I was recently rewatching the IT Crowd, which is one of my favourite shows and after finishing Season 2 Episode 1, “The Work Outing” for the hundredth of time I realized this is probably my favourite sitcom episode of all time. I just can’t get bored of the jokes and the delivery. The writing is gold, and the story escalates from funny to absolutely insane hilarious. Makes me laugh every time. Half the dialogue I quote to this day.
There are many good episodes I love, and could put here as close seconds: probably most of the Futurama series, a dozen of episodes of The Office or some classics from the Friends, I could think of.
So I would like to hear what episodes of any TV show is your favourites and why? Doesn’t needs to be necessarily comedy, anything from television is fair game.
Think of it as a “what single item would you bring to a desert island with you” question, just with an episode of a TV show :)
- Travelers - S02E07 “17 Minutes”
Timeloops, what more can I say. They’re fun.
TLDR: Main Cast of Time travelers die, but no worry, we literally have time travel, so the future send another time traveler’s conciousness back in time before the team dies, the time traveler take over a skydiver that historically died and averts their host’s death, then races to do their primary mission of saving the main cast time traveler team, they only got 17 minutes left. But the mission fails, then they try again, and again. For almost 10 times.
Why: Because I just love watching each iteration progress. Like, imagine if life had do-overs… But its a mission instead.
(I’m horrible at explaining things, but just watch the entirety of Travlers, trust me 😉)
- The Magicians - S05E06 “Oops!..I Did It Again”
MORE TIME LOOPS, what more can I say? (I almost forgot about this one, but Travelers reminded me of this)
Earth goes Kaboom, but an ancient spell reverses time for 12 hours, only 2 people, specifically 2 Magicians, remember the previous loop. So they try various spells to fix it.
Why: Its more timeloops, so fun, thats why!
Since you like time loops, there’s a Stargate SG-1 episode about time loop as well, S04E06 Window of Opportunity, also one of my favorite episodes.
For the Magicians, the cause of the time loop was fucking hilarious.
Spoiler below!!!
The destruction of Earth lead to the breaking of a magic seal meant to hold an Eldritch being. Whales made this seal long ago, and whenever it breaks, it reverses time so that the breaking is undone. Whales are OP wizards.The moment I read Travelers I knew which episode it was going to be. I didn’t like the show that much but it played with some very interesting concepts and this was best shown in that episode.
Might I suggest the game, Outer Wilds?
I heard people say its great, but my short attention span could never deal with not having constant action on screen as with passive medias consumption like TV so… 🤷♂️
Star Trek:TNG, that episode where Picard has been captured and turned by the Borg.
Backstory: I’ve always considered myself a bit of a geek, but despite this I never watched Star Trek. From 2008 to 2012 I was working on a ship, so I needed something to watch. So I decided to start watching ALL of Star Trek, starting with the pilot, then via Kirk, etc.
Come 2010 I wad at home with my GF, and we were watching TNG together the evening before I was to fly out. And with each episode it got more and more exciting, to the point where it was 0200 in the morning and 8 had to get up early to catch a flight for work at 0900.
“OK, one more episode, and then we HAVE to call it quits for now”.
Well, yeah, that was the episode that ended with the cliffhanger of Picard having been captured. I ended up not sleeping at all that night.
I had to wait for the next season to watch the conclusion the first time I saw it back in the day. Broadcasters were mean with the season ending cliffhangers!
That story arc is still one of my favorites. When Ryker is about to try warping right through the other ship and Data just tells him “standby”, one of my favorite scifi moments in any show/movie. Comparable to Adama saying jump the ship! Where, I don’t have a solution? Anywhere, jump now!
You consider yourself a bit of a geek, but you don’t know off the top of your head that the name of that episode is “Best of Both Worlds”?
Pfft…
/s
It’s cool that Hannah Montana was an inspiration for the title.
Firefly, Out of Gas
“Fay-yoo? Ah… ah… OK, she won’t be winning any beauty contests anytime soon, but she is solid. Ship like this, be with you till the day you die.”
“Because it’s a death trap.”
Succession has some of the best screenwriting of any TV show or movie, IMO. S3E08 “Chiantishire” stands out to me. So much of the dialogue is passive-aggressive or euphemistic. S4E09 “Church and State” is also an absolute marvel, with the main scene being shot with 8 cameras simultaneously, and showing some of the most powerful performances in the series.
What We Do In the Shadows, “Baron’s Night Out”. Absolutely hilarious. The vampires getting high drinking the blood of high people is great comedy.
X-Files: Jose Chung’s From Outer Space
You will never laugh so hard at the X-Files.
Deep Space Nine: “The Visitor”
Monorail monorail monorail
I can’t remember the name, but for IT Crowd specifically, when one of their coworkers thought Jen died and became a vengeful ghost. I laugh whenever I watch that episode.
Over all, King of the Hill, “Pretty, Pretty dresses.” First off, hilarious, second, I found it strangely touching. Bill has good people around him, even if they don’t show it. Even Dale was coming around the corner in a dress to participate. I thought that was very kind. No matter how bad it gets, they don’t leave him, even if they don’t know how to help him.
Runner up: “Almost got 'em” from Batman the Animated Series. All the villains were talking about how they almost got Batman, only to find out Batman was there in disguise. He was disguised as Croc. I found that hysterical for some reason.
Ironic that the most memorable Killer Croc line wasn’t said by Croc
In his defense, it was a big rock.
Dr who The 11 hour
Having been told about Dr who, and having seen a fee episodes prior. This one encapsulated the entire series for me and explained all of the why’s I had with previous doctors and previous companions
To have river song start with the 10th doctor and carry on just allowed me to inhabit any episode past or present.
Now as a whovien I will cheat and say part one and two of the pandorica was a fantastic episode.
With honorable mentions to the Christmas special with all three doctors
Still hard to beat the Top Gear original amphibious vehicle episode.
This and the alternate mobile home episode where Jeremy drives a 3 story tall structure always make me laugh so hard I could cry.
Forgot about that. Good one.
Honorable mention for my favorite moment in a TV show - Brienne of Tarth a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. What a shining, glorious moment of satisfaction for a hardworking and truly good character in a season of utter bullshit.
I will always feel that we were robbed of so many satisfying conclusions because of the show rushing to wrap everything up. Not everything had to be tied in a perfect bow, but what we got certainly did not scratch that perfectly placed itch.
It’s an absolute travesty that they threw away nearly every character’s arc in the final season and robbed them of their big moments, purely to subvert expectations. These arcs were predictable because that’s where their stories were fucking heading. But noOoOoo…
Jaime is probably the show’s finest example of an eight-season arc thrown directly into the trash at the last moment. What was even the point?
I understand they wanted some characters to be disappointments, it could have been cool to have Jaime get super close to a satisfying arc and, at the last second fail. But the last few scenes with him completely backpedalling his entire motivation make no sense.
GOT had so much going for it. And yet, in a post like this asking about favorite episodes, no one is even mentioning it’s earlier fantastic episodes - the final season ruined all previous good work.
Bo Jack - Free churro.
They wouldn’t work by themselves (for the desert island thing) but there are two season finales I love. Dark season 2 and Mr Robot season 3. Two great seasons with tension being built up and these gave just the perfect ending.
Dark is massively underrated, we were obsessed with it witth my wife. It was a separate evening before each new season to binge recaps on youtube to have a fresh knowledge of every character in every timeline.
Mr Robit is definetly in my top 10. I loved the “heist” episode, where they didnt say anything the whole time. It was just another level of television. Also the season finales are great.
I actually made a graph for the characters in dark while watching the first two seasons. Definitely my favorite show.
Since you like both Dark and Mr Robot, may I recommend you the Movie ‘Who Am I’?
Without giving away too much, it’s basically Mr Robot made by Baran bo Odar, the creator of Dark, combining aspects of both
But full disclosure, it’s only subbed and finding copies outside of Germany is a bit though
Huh I actually watched that without knowing it’s from the same guy. I just thought Germans make good movies/shows. Now that you say it it does feel similar to both shows.
