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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.

5

Seinfeld, “The Contest” (Season 4, Episode 10)

Larry David believed in this episode so much that he planned to quit if NBC didn’t let them air it — but much to his surprise, even then network heads saw just how groundbreaking it would be. Indeed, after 18.5 million people — 20 percent of American televisions at the time — tuned in to watch in November 1992, Seinfeld went from a scrappy sitcom about a group of narcissistic New Yorkers to the show that everyone, no matter your demographic, had to keep up with. The premise — which had been hanging out in David’s notebook since he participated in a real-life “contest” in the 1980s, but figured would never pass the censors — was simple: After George’s mother (Estelle Harris, introduced in this episode) catches him in flagrante with himself, takes a fall, and is laid up in the hospital, George swears off the habit indefinitely. Jerry doesn’t believe he can do it and turns the challenge into a bet. Then Elaine and Kramer get in on the fun. Suddenly, reasons to be horny greet the gang at every turn: the hot nudist across the street that Kramer can’t take his eyes off of; the virgin (Frasier’s Jane Leeves) who Jerry’s dating; the girl-on-girl sponge baths George spies in his mother’s shared hospital room; John F. Kennedy Jr. flirting (offscreen) with Elaine in an aerobics class. Every part of it is spot-on, from David’s Emmy-winning script to Jerry’s rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus,” Kramer’s quick caving (“That was one of the biggest laughs we ever got,” David said), and Elaine’s wistful imagining of her new married name (“Elaine Benes-Kennedy Junior,” she practically whispers, after admitting she’s out of the race). But the best part is that by leaving the word “masturbation” entirely out of its 23 minutes, the show gifted us the best sexual euphemism to come out of the series’ nine seasons: “master of your domain.” —EGP

4

The Sopranos, “College” (Season 1, Episode 5)

If this isn’t the single most influential television episode ever made, it’s near the top of a very short list. As Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) takes his teenage daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) on a tour of colleges in Maine, he’s surprised to recognize Febby Petrulio (Tony Ray Rossi), a former Family associate who turned rat and went into witness protection. Tony’s decision to stalk and murder Febby, solely for the satisfaction of doing it, was a line that no TV protagonist had ever crossed before — the idea scared even the executives at HBO! In its aftermath, the audience’s continued affection for Tony emboldened not only The Sopranos, but all of the dramas it inspired over the past 25 years. Beyond that groundbreaking moment, “College” is incredible. The Tony-Meadow plot captures the tension between the two lives Tony leads — about which Meadow confronts him for the first time here — as well as any other Sopranos installment does. And the B-story, where Carmela (Edie Falco) spends a memorable, tempting night with Father Phil (Paul Schulze), is practically a stage play, forcing Carmela to articulate her qualms about her husband’s profession in a way she almost never allows herself to afterwards. —A.S.

3

The Leftovers, “International Assassin” (Season 2, Episode 8)

The Leftovers, set in the aftermath of a Rapture-esque event where a random two percent of the world’s population vanishes without explanation, was in its first season a powerful but at times oppressive story about grief, faith, loneliness, and madness. By its second, it was still about all of those difficult themes, but it managed to grapple with them in far more audacious, at times shockingly fun ways. Never was that combination of sorrow and absurdity more potent than in this episode, where Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) swallows a lethal dose of poison to push out the dark voice inside his head, and wakes up in a fancy hotel to find that he’s an international assassin tasked with killing the president of the United States. Is this another hallucination? The afterlife? The place where the Suddenly Departed went? “International Assassin” never feels the need to explain, because it understands that the emotional catharsis Kevin gets out of this bizarre scenario is all that he, and the audience, requires. The episode is so stylish, so unexpected, so funny, and so devastating, that we’re picking it even though it’s one of the few Leftovers episodes to not feature Carrie Coon’s staggering performance as Nora Durst. —A.S.  

2

The Simpsons, “Last Exit to Springfield” (Season 4, Episode 17)

The funniest episode of the greatest sitcom in television history, animated or otherwise, manages to cram in references to everything from The Godfather Part II and Tim Burton’s Batman to Yellow Submarine, Citizen Kane, Moby Dick, Get Smart, Buster Brown, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas across a mere 22 minutes. It’s about Homer trying to negotiate a new union contract from Mr. Burns that will allow the nuclear plant employees to keep their dental plan while Lisa adjusts to the cheap braces she’s forced to wear. But that’s just the backdrop for an astonishing series of rapid-fire gags that have been endlessly quoted and memed over the past 30 years. (“Dental plan/Lisa needs braces…”; “So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time…”; “Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?”) Our favorite moment comes when Mr. Burns shows off a room with a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters, thinking they’ll eventually write the greatest novel known to man. “It was the best of times, it was the — ‘blurst’ of times?!” he reads from one of them, unimpressed that the simian came close to the opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. “You stupid monkey!” The episode was written by Jay Kogen and Wallace Wolodarsky, who worked that season alongside Conan O’Brien, George Meyer, John Swartzwelder, and Jon Vitti in what’s now seen as one of the greatest writing rooms of all time. They churned out all-time classics that season like “Marge vs. the Monorail,” “A Streetcar Named Marge,” “Krusty Gets Kancelled,” and “Whacking Day,” but none pack in as many laughs pers second as “Last Exit to Springfield.” —A.G.

1

Breaking Bad, “Ozymandias” (Season 5, Episode 14)

The power of dramatic television, fully realized. The medium’s biggest advantage over film is the sheer amount of time we get to spend with characters and their stories, episode after episode, year after year. Many of the episodes on this list hit as hard as they do because of how well we know the players and the conflicts by that point. None are as devastating, or as painstakingly set up, as “Ozymandias,” the hour in which every terrible thing Walter White (Bryan Cranston) has done over five-plus seasons finally blows up in his face. Uncle Jack (Michael Bowen) and his gang of neo-Nazis murder Hank (Dean Norris) and steal Walt’s money. Skyler (Anna Gunn) and Flynn (RJ Mitte) refuse to go on the run with Walt, and when he sees the terror in their eyes at the monster he’s become — sees the cold, cruel truth of his situation, rather than the lie he’s been telling himself about how he’s done all these terrible things for his family — he kidnaps baby Holly and drives off. Even a long-dormant storyline — would Jesse (Aaron Paul) find out that Walt was responsible for Jane’s death, and if so, how? — gets an incredible payoff when Walt casually tells Jesse about it, solely to twist the knife before leaving his former partner to be killed (or so he thinks) by Jack’s goons. “Ozymandias” (written by Moira Walley-Beckett and directed by Rian Johnson) tops our list not only because of how well it builds on what came before, but for how perfect it is as an individual hour of storytelling, packed with one indelible moment after another: Hank telling Walt that Jack made up his mind to kill him 10 minutes ago; Walt’s errant pants from the series premiere resurfacing at their owner’s lowest moment; a bereft Skyler howling in the street after Walt steals her daughter; and so many more. The GOAT. —A.S.