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Recently, Rolling Stone published a ranked list of the 100 best TV episodes of all time, which you can read here. The list is pretty good, as these things go, except for all of the ways in which it is absolutely and completely wrong. It is, as always, limited by the biases and preferences of the people who made it, which means that it skews both a little modern and a lot American. That's fine. There's a ton of great American TV that has been made in the last couple of decades, and TV, as a medium, kind of abhors having a canon. It just keeps moving forward. That said, I was chatting about this with Libby Hill, the esteemed TV writer, journalist, and wife, and we ended up listing a bunch of episodes we wished had been on said list. We eventually amassed a list of nearly 50 ourselves, but writing them all up seemed not in the spirit of being selective, so we cut it back to the 20 you see below. There were a few ground rules we made for ourselves: - If a show was on the Rolling Stone list, we could not contradict said list. Even if the best episode of Breaking Bad is obviously "Fly," we weren't going to try to prove that. Thus, all of our picks had to be from shows that didn't make the list.
- If we were torn between two choices for our marginal picks, we always opted for the show that was older or the show that was not American.
- Unfortunately, a lot of the best non-American TV has reached our shores via movie theaters first. If that was the case, we decided the pick was ineligible, which is how I ended up cutting Dekalog. Boooooooo.
We still made a ton of painful cuts, but such is list-making on the internet. That said, if you are, like, "Well, what about..." how dare you? This list is perfect. So let's get on with it! Futurama, "Jurassic Bark" (Season 4, Episode 7)Sure, that other Matt Groening show will kick-off its 36th season at the end of this month, but let's show some respect for Futurama, the little show that has just kept kicking, with nine seasons spread over 25 years. Co-created by Groening and David X. Cohen, the series centers on a dim-witted, yet well-meaning pizza delivery boy named Fry who is flash-frozen on January 1, 2000, and reawakens 1000 years later, where he connects with a wayward band of co-workers and friends. And yet, for as funny as the show can be, uttering the title of one particular episode is enough to make even the most stoic fans of the show weepy: “Jurassic Bark.” The installment sees Fry potentially reunited with a long-lost friend, only to be repeatedly thwarted by his robot best friend Bender, who’s jealous that someone might come between them. All of that, however, is just the perfect set-up for one of the most devastating episodic codas of all time, the type of emotional reversal one would expect from shows with far more gravitas. That Futurama was able to stick the landing is just another testament to the series’ storytelling prowess. (LH) Gilmore Girls, "They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?" (Season 3, Episode 7)
God, these vintage WB promos. Pour one out for The WB, a network whose small viewership belies just how influential it was on an entire generation of TV writers. One of the network's signature hits was Amy Sherman-Palladino's series about a mother and daughter who were more like best friends than parent and child, and its vision of a blissful small town where everybody talked way too quickly remains potent even after some rough moments in the show's later seasons. If you ask essentially any Gilmore fan their favorite episode, they're going to pick this one, which weds a fun high concept (a dance marathon!) to love triangle drama (Rory is dating Dean but clearly in love with Jess!). Hearts are broken, of course, leaving no better example of the show's willingness to play fair with its characters' emotions, even as it's placing them in ridiculous situations. (ESJ)
You want to read our other 18 choices? Then you're going to have to become a paid subscriber. But you're in luck because our annual September sale – in honor of the fall TV season, an outmoded tradition that we still celebrate here – is up and running. Our annual subscription rate of $50 – already a better deal than our $5/month rate – is reduced to $45 for the next 10 days only. That means you'll be getting three whole months completely free. But wait! There's more. That rate will be set in stone for you as long as you stay subscribed. Subscribe in the next 10 days, and you'll be getting those three free months for the rest of your life (or the rest of the duration of this newsletter). Neat deal! And, of course, you can always subscribe for $5/month, read what you want to read, then cancel. I promise not to judge. Whatever you can contribute is always, always appreciated. Being able to keep this newsletter going helps me have a somewhat stable income from month to month, and every little bit helps. But, again, to read the rest of this particular list, you are going to have to pay.
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