A purely fun episode, this is the best of the many movie send-ups The Goldbergs has done in its seven seasons. The show includes a couple shot-for-shot moments from the iconic movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off complete with a Charlie Sheen cameo. I don't always enjoy Barry themed episodes but this was such a fitting premise for the character. It didn't get too sappy either, it stayed very joyful just like the movie.
The funniest episode of a show with a lot of funny moments, New Girl's "Cabin" had two hilarious stories that we were bouncing between. We had Nick and Jess on a couples weekend with their significant others that included trying absinthe and some great comedic moments by both Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson. The "B" story was just as great with Schmidt encouraging Winston's "blackness" and ultimately trying to score some crack cocaine.
I have not finished The Good Wife yet, but this was my favorite episode to date. The show managed to keep the Alicia-Peter relationship ups and downs very interesting. Through almost two seasons it seemed like the show was taking them from a terrible point at the beginning of the series to a reconciliation, but then they turned it upside down with another report of Peter's infidelity, and this time with Kalinda. There's also a great "case of the week" with the return of a great recurring character played by Martha Plimpton.
Superstore is a frequently hilarious comedy but they haven't shied away from grappling with some serious working class and social issues from time to time. It's been at its best as it has dealt with a long but captivating arc regarding unions that is still going on. This episode had that arc but then meshed it with a really powerful story about illegal immigration that ended with Mateo being hauled away. And as always, they handled it with humor so it never got too heavy handed.
I already talked about my love of the ending arc of Bates Motel in my Top 10 Dramas, but this was really the climax of the series. As others tried to help Norma see the truth about Norman, she refused to listen and by the end of the episode, she was dead by result of a murder-suicide attempted by Norman that he survived. The show is really a heartbreaking and devastating look at mental illness and it was never more clear than in this chilling episode.
Parenthood was a tough show to pick individual episodes from because they all connect so much from episode to episode. I went with "The Offer" for a couple reasons including a good Amber & Drew story and the potential sale of the Braverman family house. But the biggest reason was a scene in the car with Adam, Kristina and Max where Max worried he was a freak and Adam and Kristina felt helpless except to try to comfort him. It was one of the most heartbreaking moments in a series full of them.
Master of None was a very experimental comedy that had ups and downs in terms of quality which is to be expected. By far the best episode was the "Thanksgiving" episode that jump through decades and a coming out/coming of age story for Denise with a great guest appearance by Angela Bassett as her traditional mother. Dev's continued integration into the story allowed for some great comedic moments while the more emotional story was happening.
There was a time when Scandal was the most thrilling show on TV week after week. It climaxed with the episode following the shooting of President Fitzgerald Grant. As he was being tended to at the hospital, the show flashed back to how he got together with Olivia in an episode that filled in a lot of the gaps the story had left open. All seemed like it was going to end calmly until it was revealed at the ending of the episode that Huck was the shooter. Even though the truth was more convoluted, I still remember my jaw dropping at that moment.
Black-ish has never shied away from controversial topics but it has been done to varying degrees of success. Sometimes, I feel like they are too heavy handed. They struck the exact right tone with the season two opener, dealing with the "n" word. I think it was because the show explored the issue without attempting to solve it. It had some hilarious moments (the list and discussion of who can and can't say the word still makes me laugh when I think of it) and some poignant moments.
11. THE GOOD PLACE #13 "Michael's Gambit" (NBC, 1/19/17)The most famous episode of The Good Place, "Michael's Gambit" took everything we thought we knew about this show and turned it on its head. Rarely has a TV show, especially a network one, been so willing to literally change everything. I actually wasn't watching The Good Place then and found out about the twist before getting back into the show but it still floored me with how they decided to do it. I can't imagine how thrilling it must have been to genuinely be caught off guard by it.
It was tough to pick an episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel which has been wonderful since the beginning. But my favorite arc they have done was the Catskill arc and the best episode of that bunch is when they first arrive. The show is a time capsule in general and this on location spot feels even more like a throwback. We also get the hilarious revelation of Abe's morning exercise routine and the start of the even more hilarious on-going story of Susie posing as a worker at the resort.
Sterling K. Brown had quite a decade on TV with his turns in The People vs. OJ Simpson and This is Us. But he also had one brilliant guest appearance on Brooklyn Nine-Nine in an episode that helped revitalize Brooklyn for me towards the end of its fifth season and right before its cancellation on FOX (before being revived on NBC). This episode barely featured any actors besides Brown, Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher. As they stay up all night trying to break Brown in relation to a murder, the show expertly explores the best relationship the show offers between Jake Peralta and Captain Holt.
The Middle ended its nine year run with a finale that was so perfect for a show that was a model of consistency. It rewarded longtime fans with a lot of callbacks to previous episodes. However, it also didn't try to do too much or go too big. It kept with the low-key nature of the show and its trademark sweetness. It's very hard to make a last episode work on all levels and The Middle is one of the very few I've seen that was able to strike every note perfectly. I'm also glad the Sue Heck spinoff didn't happen because I thought the epilogue for all the characters was perfect.
The sixth season finale of Parks and Recreation felt an awful lot like a series finale and I think it was better than the actual series finale (which was still good). This episode brought back pretty much every important side character and had a cameo from Michelle Obama. As opposed to the more ambitious and time hopping series finale, it had a very strong linear story that centered around a possible departure from Pawnee for Leslie and Ben and celebrated everything was that was so wonderful about the series.
How I Met Your Mother really declined in its later years and I was among those who thought the final episode misfired on every level. One reason it did is the show didn't seem to respect how well they cast the "mother" with Cristin Milioti. They made fans fall in love with her and then killed her off. One way fans fell in love was thanks to the last great episode of the series - the 200th and one that showed the mother's journey to Ted. It was delightful and Milioti was so charming. It made me want to watch an entire series from her perspective.
It was hard to pick a Mad Men episode for this list. Like Parenthood, so many episodes build on each other with so many slow burn stories. But the best episode is one that is widely regarded among the best if not the best of the series and it occurs exactly halfway through the run. "The Suitcase" takes the two most fascinating characters - Don and Peggy - and puts them alone together for a majority of the episode. Don and Peggy go on such opposite paths throughout the series and it's fitting that halfway through the run their character arcs would meet in the middle for one fascinating night.
FX's brilliant The People vs. OJ Simpson was filled to the brink with dynamic performances but none more so than Sarah Paulson's Marcia Clark. There were many times where she made me as a viewer mad at her for bad calculations that perhaps contributed to the verdict. But in "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia," she made me feel sorry for her as the show explored how a sexist media contributed to the caricature that Clark endured. She didn't need to say a thing as she proudly debuted a new haircut only to be immediately torn down. It allowed us to see her as a person again and not the caricature she unfairly became.
Friday Night Lights was such a beautiful drama for its entire run. On paper, it was about football. At its heart, it was about the relationship between Eric and Tami Taylor. The show recognized that in the series finale and made it more about the relationship than anything else with such a title so fitting for the Taylor marriage - "Always." The show gave closure and epilogues to many of the characters but we didn't even find out how the state game went for East Dillon in a dramatic sports moment because, once again, the show was never about that. As I've said several times, it's hard to come up with a perfect series finale but this one did it better than any other of the decade.
Steve Carell's goodbye to The Office was the beginning of the end for that show. It never recovered from Michael Scott not being there but his send-off was brilliant. For years, Michael Scott was a fascinatingly complex character. He would enrage us but Carell's nuanced performance also made us root for him or feel bad for him at times. Michael Scott got to ride off into the sunset in "Goodbye Michael" finally having snagged his beloved Holly and getting the family life he always dreamed of. But first he got to say goodbye to everyone in the office in a special way, leaving his heart-tugging farewell to Pam for the end. This should have been the series finale.
This is Us has had many tear-inducing moments in its four seasons but the most heartbreaking and beautiful episode wasn't even about one of the main family members (at least not directly). It was all about the life and death of Ron Cephas Jones' William. As Randall and William traveled to Memphis, we learned about the many twists and turns life takes and why things ended up the way they did. With dynamic performances by Jones, Sterling K. Brown and Jermel Nakia as young William, the episode was a difficult watch. I don't even think I could brave myself to do it again, at least not for awhile. This is Us is not a perfect show but I remember thinking when I finished that episode that it was one of the best episodes of a TV show I have ever seen. Almost three years later, I still feel the same way.
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