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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.

11

The Twilight Zone, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” (Season 1, Episode 22)

A summer afternoon on Maple Street: barbecues, ice cream trucks, porch swings, children playing, adults adulting. But all of that is disrupted when a shadow, a blaring noise, and a beam of light quickly pass across the street, and suburban paradise descends into paranoid chaos. Was it a meteor, or should they listen to the comic-book-obsessed kid, who believes aliens have arrived according to a story he read? Soon enough, the neighbors are suspicious, calling out any habit or behavior they suddenly deem outside the norm: Maybe you’re the alien. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street aired in March 1960, a Season One stunner that showed audiences Rod Serling wasn’t afraid to confront McCarthyism head-on or lead viewers deep into the unknown. As for valuable takeaways, make sure to have a good explanation when your car randomly starts, OK? —A.M.

10

Atlanta, “Teddy Perkins” (Season 2, Episode 6)

Donald Glover’s FX series loved nothing more than adding surreal absurdism to its explorations of fame, success, race, class and the ongoing hallucinatory trip that is life in modern America. (Big up the invisible car!) This stand-alone episode about the quest of Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) to procure a vintage piano, however, is like a straight-up horror movie in miniature — part Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and part waking nightmare that’s hard to shake off. It’s not where our stoner tour guide is picking up the musical instrument that’s so spooky, though the Confederate flag trucker hat he finds at a gas station suggests he’s not exactly in 100 percent friendly territory. It’s who he’s purchasing it from: a creepy, possibly skin-bleached recluse named Teddy Perkins, brother of a once-famous musician, Benny, who may or may not be real. Director Hiro Murai admitted he borrowed a lot from The Shining here, and the sepulchral set feels less like Teddy’s dream of an at-home museum dedicated to great fathers (among whom he cites the Jackson family’s problematic patriarch, Joe, to “the father who drops off Emilio Estevez at the beginning of The Breakfast Club”) and more like a mausoleum. Glover himself plays the host, under prosthetics and a perverse amount of pancake make-up; by all accounts, he went full Method and stayed in character the entire time on set, with the credits listing “Teddy Perkins as himself.” The pale skin and cleft chin invited comparisons to Michael Jackson, yet you can see an entire music industry’s worth of curdled dreams, broken spirits, and madness in the Perkins brothers. Bonus points for the best needle-drop in the show’s history as well: Stevie Wonders’ “Evil,” a song filled with rhetorical questions that feels like it was written just for Teddy.  —D.F.

9

The Shield, “Family Meeting” (Season 7, Episode 13)

Consequences, consequences, consequences. Everywhere you look in the series finale of the trailblazing basic-cable drama, characters — particularly crooked cop Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) and the surviving members of his strike team, Shane (Walton Goggins), and Ronnie (David Rees Snell) — are forced to reckon with the terrible things they did since The Shield began. For six seasons, viewers had wondered whether Vic would die, go to prison, or somehow get away with everything. Among the brilliant aspects of “Family Meeting” is how Shield creator Shawn Ryan is able to mix and match those familiar outcomes among the strike teamers in unexpected, often utterly devastating ways. (Good luck getting over the terrible decision Shane makes here, and the way Goggins plays the scene where the episode’s title is uttered.) Even Vic’s fate is much knottier than anyone could have expected. These kinds of intensely serialized dramas often struggle to wrap things up in satisfying fashion, but The Shield did it perfectly, making it the best drama finale of them all. —A.S.

8

Roots, “Part II”

This miniseries adaptation of Alex Haley’s bestselling novel, inspired by stories of slavery that had been passed down through his family for generations, arrived on television at the exact right time. This was 1977, the days when TV was still a mass medium, and half the country saw some or all of the story of Mandinka warrior Kunta Kinte (played by LeVar Burton as a young man, John Amos as a middle-aged one) being abducted from his homeland and forced into a life of bondage and servitude. And it was at a moment with just enough distance from the peak of the Civil Rights Movement that viewers were prepared to grapple with the ugliness of America’s original sin. (Arguably, many more were prepared in 1977 than would be now.) The whole thing is extraordinary, but the part etched in the memory of everyone who’s seen it is this second chapter, which begins with a violent failed revolt on the ship bringing Kunta and his fellow captives across the Middle Passage, transitions into the utterly banal evil of a slave auction, and ends with Kunta being graphically whipped, over and over again, for escaping from the plantation — and, just as importantly to his captors, for refusing to accept the name “Toby” that they have insisted he adopt. The rage and pain in the eyes of Burton, and in the eyes of Lou Gossett Jr. (playing Fiddler, an older, American-born slave), is as indelible an image as has ever crossed a television screen. —A.S.

7

Cheers, “Showdown, Part 2” (Season 1, Episode 22)

The first-season finale of the beloved sitcom brought the long-simmering romantic tension between ex-jock bartender Sam Malone (Ted Danson) and pretentious waitress Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) to a full, wonderful boil. After resisting Sam’s advances for a year, Diane has begun to date Sam’s more successful brother, Derek (George Ball), but Sam continues to hold out hope that he’s the Malone sibling she really desires. Even after Diane confirms his suspicions, everything between them has to turn into an argument, leading to an iconic exchange that every will-they-or-won’t-they rom-com has been chasing ever since: Diane tells an infuriated Sam, “You disgust me. I hate you.” He asks, “Are you as turned on as I am?” “More!” she exclaims, and they kiss as the studio audience explodes at this long-awaited climax. —A.S.

6

Mad Men, “The Suitcase” (Season 4, Episode 7)

Honestly, “The Suitcase” might have made the list even if the rest of it was forgettable outside of the moment where Don Draper (Jon Hamm) screams at Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who’s looking for a little gratitude for a job well done, “THAT’S WHAT THE MONEY IS FOR!” Fortunately, the whole thing is amazing, and among the best examples of the emotional impact of ongoing episodic television. As Don and Peggy work an all-nighter for a Samsonite suitcase pitch, they get to hash out their latest conflicts with one another, and reveal parts of themselves that they had previously hidden. Viewers who had watched the 45 previous hours of Mad Men got this rewarding acknowledgment of the way the relationship had evolved, as Peggy went from Don’s meek secretary to his eager protégé to his frustrated peer. But if you were to show “The Suitcase” to a Mad Men newcomer who didn’t know the backstory between them, or their respective complicated histories with Duck Phillips (Mark Moses), who briefly intrudes on them, they would still be able to appreciate the nuanced character work of the hour, and the awe-inspiring performances by Hamm and Moss. —A.S.

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.