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The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time

Standout installments of ‘Friends,’ ‘Veep,’ ‘Succession,’ ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Black-ish,’ ‘Twilight Zone,’ and more

The 100 best TV episodes of all time

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.

57

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.