Ask Lemmy

Maybe not favorite of all shows but the first that came to mind;

Out of Gas, Firefly

Take my love
Take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care 'cause I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me

Firefly, Out of Gas

The Tales of Ba Sing Se from S2E15 of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

It is an incredibly poignant, albeit beautiful tableau about the loss of a child in a filler episode of a Y-7 Nickelodeon show. On top of that, the voice actor whose character is at the center of this incredibly painful story was dying of esophageal cancer during the recording and the episode ends with his in memoriam.

The Luck of the Fryrish - Futurama

Fry spent his life thinking his brother was a dick who was stealing his personality, when all he really wanted was to be around him. And by the time he realized it, it was too late. Having a similar relationship with my brother, this hit close to home. I keep telling myself if I ever got a tattoo, it would be a 7 leaf clover.

"Blink" Episode 11, season 3, Sep 3, 2007 Doctor Who

Edge of your seat. It was so enjoyable.

Someone already mentioned my top favorite (Community - "Pillows and Blankets"). So I'll have to go to my backup which is its equal.

Community - S3E04 - Remedial Chaos Theory.

Why? Because it's the quintesential Community episode; goofiness, intelligence, absurdity, slapstick. and it all exists in one package)

I don't know if it's my favorite, but the first one to immediately come to mind is the episode of The Last of Us featuring Nick Offerman. It was just heartbreakingly beautiful.

Scrubs, Where do you think we are?

A perfect misdirection the entire episode, us as the viewer have no idea what is happening or why Dr Cox is losing it, until it all just shatters. We experience his grief firsthand, not understanding and denying it, until the world shatters around us and reality finally forces its way through. It's perfectly done, and completely gut wrenching

"I'm disabled!" Is a classic reference in my house that cannot be used in pleasant / uncultured company. It's great to see my people are out there!

I'm not the biggest Seth MacFarlane fan, but the American Dad episode "Joint Custody" is pure classic.

I really want to pick an episode of Community, but I'm having a hard time nailing down just one. There's the obvious answers like Remedial Chaos Theory or Modern Warfare. I just love the whole series. Maybe Basic Intergluteal Numismatics, The Asscrack Bandit episode, just because it's so layered it really lends itself to rewatches.

Master of None has its issues, but there's some standouts in the first season. Parents and Mornings always get me.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Hush

The writing for this silent episode is just wonderful, and the whole cast’s chemistry really shines in their non-verbal acting

Community, season 3, Pillows and Blankets.

It's a campus wide pillow fight between two friends / armies done as a Ken Burns Civil War documentary.

A Dark Quiet Death from Mythic Quest.

Nearly totally removed from the rest of the show, it's about relationships, sacrifice, integrity, compromise. For a comedy show about video games, this episode hit hard and made me reflect on past relationships and really broke me down. A reminder to take responsibility of your actions when you feel like the blame is external.

Then there's a very brief end scene that puts it in context with the regular cast.

This episode should have won an award.

The gay episode of The Last of Us. I think it's the greatest episode of television period.

The IT crowd when they go to the theater. Roy gets caught in the disabled washroom and Moss gets a new job

I know we're being asked for our favoritE, not favoriteS, but it's too difficult to pick just one. Both of them had me unashamedly bawling my eyes out. The first (aired) is the fourth episode of the third season of Black Mirror -- San Junipero. The second is the third episode of the first season of The Last of Us -- Long, Long Time. I couldn't keep my cool during either of them or for quite a while after.

Honorable mention is the series finale of Six Feet Under. The show, by and large, I'm just not a fan of. Like, pretty much at all. But that finale. Good god.

Monorail monorail monorail

Twin Peaks season 3 episode 8 comes to mind. It might not be something I want to watch over and over but it's probably the most incredible thing I've ever seen on broadcast TV. A surrealism short film in the context of a series that both has a self contained story and speaks to the broad narrative of the series. Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, Nine in Nails, The Platters' "My Prayer" on the soundtrack? Amazing! Still to this day I can not believe the artistic freedom allowed by Showtime to create this. Jaw was on the floor for the entire episode. I've felt for a long time that nothing could actually be new/shocking/different on broadcast TV. This changed my mind. Nothing has even been close imho.

Ed, Edd, n Eddy

The Eds break reality

The episode focused on the Eds breaking physics by dismantling the perspective of certain objects. At one point Ed stands on what's supposed to be a silhouette of a house far in the background, grabs the sun, and takes a bite out of it before putting it back in the sky. Eddy at one point grabs Jimmy's outline and pulls it off causing him to melt and slip down a sewer grate.

It's always stuck with me because that's where my love of learning physics came from and it exemplified a lot of the tricks artists use to convey a 3d world in a 2d animation.

Firefly s2e1. Because I daydream that fox weren't a bunch of dicks every now and then.

Samurai Jack - The Scotsman

One of the best episodes of one of the best animated series of all time.

Bo Jack - Free churro.

S05E14 of Breaking Bad - Ozymandias.

I vividly remember watching it for the first time. I've had emotional reactions to movies and shows in the past, but not like this. This is like the immediate aftermath of everything coming to a head, and everyone's acting made the whole episode so immersive. I felt like I was there, and this was happening to my family.

::: spoiler Specifically the scene of Skylar sprinting down the street chasing Walt's car after he kidnaps Holly.. or shit, the scene where Walt is wrestling with Walt Jr. over the knife. Or shit, just the realization that Skylar and Walt Jr. have that Walt essentially killed Hank. Everything is just compounded with the immense grief of losing Hank in such a brutish, unceremonious way. :::

This is still one of my top 3 shows. I'm not good at picking favorites, but I know it's up there.

Always Sunny, "The Gang Hits the Road".

The entire episode is just them driving around Philly with the intention of going elsewhere, but the plan gets derailed in typical gang fashion when they wind up just switching seats over and over (both in and out of the U-Haul) until they end up back where they started, and with zero interest in continuing the original plan.

Pick between the good place season 1, 3, 4 finales.

But I don't really look at shows as by episode generally.

There's an old comedy/parody of soap operas called SOAP. SOAP is the show Benson spun oft from. It starred, among others, Billy Crystal and Katherine Helmond. Absolutely amazing show that I can and will talk about for hours.

S1e9 has a scene in which Jessica (Helmond) discovers that her husband Chester is cheating on her.

She looks to her sister and says Oh, Mary, I would faint if I knew how

It's one of the finest examples of writing, acting, direction... Everything. It's a perfect scene, so much so that it inspired me to want to write, and is the reason I decided to go for a creative writing degree.

For anyone curious, SOAP was so hated by network execs, Christian right orgs and basically all of conservative America that by the end of it's run all advertisers had pulled out except for vlassic pickles, and commercial breaks would just be pickle commercials over and over again during the break. You couldn't watch it in most areas, because locals refused to run it. It featured the first openly gay character in a major network show, a trans story (which did not age as well as it could have, but was progressive for it's time), a lesbian character, interracial relationships, suicide, race relations, crises of faith, extramarital affairs, divorce... In the 70s. It always punched up, and the black and gay characters were almost always the most clever, most witty and sharpest.

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.

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.

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.

Favorite might be a strong term but definitely the most impactful was the episode or two where Bojack Horseman discussed miscarriages because I was watching through the series on a depressive streak after experiencing such a thing in my own life when I got to that part.

I really enjoyed the episode Forks from The Bear, particularly after the traumatic gut punch that was Fishes. Hit close to home and didn't expect a Taylor Swift song to break me, much less in a GOOD way.

Star Trek TNG S6E21 Where Riker gets put through psychological hell in magnificent fashion. It spells out clearly everything that's terrifying about psychedelics, and mental hospitals commandeering your life with discrediting tactics.

Also I love the wrestling episode of King of the Hill because Bobby and Connie subvert expectations of warring adults in grand fashion!

The circle of life episode of Adventure time is such a blast! Very trippy.

It's always sunny in Philadelphia - "The gang cracks the liberty bell"

The Good Place finale

I could watch it and cry every time.

1. 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 😉)

2. 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!

Stargate SG1 S4:E06 Window of Opportunity

I don't know about my favorite ever, but the episode I rewatch and love the most from the last few years is the Jackie Daytona (On the Run) episode of What We Do In The Shadows. It's just perfection from start to finish. It's ridiculous, hilarious, it's endlessly quotable, and it doesn't matter how many times I have seen it- I will always be up for another rewatch. The show is great in it's entirety but that episode was just pure gold!

The Late Philip J Fry in Futurama. It's a really sweet but sad episode, and I loved how they explored all the different eras. Episodes which involve Farnsworth's wacky inventions are always my faves!

I've seen Scrubs mentioned before, so I'll go with the Doctor Who episode "Blink".

It's a weird one because the Doctor is barely in it, but the story's great and it's the Angel's first appearance.

For some reason, my mind went to first episodes/pilots. Of these, I'd say that Suits and The OC are up there with some of the best.

As for the actual best episode, I'd go for My Lunch, the Scrubs episode where there's a rabies outbreak amongst organ transplant patients. Alongside this, probably Tracy does Conan from 30 Rock, and the musical episode of IT Crowd.