Sure shots: The 20 best TV oners of all time
To mark The Bear's much-anticipated return, let's count down the most impressive extended takes to ever grace the small screen
TV Features Bartlett
The oner—that is, an extended, uninterrupted take—is most synonymous with film, with standouts like Goodfellas’ “Copacabana shot,” the ambush in Children Of Men, or the intro and pool-party scenes in Boogie Nights having inspired countless cinephiles to enroll in film school. But the single-shot has been experimented with—to beautiful, anxiety-inducing, frightening, or dazzling effect, depending on the series—on TV, too. So with the much-anticipated return of The Bear set for June 27—the show’s 17-plus-minute single shot in season-one episode “Review” remains such a perfectly-constructed doozy all these rewatches later—we decided to count down the very best oners to grace the small screen, from a bloody battle in Game Of Thrones to a sun-kissed homage in Pen15.
43 Comments
I feel like, with all the visual brilliance that went on, Breaking Bad should have something here, but I can’t come up with much (brilliant shots, to be sure, but I’m struggling for brilliant oners though I’m hoping someone corrects me).Also, love seeing that Daredevil scene on here. That episode remains for me liking the best thing to come out of adaptations of marvel comics in the last two decades.
There’s no complex camera movement involved, but Walt and Jesse’s climactic raging fight that ends with Jesse ordering Walt out of his life for good is done in a single take, with both Cranston and Paul having to nail the emotional intensity perfectly with nowhere to hide if they ever slipped.
I also like the over the back shot of Gus walking back to the party in Salud. It’s relatively brief but still impressive and, in context, badass.
I use it in my visual studies courses all the time. Even students who haven’t watched a single episode of BB and know only the context that I give them about the characters and situation are typically impressed by the fluid camera and long take. It’s a great example of sound design, too, with the music growing slightly louder just as Gus opens the bathroom door to reveal the poisoned henchman and then louder still as he steps outside to the pool area to reveal the larger carnage taking place.
“PATRIOT” made the list!
This is one of the best shows out there. A hidden gem. This is a fun scene, but there’s another long take in season 1 that’s just as good if not better.
Are you talking about him laying in the concrete tube and everyone coming up to him with their complaints, criticisms, and demands? Cause even though there isn’t tricky camera work, the timing is amazing. The piping monologues are some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. If you haven’t heard them, there are two different podcasts set in that world. The guy with the 2 girl names reading his book about Flute Jousts is simply amazing.
I was travelling so I apologize for the late reply. Yes, that was the scene I was talking about. It must’ve been a lot of pressure not to mess up timing or lines and ruin it for everyone! Yes, those jargon monologues were great, too!
Get your piping in order, Lakeman.
Patriot is so damn good. The fact that its not talked about in the same breath as Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Mad Men, etc. is criminal. It is every bit as good as those shows or anything else that has been produced in the past 25 years.
Almost every single host segment from Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a single take. Not much camera movement ever went on, but there’s quite a few times where they pulled off some impressively complicated stagecraft. Plus this time where Mike manages to hold the camera in a solid unblinking stare for nearly a full minute.
After opening by showing the Cylons launching their attack on humanity, Battlestar Galactica’s second ever scene is this marvel that introduces a ton of the major characters without ever feeling awkward in the cramped hallway sets.
The school brawl in the Season 2 finale of Cobra Kai is overall a magnificent achievement, belying its low budget with a ton of participants and swooping camera moves that perfectly capture everything we need to see, and the centerpiece is this long shot:
I’d give you grief for not including the epic finale in Quarry, but I feel I am the only person who watched that show.
that Stranger Things long take was, even for a show about interdimensional portal monsters and a telekinetic child army, reality-breaking. The show just shifted into John Wick style action, and the oner only emphasized how out of tone the whole situation was….and the Succession long take…isn’t. Cross-cutting aside, even, it’s clearly several different takes.
Glad to see “Buffy” included, but I’d actually have put a different oner: The 3 1/2-minute shot near the start of “Anne” (S3 E1) that starts in the library, goes out to the hall and eventually meanders its way to the student break area. It even gives Larry a good line (“If we can focus, keep discipline, and not have quite as many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule!”)
I don’t think that Mrs. Maisel oner is anywhere close to 3 minutes, there are some distinct cuts throughout. The initial raid is a longish take, maybe 45 seconds.Anyways, I think a good oner focuses less on what the camera is doing and more on what the performers are doing. Spielberg’s Jaws oners should be textbook reading for any director in any medium wanting to show off, in my opinion.
I remember watching that X-Files episode when it first aired, and realizing a day later that it was all shot in one long take (broken up by commercials, of course).
Drive?(i.e. How Vince Gilligan Met Bryan Cranston)
Triangle, the one in the list.
Ah. (I didn’t want to do the slideshow.)
If you start the slideshow there’s a link that will allow you to just look at the list. That’s what I do.
Thanks! I gave up trying to do the slideshows cause I can never seem to get the list-out to work in Chrome. 🙂
While I prefer the list because I don’t really need to read the paragraphs about some and the index is enough, but if there is a slideshow you’d like to totally consume, if you shrink the browser to half-screen, the post will become infinite scroll.
Yeah, that’s what I mean about it not working in Chrome. Sometimes I don’t have access to Firefox, and the infinite scroll doesn’t work for me in Chrome. So I’ve kind of gotten into the habit of skipping the slideshow and going to the comments.
I use Edge on the blog sites and haven’t tried it in Chrome.
Funnily enough, on the DVDs the image quality for this particular ep is atrocious – I’m fairly certain it was the only episode shot on tape, not film. The long cuts would certainly make using tape cams more likely than film back in the 90s.
Sure shots: The 20 best TV boners of all time
Mr Robot still feels under appreciated to me. It may be my favorite show of all time.
Mr Robot appreciation society assemble!
There are dozens of us!! DOZENS!!!
Came here for West Wing. There is is.Solid list.
The performances from Snook, Strong, and Culkin were obviously fantastic in that scene from Succession, but a little bummed that Mcfadyen didn’t get a shout-out. I thought he was the actor who really held that whole episode together.
Not a TV show, but since today is the 6th of June, and the only way most of us have seen this movie is on TV, here is the amazing one-shot from The Longest Day:
Tiny quibble, but I’m almost positive that Bear episode is handheld, not steadicam.
Never even heard of Patriot, but I’m going to give it a watch.
“The Body” and “Connor’s Wedding” were masterful. Both will always make me sad, but the “The Body” can reduce me to tears. SMG was brilliant – going though all stages of grief in a single episode, while never overplaying it.
Lenny Bruce in Mrs. Maisel is played by Luke Kirby, not Jack Kirby.
Back before streaming, shows had to take commercial breaks into accountAs we all know, streaming eliminated that concept and in no way would streamers reintroduce commercial breaks to make more income.
Streamers double your money by giving you the fades where the commercial breaks were edited in plus the actual locations where the algorithm inserts the commercials.
It’s not clear to me how you possibly could have left out the nearly six-minute single take finale, set to “American Pie,” of the first season of Zoe’s Extraordinary Playlist.
It’s not even the worst cover of American Pie.
There’s a fun scene in Swingers when the characters discuss a one shot – Scorcese/Goodfellas – and then they do one of their own with the guys walking into a club through the back door/kitchen. How young is Vince Vaughn here??? Holy cow 1996 was a LOOOONG time ago.
Such a pity that episode of The Bear broke my suspension of disbelief and made me not care about the next episode (haven’t bothered with season 2).
I’ve been in actual situations like that, and each time in each team we just did what work we possibly could. Portraying it like they did in the show was just rubbish.
Yeah, Barry subverted many tropes, but Bill Hader himself couldn’t subvert the “comedian gets a prestige comedy show but decides later on that he wants Hollywood to see him as a serious ‘artiste’ and a ‘filmmaker’ instead of a comedian” trope. From top of my head, Louis CK, Donald Glover, Aziz Ansari all made shows that got progressively weirder, experimental, and even sadder as they went on.