The Simpsons: Whacking Day! Friends: The One with the Prom Video Seinfeld: The Soup Nazi Family Guy: too hard Futurama: The one where Leela finds her parents Everybody Loves Raymond: too hard ER: the one where Lucy and Carter are stabbed and Lucy dies South Park: either Mr. Hanky (not quite as funny now though), the LOTR spoof, or the one where Butters goes undercover to steal the future-telling device from the girls.
Star Trek TNG: the one where Q sends the Enterprise to meet the borg for the very first time. Deep Space Nine: the one where Garak plants a bomb on a Romulan ambassador's ship in order to frame the dominion X-Files: yeah, small potatoes was good. Battlestar Galactica: the one where they have to jump every 30 minutes in order to escape the cylons.
The Office US: Either Diversity Day or the Sexual Harrassment seminar. The Office Brit: The Comic Relief episode. My Name is Earl: Joy's wedding. Friends: Yup, the Prom Video episode is the best. Cheers: Either the prank war against Gary's Oldtime bar where Kevin Mchale "breaks his leg", or Sam the sportscaster. Night Court: Either one of the episodes where they have to try an incredible number of cases, or the prank war with the younger wacky judge. Seinfeld: Too hard to choose, but I have a soft spot for the "Helllllllooooo" voice episode. Frasier: Either the Live Mystery Radio Program, or when the Cockatiel gets stuck on Niles' hair. X-files: Bad blood. (Small potatoes is good too, not to mention Jose Chung, and Clyde Bruckman, but Bad Blood is the best.) Buffy: The one where Buffy sends Angel to Hell. It was manipulative, and ultimately inconsequential, but still amazingly powerful. Angel: The first episode of season 2 where they flashback to Angel's first time at the Hyperion Hotel. It has a truly beautiful ending scene. West Wing: By far, Two Cathedrals. Just truly fantastic storytelling. Sports Night: The one where "Benson" has a stroke. Just Fabulous. Ed: The "Live Deliberately vs. Do Everything" episode. That was an fascinating demonstration of two vastly different roads towards self-fulfillment. Macgyver: One of the Murdock episodes. Quantum Leap: Evil Leaper. That was a shocking episode when I first saw it. Pretender: Keys. Jarod and Miss Parker joining forces. How can you not like that. Just a small sample of some of my favorite shows and episodes. I'm sure I'll think of some more later.
Buffy - one of: Once More With Feeling, The Zeppo, or The Storyteller. X-Files: not my favorite show, but by far the best episode was Jose Chung's From Outer Space.
Cheers - Woody and Kelly's Wedding. my favorite episode of any tv show ever. it had it all. tons of frenetic action, perfect jokes, it displayed a lot of the minor characters Cheers was amazing at writing into the show (for my money, no show ever introduced characters more seamlessly than Cheers), and was just great, plus it was 2 episodes together so there was more to like. and there were 7 Bar Wars episodes. The Simpsons (tied with Cheers as my favorite show ever) - the episode where bart and lisa play hockey. "Two children fighting for their parents love!" Cape Feare would probably be second. Futurama - the Slurm Factory or the Harlem Globetrotters episode. South Park - i probably haven't even seen 25% of all SP episodes and wouldn't call it an all-time favorite show (though it's brilliant when i watch it), but when Cartman makes that dude eat his parents and then is licking the tears off his face, that's one of the most epic moments i've ever seen on tv. it was so utterly demented you couldn't help but appreciate it. Scrubs - i don't really have a favorite scrubs at this point. it's still going so i haven't seen a lot of the episodes more than once so they're not permanently imprinted on my brain. but since it will probably join Cheers and the Simpsons in the top spot one day, i'll eventually have some favorites. "there's always women at the pool, baby!"
seinfeld - the marine biologist cheers - the one when henri challenges sam to see who the bigger ladies man is newsradio - if i have to pick one it's when dave's old singing group comes to see him on his birthady. "chock full of notes"
Babylon 5 - The G'Kar has to leave the Counsel and gives an empassioned speech about teaching the Centauri THE LESSON . . . AGAIN!! Powerful speech Rocket River
Cheers - The episode were Gary, Sam's nemesis, supposedly dies and Sam doesn't believe it at all thinking it's another one of his pranks. Classic! Moonlighting - The episode were Herbert Viola serenades Agnes with a polka type version of Sexual Healing. Moonlighting was one of the best tv shows ever. EVER! Simpsons - The one were they do a skit of every character in the show. The one were they go to Australia. Night Court - the one were Dan and Harry are competing to see who gets to take out Sela Ward.
m_cable: How could I forget? Quantum Leap was one of my favorites, and you nailed my favorite episode! Newsradio - Jimmy James: Macho business Monkey Wrestler. And Max: yes, the Wonder years had a great finale. Sure didn't leave much room for a reunion episode, did they?
I forgot about MacGuyver, also. My favorite episode was the one where he had to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico into Texas and had all those guys after him. He rigged up exploding barrels and jeeps and put himself into a big wagon wheel looking thing and rolled down the hill himself into the river. He was on fire that day...
Thanks for reminding me about newsradio BigM. But my favorite was the "Heat Wave" episode. When the sandwich guy had his daydream, I just about lost it. Oh and I just remembered an Angel episode that is a contender for the Best: The "Birthing" episode where Darla gives birth to Connor was fabulous. It has one of my favorite lines of all time where Darla says something to the effect that, "That the baby is giving her a soul." After pondering over the Simpsons, I'd go with the "Baby Lizards" episode. I love the ending where Lisa is saying that Bart was sad over killing one bird, but ended up killing tons of birds. Bart shows remorse for a second, before he completely shrugs it off. More to come later probably.
WKRP - The turkey episode. Les: No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, Johnny, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenberg tragedy has there been anything like this!
There is a "Law and Order" episode when it turns that a private lender forced his customers to kill other customers for insurance money to pay off their loans. the lending store was a front for the mob. really good episode how they got through the investigation to the truth.
Another great episode was where they had some people come in to show the effects alcohol has to your body in regards to your reaction time. They set up Johnny Fever for it. Problem was, Johnny's reaction time kept getting better and better, screwing up their entire theory.
Newsradio: Super Karate Monkey Death Car or Space episode Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror where Homer uses the toaster to go back in time Battlestar Galactica: 33 Seinfeld: Bizarro Jerry or Soup Nazi Friends: "I wanna quit the gym!" Lost: Locke's first episode Arrested Development: George Michael and the jetpack (the Godzilla scene is priceless)
