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tv_talk2024-01-30 09:09 am
yourlibrarian) wrote in tv_talk2024-01-30 09:09 am
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TV Tuesday: Favorites
Even in shows that are good across the board, we may have favorites for personal reasons. Or maybe a show wasn't that great but there were a few episodes that have really stuck with you.
Can you pick a favorite episode from 5 different shows? Tell us why they're so memorable!
Can you pick a favorite episode from 5 different shows? Tell us why they're so memorable!
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"Those Old Scientists" -- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 2, ep 7. This is the Star Trek: Lower Decks/Strange New Worlds crossover episode. When I first learned that this was going to happen, I honestly had many doubts about how bringing the voice actors into the non-animated realm would turn out. Well, it turned out absolutely wonderfully -- the actors who voice Mariner and Boimler worked really hard to bring their characters' animated physical attributes (facial expressions, how they run, etc.) into the "real" world. It was just one of the very best Trek episodes ever -- any series. A close runner-up is the musical episode, but I just like this one a wee bit more.
"Never My Love" -- Outlander, season 5, ep 12. Maybe a surprising choice given that it's one of Outlander's rape episodes. Claire was kidnapped and basically gang-raped (in the book she's assaulted by only one guy, not the lot of them), and to survive the ordeal, she disassociates into an alternate fantasy of her life set in the late 1960s. It's filmed mostly in shadows and heavily done through what is implied with cutaways, sound effects, and the haunted, stoic expression on Claire's face. It's done sensitively and with care, when it could easily have been gratuitous. Gabaldon relies on sexual assault way too much in her books, and has been rightly criticized for that. But you have to give credit where credit is due, and the showrunners did their best with a truly heinous plot point and made it appropriately emotional without being exploitative. Caitriona Balfe is, as always, amazing.
"There Goes the Neighborhood" -- Friday Night Lights, season 2, ep 10. I'm picking this one mostly just for the maybe last 10-15 minutes or so of the episode. It's the one where Tim Riggins moves in with Coach Taylor and his family, goes to a party with Julie, who gets drunk, and he rescues her from another boy who tries to have sex with her. Tim intimidates the guy into leaving, and gets Julie back home. As he puts her in bed, Coach Taylor walks in. Believing that Tim was trying to have sex with Julie, Coach angrily kicks him out of the house. It’s a heartbreaking scene, and also the best one demonstrating all of the things that make Tim Riggins such a special TV character: his charm; his unquestionable loyalty; and his miserable existence, because every time he tries to do a good thing for someone else, it ends up being a bad thing for himself.
"Trials and Tribble-ations" -- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 5, ep 6. Another crossover of sorts. To mark the 30th anniversary of the Original Series, the DS9 crew go back in time and are integrated into the TOS original episode The Trouble with Tribbles. I don't love (or even like) most of the TOS series, but the Tribbles episode is one that I do really enjoy. The integration of the DS9 crew into scenes from the original episode was superbly well done.
The series finale of Ashes to Ashes (season 3, ep 8). Because Alex (and the viewers) finally get answers to the questions we've been asking since Sam Tyler woke up in the 1970s in the original series, Life on Mars.
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I happen to love ST: TOS so I found the crossover episode particularly fun to see. And yes, the Ashes ending creates a definite payoff to the 2 series.
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S02E22 - Becoming, Part II (Buffy the Vampire Slayer): one of the best season finales for the show! The end of the world was coming and everything that could go wrong? Did. My favorite bits from it were Joyce and Spike interacting, Willow doing her magic, and the best dialogue exchange...
S01E01 - Pilot (Supernatural): I'm a sucker for SPN's Pilot ep because I still remember when the show premiered. It was 10PM Tuesday in Brazil and I was pretending to be asleep so my parents wouldn't come yell at me lol I had my TV on mute and was so damn scared when Mary caught fire. It worked great to set the tone for the rest of the show and the relationship between Sam and Dean--and John, to an extent. I can still quote pretty much the entire episode lol
S03E03 - Deer Lady (Reservation Dogs) - I have no words for this episode. It has all the trigger warnings as it deals with residential/boarding-school abduction and abuse of Indigenous people. The Deer Lady myth was so well explored here and the flashbacks of her life gave a striking contrast to Bear, his situation, and their meeting. The use of language here was incredible! and worked amazingly to put the viewer directly in the perspective of the Indigenous characters.
S01E06 - Bastogne (Band of Brothers): this entire episode was so grim that the fact this was based on real life facts made it even worse. The focus shift to Eugene Roe and his work as a medic in the front lines served as a good balance to all the death and destruction. There were some fantastic character moments here and some heartbreaking scenes as well.
S02E01 - Across the Barricade (Derry Girls): the entire show is hilarious, but the amount of chaos in this episode is off the charts. Sister Michael represents me so much during school trips and functions! And the way the girls decide to tackle the peace initiative is pure galaxy brain lol If you haven't watched Derry Girls yet, highly recommend.
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Deadloch: Season 1, episode 8
No spoilers, but a strong finale is exactly what I want out of a murder mystery series and Deadloch delivered. What makes it a favourite episode of television isn't just the answer to the mystery, but resolution for all the characters we'd gotten to know over the course of the series. Through lenses of both drama and humour, the show spent a lot of time looking at conflict between and within groups, whether those be communities, genders, cultures/nations, families or friendships. Then, at the end, we see the potential strength and joy when those relationships start to heal. This is a "favourite by culmination" episode, where the satisfying payoffs for the plot and the character arcs (both large and small) left me at first at the edge of my seat and then cozying back up in it with a happy sigh. I never thought someone buying someone else thrush cream would make me smile so much.
Star Trek: Lower Decks: Season 3, episode 10 - The Stars At Night
I was torn between choosing an episode I loved for its character work, an episode I loved for its concept, or an episode I loved for an exceptional moment. I'm starting to see a trend re: my love for episodes with a payoff, because I had to go with that last one, in the form of the season 3 finale. Lower Decks is a show about the little guy, at least relatively within the power and prestige of Starfleet. Not only are the main characters ensigns at the start of their careers, but they serve on a tier of starship classified as support ships, taking care of routine duties instead of being at the frontline of exploration and adventure. The finale deals with an attempt from the admiralty to render their class of starship obsolete, and it has a triumphant "power of the little guys banding together" moment that had me tearing up with Big Hopeful Star Trek Feelings in a way I never expected to experience when I first started watching what just seemed like a funny cartoon riffing on 'real' Trek.
Our Flag Means Death: Season 2, episode 2 - Red Flags
Continuing the trend of payoffs being important to me, I struggled with this one because while OFMD still contains many of my favourite TV moments, its season 2 finale turned far enough away from what I felt had been set up—and from what I had found compelling, clever, and special about the series—that it retroactively complicated my feelings about earlier episodes. Prior to the finale, I think I would have said 2x04, but the things that moved me so much in that episode exist in a much different light by the end of the series. So, I think it's 2x02 that continues to stand out to me in a way that's still satisfying, especially within the bounds of its run time. This episode is one where pirate captain Blackbeard—terrorizing those around him as he spirals into suicidal depression—forces the crew toward a cruel breaking point in the hopes of ending his pain. While still full of dark humour, this episode contains some of the series' best dramatic acting, a study of people at different levels of power pushed to their limits, and a spectacular climax during a storm set to "Run from Me" by Timber Timbre.
Good Omens: Season 2, episode 2 - The Clue
Both seasons of Good Omens were uneven for me, but I found season 2's unevenness much more interesting, maybe because it seemed to come from trying to do something new rather than the usual stumbling blocks of adaptation. I was often curious about what the writing process looked like, because at times it felt like two writers with very strong but differing styles were a little too conciliatory with each other in the wrong spots. But 2x02 felt like the partnership firing on all cylinders, particularly with John Finnemore's embedded minisode A Companion to Owls—a flashback to the events of the Book of Job that sees angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley taking their first real steps toward a shared concept of "their side" beyond Heaven and Hell. As both a standalone meta-parable and one part of a very long romantic story, it brings the comedy, insight, and heart in full force.
Severance: Season 1, episode 7 - Defiant Jazz
I could have easily gone with the finale on this one too, but episode 7 is that wonderful combination of payoff and escalation. I'll go light on spoilers here, but Severance takes place in a world where a new technology enables people to separate their work and home lives neurologically. People arrive at the office, black out, then immediately get to resume their lives eight hours later without the burden of thinking about work. This episode focuses on the point of no return, where characters' thoughts and feelings about that other life their shared brain and body are living can't be ignored any longer, and where the "little guys" come together with joint resolution against a more powerful system. Complex story threads start to weave more tightly and tensely together, recurring elements take on unexpected meaning, and there is both the satisfaction of new knowledge and the forward momentum into taking action on that knowledge. Plus it has one hell of a dance party.
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I don't remember Bastogne as well but agree about how well the focus shift helped in it.
Loved Derry Girls -- it's only failing to me is that it was such a short series.
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I have not yet seen S2 of Good Omens but I expect to next month.
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Severance was one of those 'head but not heart' appeals for me. I admired how it was put together and executed, and I'm interested to see season 2, but I wouldn't feel sad or let down if the second season didn't come out or didn't live up to what I liked about season 1.
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The whole reason she went to Spike for intel is because she was wounded by a vampire.
The twist? Spike tells Buffy that it's nothing that he did or anything special about the vamps that resulted in the slayer's deaths. But the slayer themselves. The only reason he beat them - was they wanted him to. Otherwise, he'd have lost.
Nothing goes as expected in this episode, which makes it fun to watch. And each time I see it, I see something new.
2. Angel the Series - Episode - Dear Boy, in this episode, we get Angel's back story, but mainly through Darla's point of view. He becomes a vampire, and seeks vengeance on his father - by killing everyone in the household including his father. But it is revealed all Angel wanted was his father's approval - which he could never achieve, and Darla reveals that now he never will - because he killed him, and will always be empty and cursed as a result. It's not the soul that is his curse, but that unresolved matter with his father.
3. Breaking Bad - S4 - Problem Dog - Problem Dog - there's a memorable scene in the middle of the episode, that is the only thing I clearly and vividly remember from this series. In it Jesse, partners in crime with Walter White (the show's anti-hero), bares his soul to his Narcotics Anynomous Group - and calmly tells the story of killing Gale. It's a riveting scene. And a bit twisty, in that the group believes he's talking about a dog, when he's actually talking about a man. It's a great scene in how it depicts guilt, and justification. Continues to haunt me.
4. The Good Place - S2, Ep 6 - The Trolley Problem - this may be among the darkest and funniest episodes that I've seen, and the best philosophical satire. In the episode Michael fed up with Chidi's theoretical approaches to ethics, subjects Chidi to variations on the Trolley Problem - an ethical dilemma on how to fix an unfixable problem. A trolley is heading for a construction worker, how do you save the construction worker without killing everyone in the trolley, who do you save? It's the many outweigh the one, or the one outweigh's the many?
"Okay, so that was trolley problem version number seven. Chidi opted to run over five William Shakespeares instead of one Santa Claus." - Michael
5. Doctor Who - Tenth Doctor, Series 4, 9th Episode. "Forests of the Dead" - in this episode, we meet Dr. River Song, and introduced is perhaps the scariest villain/monster yet - it's air piranha - who we see as creeping shadows. Donna and the Doctor have landed on a planet with an empty library, but where have all the people gone? They were eaten alive by the piranha that inhabited the imported books. Doctor River Song arrives, an interplanetary archeologist who knows all the Doctor's secrets, including his real name, but refuses to tell him anything.
[I don't know if favorite is the right word - so much as what I can remember right now?]
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House - House's Head/Wilson's Heart: At first, I wanted to choose Three Stories but I still fondly remember this devastating season finale.
Sherlock - The Reichenbach Fall: I get it, everybody and their mother is over Sherlock at this point. However, I still think that Moriarty on the roof with his Bee Gees ringtone and that "Staying alive. So boring, isn't it?" line is absolutely iconic. (Was majorly suicidal at that time, so, yeah, it hit a chord.)
The Simpsons - The Springfield Files: Loved this episode as an elementary school kid with an X Files obsession. Back when I was in summer camp, I sent my mother a postcard on which I drew this Mulder-in-a-speedo pic on it because I was a huge dork. Happy memories.
Ted Lasso - No Weddings and a Funeral: As someone who relates a lot to some of the things that happened in Ted's life, I thought it was a really moving episode. Also, that "Easy Lover" scene. Goosebumps.
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Yes, can see why that Ted Lasso episode would resonate. In a way it's very like OMWF in that it's an episode that cracks open what has been going on and things come to a head.
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1) ST:TOS - Amok Time. I was a huge Spock fan at the time I saw this so of course this was a tremendously significant episode. But I also think it established the close bonds among the command crew, and is such a famous episode that even non-fans can often recognize the musical signature of the Kirk-Spock battle.
2) Twin Peaks - Pilot. Despite seeing the first 2 seasons and movie of Twin Peaks, I don't find it holds up all that well on a rewatch. That said, this episode was amazing to see at the time of its release. There had just not been anything else like it on American TV.
3) Roots: Episode 1. Ditto about it being a landmark episode of TV, just for different reasons than Twin Peaks. Also kicked off the miniseries as a U.S. format, which meant lots of great book adaptations.
4) Moonlighting: Atomic Shakespeare. It wasn't even Moonlighting's first historical AU! But I liked it a lot better as it leaned into the humor, and it took the series' dialogue to new heights with its iambic pentameter script. For anyone who's interested: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/05/an-oral-history-of-moonlightings-atomic-shakespeare
5) Buffy: The Freshman. Technically the first episode I ever saw was the delayed airing of Earshot. I was immediately hooked enough to try out the debut of Angel as well. But Freshman was actually a good intro to the series because it was a soft reboot of the show, with cast and setting changes. Also, S4 as a whole is so underrated a season -- Hush, Something Blue, Pangs, Primeval, Restless!
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