeps teaching me regret is a wasted emotion as long as I keep learning and continue to be a better person.
"The Jean-Luc Picard you wanted to be, the one who did NOT fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is, or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted through much of his career, with no plan or agenda… going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia - “Chardee MacDennis”
I could watch this episode on a loop for weeks and never get tired of it. I watch it at least a couple of times a week as it is. There’s something about watching people play games for which the rules are unclear to the viewer that I love.
I don’t seem to have contributed to this thread in the past dozen years.
One of my all-time favorite episodes of science fiction, or of any TV show is the episode from the original Outer Limits written by Harlan Ellison and called Demon with a Glass Hand. It starred Robert Culp as Trent, a man without a memory being hunted by aliens in Los Angeles in the then present-day. He has a computer grafted onto his arm, with a glass exterior, in the form of the hand it replaces, and it talks to him. It tells him a surprisingly complex story – he and the aliens are from the future. The aliens have invaded the earth, but find that all the people have vanished, and that they set off some very dirty atomic bombs that have left fallout behind, which is killing the invaders. The only person left was Trent, who fled into the past (1960s LA). He’s the only one who knows where everyone on earth is hiding. Except he doesn’t remember – his memory is wiped. The computer knows, but the information is stored in its detachable memory – three of the fingers – which it doesn’t have. The alien invaders have them, but can’t access the information.
So Trent is chasing the aliens to get back the fingers/memory lobes (and to get to the time machine – which the aliens have commandeered – to prevent more of them from coming through), while the aliens are chasing Trent to get the Hand, so it can tell them where all the humans are.
This complex story works, and it has some surprising twists, and a very poignant ending. Most of it takes place in the very photogenic Bradbury Building in LA (Where scenes from Bladerunner were shot, as well as the ending of the original D.O.A.). No time paradoxes in this one, which is all to the good – they’re distracting.
Although the David Morse series “Hack” was pretty forgettable, there was one episode, where he was trying to return money a fare left in his cab, that was really good.
Off the top of my head:
House, “Three Stories” (the most amazing episode of an amazing series), followed by the two-parter “House’s Head” and “Wilson’s Heart”
Father Ted, “Good Luck, Father Ted” (the first episode–I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as hard as the first time I saw that one)
“Day of the Doctor” (50th Anniversary Doctor Who special, starring David Tennant, Matt Smith, John Hurt, and the hands-down best cameo by a pair of eyebrows in the history of television).
It’s on Hulu! Gonna watch it ASAP
This had not aired when this thread died off in 2003, so I’ll add this, and probably take some grief for it. The Pilot of LOST.
Forget the rest of the holes that the subsequent episodes and season never quite filled in. The pilot gave us:
[ul]
[li]the opening close up of Jack’s eye, zooming out to take in the jungle he is laying in.[/li][li]The carnage and spectacle of the beach crash site[/li][li]Evangelne Lilly in a bra and panties (her first scene and major role)[/li][li]the desperate search for the radio in the cockpit[/li][li]Lock waking up to realize he could now wiggle his toes and walk.[/li][li]The looping French distress signal[/li][li]the smoke monster[/li][li]Charlie’s episode ending line "Guys…where are we?[/li][/ul]
CSI (Vegas):
Lab Rats really appealed to me. There were many great CSI episodes showing skilful crime-solving and the interaction between the characters. The series even had the guts to make Gil Grissom the lead character.
But in Lab Rats, the minor characters get almost the whole episode to themselves - and some of them are even nerdier than Grissom!
Doctor Who:
The Day of the Doctor was an astonishing tour de force. Three Doctors collaborate (including the amazing John Hurt as the unmentionable ‘War Doctor’), then all the Doctors make an appearance. The end of the Time War is smoothly explained and finally there is a special cameo by the great Tom Baker.
**
West Wing**:
Whilst I acknowledge that ‘Two Cathedrals’ was a marvellous episode, my personal favourite was In Excelsis Deo.
The way that the main story built from simply finding a business card to organising a funeral for a veteran with full honours was beautifully done.
I cried on at least three occasions:
i should add the episode of China Beach when “Cherry” dies…that made me sad!
Dharma & Greg S03E16: “Weekend At Larry’s”
They do some gardening, digging up various things and friends. Perfectly crafted in the same way as P. G. Wodehouse’s short story, ‘Uncle Fred Flits By’, which is brutal in sequencing.
And there’s Newhart: S02E14 where he interviews an Air Force colonel, "…And how long have you been in the KGB, Dick ?"
And anything, especially on Wings, where she played Sandy Cooper obsessed with her Joey Bear, that involved the manic titian-haired Valerie Mahaffey.