Carville on political rhetoric

 ‘Trump Has Given Her a Giant Opening’

Politico / by Ryan Lizza / Sep 28, 2024 at 6:20 PM

Kamala Harris has a chance to win on a message that most people think is Donald Trump’s strength. It’s the economy, stupid.

That’s the view of James Carville, who legendarily helped Bill Clinton win the White House with that message in 1992. Now, the “Ragin’ Cajun” says Trump “has given her a giant opening” by telling voters “they have nothing to lose” financially by voting for him. Carville’s advice to Harris is to remind voters the opposite is true with an argument that goes like this:

“He thinks you have nothing to lose. I think you have something to gain. I think most of you feel like you're pretty secure in your jobs. If you have a little bit in your IRA, you’ve got a little bit more now. You’ve got something to lose.”

This cycle, Carville, 79, has been omnipresent on podcasts and television and in print giving his very, very unfiltered views on 2024. He was an early player in outside efforts to force Joe Biden off the ticket. And he has been a loud critic of certain left-wing strains in the Democratic party. “Winning is Everything, Stupid,” is the title of a new documentary about Carville that is set to premiere on CNN on Oct. 5 — and our conversation for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast about who will win this election amplified its premise.

I caught up with Carville on Thursday. We talked about his outlook on the election; what he thinks Democrats could learn from Trump’s “huckster” style; and why he has absolutely no remorse for voicing his complaint that the Democratic Party’s culture was dominated by what he calls “preachy females.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by Deep Dive Producer Kara Tabor and Senior Producer Alex Keeney. You can listen to the full Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview here: 

Let's talk about the race here. James, where are we right now?

So I can remember a past you can’t, but we can both remember the politics of the 21st century. And in politics of the 21st century, only in one election, 2008, did we know who was going to win. And you know, I don't like to make election predictions, but this is one thing. If there are seven swing states, the most unlikely result is that they break four-three.

You think it's more likely to go one way or the other? 

I think, at the end, somebody is going to close a lot better. And in defense of polling, they can't pick that up sometimes.

It’s funny you say that because I have this memory of you on CNN during election night 2002. That night, all the competitive Senate seats broke towards Republicans. It was a good lesson on what you just described — that swing states don’t always break evenly.

Correct. I put a trash can over my head.

Yes, that's why I remember it. 

It kind of graphically brought the point home.

But the point to remember is there's only so much that polling can give you. And I also think how Harris handles the economy question is critical. And I want to make this point here: I think Trump has given her a giant opening.

The hardest, most difficult strategic thing you can do in American presidential politics is — when can you take credit for the economy? The economy was clearly gangbusters in the ’90s. We got wiped out in ’94 because the recovery had not been underway sufficiently where its tentacles got down to ordinary people.

And so now I get five texts a day [saying]: “Look at this stuff!” Somebody just sent me how good growth was. And if you argue with people by telling them that the economy is better than they think, you're almost [always] going to lose that argument.

But Trump came in and gave [her] a golden opportunity. Because he didn't say, “the economy is sluggish” or “prices are too high. I'll pick it up.” He said, “You have nothing to lose. It's awful. The whole thing has fallen apart. We're going to start slapping tariffs on everything. We're going to start deporting people.”

I think people do feel like they have something to lose. But he has moved the ball from “Is it a good economy or a bad economy?” to an economy where you have nothing to lose. And that's a big shift. Because you now are not burdened with trying to tell people it's better than you think. You can just say, “He thinks you have nothing to lose. I think you have something to gain. I think most of you feel like you're pretty secure in your jobs. If you have a little bit in your IRA, you’ve got a little bit more now. You’ve got something to lose.”

And if she talks about it like that and keeps running loops of tape of [Trump saying], “What the hell do you have to lose? It's all falling apart,” I don't think that's a hard sell to tell people that you’ve got something to lose here.

Let's talk about Harris versus Biden, because what you're talking about here on the economic message had a lot to do with Biden. What’s your analysis of what Harris has been able to do message-wise better than Biden? And where do you think she's still got some work to do? 

Well, she's 25 years younger. That's the most powerful message that you had. And I can't tell you the number of people that would do focus groups or research that would call me and say that they don't think Biden has anything to do with the economy because he's too old. And you’d actually [hear] people say, “How could he cause inflation? He's too old to cause inflation. He’s too old to fix it.” I mean, come on, people.

You can’t blame him for anything. You can’t give him credit for anything.

She's done better. I think the way that she closes is not “the economy is better than you think,” but “we think you have got something and you can do better. And he thinks you’ve got nothing to lose, that your whole economic situation is equivalent to a third world country.” And that's a much easier argument for Democrats.

Let's talk about an issue that you are identified with a lot, which is telling Democrats to tone down identity politics. This is a tricky subject for a candidate who is a Black woman, where there's a temptation to want to emphasize her gender and biracial heritage. But it seems like her campaign is downplaying that. What’s your sense of how she is dealing with these competing pressures?

I very much agree with her strategy. It is evident that she's a woman. You don't need to tell people. I can look.

I can't tell you what part Black or what part South Asian she is, but I could figure out that she's not a Caucasian. You don't need it.

So it's like the white Democratic candidates that need to do that sometimes? 

People know your race. They can look. Now, a lot of times — I have pollsters who tell me they don’t even ask race questions anymore because — thank God — if you go to metropolitan Atlanta, you don't know who the hell is what. Or you go to Fort Bend County, Texas. And I think it's a good thing. It’s not the basis upon which to run a campaign. People know it. They can see it. You got to give the public some credit. I can look at you and tell you’re a Caucasian. There's no doubt about it.

Do you see her consciously and affirmatively trying to stay away from that issue? 

Yes. She doesn't bring it up.

You had this great line in the documentary that “Democrats spend too much time trying to change the dictionary rather than changing minds.” That's sort of your anti-woke slogan, right? 

First of all, [identity politics] is not popular at all. Twelve percent of the entire Democratic Party describes itself as “progressive liberal.” I don't know what that means. I know I'm a liberal. I really am.

We started using language that people do not use. And we are trying to convince people to vote for us. And I tell the identity community, “I want the same things you want. But if you want to accomplish a place where people have greater opportunity to succeed, where wealthy and fortunate people pay a greater share of taxes to give less fortunate people a leg up in the world, I'm 1,000 percent for that. But why wouldn't you communicate that in the language that people use every day?"

I always use the example where I live in New Orleans. I have more encounters with Black people than probably anybody in the commentariat. And suppose I went down to the store and I see three guys and I said, “Hey fellas, how are things in the community of color?”

They’d say, “What’s this son of a bitch talking about?”

And to make a further point, the term “communities of color” is actually irritating. And I'll tell you why. Because the assumption by overeducated whites is that everybody who is not white is the same. And it's just bullshit. And it's so frickin’ arrogant.

You're arguing with the intersectionalists. You've been in academia, you know what that word means. 

They're fine people. They didn't storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. They're not pulling for Russia. They're actually kind of well-motivated — I would say naive — but clearly want to rush to the future. You know, they want to get on with 50 years from now today. And, you know, the Supreme Court could do a lot of damage in the next 50 years if we don't we don't win elections.

You're constantly in touch with all of the factions of the Democratic Party. What's the best argument you've heard on the other side that has made you modify your views on the more progressive, identity-driven issues? 

To be a member of the Democratic Party historically is, above all, to be a member of a coalition. We actually practiced coalition politics way more than they do. And what I would tell people is, if you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you're not in a coalition. The nature of a coalition is to cause certain members of the coalition some discomfort. Now, our coalition goes from Dick Cheney to Pramila Jayapal. Somebody is going to be uncomfortable in this coalition, right?

But the contradictions in the coalition get resolved after the election, not before the election. And that's very, very important to remember. And the other thing to remember is — he now has changed his mind, I congratulate him — but in 2016, Bernie Sanders said the important thing is to have the argument, not win the election. No! The important thing is to win the election. Then you have the argument.

Let me push back on that a little bit, because each member of this coalition will say, “You've got to lock in the promises before the election.” And that's why these fights have to happen. Your argument is about winning in politics, but if they’re going to help your candidate win, then these interest groups are going to want something from the candidate. 

And that's fine. I know interest groups. I raise money for an interest group. They used to come in to the campaign and they said “the activist community.” And I said, “Get these goddamn people as far away from me as you can. Put them two floors away from me.” Because if you work for an interest group, it might be an environmental group, a women's reproductive health group, a fight poverty group, historical preservation — you ever see these people? Man, they’ll drive you goddamn batshit in the middle of a campaign.

They represent and raise money from people who support this. This is their passion. The campaign and the campaign manager has one job: to win the election. If you want, after we win, come see the people and we'll talk about a cabinet position maybe, or we'll talk about how we do legislation, but for right now, tell your people this is the best way. Don't push an activist agenda during the middle of a campaign. Push winning the election. And that's kind of hard for people to understand.

For a long time, Democrats just wanted to feel good about themselves: We were more tolerant, we were more educated. We had a broader view. And we’d lose the election because the public wasn't ready to accept our advanced vision of the nation. That's a stupid fucking argument. OK? I can't tell you the number of times in politics — “Oh, poor Dukakis. He was such a good man,” and “they used Willie Horton” or you know, “John Kerry was a really accomplished guy.” True. But it's no good if you don't win. Politics is not to make an individual feel superior about her or himself. It is to win an election. And we have to understand that.

Listen to this episode of Playbook Deep Dive on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's talk about hucksterism in politics. In your documentary, you make the case for some salesmanship in the business. Trump definitely believes that. Tell us a little bit about hucksterism and what should Kamala Harris be doing that borrows a little bit from it?

So, you know, my mother sold encyclopedias. And the word “huckster” — I’m kind of favorably disposed towards it.

You like it, but other people think it's negative. 

I understand. But other people don't understand what politics is about. To me, hucksterism is effective salesmanship. And I have so many people that I would see and they [would say], “I want to do policy, James.”

Well, you could do all the frickin’ policy you want, but if we ain’t selling, we’re not winning. And there's become this idea that there's something sleazy about selling, which is a very dangerous idea. I'm doing this podcast, you're selling this to somebody, I promise you.

I mean, everybody should be selling all the time. Campaigns are not decided by editorial page writers, all right? They're really decided by salesmen and hucksters.

Who are the Louisiana Republicans that you know? It seems like you and Mike Johnson still have some beef. 

I mean, I know a lot of Republicans.

Do you know Johnson at all?

Not really. But I did a whole YouTube video on him and I got something like 800,000 views. I know exactly who Mike Johnson is. I know precisely who he is. I know the people that influenced him. People don't realize how many influential, really far right people come from just the Baton Rouge area. Rod Dreher is probably the most influential person on that side of the equation. Tony Perkins is very big in that kind of Christian nationalist movement. And a lot of them formed who Mike Johnson is. And Mike Johnson — I think he actually believes the earth is 5,000 years old. But he also fervently believes in fossil fuels and is too stupid to see the distinction between young earth-ism and fossil fuels.

You just don't know enough about intelligent design, James. 

Right.

But I am not trying to beat up on Mike Johnson. Because don't you think that one of the most interesting things about him is that he has governed as speaker without paying too much attention to those issues and the sort of ideology of the folks you're describing there?

A good question. He tries to accommodate [them] everywhere [he] can. But at the end of the day, on Ukraine funding, at the end of the day, on keeping the government open, I think he did. I do think Johnson has exhibited an ability to at least demonstrate he has some idea of the majesty of the job.

One thing we didn't talk about is your opinion of Tim Walz. I should mention that podcast you did with Gov. Josh Shapiro I thought was interesting because at one point he called you out for your very, very famous expression about Pennsylvania being Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Alabama in between. Am I right about that?

The actual quote is from “Paoli to Penn Hills, it's Alabama without Black people.” Paoli is the westernmost Philadelphia suburb and Penn Hills, the easternmost of Pittsburgh.

Oh interesting! You changed a bit or was that always your quote?

That was the original quote. Then it just became “Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Alabama in the middle.” The only people that take offense from that are people that are not from Pennsylvania. People say, “That's exactly right!”

No, Shapiro told you he was offended by it, if I'm remembering correctly, in the podcast with you and Al Hunt.

Well if he did, I'm not offended that he's offended by it. He does very well in “Alabama.” In that part of the state he really outperforms.

All right, so you’re sticking to this despite what he said?

Absolutely. Because I think it's a graphic way — if you say something where people have an image of it, you get your point across. If I’d say that “outside of urban areas, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania exhibits certain rural characteristics that would be in line with more the Midwest than it would be the East Coast,” no one knows [what] the fuck I'm saying.

One of the best pieces of advice from a famous Orwell essay about writing is about how crucial mental images are in getting any point across. He knew what he was talking about.

If I think that Democrats are doing insufficiently well for males, I will message it. But if I say there are “too many preachy females in Democratic campaign culture,” I get my point across. OK? Everybody knows what I'm saying. What are they going to do to me? I mean, the real thing that somebody told me two years ago and I actually concluded was kind of true is that, “Man, you can say shit no one else can say.”

You personally can?

Yes.

Why is that? Why do you get away with that?

Well, there's nothing to fire me from. But if you're the adjunct art professor at some overpriced college in Minneapolis, they'll run your ass out in a second.

Regarding your “preachy females” comment, a lot of people thought that was sexist and beat you up for it. Did you feel it necessary to apologize? Did you apologize? Should you apologize? 

I made my point. And the fact that you're talking about it is making my point because I was making the point that our messaging tends to be over-feminized: “Don't drink beer, don't smoke dope, don't watch football.” And they’re like, “Get out of my life!” It’s a guy working 10 hours a day in a tire store in South Atlanta and he doesn't want someone in his face shaking a finger at him.

Was the statement exaggerated? Yes, it was intentionally exaggerated. The idea that somebody like me is going to sit down with Maureen Dowd and do an interview and use something like that and not know what I was doing and looking for a desired effect is ludicrous. That was not a gaffe. That was intentional. And by the way, I think it worked. I think [Tim] Walz, in his own way, Harris’s people said, “We're going to find the most male-like guy we can find. We're going to find a soldier, a football coach, a hunter.” Boom!

Do you think it was the right pick?

I would have wanted Josh [Shapiro] or Andy [Beshear] because I know them. They're friends of mine.

So it was a personal thing.

Yeah, it's a personal thing. But I think that strategically, the decision made sense. She didn't want another coastal person — which is a problem we have — and she wanted someone with kind of real male credentials. It doesn't matter that he's liberal. The problem we have is not ideology, it's cultural. And it's so felt by people in the rest of the country. Coastal people have no idea. They think they are educated, smart, decent, tolerant people. And they may be, but they have no idea of their arrogance or the way that they are received by people. And I used to think that when I lived in Washington, “Ah, I know most of these people. They’re not that arrogant.” But when I got to Louisiana, there is a — I wouldn’t say intentional — but there's a kind of condescending look at the rest of the country and people feel it.

Listen to this episode of Playbook Deep Dive on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trump Cognitive Decline? Atlantic

 Trump’s Repetitive Speech Is a Bad Sign

Harris dominates Trump in debate

•The Atlantic / by Richard A. Friedman / Sep 12, 2024 at 2:30 PM

Tuesday’s presidential debate was, among other things, an excellent real-world test of the candidates’ cognitive fitness—and any fair-minded mental-health expert would be very worried about Donald Trump’s performance.

The former president has repeatedly bragged over the past several years that he has passed various mental-status exams with flying colors. Most of these tests are designed to detect fairly serious cognitive dysfunction, and as such, they are quite easy to pass: They ask simple questions such as “What is the date?” and challenge participants to spell world backwards or write any complete sentence. By contrast, a 90-minute debate that involves unknown questions and unanticipated rebuttals requires candidates to think on their feet. It is a much more demanding and representative test of cognitive health than a simple mental-status exam you take in a doctor’s office. Specifically, the debate serves as an evaluation of the candidates’ mental flexibility under pressure—their capacity to deal with uncertainty and the unforeseen.

Just to be clear: Although I am a psychiatrist, I am not offering any specific medical diagnoses for any public figure. I have never met or examined either candidate. But I watched the debate with particular attention to the candidates’ vocabulary, verbal and logical coherence, and ability to adapt to new topics—all signs of a healthy brain. Although Kamala Harris certainly exhibited some rigidity and repetition, her speech remained within the normal realm for politicians, who have a reputation for harping on their favorite talking points. By contrast, Donald Trump’s expressions of those tendencies were alarming. He displayed some striking, if familiar, patterns that are commonly seen among people in cognitive decline.

Much of the time, following Trump’s train of thought was difficult, if not impossible. In response to a question from the moderator David Muir about whether he regretted anything he’d done during the January 6 insurrection, Trump said:

I have said “blood bash—bath.” It was a different term, and it was a term that related to energy, because they have destroyed our energy business. That was where bloodbath was. Also, on Charlottesville, that story has been, as you would say, debunked. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Jesse—all of these people, they covered it. If they go an extra sentence, they will see it was perfect. It was debunked in almost every newspaper. But they still bring it up, just like they bring 2025 up. They bring all of this stuff up. I ask you this: You talk about the Capitol. Why are we allowing these millions of people to come through on the southern border? How come she’s not doing anything—and I’ll tell you what I would do. And I would be very proud to do it.

Evading the question is an age-old debate-winning tactic. But Trump’s response seems to go beyond evasion. It is both tangential, in that it is completely irrelevant to the question, and circumstantial, in that it is rambling and never gets to a point. Circumstantial and tangential speech can indicate a fundamental problem with an underlying cognitive process, such as logical and goal-oriented thinking. Did Trump realize that his answer was neither germane to the question nor logical?

Eleven days before the debate, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to criticism of his rambling speech by claiming that it is part of a deliberate strategy to frustrate his opponents. “I do the weave,” he told the audience. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together. And it’s like—and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say: ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’” Viewers can judge for themselves whether the disjointed statements they heard during the debate cohered brilliantly in the end.

[Read: How swing voters reacted to the Trump-Harris debate]

The speech Trump excuses as the “weave” is one of many tics that are starting to look less strategic and more uncontrollable. Last week, David A. Graham wrote in The Atlantic that the former president has a penchant for describing objects and events as being “like nobody has ever seen before.” At the debate, true to form, Trump repeatedly fell back on the superlative. Of the economy under his presidency: “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.” Of inflation under the Biden administration: “I’ve never seen a worse period of time.” Of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan: “That was one of the most incompetently handled situations anybody has ever seen.” Harris, for her part, also showed some verbal tics and leaned on tired formulations. For instance, she invited viewers more than 15 times to “understand” things. But Trump’s turns of phrase are so disjointed, so unusual, and so frequently uttered that they’re difficult to pass off as normal speech.

Trump’s speech during the debate was repetitive not only in form but also in content. Politicians regularly return during debates to their strongest topics—that’s just good strategy. Harris twice mentioned Project 2025, which voters widely disapproved of in recent polling, and insisted three times that Americans want to “move forward” or “chart a new way forward.” Trump likewise expounded at every opportunity on immigration, a weak issue for Harris. But plenty of the former president’s repetitions seemed compulsive, not strategic. After praising the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Trump spoke unprompted, at length, and without clarity about gas pipelines in the United States and Europe, an issue unlikely to connect with many voters. A few minutes later, he brought up the pipelines again. The moderators cut him off for a commercial break. Even in cases where Trump could have reasonably defended himself, he was unable to articulate basic exculpatory evidence. When Harris raised his infamous “very fine people on both sides” remark regarding the 2017 white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump could have pointed out that even at the time, he had specified, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists—because they should be condemned totally.” But he did not.

[Read: The mistake that could cost Trump the election]

In psychiatry, the tendency to conspicuously and rigidly repeat a thought beyond the point of relevance, called “perseverance,” is known to be correlated with a variety of clinical disorders, including those involving a loss of cognitive reserve. People tend to stick to familiar topics over and over when they experience an impairment in cognitive functioning—for instance, in short-term memory. Short-term memory is essentially your mental sketch pad: how many different thoughts you can juggle in your mind, keep track of, and use at the same time. Given the complexity of being president, short-term memory is a vital skill.

If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness. A condition such as vascular dementia or Alzheimer’s disease would not be out of the ordinary for a 78-year-old. Only careful medical examination can establish whether someone indeed has a diagnosable illness—simply observing Trump, or anyone else, from afar is not enough. For those who do have such diseases or conditions, several treatments and services exist to help them and their loved ones cope with their decline. But that does not mean any of them would be qualified to serve as commander in chief.

Trump Via Reagan Atlantic

 How the GOP Went From Reagan to Trump

Chris Wallace challenges Dennis Quaid's Trump

•The Atlantic / by Max Boot / Sep 8, 2024 at 3:03 PM

Donald Trump’s far-right worldview has a lot of critics, many of them Republicans, who argue that Ronald Reagan would “roll over” or “turn over” in his grave if he could see what is happening to his old party. The Trump-dominated, populist-nationalist GOP is certainly very different from the conservative party that Reagan led in the 1980s, and Trump is a very different figure, in both outlook and personality, from Reagan. But it’s also true that, however much Trump has changed the Republican Party since 2016 (and the changes have been enormous), the roots of Trumpism can be traced back to Reagan—and, before him, to Barry Goldwater and even earlier figures on the American right. Uncomfortable as it is for many Reagan fans to admit, the 40th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th in multiple ways. These similarities are a reminder that Trump did not emerge from nowhere, and that ridding the Republican Party of his influence won’t be easy.  

The differences between Trump and Reagan are, to be sure, substantial. Trump criticized Reagan’s policies in the ’80s. He took out newspaper advertisements in 1987 to argue that “Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States” and that “the world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

Reagan was pro-immigration and pro–free trade, rejecting the nativism and protectionism that have been Trump’s hallmarks. He launched his 1980 campaign with a speech that included a proposal for a “North American Accord” to allow “peoples and commerce” to “flow more freely” across the borders between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This idea eventually blossomed into the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump called the “worst deal ever.” As president, Reagan signed the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which legalized millions of undocumented immigrants—exactly the kind of “amnesty” provision that Trump and his followers denounce today.

Although Reagan, like Trump, did not see combat, he, unlike Trump, venerated U.S. troops and staunchly supported U.S. alliances such as NATO.

Reagan would never have denounced veterans as “suckers” and “losers,” denigrated Medal of Honor recipients, or told the Russians that they can do “whatever the hell they want” to U.S. allies who don’t pay more for their defense.

[Jeffrey Goldberg: Trump says Americans who died in war are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’]

So, too, is it inconceivable that Reagan would have raised any concerns about supporting Ukraine. As president, Reagan backed anti-Communist insurgents from Afghanistan to Nicaragua.

The stylistic differences between Reagan and Trump may be even more notable than the policy differences. Trump is a foul-mouthed vulgarian who maligns his critics in harsh terms. Reagan, by contrast, was a consummate gentleman who seldom had a harsh word for anyone. A product of the early-20th-century, small-town Midwest, Reagan, even in the privacy of his own diary, never spelled out hell and damn (instead writing “h---l” and “d---n”). Reagan revered America as a “shining city on a hill” and ran for reelection in 1984 claiming it was “Morning in America.” Reagan would never say, as Trump just did, that “the American dream is dead” and that “our country is doing really badly.” Reagan inspired hope, whereas Trump spreads fear.

Despite their many differences, however, the only two presidents who have hosted a nationally televised show before taking office (General Electric Theater for Reagan, The Apprentice for Trump) also share some significant similarities. Reagan was a populist who reviled the government he led, even if he did not call it the “deep state,” and belittled expertise. He often quipped, “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” Reagan’s attacks on the federal government were wittier and tamer than Trump’s, but they intensified the anti-government mood that Trump has exploited in recent years. Reagan’s policies, tilted toward the wealthy, exacerbated income inequality, thus also contributing to the populist backlash that Trump now harnesses.

More similarities: Reagan was proud of his dealmaking skills (learned as a union negotiator, not a real-estate mogul), and he promised in his 1980 campaign to “make America great again.” He displayed an often-shocking ignorance of public policy, even if he knew far more, and read far more, than Trump. He often made false statements, even if he uttered fewer than Trump has, and he had a cavalier attitude toward fact-checking. Asked in 1965 by a graduate student about his oft-repeated and false claim that “no nation in history has ever survived a tax burden of one-third of our national income,” Reagan breezily replied, “I’m sorry … I just plain don’t have that source any longer,” and continued repeating it in his speeches. Reagan arguably inured Republicans to Trump’s far more pervasive falsehoods.

So, too, did Reagan’s campaign rhetoric sometimes contain the extremism espoused today by Trump. Early in his political career, Reagan regularly accused Democrats of plotting to turn America into a socialist and even communist country with their welfare programs, just as Trump later did. In his famous 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech, Reagan accused Democrats of “taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.” Reagan later moderated his rhetoric; Trump never has.  

Perhaps the most disturbing Trump-Reagan parallels concern public health and race relations. Reagan mishandled the AIDS epidemic, just as Trump mishandled COVID-19, resulting in needless loss of life. Reagan did not make a speech on AIDS until 1987, six years after the first cases were reported, and did next to nothing to mobilize a federal response even as nearly 50,000 Americans died of the disease while he was in office.

[David Frum: Is America still the ‘shining city on a hill’?]

Although Reagan always insisted, much like Trump, that “I just am incapable of prejudice,” he regularly appealed to white-backlash voters—albeit less crudely than Trump. Reagan opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he called “purely an emotional bill based on political expediency,” and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which he described as “humiliating to the South.” He later used coded appeals to white voters, condemning “welfare queens,” demanding “law and order,” and, in 1980, endorsing “states’ rights” in Mississippi near the site where three civil-rights workers had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. As president, Reagan tried to water down civil-rights laws and opposed tough sanctions on South Africa.

We should not exaggerate the similarities between Reagan and Trump. If Reagan were alive today, he undoubtedly would be criticized by Trump supporters as a RINO (“Republican in name only”). But Reagan, like other Republican politicians of earlier eras, helped set the GOP—and the country—on the path that led it to embrace Trump. The question for the Republican Party now is: What comes next? Will the party continue moving ever further to the right, toward a Viktor Orbán–style authoritarian movement that would presumably have Reagan (an avid believer in democracy) doing more spinning in his grave? Or will it revert to being a more center-right party in the Reagan mold? In the 1980s, “Reaganism” represented a right turn for the GOP. Today it would represent a left turn—a restoration of a more moderate, if still conservative, outlook. That may still happen. But only if Trump loses decisively in November—and even then, it won’t be easy.

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Top 100 TV Episodes per Rolling Stone 50-100

SEPTEMBER 2, 2024

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY. IMAGES USED IN ILLUSTRATION: URSULA COYOTE/AMC; RUSS MARTIN/FX; AMAZON STUDIOS; DISNEY ENTERTAINMENT/GETTY IMAGES; MICHAEL YARISH/CBS/GETTY IMAGES; FOX; AMC; GUY D'ALEMA/FX

THE THING THAT has always distinguished TV storytelling from its big-screen counterpart is the existence of individual episodes. We consume our series — even the ones that we binge — in distinct chunks, and the medium is at its best when it embraces this. The joy of watching an ongoing series comes as much from the separate steps on the journey as it does from the destination, if not more. Few pop-culture experiences are more satisfying than when your favorite show knocks it out of the park with a single chapter, whether it’s an episode that wildly deviates from the series’ norm, or just an incredibly well-executed version of the familiar formula.  

Still, that episodic nature makes TV fundamentally inconsistent. The greatest drama ever made, The Sopranos, was occasionally capable of duds like the Columbus Day episode. And even mediocre shows can churn out a single episode at the level of much stronger overall series.  

For this Rolling Stone list of the 100 greatest episodes of all time, we looked at both the peak installments of classic series, as well as examples of lesser shows that managed to briefly punch way above their weight class. We have episodes from the Fifties all the way through this year. We stuck with narrative dramas and comedies only — so, no news, no reality TV, no sketch comedy, talk shows, etc. In a few cases, there are two-part episodes, but we mostly picked solo entries. And while it’s largely made up of American shows (as watched by our American staff), a handful of international entries made the final cut.

100

Fargo, “Bisquik” (Season 5, Episode 10)

FX

Our list of classic episodes starts with its most recent entry, from a January 2024 installment of the great FX anthology drama inspired by the work of the Coen brothers. Fargo Season Five dealt with the growing sense of polarization in America, and the debts — both literal and figurative — that everyone feels they’re owed from everyone else. It all culminates in a long, surprising, utterly gorgeous scene where our firecracker of a heroine, Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) finds herself face-to-face with immortal sin-eater Ole Munch (Sam Spruell), who has come for a rematch of their clash in the season premiere. With her husband and daughter in the house with her, Dot declines to fight this terrifying man, and instead explains, patiently and with palpable kindness, that perhaps Ole Munch might prefer a world focused less on resentment and more on love. —Alan Sepinwall

99

The Cosby Show, “Theo’s Holiday” (Season 2, Episode 22)

NBCUNIVERSAL/GETTY IMAGES

There’s a temptation with these lists to immediately disqualify anything associated with the true monsters like Bill Cosby. But his crimes shouldn’t erase from the history books the wonderful work of everyone else involved in “Theo’s Holiday,” in which the Huxtables get together for an elaborate role-playing exercise to teach Theo (Malcolm Jamal-Warner) a lesson about the economics of life in, as he puts it, “the real world.” All the actors throws themselves into these larger-than-life characters, like Clair (Phylicia Rashad) as a cheery restaurant owner as well as a fast-talking furniture saleslady, or little Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam) as a powerful businesswoman. The idea of the whole clan teaming up to both mock Theo and help him out is so intoxicating that even his best friend Cockroach (Carl Anthony Payne II) admits, “I wish they did this kind of stuff at my house!” —A.S. 

98

South Park, “Scott Tenorman Must Die” (Season 5, Episode 4)

COMEDY CENTRAL

A show that features an anthropomorphized turd in a Christmas hat and at least one projectile vomit scene per episode, South Park has never been known as highbrow. Yet there are elements of “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” a Season Five episode focused on Cartman’s elaborate revenge plot against a high schooler who scammed him by selling his pubes, that are nothing less than virtuosic. There’s the plot itself, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, which culminates (spoiler alert, I guess) with the protagonist forcing a woman to unwittingly eat her own children. There’s the exquisite cameo appearance by Radiohead, the culmination of Scott Tenorman’s debasement. And there’s Cartman’s classic taunt, “Charade you are, Scott Tenorman,” a reference to an obscure track of Pink Floyd’s Animals. Co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have often referred to “Scott Tenorman Must Die” as the apex of Cartman’s villainy, marking the character’s transition from obnoxious troll to next-level sociopath. But really, the episode marks another transition entirely: that of Stone and Parker from poop joke purveyors to dark-comedy masters. —Ej Dickson

97

You’re the Worst, “There Is Not Currently a Problem” (Season 2, Episode 7)

BYRON COHEN/FX

Here’s an odd but welcome trend: FX not only has an excellent track record with extremely niche half-hour comedies (some of which you’ll find higher on this list), but many of them manage to weave thoughtful, even dramatic, material about mental health issues into their usual humor. The hip-hop comedy Dave did it with a terrific episode where we learn that Lil Dicky’s hype man GaTa struggles with bipolar disorder. The final Reservation Dogs season revolved around a character who’d spent much of his life institutionalized. And You’re the Worst — a romantic comedy about two selfish, immature people who would be horrified to learn they were the main characters in a romantic comedy — found a new level with an episode revealing that Gretchen (Aya Cash) suffers from clinical depression. Much of “There Is Not Currently a Problem” is fairly comedic: a bottle episode where the gang is stuck together with Gretchen and Jimmy (Chris Geere) because a local marathon has caused a traffic jam in their neighborhood. But this forced closeness comes while Gretchen is trapped in her latest depressive episode, with no choice but to finally reveal her condition to Jimmy — and to admit that she’s less worried that he’ll reject her for it than that he’ll become the latest man convinced he can “fix” her. Cash conveys every bit of the pain and fear Gretchen is experiencing, in a way that enriches the laughter rather than undercutting it. —A.S.  

96

In Treatment, “Alex: Week Eight” (Season 1, Episode 37)

HBO

Most episodes of this drama were presented as real-time therapy sessions between Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) and one of his patients, or Paul visiting his own shrink. Occasionally, though, outsiders found their way into Paul’s office, like Alex Prince, Sr. (Glynn Turman), the father of one of Paul’s patients, seeking answers as to why his son committed suicide. Alex Jr. had spent most of his sessions to that point painting his dad as such a monster, it should have been impossible for any actor to both live up to those stories and not seem like a cartoon. Turman, in one of the best dramatic performances you will ever see on television, somehow did it, channeling both the bogeyman and the grieving father, in a riveting two-hander with Byrne. —A.S.   

95

Bob’s Burgers, “Tina-rannosaurus Wrecks” (Season 3, Episode 7)

CR: FOX

Bob’s Burgers loves puns, but “Tina-rannosaurus Wrecks” is a groaner of a title even for them. No matter, because the episode so expertly combines many of the series’ hallmarks into one tight, funny, awkward package. Once again, a well-meaning parenting gesture by Bob (H. Jon Benjamin) goes awry, when he lets Tina (Dan Mintz) drive the family station wagon in a nearly empty parking lot, and she somehow crashes into the only other car there. Once again, the Belchers find themselves on the verge of financial calamity, when the other car turns out to belong to Bob’s ruthless rival, Jimmy Pesto (Jay Johnston). Once again, the family gets mixed up in the plans of a lunatic, when insurance adjuster Chase (Bob Odenkirk) forces them to aid him in an insurance fraud scheme in order to get out of the mess with Jimmy. And, once again, Bob’s lovable but terrible children somehow prove surprisingly useful, when Tina uses her brother’s Casio keyboard to get incriminating evidence that frees them from Chase’s clutches. All’s well that ends… not necessarily well, but at least not substantially worse than usual. —A.S.

94

Enlightened, “Consider Helen” (Season 1, Episode 9)

HBO

Today, it seems almost obligatory for cable and streaming shows to devote one or two episodes a season to presenting the POV of a minor character. When future White Lotus creator Mike White did it with his first HBO series, Enlightened, it was still relatively rare. And in this case, the shifts in perspective came as a welcome, even necessary, relief from all the time spent in the head of the show’s fascinating but maddening main character, Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern), a toxically narcissistic former executive trying to rebuild her life after a nervous breakdown. With “Consider Helen,” White moved the focus to Amy’s mother Helen (played by Dern’s real-life mom, the great Diane Ladd), to present a day in her life, to show what a chore it is to have to deal with such a pathologically needy child, and to make clear that Enlightened itself understood exactly how its audience would respond to Amy. —A.S.

93

Maude, “Maude’s Dilemma” (Season 1, Episodes 9 & 10)

EVERETT COLLECTION

This two-parter, in which Maude (Bea Arthur) is shocked to discover that she’s pregnant again at 47, and has to decide whether she wants to get an abortion, was so ahead of its time, even the original Supreme Court verdict on Roe v. Wade was two months away. Well after Maude decided to end her pregnancy, the rest of television shied away from the subject, often having pregnant characters suffer conveniently-timed miscarriages before they could make up their minds and potentially alienate viewers and sponsors. But “Maude’s Dilemma,” with a teleplay by future Golden Girls creator Susan Harris, ran toward the thorny subject, and handled it with both humor and grace. —A.S.

92

Scrubs, “My Screw Up” (Season 3, Episode 14)

CARIN BAER/NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES

There are plenty of shows we call dramedies, even though they’re really just half-hour dramas, as well as lots of alleged comedies that aren’t particularly interested in making the audience laugh. The hospital show Scrubs, though, was remarkably comfortable at balancing silliness and sadness throughout its run, especially in “My Screw Up.” Brendan Fraser reprises his role as Ben, wisecracking brother-in-law to John C. McGinley’s bitterly sarcastic Dr. Cox. Ben’s leukemia appeared to be in remission when last we saw him, so there’s room for him to relentlessly tease J.D. (Zach Braff) about having made out with both of Ben’s sisters, as well as a lighthearted subplot where Turk (Donald Faison) tries to convince Carla (Judy Reyes) to take his name when they’re married, in exchange for having a mole she hates removed. But things also get plausibly serious, even before we get to the Sixth Sense-style twist: Ben was the patient whose death earlier in the episode caused a rift between Cox and J.D., and Cox has been in denial about it ever since. Even the revelation that Cox has been imagining conversations with his dead friend is reflective of the show’s juggling of comedy and drama — it’s the dark mirror of how Scrubs generates so much humor from taking us inside the highly-distractible mind of J.D. —A.S.    

91

Watchmen, “This Extraordinary Being” (Episode 6)

MARK HILL/HBO

Even for a series as sophisticated and layered as Watchmen, this episode is an acrobatic feat. In the most dramatic departure from the show’s source material, the 1980s comic of the same name, “This Extraordinary Being” tells the origin story of one of this world’s seminal vigilante superheroes, Hooded Justice (a man lionized in a modern-day TV show-within-the-show that kicks off the episode). Told almost entirely in black and white, it sees our current-day heroine Angela Abar (Regina King) — herself a vigilante who goes by Sister Night, when she’s not working her day job as a cop — sucked into the memories of her grandfather, Will Reeves, after swallowing a bottle of his “nostalgia pills.” Transported to 1930s New York, we watch Will (played as a young man by Jovan Adepo), and sometimes Angela-as-Will, join the NYPD, where he encounters racism so virulent, his fellow cops stage a near-lynching, covering him with a hood and briefly hanging him from a tree as a warning to stand down. The message he takes away, though, is that there is plenty of evil to fight in the world, even in his own precinct. He just has to do it undercover — appropriating for his costume the very hood and noose that had been used to terrorize him. With balletic camerawork, a period soundtrack of big band standards, and visceral performances from King and Adepo, the episode is a sweeping achievement that inverts a fundamental truth of the series’ world — this revered hero that everyone assumed was white is Black — and underscores one about ours: Justice often comes at a steep price. —Maria Fontoura

90

The Golden Girls, “Mrs. George Devereaux” (Season 6, Episode 9)

RON TOM/NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES

The Golden Girls experienced so many adventures together, as Dorothy (Bea Arthur), Rose (Betty White), Blanche (Rue McClanahan), and Sophia (Estelle Getty) lived together as pals and confidantes. But “Mrs. George Devereaux” is a truly touching treatment of grief and loss. Blanche, the most frivolous of the Girls (and the funniest), opens the door and beholds a strange sight: her late husband George, telling her that he faked his death and now wants her back. The episode explores how all the characters live with their different kinds of grief — and how that grief is what brought them here together in the first place. It has the most emotional resonance of any Golden Girls episode, but it’s also the funniest in terms of pure farcical comedy, as Dorothy gets swept up in a bizarre love triangle with two 1970s heartthrobs, guest stars Sonny Bono and Lyle Waggoner. As usual, Blanche gets the best line, when she confronts Cher’s ex-husband with the command, “Sonny Bono, get off my lanai!” —Rob Sheffield

89

SpongeBob SquarePants, “Pizza Delivery” (Season 1, Episode 5)

NICK KIDS

The absurdist humor that made SpongeBob SquarePants beloved across multiple generations is already at full strength in this early episode. At the end of another shift at the Krusty Krab, a customer calls in to order a pizza to be delivered to his home. Never mind that the restaurant doesn’t make pizzas: Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown) sees a few bucks to be earned, and somehow turns a Krabby Patty burger into a pizza, complete with box, then orders SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and Squidward (Rodger Bumpass) to take it to its destination. Instead, SpongeBob’s usual difficulty with driving strands the odd couple far from Bikini Bottom, trying various bizarre methods to get home — all of them borrowed from the “pioneers,” like the idea of riding on giant rocks. In the end, we get one last, great punchline: The customer lives right next door to the Krusty Krab, and they could have just walked the pizza over to him. —A.S.

88

Roseanne, “War and Peace” (Season 5, Episode 14)

ABC

Both in its Nineties heyday and its modern reinvention as The Conners, Roseanne had a real knack for blending domestic comedy with candid material about poverty, addiction, sexuality, and more. In this terrific conclusion of a two-part story, Dan (John Goodman) gets hauled off to jail after beating up Fisher, the abusive boyfriend of Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), while Roseanne tends to her sister, and Darlene (Sara Gilbert) gets to briefly relish the sight of her disciplinarian father behind bars. “War and Peace” doesn’t hide from the horror of Jackie’s experience, but even its dark moments are flavored with sass, like when Roseanne warns Fisher, “If you ever come near her again, you’re gonna have to deal with me, and I am way more dangerous than Dan. I got a loose-meat restaurant. I know what to do with the body!”  —A.S.

87

The Dick Van Dyke Show, “Never Bathe on Saturday” (Season 4, Episode 27)

CBS/GETTY IMAGES

Somehow, the best showcase for Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore as one of TV’s all-time couples is in an episode where Moore is frequently off-camera. A romantic getaway for Rob and Laura goes horribly awry when Laura’s big toe gets stuck in a hotel bathtub faucet, the bathroom door gets locked, and Rob makes the ill-timed decision to draw a fake mustache on his upper lip that he can’t wipe off — leading every hotel worker who arrives to help assuming he’s up to no good. Written by Dick Van Dyke Show creator Carl Reiner, this installment keeps finding new and amusing ways to escalate the sticky situation, and to push the outer edge of the envelope of censorship circa 1965, with a story about the risk of other people seeing Laura naked. By this point in the series’ run, Reiner knew exactly how to use his leading man’s fluency with physical comedy, and how his leading lady’s voice on the other side of that locked door was all that was needed to sell Laura’s dismay at being trapped in such an embarrassing position. —A.S.

86

Black Mirror, “San Junipero” (Season 3, Episode 4)

DAVID DETTMANN/NETFLIX

What would your ideal afterlife look like? Black Mirror — the British dystopian anthology series with a nihilistic approach to rapidly-developing technology — is known for being a show that doesn’t only answer questions about the future but depicts the worst possible alternative you’ve never even considered. Maybe that’s why, when fans were introduced to the couple at the heart of “San Junipero,” and found the answer of the ideal afterlife to be an Eighties beach town party that never ends, they responded so fondly. Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) meet on a night out and quickly fall into a romantic entanglement. But what begins as a love story about two lesbians finding each other in a heaven on earth is quickly revealed to be a virtual reality — one where the elderly and those who have died can be uploaded and then live on forever as their younger selves. The two — both dying in real life — must deal with whether or not the love they’ve found in pixels is enough for both of their forevers. It’s a touching love story that embodies Black Mirror at its very best. —CT Jones

85

Sex and the City, “My Motherboard, My Self” (Season 4, Episode 8)

CRAIG BLANKENHORN/HBO

Family is, arguably, everywhere in Sex and the City — from those the core four start with their partners to the ones they marry into (have there ever been more terrifying mothers-in-law than Frances Sternhagen or Anne Meara?) and the one they build just among themselves. But when it comes to the blood relations of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), the show is surprisingly thin, which is what makes “My Motherboard, My Self” stand out so much. It’s not that the other subplots aren’t memorable — the endless physical comedy of Samantha losing her orgasm; Carrie’s Macintosh meltdown and trip to Manhattan 1990s mainstay Tekserve (R.I.P.), where technician Dmitri (a brilliantly dry Aasif Mandvi) rags on her for not “backing up” — but Miranda’s turn here feels different. As she attends her mother’s funeral in Philadelphia (where she is, apparently, from, and where she has, apparently, multiple siblings), we see a more human side of a character who until this point has largely maintained her station as “the analytical one.” (Though it’s notable that the most intimate moment she has in the City of Brotherly Love isn’t with a direct relation, but the fitting room attendant trying to sell her a bra.) While the show has been criticized for celebrating solipsistic behavior, this episode is a prime example of the four women grappling with their ability to be vulnerable. —Elisabeth Garber-Paul

84

Broad City, “Knockoffs” (Season 2, Episode 4)

COMEDY CENTRAL

Both stories in the stoner comedy’s most laugh-out-loud installment involve imitation products. In one, Ilana (Ilana Glazer) and her mother Bobbi (Susie Essman) travel into the sewers of Manhattan to obtain counterfeit designer purses. In the other, Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) is shocked when her boyfriend Jeremy (Stephen Schneider) asks her to peg him with a strap-on — a development that so thrills Ilana, she does an upside-down twerk on her friend’s behalf — then has to scramble to find a reasonable facsimile after her dishwasher melts Jeremy’s custom-made dildo. In the end, the replacements prove shoddier than the real thing, but “Knockoffs” is so perfectly constructed, and so memorable, that when the friends met Hillary Clinton in a later episode later, among the first things a flustered Abbi can think to tell her is, “I pegged!” —A.S.

83

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Excuse” (Season 4, Episode 24)

NBC

When The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air went on the air in 1990, Will Smith was such an inexperienced actor that he literally mouthed the lines of his co-stars while they spoke. But it didn’t take long for Smith to learn his craft and land roles in dramatic movies like Six Degrees of Separation. That’s why the creative team behind this series knew he was ready for a Season Four episode where Will reunites with his father (played by Ben Vereen) 14 years after he walked out on the family, only to see him leave once again after they reconciled. “I’ll be a better father than he ever was, and I sure as hell don’t need him for that, ’cause ain’t a damn thing he could ever teach me about how to love my kids!” Smith roars, before breaking down in the arms of Uncle Phil. “How come he don’t want me, man?” For anyone who grew up without a father, the moment cut deep. “I shed a tear til this day every time I see this episode,” LeBron James wrote on Instagram in 2015. “This hit home for me growing up and I couldn’t hold my tears in. Til this day they still coming out when this episode come on.” —Andy Greene

82

Doctor Who, “Blink” (Season 3, Episode 10)

BBC

The scariest, cleverest episode of the British sci-fi institution Doctor Who features monsters who are elegant in their simplicity: the Weeping Angels, predatory aliens who resemble stone statues of angels, and who can only move when you’re not looking at them. Writer Steven Moffat places these disturbing creatures in service of a story that barely features the Doctor (David Tennant) and his then-companion Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), instead focusing on a young Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow, a woman who keeps running afoul of the Weeping Angels. Her only hope of surviving the ordeal comes in the form of a DVD Easter Egg that creates the illusion of the Doctor having a conversation with her, and even the Time Lord himself struggles to adequately explain all the seeming paradoxes contained within Moffat’s tale. “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,” he tells Sally, “but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.” Yet it all makes exciting sense by the end. —A.S.

81

Alias, “Truth Be Told” (Season 1, Episode 1)

BYRON J. COHEN/DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT/GETTY IMAGES

Throughout his career, J.J. Abrams has struggled with endings, as anyone who sat through The Rise of Skywalker can tell you. Few, though, are better at beginnings, and the pilot episode of his spy drama Alias is so fantastic that it bought years of goodwill from viewers, no matter how nonsensical the plots grew as the show went along. While undercover agent Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) is in Taiwan being interrogated by a torture expert, we flash back through the events that led her here, starting with her double life as a grad student by day, CIA agent by night. This turns out to be a triple life when Sydney discovers that she’s been tricked into working for a terrorist organization called SD-6, and that her father, Jack (Victor Garber), is secretly her co-worker. Oh, and Sydney’s fiancé gets murdered on the order of SD-6 boss Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), plus a half-dozen other characters have to be introduced, Sydney has to try on multiple hair colors and accents, and more. Between the fractured timeline and the multiple lies Sydney has to live at once, “Truth Be Told” should be absolute gibberish. But Abrams, in one of his earliest efforts as director as well as writer, keeps everything coherent and thrilling in an episode that made him into a star just as much as it did Jennifer Garner. —A.S.  

80

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “Mac Bangs Dennis’ Mom” (Season 2, Episode 4)

PATRICK MCELHENNEY/FX

Most of the time, the Paddy’s Pub gang aim to screw over other people but really just end up screwing themselves, and that’s just what happens in this crude, tangled adventure. When Frank (Danny DeVito) promotes Charlie (Charlie Day) from a sleazy janitor to manager of the bar, he sets in motion a dizzying sequence of events that puts each character’s Achilles’ heels on full display: Mac’s (Rob McElhenny) sensitivity, Frank’s lost youth, Dennis’ (Glenn Howerton) pride, Charlie’s unrequited love, and Dee’s (Kaitlin Olson) conniving impulses. In order to get out of the grunt work Charlie left behind, Dennis goes on a mission to sleep with the unnamed character the Waitress (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), but ends up setting his sights on Mac’s mom (and later Charlie’s) when he finds out Mac banged his mom (and Frank’s ex-wife). Meanwhile, Charlie draws up a plan to finally bang the Waitress; Dennis’ sister Dee isn’t looking for sex, just power, as she plays the henchman to Charlie’s mastermind; and Frank just wants to bang any “young broad” who will give him the time of day. “That doesn’t make any sense,” Mac says to Charlie after encouraging Mac to sleep with Dennis’ mom. Charlie’s response pretty much sums up the entire FX sitcom: “It doesn’t have to.” —Maya Georgi

79

Grey’s Anatomy, “It’s the End of the World/As We Know It” (Season 2, Episodes 16 & 17)

PETER "HOPPER" STONE/DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT/GETTY IMAGES)

Hearing main character Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) refuse to get out of bed for fear that she’ll die at work should have been a clue that it wouldn’t be a good week. But viewers were still terrified when the series seemingly tried its hardest to make every main character (plus guest stars Christina Ricci and Kyle Chandler) have near-death experiences in this two-parter, which began airing after Super Bowl XL. Bailey (Chandra Wilson) is in labor at the hospital waiting for her husband, who won’t answer his phone. Derek (Patrick Dempsey) can’t concentrate on saving his patient’s life while the man’s cell keeps going off (put two and two together here). And when a newbie paramedic shoves her hands into the chest cavity of a patient who’s bleeding out, it’s Meredith who learns that what’s currently killing him is unexploded ammunition that could go off at any minute, taking her and the entire O.R. with it. The bomb squad evacuates the floor, but if Derek leaves, Bailey’s husband dies. Meredith steps in for the paramedic, who’s had a panic attack, so now, if Meredith moves, she and Derek and Bailey’s husband die. Richard (James Pickens, Jr.) has a heart attack from the stress of the evacuation. Izzy (Katherine Heigl) and Alex (Justin Chambers) are off hooking up in a closet, which is also life-threatening if you consider Alex’s numerous confirmed STDs. And if Bailey, who is refusing to push without her husband being present, doesn’t give birth, she and the baby will die. It’s an all-in, melodramatic pivot for a series that has since become known for putting its main characters in life-threatening situations. And yet, in the midst of these increasingly heightened stakes, the standout scene remains George’s (T.J. Knight) gentle cajoling that finally convinces Bailey to push — and to name her son after him. “You’re Doctor Bailey,” he says, in a scene that remains one of the most tender of the entire series. “You don’t hide from a fight.”  —CTJ

78

Girls, “American Bitch” (Season 6, Episode 3)

HBO

If ever Hannah Horvath was a voice of a generation, this was it. Airing just a few months before the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017, this quiet cri de coeur — in which famous author Chuck Palmer (Matthew Rhys, nimble as ever) confronts Hannah (Lena Dunham) about a blog post she wrote slamming his alleged misconduct with several college girls — taps into every conversation we’re still having about power and consent. Chuck summons Hannah to his stately apartment, where she attempts to explain why taking advantage of his literary stature to hook up with young women is predatory, while he hurls every trick in the Bad Men Handbook at her: flattery (“You’re very bright”); faux honesty (“I’m a horny motherfucker with the impulse control of a toddler”); defensiveness (“These girls throw themselves at me!”); casual intimacy (“You’re more to me than just a pretty face”). With astonishing precision and economy, Dunham turns the tables such that by the end of the episode — that is, by the time Chuck and Hannah are lying clothed atop his bed, and he takes out his dick and flops it onto her thigh — Hannah has fallen prey to the very manipulations she was calling out. A hallmark moment in a show that will only age better with time. —M.F.

77

Everybody Loves Raymond, “Baggage” (Season 7, Episode 22)

CBS

Like Carl Reiner once did with The Dick Van Dyke Show, Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal liked to come up with stories by asking his writers what they’d been up to with their families lately. More often than not, there was a conflict that mapped pretty easily onto the Barone family, like an argument that writer Tucker Cawley had with his wife about who would put away the last suitcase left over from a recent vacation. The fictionalized version of it becomes a cold war of sorts between Ray (Ray Romano) and Debra (Patricia Heaton), even as Marie (Doris Roberts) compares the stalemate to a fight that once almost wrecked her marriage to Frank (Peter Boyle). (This leads to one of the great sitcom lines that makes zero sense out of context and seems absolutely logical in context: “Don’t let a suitcase filled with cheese be your big fork and spoon.”) The whole thing culminates in a slapstick battle between the spouses, demonstrating the impressive physical-comedy chops that Romano and Heaton developed over the series’ run. —A.S. 

76

King of the Hill, “Bobby Goes Nuts” (Season 6, Episode 1)

FOX

Some episodes made this list because they do innovative things with episodic structure, or because they have something deep to say about the human condition. This one’s here because Bobby Hill (Pamela Adlon) kicks a bunch of guys in the groin. Well, no. This one’s here because he learns to do this from taking a women’s self-defense class at the Y — at the unwitting urging of Hank (Mike Judge), who just wants his son to learn how to stand up to bullies — and incorporates not only the crotch attacks, but a high-pitched screech of, “THAT’S MY PURSE! I DON’T KNOW YOU!” every time he does it, just like he and his middle-aged, female classmates were taught. Sometimes, you just have to cherish the little things, you know? —A.S. 

75

Insecure, “High-Like” (Season 3, Episode 5)

MERIE W. WALLACE/HBO

The struggling women of Insecure can’t even catch a break when they head to Coachella to see Beyoncé headline. Newly unemployed Issa (Rae) needs everything to go perfectly for the group’s last hurrah before Tiffany (Amanda Seales) gives birth, while Molly (Yvonne Orji) is preoccupied with work, and Keli (Natasha Rothwell) just wants to have a good time. The girls (minus Tiffany, or so we thought…) take edibles and pop so much MDMA they are forced to miss Bey, instead finding themselves in a drug-fueled frenzy that makes the chaos and humor feel like they’re seeping through the screen. Keli takes “Beyoncé or bust” too far and pisses herself after getting Tasered by festival security. Tiffany cries in a closet and tells her husband, “It’s our weed, baby” after admitting to “one bite” of a pot brownie. Molly bugs out and types nonsense on her work laptop, while Issa insists the mess of the night is all her fault. For an episode that starts with a silly Thug Yoda appearance and ends with the abrupt, emotionally-charged return of Issa’s ex-boyfriend, Lawrence (Jay Ellis), it packs in one hell of a trip. —M.G.

74

Game of Thrones, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”  (Season 8, Episode 2)

HELEN SLOANE/HBO

Because Game of Thrones presented spectacle on a scale never before seen on television, it’s easy to forget that the series first became beloved when its budget was much smaller and it couldn’t afford to depict massive battles, dragon attacks, or ice zombie hordes. That stuff, when it came with frequency, was icing on the cake that was the deep roster of memorable characters George R.R. Martin had created, who the GoT writers brought to such vivid life. Even in its later, more epic seasons, the show was still most potent when it placed people first and carnage second. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” takes place the evening before a coalition of heroes from across Westeros will face the Night King and his undead army. It’s almost all talking, as the characters have the kinds of conversations you’d expect when they don’t believe they’ll survive the next day. The most powerful of these is the moment that provides the episode with its title, as Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) realizes that, by the laws of Westeros, he can fulfill the dreams of his old friend Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) and grant her the knighthood she spent her whole life believing her gender disqualified her from achieving. The actual battle with the Night King winds up being the most visually underwhelming episode of the series, but writer Bryan Cogman’s love letter to these characters still resonates years later.  —A.S.

73

The Good Place, “Michael’s Gambit” (Season 1, Episode 13)

VIVIAN ZINK/NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES

TV has a mixed track record with twist endings. For every Twilight Zone, it seems there are a half-dozen disasters like the Dexter season where Edward James Olmos was a ghost, or the Westworld season where Ed Harris and Jimmi Simpson were playing the same character — both ideas that fans sniffed out long before those series’ producers expected them to. But then there is the marvelous conclusion to the first season of the metaphysical comedy The Good Place. For the previous 12 episodes, Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and her friends had struggled to figure out why the seemingly perfect afterlife in which they found themselves had so many obvious flaws. In the end, it’s dum-dum Eleanor who’s the only one smart enough to see through the genial exterior of their host, Michael (Ted Danson), and recognize that, for all their worry of ending up in the Bad Place, “This is the Bad Place!” In hindsight, the idea was clearly seeded; some viewers did guess it in advance, but not so many that it ruined the surprise for everyone else. Rather than undercut everything that happened before, the twist is in keeping with the show’s basic premise about heaven being not all it’s cracked up to be. And it set the series off in new, increasingly wild directions, rather than repeating the same jokes about fro-yo for years on end. —A.S.

72

Star Trek, “City on the Edge of Forever” (Season 1, Episode 28)

CBS/GETTY IMAGES

This episode, written by author Harlan Ellison, offers one time-travel tragedy to rule them all. When a deliriously ill Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) staggers through a time portal on a mysterious planet, he somehow alters history enough that the Enterprise is no longer in orbit above the away team. It’s up to Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to follow their friend, winding up in Depression-era New York, where interplanetary lothario Jim Kirk finds himself falling hard for do-gooder Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). Unfortunately, Spock figures out that Edith is a pivot point for the future of humanity, where her life will ironically lead to centuries of pain and misery, while her death will lead to the timeline our heroes know well. Torn between his duty to the galaxy and the desires of his own heart, Kirk allows Edith to be fatally struck by a car, in a tearjerker ending that wound up echoing throughout the future of TV science fiction. —A.S.

71

My So-Called Life, ”Pilot” (Episode 1)

ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT/GETTY IMAGES

Meet Angela Chase, a high school sophomore who offers us a look into her life in a mundane suburb of Pittsburgh. She has a major crush on Jordan Catalano (“I just like how he’s always leaning. Against stuff. He leans great”) and is quite possibly the only person in history to be jealous of Anne Frank (“She was stuck in an attic for three years with this guy she really liked”). My So-Called Life premiered 30 years ago, giving teens a much more realistic portrayal of what it’s like to endure the “battlefield” that is high school over primetime soap operas like 90210. And the pilot lays that groundwork perfectly, with Angela (Claire Danes) narrating as she navigates her strained relationship with her mom, outgrows her best friend and abandons her for two cool, kindred spirits, and, yes, watches Jordan (Jared Leto) excel at leaning. A battlefield indeed. —Angie Martoccio

70

Master of None, “Thanksgiving” (Season 2, Episode 8)

NETFLIX

Though Aziz Ansari was star, frequent writer, and occasional director of his series about an actor named Dev trying to find meaning in his life, he periodically turned over episodes from the first two seasons to other characters, demonstrating that their stories had just as much richness as Dev’s, if not more. “Thanksgiving” tracks many years of the holiday, as Dev’s best friend Denise (Lena Waithe, who co-wrote the episode with Ansari) gradually comes out to her family, slowly but surely wearing down the resistance of her mother (Angela Bassett), aunt (Kym Whitley), and grandmother (Venida Evans). Partly inspired by Waithe’s own coming-out story, the warm and knowing episode was such a creative success that when the series finally returned for a third season four years later, it was built entirely around Denise’s marriage, with Dev now a minor figure in what was once his own show. —A.S.

69

For All Mankind, “The Grey” (Season 2, Episode 10)

APPLE TV+

The second season of this sci-fi drama, set in an alternate timeline where the Soviets beat America to the moon, triggering a never-ending space race, is the platonic ideal of the intensely serialized, “10-hour Movie” approach so much of dramatic television has taken in the years since The Wire, and that so few shows actually do well. Everything that happens throughout Season Two, even the parts that seem slow and pointless when you first watch them, have thrilling payoffs in the finale, where Earth seems on the verge of nuclear Armageddon, while American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts wage war on and around the moon. All the earlier subplots matter, like Gordo (Michael Dorman) putting his new devotion to jogging to good use when he and ex-wife Tracy (Sarah Jones) have to run across the lunar surface, clad only in spacesuits jury-rigged out of duct tape, to prevent a nuclear meltdown. —A.S.

68

St. Elsewhere, “Time Heals” (Season 4, Episodes 17 & 18)  

NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES

This innovative hospital drama pushed the boundaries of its format throughout its run. One episode was set largely in the afterlife. Another told a quartet of stories about the stages of life from birth through death. The most audacious, and satisfying, of these, is the two-part “Time Heals,” which aired over consecutive nights. As St. Eligius prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, we get glimpses of the hospital across the decades, and see how Dr. Westphall (Ed Flanders), Dr. Craig (William Daniels), and the other senior members of the staff each came to work there. Beyond all the backstory — including a great guest turn by Edward Hermann as Father McCabe, the priest who founded the hospital and helped raise the orphaned Westphall — “Time Heals” impresses because each vignette from the past is presented in the style of movies (or, in some cases, television) of that period: Scenes in the 1930s are in black and white, ones in the Sixties are much more brightly lit, and so on. —A.S.

67

Larry Sanders, “Flip” (Season 6, Episode 12)

HBO

“You could sense there would never be another show like that again,” The Larry Sanders  Show actress Ileana Douglas said of the show’s final scene. “And there hasn’t been.” As Rip Torn, Jeffrey Tambor, and show creator Garry Shandling group-hug in an empty studio, a poignant sadness infuses the acerbic wit that Shandling’s revolutionary series displayed for six seasons. Set around Larry’s final show, the Peabody Award-winning episode features gags that remain timeless: Jim Carrey serenading Larry on-air while excoriating him off-air, Tom Petty telling Clint Black to “quiet down, cowpoke” before getting into a fistfight with Greg Kinnear, and Carol Burnett and Ellen DeGeneres catching Larry in a lie that destroys both the show-within-the-show itself and Larry’s glass-fragile ego. It’s a brilliant ending that balances pathos (“I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do without you,” Larry says to his audience before choking up. “God bless you. You may now flip”) with the series’ trademark send-up of Hollywood phoniness (Torn instinctively telling a bumped Bruno Kirby on the last show that “we’ll have you on another time.”) The show that invented the modern sitcom and stuck the landing perfectly. —Jason Newman

66

Orange Is the New Black, “Toast Can’t Never Be Bread Again” (Season 4, Episode 13) 

JOJO WHILDEN/NETFLIX

The Netflix prison series is the only show in Emmy history to be reclassified from the comedy categories to the drama ones, in part because its tone was so elusive, even to the people making it. But when Orange wanted to get totally serious, it was incredible, like in this episode set in the aftermath of the shocking death of beloved inmate Poussey at the hands of a guard. As Taystee (Danielle Brooks) and the other women grieve the loss of Poussey, then fume at the realization that the guard will go unpunished while most of them are stuck behind bars for much lesser crimes, their pain and rage boils over into a prison riot that will take up the entire following season. —A.S.

65

The Andy Griffith Show, “Opie the Birdman” (Season 4, Episode 1)

CBS/GETTY IMAGES

The Andy Griffith Show set the template for broad, light, homespun small-town humor, but the best episode of the long-running 1960s show is as raw as a modern prestige TV feelings-fest. Gifted a slingshot by Don Knots’ iconically bumbling deputy Barney Fife, a young Opie Taylor (played by a nine-year-old Ron Howard) accidentally kills a bird, orphaning its three young offspring. “You gonna give me a whippin’?” Opie asks his father, Sheriff Andy Taylor, played by the show’s star, Andy Griffith. Not this time. Instead, TV’s all-time cool-headed dad simply opens Opie’s window so his boy can listen to the newly motherless baby birds in the tree outside, filling the Mayberry night with their desolate emo chirps. Howard later said the tears he cried in the scene where he kills the bird were real, because he was thinking of his recently deceased dog. The episode doesn’t have any big laughs, a bold move considering it was a season-opener. But by breaking with formula, they made a heartbreaking classic. —Jon Dolan

64

Good Times, “The I.Q. Test” (Season 2, Episode 7)

As the Seventies sitcom’s iconic gospel theme song noted, there was a lot of scratchin’ and survivin’ to do for the Evans family in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. And the Maude spinoff was so smart in illustrating the many ways the deck was stacked against Florida (Esther Rolle), James (John Amos), and their kids. In “The I.Q. Test,” everyone is shocked when gifted youngest son Michael (Ralph Carter) flunks a school standardized test, until Michael explains that he refused to finish after recognizing that the test is racially biased, with questions geared towards the experience of reasonably well-off white children. The episode nimbly addresses systemic problems in a way that few shows were even thinking about at the time, much less willing to incorporate into their scripts. And it does it while still having some fun with the situation, through the obliviousness of the white test proctor. —A.S.

63

Moonlighting, “Atomic Shakespeare” (Season 3, Episode 7)

DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT/GETTY IMAGES

At the point “Atomic Shakespeare” rolled around in the third season of Moonlighting, the private detective comedy had already established two things: 1) that the onscreen chemistry of co-stars Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd was as scorching as any couple — even an unconsummated one like this — ever put on television; and 2) that the show’s writers didn’t feel in any way bound by the conventions of genre or era, as they had already done a black-and-white film noir tribute, as well as put Willis’ David into a musical number helmed by Singin’ in the Rain director Stanley Donen. So it felt wholly natural to translate the familiar David and Maddie dynamic back to Shakespearean times, with a postmodern retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, with Willis and Shepherd playing David and Maddie-flavored versions of Petrucchio and Kate, and that at various points features ninjas, a horse wearing sunglasses, and wannabe blues singer Willis wailing on the classic rock hit “Good Lovin’.” The episode even gets away with rewriting the Bard: Instead of Kate submitting to Petrucchio’s insistence that the sun is in fact the moon, as a way of humoring her new husband, she instead stands her ground and gets him to admit that, “My wife hath called it: ’Tis the sun, and not the moon at all!” —A.S.

62

Severance, “The We We Are” (Season 1, Episode 9)

APPLE TV+

By the time we reach the Season One finale of the satirical workplace thriller Severance, the employees of the macrodata refinement department of Lumon Industries have reached their boiling point. Part of a cohort who volunteered for a surgical procedure that separates their work selves, called “Innies,” from their personal selves, called “Outies,” they all live bifurcated lives, where one half has no clue what the other half does. But now, the Innies, sure they’re getting the short end of the deal, are fed up. With the help of Dylan (Zach Cherry), who hacks into a control room, Helly (Britt Lower), Mark (Adam Scott), and Irving (John Turturro) find a way to inhabit their Outie personas — and, as a result, learn all kinds of things about themselves that they aren’t fully prepared to know. Mark faces his wife’s death in a car accident. Irving tries to reignite his workplace romance with Burt (Christopher Walken), who retired his Innie self. And Helly is shocked to discover she’s descended from the family that championed Lumon’s severance procedure. A master class in building and maintaining tension, the episode reaches a heart-racing crescendo before an abrupt, cliffhanger ending. Premiering two years after the pandemic, as many employees returned to the office with shifted priorities and revamped notions of “work-life balance,” the Dan Erickson-created, Ben Stiller-directed series captures something essential about our modern malaise. But as the mirror maze of this episode shows, completely severing work and home may not be the fix we think it would. —Kalia Richardson

61

Review With Forrest MacNeil, “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes” (Season 1, Episode 3)

In this cult comedy, Andy Daly plays Forrest MacNeil, a pompous fool who has committed himself to the self-destructive task of undergoing and reviewing whatever life experiences his viewers ask him to. Installments prior to this one saw Forrest becoming addicted to cocaine, acting racist, and trying to make a sex tape. But the true folly of the exercise doesn’t hit until the third episode, where two different binge-eating assignments are wrapped around Forrest having to divorce his wife, without even being allowed to explain to her why he’s doing it. It’s a classic case of a joke building and building, until we get a traumatized Forrest declaring to his awful audience, “Perhaps I simply understood, from the darkest corner of my soul, that these pancakes couldn’t kill me, because I was already dead.” —A.S.

60

Homeland, “Q&A” (Season 2, Episode 5)

KENT SMITH/SHOWTIME

When this spy thriller about domestic terrorism ended its first season without brainwashed double agent Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) going through with a planned suicide bombing, it felt like a failure of nerve from the creators of a show that would have been best served as a one-and-done. But the first half of Season Two, featuring an ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Brody and CIA analyst Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), was excellent, and led to the series’ single-best episode, where Brody gets arrested and Carrie is given a limited window to interrogate him in the hopes of turning him into an asset. Danes and Lewis put on a mesmerizing acting duet, so potent it’s easy to ignore a silly subplot about Brody’s daughter Dana (Morgan Saylor) and her boyfriend Finn (a young Timothée Chalamet) getting into a hit-and-run incident. It was largely downhill for Homeland from here, at least until the producers were finally willing to kill off Brody for real, but that takes nothing from “Q&A.” —A.S.

59

China Beach, “Hello Goodbye” (Season 4, Episode 16)

ABC ARCHVIES/DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT/GETTY IMAGES

Long before cable and streaming dramas began to experiment with fractured timelines, there was the final season of this wildly underrated series about the staff of a U.S. Army hospital base during the Vietnam War. Episodes bounced back and forth between events at various points in the war and in the lives of nurse Colleen McMurphy (Dana Delany) and her surviving colleagues throughout the Seventies and Eighties. Much of the series finale takes place in 1988, as recovering alcoholic McMurphy warily attends a China Beach reunion event, then joins her pals in an impromptu (and incredibly poignant) visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. But “Hello Goodbye” also takes us back to China Beach one last time, to show us McMurphy caring for a dying soldier she knows she can’t save, as a closing reminder of the costs of war, whether or not you fight in them. —A.S.  

58

The Jeffersons, “Sorry, Wrong Meeting” (Season 7, Episode 14)

All in the Family, the parent show of The Jeffersons, had already done a story about the Ku Klux Klan four years prior to the KKK-themed “Sorry, Wrong Meeting.” But the very nature of the spinoff and its leading man made the latter episode feel anything like a rehash. A racist neighbor decides that he can’t tolerate the presence of Black tenants like George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) and hosts a Klan rally to drive this undesirable element out of the building. But he invites the supremely WASPy Tom Willis (Franklin Cover), not realizing that Tom is best friends with George. Tom mistakenly assumes that the meeting will be about a recent spate of break-ins, and later suggests George attend with him. It’s a perfect set-up for both comedy and drama, as an oblivious George enters and cheers on what he thinks is rhetoric aimed solely at low-class criminals, rather than an upstanding businessman like himself, while the meeting’s vile host is shocked by his presence. But then some earlier business about CPR training leads to a great, dramatic climax: This spectacle agitates the Klan leader into a heart attack, and George turns out to be the only one in the room capable of saving the life of someone who thinks of him as less than human. —A.S.

57

What We Do in the Shadows, “On the Run” (Season 2, Episode 6)

RUSS MARTIN/FX

For a show that specializes in absurdist, nonsensical humor, creator Jemaine Clement and company take it next-level with “On the Run.” The episode plucks pompous vampire Laszlo (Matt Berry, who in July finally got an Emmy nomination for his work on this show) out of Staten Island, where he lives with four roommates — his undead wife Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Prosch), 760-year-old Nandor (Kayvan Novak), and Nandor’s familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) — and relocates him to small-town Pennsylvania, where he’s hoping to escape an old friend (Mark Hamill) who’s come to collect on a nearly two-century-old debt of unpaid rent. A stranger in a strange land, Laszlo goes undercover as a “regular human bartender” named Jackie Daytona and, naturally, becomes an avid supporter of the local girls’ volleyball team. His disguise of dark-wash jeans and a toothpick is enough to fool his pursuer… until a mirror (and the removal of the toothpick from his mouth) exposes his true identity. Fully withdrawn from the show’s usual despondent setting, “On the Run” humorously plays Laszlo’s macabre nature against his desire to help 14-year-old girls make it to their state championship. What more could you want from a small-town, salt-of-the-earth bloodsucker? —CTJ

56

Friday Night Lights, “Mud Bowl” (Season 1, Episode 20)

NBC

When a train derailment near the school forces the relocation of a crucial playoff game, Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler), seeking a neutral battleground, opts for the most retro possible site: a cow pasture that turns into a swampy mess after a downpour starts during the contest. While everyone else thinks the coach has lost his mind by eschewing a modern facility, he sees it as a back-to-basics location that will allow himself, his players, and the Dillon High School fans to reconnect with the pure essence of the sport, rather than all of the usual cynical distractions. In the same way, “Mud Bowl” provides the most concentrated blast of emotions that this most heart-tugging of all dramas ever provided: the joy of seeing the Panthers have fun and play well despite the weather conditions, and the horror of Tyra (Adrianne Palicki) barely fighting off a rapist while skipping the game to study. —A.S.

55

Better Things, “Batceañera” (Season 4, Episode 9)

SUZANNE TENNER/FX

Pamela Adlon’s stunning, semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about Sam Fox, a single mom-slash-actress raising three daughters, is packed with installments that feel worthy of being called the best, but “Batceñera” brilliantly captures what makes this underrated gem of a show so special. It opens with a surprise: Frankie (Hannah Alligood), Sam’s headstrong middle daughter, perfectly reenacting a Jerry Lewis bit from Who’s Minding the Store? set to composer Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter.” The heart of the episode is the blending of a bat mitzvah and a quinceañera for 15-year-old Frankie and her friend Reinita, respectively. The episode has everything: carnitas and knishes, a replica of Frida Kahlo’s suit, an all-female mariachi band, great needle-drops, poignant mother-daughter exchanges with each girl, Sam’s ex finally feeling a bit of proper shame for not being there for his kids, and much, much more. It’s a batceañera you never want to end. —Lisa Tozzi

54

The Honeymooners, “The Man From Space” (Episode 14)

For fans of The Honeymooners, it’s impossible to choose an all-time favorite episode, but like Jackie Gleason himself, “The Man From Space” is one of the greats. Originally airing on New Year’s Eve 1955, it pit Gleason’s blustering Ralph Kramden against his dimwitted pal o’ mine Ed Norton (Art Carney) in the Raccoon Lodge costume contest. Norton rents his outfit — a foppish French getup that’s supposed to evoke the engineer who built the sewers of Paris — while Ralph aims to prove he can do better by making a costume out of everyday items: a flashlight, the ice-box door, a kitchen pot as a helmet. His vision is “the man from space,” but neither his long-suffering wife Alice (Audrey Meadows) nor Norton take it that way. When the live audience finally sees Ralph emerge in all his resplendent glory, their reaction is unhinged, even as pieces of his spacesuit unexpectedly fall to the floor, teeing up a classic Gleason ad lib: “Let me have that,” he barks at Alice, “that’s my denaturizer.” The final scene at the costume party, with Norton barging in from his shift in the sewer in a gas mask, is one for the ages. —Joseph Hudak

53

Six Feet Under, “Everyone’s Waiting” (Season 5, Episode 12)

HBO

Alan Ball’s HBO drama usually kicked off its episodes with a grisly and/or highly ironic death. For the series finale, however, the showrunner opted for something a little different: He’d begin the last chapter of the Fisher family and their associates not with a life being snuffed out, but with a birth — and then he’d end the show not with one death, but a dozen. Having spent the bulk of its swan song tying up all of its loose narrative ends, Six Feet Under then shows us how every one of its surviving main characters would eventually shuffle off this mortal coil: Matriarch Ruth Fisher will die of old age with her family around her; Federico has a heart attack on a cruise ship; David’s security-guard husband Keith is murdered during a robbery, etc. Set to the Sia song “Breathe,” this justly praised montage doubles as a full-frontal assault on your tear ducts. It saves Claire’s passing for last, and before she takes her last breath at age 102, we see evidence of friends, loved ones, professional accolades, and personal memories all around her. For a series so devoted to sudden death, it goes out with a tribute to a long life well-lived. —David Fear

52

Columbo, “Etude in Black” (Season 2, Episode 1)

As rumpled homicide detective Lt. Columbo, Peter Falk was so superhumanly charming that he could have onscreen chemistry with a doorknob. But the iconic mystery series was at its best whenever Falk had a strong foil. This episode, with the dogged cop trying to prove a famous orchestra conductor murdered his mistress, has a home-field advantage in this regard, as the bad guy is played by Falk’s close friend and frequent collaborator John Cassavetes. Beyond the actors’ ease around one another, the dynamic crackles because the Columbo formula depends on the killers being too arrogant to assume this mumbling schnook could possibly outsmart them — and Cassavetes had a gift for playing smug and irritated. —A.S.

51

Friends, “The One Where Everybody Finds Out” (Season 5, Episode 14)

NBCU PHOTO BANK/NBCUNIVERSAL/GETTY IMAGES

The best Friends moments come from full-ensemble episodes (Season Three’s “The One Where No One’s Ready,” Season Seven’s “The One With Monica’s Thunder”) where all six buds join forces and create a killing floor of comedy. The result is always a propulsive 22 minutes that doesn’t have a single dull moment, and “The One Where Everybody Finds Out” is this dynamic at its best. Secret’s out: Everyone has found out about Monica and Chandler’s relationship (OK, maybe Ross is a little late), and the gang play a game of chicken, one-upping each other to see who cracks first. Phoebe’s line, “They don’t know that we know they know we know!” embodies everything great about this episode, and the wit and wordplay that make the series a classic. No surprise it was nominated for three Emmys. —A.M.

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IN THIS ARTICLE:

• All in the Family,
• Arrested Development,
• Atlanta,
• Better Call Saul,
• black-ish,
• BoJack Horseman,
• Breaking Bad,
• Broad City,
• Cheers,
• Dr. Who,
• Fleabag,
• Freaks and Geeks,
• Friends,
• Game of Thrones,
• Girls,
• Justified,
• Lists,
• lost show,
• Mad Men,
• MASH,
• Orange Is the New Black,
• Parks and Recreation,
• Roots,
• Seinfeld,
• Severance,
• Sex and the City,
• South Park,
• Star Trek,
• Succession,
• The Good Place,
• The Last of Us,
• The Leftovers,
• The Office,
• The Sopranos,
• The West Wing,
• The Wire,
• Twilight Zone,
• Twin Peaks,
• Watchmen
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