The 15 best TV episodes of 2023
This year delivered installments bursting with heartbreak, hilarity, and a just a dash of teen cannibalism
TV Lists Ali Wong
Clockwise from bottom left: The Last Of Us (Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO), The Bear (Photo: Chuck Hodes/FX), Poker Face (Photo: Peacock), Yellowjackets (Photo: SHOWTIME) Graphic: Karl Gustafson
It’s end-of-year list-making time at The A.V. Club, and the TV team has already counted down the very best shows and performances of 2023—and we have plenty more celebratory retrospectives planned over the coming weeks. Today, we’re toasting the episodes that really hit us hard, from an unexpected detour in The Last Of Us to a gruesome Yellowjackets installment we saw coming but still managed to shock. These are our 15 favorite eps of the year, listed in chronological order and capped at one entry per show.
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Episode 5 of Blue Eye Samurai kept the main story going while showing a flash back and telling both via a flash forward to a Japanese puppet show. It was very well done.
While both Deer Lady and Forks were phenomenal episodes, I would have likely chosen Elora’s Dad and Fishes as the better episodes imo
SO hard to pick a “best” but for “favourite” I’d have to go with Frankfurter Sandwich
Totally agree on Elora’s Dad. That episode murdered me. The best writing on any show this year. I love Tiio Horn, too, so you know the episode has to be good for me to choose it over the Deer Lady ep.
Nice that you did it in chronological order as that rids us of all the arguments. I have watched 10 out of the 15 and agree on all of them. It’s a pretty tight list.
“Fishes” was the most uncomfortable I’ve felt watching TV in a long time.
Working my way through season 2 and just watched Forks last night – but yeah, Fishes was a way better episode IMO. I was soo tense watching that episode waiting for the inevitable explosion.
Nice call on “Deer Lady”. Loved the episode (and her previous appearances) but it wasn’t till her starring turn that I decided to figure out where I’d seen the actress (Kaniehtiio Horn) before. She’s Tanis from Letterkenny!And she’s done a ton more stuff. Anyway she’s wonderful.And – of course “Forks” makes the list. I think I’ve seen it 5 times now. Damn, that part where Richie’s driving and singing along to Taylor Swift is perfect. But so is literally every second of the episode.
Deer Lady was astounding. I love how there is still some mystery to what is happening at the boarding school, since we are seeing it mostly through the eyes of young Deer Lady, but the general outlines of the inhuman abuse are clear even if you don’t want to believe it. I love that Deer Lady is the mystical avenging force that she seemed to be in her earlier appearances (always highlights) but also a real person too, which is a nice example of how the show approaches Native American spirituality. It is real to them
The choice in “Deer Lady” to render the boarding school staff’s language as guttural nonsense was brilliant. A bunch of furious nuns screaming at you in some incomprehensible language really added a lot to how alien and horrifying this must have felt.In general, I’m almost mad this was just an episode of Reservation Dogs, because the premise of this episode could’ve been an entire feature on its own. Easily.
Maybe it will be some day. She likes playing the character and Harjo seems amenable to the characters spinning off into their own stories.
She was one of the best reasons to watch the trainwreck that was Hemlock Grove. I got a huge crush on her from that and have been a fan of everything since.
It’s not an apology for the Sucession spoiler posted at the time, but I’ll take it as one.Never seen The Great but that scene makes me want to if it’s all as fantastic as that.
The Great isn’t all quite that good, but it’s extremely funny, with excellent work by both Hoult and Fanning that makes it worthwhile and, at times, great.
It’s really good and if it weren’t for the fact that Reservation Dogs was also on Hulu I would have considered The Great the best thing on the service while it was on.
I recommended The Bear to a friend who had once worked in and around kitchens for years… His response after finishing three episodes? “Thanks. You’ve just reactivated my PTSD.”
This. I think I watched 3 episodes and had to stop. I worked in the restaurant industry too long to continue the season.
I responded to the first season the exact same way, but stuck with it because of promises made. I liked the season as a whole, but it was almost too painful to get there.The second season, however, is a very different animal. It’s not really like that at all, and it’s utterly sublime. I’d recommend watching Season 2 — and I know this is sacrilege to some, but I think you can do it without finishing the first season.
Good(?) to see I’m not the only one. Though it was the second-to-last episode of the first season that ruined it for me. I know people loved it, but the way they took Sydney’s character that they’d established as pretty much the straight man of the show, and then just made her crazy, saying things out of character, threatening stabbing, and then quitting during service.. broke my suspension of disbelief. I’ve been in insane situations like that and all of them have everyone buckle down, focus on getting through service, and really unite the team. You hate it at the time, of course, because it’s impossible to serve all the orders, but that episode was pure fiction – which was surprising from a show that had been more realistically detailed up til then. Made me drop the second season.
I haven’t served in 25 years and I still have the “waiter’s nightmare.” That episode fucked me up.
Right? I only worked in a kitchen for about a year and I love the show but it is very … triggering, for lack of a better word.
I never came around to understanding that all those little details matter at all in Forks but I still enjoyed watching Richie drink the koolaid even if it was very cringe seeing him run out to buy a pizza for some rich morons who were leaving town
“if you didn’t see it when it aired, you screwed up”Bold fucking words from a publication that put a major fucking spoiler in headlines of multiple pieces. Perhaps the screw up was that I still visit this site?
Right? Like, who under 40 watches anything “live” anymore?
What gets me is the spoilers were immediate. Succession was appointment viewing for me but yea, once in a while I was a day or two behind, which in my book is still pretty good in terms of watching stuff as soon as it comes out. It’s not like I’m whining about someone ruining Empire Strikes Back or Chinatown or something. The only reasoning I can think of is there’s some ‘engagement’ metric out there that I suppose helps the website sell ads — so whatever they can do to ‘engage’ readers is fair game, including pissing them off. It worked, sort of, in that I posted about it, I’m still angry, and here I am posting about it again. Of course, I also quit the site for several months, so they lost my clicks, and then I had to create a new handle when I came back, which just pissed me off even more.
Maybe spoilers aren’t worth giving that much of a shit about?
AVC posts spoilers before the episode is even finished. Still mad they spoiled ‘The Patient’ after I wasted two months on that show.
“Oh, I’m sorry – are you not a pop-culture content-miller whose limited income depends on watching shit the instant it comes out, because we don’t draw enough water these days to get screeners?”- The AV Club
I’ve really really liked Loki, for all the fun TVA multiversal weirdness and everything, and I liked how the last few episodes worked out…That said, am I the only one who’s disappointed that after S1E1, the character of Loki has almost nothing to do with his character in any of the MCU movies? I re-watched the first Avengers the other day, and Loki was angry, spiteful, and willing to burn everything around him to the ground for whatever small bit of satisfaction or revenge he wanted in a given moment.Frigga’s death in Thor 2 somewhat broke him, but he still never really changed, and even up through most of Ragnarok he was still being a dick and willing to sell Thor down the river whenever he thought it would serve his own purposes.But somehow Mobius and the TVA got that all out of him in one episode and just turned him into a generic, guileless good guy? I mean, I still like the show, but he’s an entirely different character than he was in any of the movies. I also felt like it was weird how he’s an Asgardian god with a lifespan of thousands of years, but as he’s bouncing around time and space, he’s entirely focused on Earth, within a very narrow timeframe. Never a thought to visit Frigga in Asgard’s past, or to see what Thor is up to nowadays (or if Thor can help him?!?). I get that the show is going to have a certain scope, and Kang came from Earth so that was his focus in the TVA, but it just seemed a little weird that neither Loki himself, nor the TVA seemed to give a moment’s thought to the wider universe. Especially since Kang lived in the 31st century, 10 centuries after Earth had started interacting with Asgardians, the Chitauri, Thanos, Skrulls & Kree, and after Captain Marvel & the Guardians of the Galaxy started bouncing around between Earth and other worlds.Am I the only one that felt like all that was weird?
I do like Loki’s sendoff, especially with the way it could have written Kang out of the future of the MCU… As long as they still have an epic way to continue and close out the multiverse saga.
“but he’s an entirely different character than he was in any of the movies.”
I think seeing your own death will change you.
“neither Loki himself, nor the TVA seemed to give a moment’s thought to the wider universe”
I dunno, seemed like they were trying to save the wider universe and were pretty busy with that.
I think seeing your own death will change you.
Yeah, I guess that’s the reason within the show, but that kind of change went against so much of what the character had always been prior to the series, which is what made me want to watch it so much to begin with, and what was advertised.
I dunno, seemed like they were trying to save the wider universe and were pretty busy with that.
Sure, they were saving lots of universes, but it was entirely earth-centric. I mean, from a storytelling perspective, I get it, the audience is people on earth. But the character is a frost giant who was raised as an Asgardian and he seems to have completely forgotten everything about that. And Nothing in the TVA showed anything about Loki’s homeworld(s), or any of the rest of the alien worlds the MCU has been in. All of the TVA employees and Kang are from earth. Characters from other worlds had already had some serious effects on Earth before Loki was apprehended by the TVA, (Asgardians and the Chitauri, with influence from Thanos in Thor & Avengers, plus Captain Marvel had been kicking around between Earth and the rest of space since the 90s). For something that should be encompassing all possible versions of reality and time itself, it seems like the TVA isn’t very aware of anything happening outside of Earth.
The Tesseract was affecting everyone it came into contact with in Avengers, which is why there was so much bickering on the helicarrier and why Loki is so much more of a dick than usual. Once they took the Tesseract from him he mellowed a tad. Thats my take anyway.
For accuracy’s sake: It wasn’t the Tesseract but the Scepter with the Mind Stone that caused the exact effect you describe. But yeah, spot on.
He was still a bitter asshole in the first Thor movie though. And he mellowed a little in Thor 2 (especially after Frigga died) but he was still a selfish trickster and willing to banish Odin off to an old folks home on earth and pretend to be Odin on the throne. In Ragnarok he tried to double-cross Thor as they were trying to leave Sakaar.
In the Loki series after the first episode or two, he was a totally generic, kind-hearted all-around good guy in a TVA uniform, who just wanted to save everybody. Nothing Loki-esque about him other than the accent. It could have been Scott Lang in the TVA instead of Loki and it would have basically been the exact same show.
I found it kind of disappointing because in the run-up to the first season coming out, there was talk about how Hiddleston did a whole training sesh for the people creating the show (I can’t remember who, specifically… writers, directors, or whatever) about what makes Loki tick. I thought we’d get a really awesome deep dive into his tricksterisms, and see lots of wild double-crossing and plot twists.Instead of Loki being the star of the show named after him, the TVA and the multiverses it tried to regulate were the star. And that’s really cool, I really liked the show. It got weird and trippy and fun and funny. It just wasn’t about the awesome character of Loki that we’d gotten to know through so many MCU movies.
You’ve basically articulated the primary reasons I don’t think the show is very good at all. So, no, you’re not alone in finding all this to be weird.
I appreciate the inclusion of “Edible Complex.” TV is a series of episodes, and that episode definitely showed there can be greatness, even if a show that generally didn’t seem to know what it was doing in Season 2.
Yeah, I liked the season overall but the stuff with the current-day women joining up with Lottie… it just made no sense? That episode was good though, and obviously the reason it’s included is because of that scene, and they fuckin’ nailed it. Really captured how revolting it was, but also the relief they felt in their delirious, starving, desperate brains. That scene will for sure be the lasting legacy of the show.
Roger Ebert used to call this the “idiot plot” a plot that is “kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot.”So much of what happens with the adult women in Yellowjackets involves the women doing stupid, inexplicable things. For so many characters, the show’s come up with “reasons” for this — Taissa has a malevolent alternate personality, Natalie is druggy, Misty’s just strange, Van is dying. But the reliance on the idiot plot really stood out this season when it came to adult Shauna, who is supposed to be the most normal one. We just had episode after episode where Shauna’s response to the murder investigation involved her doing the dumbest, most counterproductive stuff, over and over.It’s striking that the part of the show where character motivations are better defined is the one involving the teens, the cannibalism and antler cult part.
The end of the season was messy for sure. I hope they can come back with a rejuvenated season 3, because it does still feel like it has potential.
The young actresses on Yellowjackets are really amazing, raw and real while also matching the performances of the more well known older counterparts
Raw, hmm, I think they prefer their accolades a bit smoked.
It was a great episode but as it didn’t feature either of the Tori needle drops I have to disqualify it from my personal list.Especially when one of the two drops was “Bells for Her”. My all time favorite song of any artist ever. And given the scene it appears in, which is my favorite kind of weather, and the mood/tone it was invoking, which is my favorite kind of horror (folk horror)… That episode was a hit of joy straight to the necgray cortex.
Okay but ‘Those Old Scientists’ and ‘Subspace Rhapsody’ are legitimately two of the greatest episodes Star Trek has ever done.
Upvote for Those Old Scientists and the first song of Subspace Rhapsody (the rest just isn’t as good).
“Those Old Scientists” was an utter triumph for both the Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks cast members involved
Good list, I’m digging the new Fargo…but as a stand alone episode, ep 7 of The Changeling, “Stormy Weather” was astonishing, dark and beautiful, almost made up for the extremely disappointing conclusion.
I can’t believe I’m going to say this compared to what we usually get on this site, but this is actually a really strong list. Well done. My regards.
Natasha Lyonne’s Old Navy commercials have squandered all the good will she built up with Russian Doll and Poker Face.
I’ll have to see what she’s spending it on first [checks notes] oh a swimming pool that resulted in a split with Fred Armisen…I’m torn.
This season of WWDITS was it’s absolute best. Good choice on the episode, but there wasn’t a bad episode in the bunch. Also, the Guillermo frogs are my favorite sight gag of any show all year.
Reservation Dogs easily had at least three more brilliant episodes this season aside from Deer Lady. They were – Dig, Elora’s Dad, House Made of Bongs
Missing 3 treks,
SNW’s Subspace Rhapsody and Those old Scientists and Picard’s Vox.
The last one was probably one of the best moments of nostalgia.
Duuude…. The “Attack on Titan” Final Episode was so metal
Regarding Poker Face, Penultimate doesn’t mean third. It’s second from the end. Antepenultimate is third from the end (the notion is useful for Ancient Greek declinations)
Many many dumdums seem to think pen- is an intesifier and has nothing to do with order. Like… it’s not the ultimate (best), it’s the super-best (penultimate).
I’m not so sure they used it to mean third, though. They’re saying that many viewers would name the penultimate episode (which was Escape from Shit Mountain, the episode a lot of viewers and critics named as the season’s peak) as the best, but AVClub is naming the third episode as the best instead.Awkwardly worded, and they could’ve helped by reminding us what the beloved 9th episode was. But not a misuse of “penultimate,” if I’m understanding them correctly.
Andor had 2 that are better than a few of these — episode 10 and episode 12.
Andor came out in fall 2022
I clearly need to see a shrink to understand why a scene of two people preparing mushrooms almost broke me emotionally. God damn that episode was so good.