YEAR IN REVIEW
From Richie learning the value of hard work in The Bear to that shocker of a Succession wedding, these are the very best TV episodes of the year
A TV show is not the same thing as a film, no matter how many pretentious actors or showrunners insist that what they’ve made is “a 10-hour movie.” TV is built on episodes, whether they are meant to exist entirely in isolation from one another, or they are designed to advance various plot and character arcs. Our alphabetical list of 10 of this year’s best episodes features examples of both kinds, from surprising love affairs to a frozen murder mystery to an unexpected tragedy.
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The Bear, “Forks”
Image Credit: Chuck Hodes/FX Like several shows we’ll be getting to later in this list, The Bear Season Two offered us no shortage of outstanding options to choose from. With all due respect to the super-stressful Christmas episode, the nearly-as-stressful finale, Marcus’ charming Denmark trip, Sydney taking a culinary tour of Chicago, etc., it has to be “Forks,” in which Richie spends a week apprenticing at the best restaurant in the world and emerges a brand new man. It should not work that he would change that much in such a short period of time, but that’s how powerful a spell “Forks” casts. It treats service itself as an artform worthy of mastery, and builds to a lovely and quiet conversation between Richie and the restaurant’s owner and head chef (Olivia Colman) that sums up so much of what makes The Bear special.
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Dave, “Harrison Ave.”
Image Credit: Byron Cohen/FX Speaking of stressful installments of FX-produced series, the second episode of the rap comedy’s third season followed the chaos of Dave filming an autobiographical music video in and around his childhood home, and reconnecting with the girl (guest star Jane Levy) the titular song is about. At times pure farce (especially when Dave is talking with the actors playing his younger selves), at times introspective (she remembers their relationship very differently), and almost always suspenseful, “Harrison Ave.” represents this underrated show at its best.
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The Great, “Ice”
Image Credit: Christopher Raphael/Hulu Hulu did the Elle Fanning/Nicholas Hoult historical comedy no favors by releasing its entire third season on a day late in the busiest stretch of the TV year, such that it wasn’t surprising that nobody noticed it, nor that the streamer would eventually cancel it. To be fair, the first half of the season felt like wheel-spinning — entertaining wheel-spinning, because the stars, the ensemble, and the writing are just that sharp, but nonetheless just new variations on some too-familiar themes about Catherine the Great’s relationship with estranged husband Peter. Then came “Ice,” in which Peter unexpectedly drowned in a frozen lake, and Catherine’s entire world shattered. “Ice” is great both as an individual installment of a TV show, and for what it represented to the larger picture of The Great. It’s a shame Hulu killed the series right as it was heading into exciting, uncharted new territory.
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How To with John Wilson, “How to Watch the Game”
Image Credit: Thomas Wilson/HBO Like every episode of the late, great, docu-comedy, “How to Watch the Game” begins in seemingly sane territory, then takes its filmmaker hero down a seemingly random path, before ending up in a destination that has both nothing and everything to do with where he started. In this case, an attempt to watch a Mets game somehow leads him to attend a convention for middle-aged men who are obsessed with vintage vacuum cleaners. What seems like it will be satire of an obscure type of fandom instead turns out to be a poignant examination of how nostalgia can be used as a way to work through grief, even very old grief. The trip from Point A to Point B makes zero sense, until it makes perfect sense.
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The Last of Us, “Long Long Time”
Image Credit: Liane Hentscher/HBO In The Last of Us video game, players got to meet Bill, a survivalist friend of Joel’s still grieving the loss of his longtime partner Frank. The Last of Us TV show opted to show that relationship, rather than just talk about it, turning almost the entire episode over to guest stars Nick Offerman (as the gruff Bill, who has kept his sexuality a secret until after the world ended) and Murray Bartlett (as Frank, who keeps finding ways to be happy in post-apocalyptic life). What could risk feeling like a distraction from Joel and Ellie’s cross-country quest instead is told so beautifully, it’s like it’s the only thing that matters — to us as much as them.
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Lucky Hank, “The Clock”
Image Credit: Sergei Bachlakov/AMC Few people seemed aware that Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk had returned to television with a dramedy about a college English professor experiencing a mid-life crisis, since it got canceled after one season despite Odenkirk’s long and successful relationship with AMC. Lucky Hank often struggled to recreate the comic voice of Straight Man, the Richard Russo novel it was adapting. But it did have one great episode in it, in which Odenkirk and his wife (played by Mireille Enos) hosted a chaotic dinner party for the English department, while he confronted a dark memory about his relationship with his famous father. At once an excellent showcase for its leading man and a good use of a fine supporting ensemble, “The Clock” suggested the kind of show Lucky Hank could have become if it had gotten more time to forge its own path, rather than fumbling around with source material it didn’t quite know how to use.
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Poker Face, “Escape from Shit Mountain”
Image Credit: Peacock We couldn’t have a list like this without an entry from a show whose main reason for existing is to argue that episodic television can be pretty goddamn great if the proper care and talent are applied to each episode. The first season peaked with consecutive installments directed by star Natasha Lyonne and creator Rian Johnson. Tempting as it is to pick the former, which had Nick Nolte and Cherry Jones, plus Lyonne sneaking into a museum by disguising herself as a horse, “Escape From Shit Mountain” is a spectacular example of what a standalone hour of television can be. Stranded in a snowy mountain motel with a wealthy murderer (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), his longtime henchman (David Castaneda), and a thief with no loyalties (Stephanie Hsu), Lyonne’s Charlie not only has to solve the crime, but save herself despite being outnumbered and seriously injured. The tension is exquisite, the solution marvelously clever.
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Reservation Dogs, “Elora’s Dad”
Image Credit: Shane Brown/FX Since picking every episode from the classic final season of Reservation Dogs would leave no room for great work by anyone else, we need to select only one. “Elora’s Dad,” in which Elora (Devery Jacobs) meets the father (Ethan Hawke) she thought she had never met, is in some ways not particularly representative of the series. Elora is the only regular character with meaningful screen time, and the focus is on the famous white guest star rather than the quirks of Indigenous life. But in the most important ways, it very much captures the series’ genius. Jacobs and Hawke are incredible together. And Reservation Dogs had long since established that it could be anything it wanted to in a given week, including a quietly powerful short story that Jacobs’ script treats as an homage to Before Sunset and Hawke’s other films with Richard Linklater.
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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Charades”
Image Credit: Michael Gibson/Paramount+ Like Poker Face, Strange New Worlds routinely makes a convincing argument for the value of a Mission of the Week structure. And like Reservation Dogs, it successfully hops tones and genres whenever it wants. This second season featured a musical episode, a crossover with Star Trek: Lower Decks that saw two of that show’s animated characters appear in live-action, a courtroom drama, an alien invasion horror story, and more. Lots of fine options, but let’s go with SNW at its most unapologetically farcical, as Spock (Ethan Peck) has to disguise the fact that he’s temporarily been transformed into a human — with the out-of-control hormones of a teenage boy — while meeting with his fiancée’s disapproving Vulcan parents. Peck’s take on the iconic hero is at its sharpest in these comedy episodes, yet “Charades” feels very much like a part of the same show as all the others.
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Succession, “Connor’s Wedding”
Image Credit: David M. Russell/HBO Again, this list is alphabetical by series title, but it’s certainly easy to argue that we saved the best for last. Everyone assumed that the final Succession season would kill off Logan at some point. But nobody imagined it would happen so early, and so abruptly, which only served to put viewers in the same headspace as the Roy siblings when they find out that the old man had a heart attack on a flight to Europe. The performances by everyone in the cast are astonishingly raw (Sarah Snook most of all), and “Connor’s Wedding” expertly captures the roller coaster ride of emotions that accompanies every sudden death, whether to an ordinary family or one of the most powerful and despicable in the world.
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December 24, 2023 at 09:00PM
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