I could over-analyze this question for days, but sometimes you’ve just got to roll the hard six and go with your frakking gut: There’s no finer three-episode run of TV than “Occupation,” “Precipice,” and “Exodus,” a.k.a. the New Caprica arc of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. (And yes, I’m counting the two-part “Exodus” as a single episode. Bite me, collaborator.) Quitting the search for Earth and settling down on a gray, muddy, Toaster-controlled dirtball might have been hell for the crew of the Galactica, but it brought out the best of the show, offering up a complex tale of tortured loyalties (and heroes) that riffed on Iraq War discontent and sci-fi action with equal skill. It all builds to “Exodus,” which ends on two of the most iconic images of the entire series. First: The Galactica, wreathed in flames, and falling like an avenging angel through the atmosphere to rescue her wayward people. And second: The heartbreaking look of anguish in the single remaining eye of Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan), as he stands trapped in a crowd of celebrating victors, quietly mourning the crimes the Resistance committed against itself in order to stay alive. [William Hughes]
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TNG:
Yesterday’s Enterprise, The Offspring, Sins of the FatherArrested Development Pilot, Top Banana, Bringing up BusterAlso, Art of Discourse is incredible!
Close contenders with BSG’s Occupation, Precipice, Exodus
TNG I’d go with season 5’s “I, Borg”, “The Next Phase,” “The Inner Light”. You’ve got a classic Trek ethical dilemma with Borg, some great concept Sci-Fi with Phase, and The Inner Light is the best episode of any Trek series.
TNG’s best three episode run should be an article in itself. I would submit “Cause and Effect”, “The First Duty”, and “Cost of Living” (even though it’s a Lwaxana episode, it’s very solid and raises yet another Prime Directive issue). Granted, if this were a two episode run, I’d submit Season 7s “Parallels” and “The Pegasus”.
I know everyone really goes on about how Season 3 was the tops for TNG, and the Yesterday’s Enterprise/Sins of the Father/The Offspring run is certainly great (although I like The Offspring less than a lot of fans and I’m ok with that), Season 5 really is the pinnacle of that show in my eyes.Although, if I were in charge of a TNG reboot for CBSAA, it would defintely be a 8-10 serialized season based around the whole Worf/Duras/entire Klingon political intrigue that the show spaced out throughout Seasons 3-4.
While not playing by the rules set forth, Time’s Arrow 1&2 following The Inner Light was loads of fun.
Oh man… at the end of Time’s Arrow, when Picard walks into Ten Forward. The look that passes between him and Guinean, after everything that has just occurred in the past. In a show that has tons of great action moments and speeches, just that one, wordless moment… amazing.
I never understood the love for Time’s Arrow. I mean yeah it’s cool to have Mark Twain up on the Enterprise but I remember watching it the first time it aired and was like, geez, I think they’re out of ideas. I do always forget that The Inner Light was the episode before though. By far the best TNG ever, and that’s taking in mind that the finale was easily one of the best. How is it that the finale 2-parter better than 3 of the 4 TNG movies? Generations was meh, Insurrection was basically a regular episode expanded to film length, and do we need to talk about how bad Nemesis was? First Contact, for all it’s flaws and character incontinuities, is easily the best of those four. For the record, I do watch Nemesis every so often because of it’s “so bad it’s good” appeal. It’s fantastic.
As far as I’m concerned, any list that includes “The Inner Light” is a valid list.
The Inner Light was certainly a great story. But the best episode of Trek (hands down!) is In the Pale Moonlight from DS9 Season 6.
It’s the best episode of DS9 easily, but I don’t think it’s a better episode of Trek because it requires the context of the rest of the Dominion War arc and familiarity with Garak and Sisko. Someone unfamiliar to the series can fully enjoy The Inner Light.
Good point.
TNG I’d also give a shout out to probably the only 3 episode run it had of connected episodes, Parts 1 & 2 of Best of Both Worlds, which showed us a fight and enemy like we had never seen before, followed by Family, where we see Picard dealing with the trauma of those episodes, which is another area/idea that had been relatively untouched in that time of television.
That would be my pick as well. Rarely did we get so much character development as just that in TNG, character development.
Aside from any episodes with the Borg, that three episode run continues to bring me back to re-watching TNG every five years or so. “Family” is so good but when you understand the character arcs it’s just heartbreaking. Still makes me well up 30 years later.
Yesterday’s Enterprise- yes!
Deep Space Nine:A Call to Arms, A Time to Stand, Rocks and Shoals
Can’t all of us little Schmittys just get along?!
I think Schmitty means loser…
The Offspring“His hands were moving faster than I could see…”
And then I cried.
The problem with your NextGen entries is that they are all stand-alone episodes. They don’t cover a story arc. Although, they didn’t specifically say that the episodes had to be related, just that they were all good. So I guess you’re right. But, if that’s the case, I would nominate any 3 consecutive episodes of DS9 from seasons 6 and 7.
Breaking Bad: Crawl Space, End Times, Face Off
Star Trek TOS: Devil in the Dark, Errand of Mercy, City on the Edge of Forever
I was going to say that as well, however the putrid The Alternative Factor is in there to spoil your fun in terms of original airdate run, and that episode is the end of the universe after dog-doo 8. (It’s the one where John Barrymore didn’t show up as the main ep character so they scrambled to replace him and the whole show just stops in its tracks to twiddle its thumbs. I mean “it’s the one where a guy from an alternate universe shows up in the worst spaceship of all time to battle his this-universe self.”)
I could scan every great show I’ve watched and find multiple worthy contenders, but when it comes to a three-episode run specifically, the choice is obvious. I have to hand this one to the final three episodes — and, brilliantly, the full final season — of Review: “Locorito, Pet Euthanasia, Dream,” “Co-Host, Ass-Slap, Helen Keller, Forgiveness,” and “Cryogenics, Lightning, Last Review.” In a single combined hour of television, Andy Daly wrapped up the tragic tale of Forrest MacNeil the only way Review knew how: with jaw-dropping physical gags, shocking narrative turns, and a heavy helping of self-destruction, all wrapped around a robust emotional core. Add in the sheer audacity of ending the series 7 episodes early with no warning, and you’ve got one for the history books. After so many near-death experiences, I always wondered how the show could possibly end without Forrest’s death. But Review saved its best trick for last by concocting a fate worse.
Oh man, Review. Yes. Could also easily go with the first three episodes.
YES. This is the correct answer. You could pretty much pull any three episodes of Review and it would work. Such a great show.
As runners-up, I would nominate:#2: “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes,” “Celebrity, Batman,” and “Best Friend, Space”#3: “Murder, Magic 8 Ball, Procrastination,” “Happiness, Pillow Fight, Imaginary Friend,” and “Conspiracy Theory”But you’re right — choosing those lineups is extremely difficult, as any three episodes can be taken as a stellar run by the standards of every other show.
The Pancakes episode is possibly my favorite. So bleak and yet so funny.
“…because I was already dead.”
I saw the title “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes” and the second Pancakes triggered a memory and a fit of giggles that caused my wife to ask if I needed help.
I had already heard of its three episode final season and was looking forward to that when I started the American version of the show, but I found the comedy of discomfort so unpleasant I quit a little bit of the way into season 2. I suppose seeing Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes should be good enough.
Review love, nice. Although “Pancakes/Divorce/Pancakes” makes every other episode of Review impossible to properly contextualize. IMO it’s the greatest half-hour of TV comedy to date.
For me, the first three episodes of Breaking Bad would win if limiting the question to a series’ opening episodes.
Really? I always felt it didn’t really get great until season three.
I don’t know how they’d stand up today — I don’t know if I’ve watched the series more than once. But I remember really liking the way it began, with Krazy 8, the RV in the desert, the gory bathtub, etc. I thought it pulled the viewer into the show’s world memorably.
It’s “certainly unusual” for two people to pick the same show in articles like this because it’s SO FUCKING BORING. One of you should have done something else. Not hard!
weird hill to die on but ok
You should demand a full refund of your AV Club subscription. Don’t settle for prorated, get 100% of it.
You mean the last 15 years of ad revenue from article clicking? I would LOVE my share back.
That being said, these kids are the ones who had never seen WKRP and tried to talk about the best TV of the last 40 years. These TV Professionals don’t know enough TV, is what i’m saying.
“ … these kids are the ones who had never seen WKRP and tried to talk about the best TV of the last 40 years.”Why on earth would you think there was any crossover between those two subjects?
omg are you trolling WKRP
Ignore him. He’s just a WPIG plant.
I’m not trolling anything. That show was mostly pretty mediocre. Like most sitcoms of its era, the majority of episodes were cliche filler that relied on pretty typical workplace sitcom hi-jinks for jokes. That was the business model. People always talk about the turkey drop episode and they conveniently forget the whole mess of episodes where two characters have to pretend to be in a relationship to avoid an awkward conversation with someone from their past, or everyone gets stuck at the station during a blizzard, or one character has to pretend to be another to land an important sale after someone gets knocked unconscious by debris falling off a shelf. I don’t see the point in being angry that kids these days don’t know enough about a 40 year old sitcom that was mostly just passably funny. It’s like being pissed off that people don’t know everything about Alice or Chico and the Man.
i don’t even know who you ARE anymore, Blurs
I’m just out here popping nostalgia balloons.
He’s from Cincinnati.
One of the funniest sequences in sitcom history, maybe?
That is a very funny sequence I think it’s rightly remembered as the high point (and probably the defining moment) of that show.
I grew ten years old from reading this.
Wasn’t that like 10 years ago? I don’t think the same people are writing for the site anymore.
Ten years?? I don’t even know MYSELF anymore
I’m really sorry that they made you read those articles. You should definitely be paid for the way you choose to spend your free time.
spare me your cookie-cutter auto-reply to online commenting in an online comment section, mom.
Your third-person passive-aggressivity amply demonstrates that you too spend your spare time commenting on the lapses you perceive in the comportment of others (plus hypocrisy).
I like the Trumpian nature of his post though, I was almost surprised it didn’t end with “FAKE NEWS!”
Nicely done. Although it was annoying. The obscure Jim Henson Hour selection kind of bails them out for having pop culture knowledge limited to ‘things I watched on TV or Netflix over the past few years’. In some ways it’s a tough problem, because the best known shows are probably also the best, but it can help to re-define your criteria to get more interesting answers and not get stuck with ‘best episodes from most universally beloved shows’. Or, just define strongest specifically. Is it just best? Most impactful? Most personally enjoyable to the person being asked? Everyone’s going to answer these questions differently if you don’t define what you’re talking about, specifically, and then you get lists of stuff people liked, for their own reasons. Defining your terms also lets you get more mileage out of articles like this because you get to pick lists based on more specific criteria! (see The Ringer for many, many examples)
TL, DR
Um… did anyone else get a Community notification for this?
But if you genuinely think it’s the strongest 3 episode run, it would be weird to then pick something else?
If we can’t trust pop-culture website writers to lie for our entertainment, then what do we really have in this crazy world? I ask you.
I mean, if you’re testifying in court and you’re bound to tell the truth? Sure. If you’re trying to come up with an interesting set of topics for an article? It’s totally okay to say “I love Community too and I was going to pick (3 episodes). But instead I’ll do…”
When I used to teach composition to (mostly) dopey college freshmen, one point I made frequently is that two people can come to the same conclusion in vastly different ways and for disparate reasons. (You know, so your writing needs to be a little more in-depth, kids.) Along those lines, I always enjoy it when I see two professional writers with a common interest come at the same subject from different angles.
Not hard!Sentence fragment!
oh that’s rich, coming from someone who can’t decide whether to Phil or not
nothing quite like a some mediocre dude getting irrationally angry about something he didn’t even have to pay for on a saturday morning
Mr. President? Is that you?
It’s the second greatest comedy of all time. Would you have gotten this salty if The Simpsons had gotten picked twice? Chill the fuck out
The Simpsons >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Community. At least for its first 11 or so seasons.
Still kind of cheating, though – technically correct, but not linked by any arc.
I bet you’re fun at parties….
i’d like to join you, travelling the world looking for things to get mad at. it sounds like a raucous good time!
It’s unbelievable that anybody is still shilling for the new BattleStar Galactica. And it is even stupider when you remember, Messages from Earth, Point of No Return and Severed Dreams from Babylon 5. (Though I could see some preferring The Rock Cried Out No Hiding Place, Shadow Dancing and Z’ha’dum, also from Babylon 5.)
It’s unbelievable that anybody is still shilling for the new BattleStar Galactica.Just because it didn’t stick the landing doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great show.Also: “Confessions and Lamentations,” “Divided Loyalties,” and “The Long, Twilight Struggle.”
BSG had a disappointing ending but it still wasn’t terrible. It’s no LOST, that’s for sure
No, LOST was much more satisfying.
We will have to agree to disagree on that one. Hopefully we will come together in a few weeks all agreeing to love or hate how GoT ends
And people will still be arguing over Endgame when the GOT finale. And of course, those two endings Will fuel the internet for the approximately 7 months until Ep 9. The internet is going to be great this year, said sarcastically.
Kit Harrington said the ending would be divisive. That sounds fun.
Ugh… no.
BSG had two-three great seasons and then went totally bonkers around the point it decided to delve deep into Cylon spirituality and All Along the Watchtower became a plot point. Lost was always consistently good, it’s just that it’s finale was really dumb
Lost was consistent, but became infinitely less compelling once you realized the show had no idea where it was going. Polar bears and smoke monsters were great when you were anticipating some satisfying explanation of uts mysteries. Once that expectation was lost, the new stuff much less compelling.You’re 100% right about BSG. And its early episodes aren’t retroactively tarnished by its later failings, because they weren’t reliant on mysteries in the same way. I suppose their not knowing who was a Cylon and who was a human could be termed a mystery, but for early BSG the not-knowing was the whole point, driving its examination of man’s inhumanity to man, what liberty were would sacrifice for security, etc. Even as they kinda tried to ruin it by [spoiler]having half the main cast turn out to be Cylons[/spoiler], it didn’t detract from what those early episodes accomplished.
Both series were too far gone by the time they reached the finale. I don’t really hate either of them.
I agree that nuBSG doesn’t hold up over time. Some folks just like shakycam, I guess. I tried to show some friends a few early eps to get them into it, it’s impenetrable and feels aimless now.And thanks more for repping Babylon 5, not enough B5 in this world. I was thinking A Voice in the Wilderness 1 & 2 followed up by Babylon Squared – season 1 doesn’t get appreciated enough but it has some really compelling storytelling as it finds its way.You can find a lot of 3-act winners between the end of season 1 and the end of season 4 of B5, now that I look at it.
Came here for “Messages from Earth,” “Point of No Return,” and “Severed Dreams” from Babylon 5 — thank you.
Ahem:Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Choices,” “The Prom,” and the two-part “Graduation Day.” Or, if you want to be really goddamn sad, “I Was Made to Love You,” “The Body,” and “Forever,” aka “The Cry Your Goddamn Guts Out Arc.”Angel: “The Trial,” “Reunion,” and “Redefinition.” Also “Loyalty,” “Sleep Tight,” and “Forgiving,” aka “Everything Goes to Shit and It’s All Wesley’s Fault.”And for all you Veronica Mars fans out there: “Silence of the Lamb,” “An Echolls Family Christmas,” and “Clash of the Tritons,” all three contenders for best episode of the show and all three back-to-back.
For me it would be the three episode arc from Angel season 4 when Faith returns and works with Wesley to defeat Angelus and restore Angel’s soul, even if it kills her: “Salvage,” “Release,” and “Orpheus.”
Yes, I love that arc. Especially “Orpheus.” “Dude, you saved a puppy!”
My favorite Faith line from fourth season is still: “Just like riding a biker.”
Angel: Smile Time, A Hole in the World, and Shells.
I would have chosen that, too, but it’s just sheer mood whiplash to go from “Ooh puppet hilarity” to “OH MY GOD WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS TO US?”
“A certain level of quality edutainment!”
Best ANGEL Line Ever, Call Me Carlos the Dwarf.
Because you experienced joy.
That’s what makes it great, though. The cuteness of Smile Time sets you up perfectly for the tragedy.
Fred died, but oh don’t worry her soul burnt up too. It was well done, but goddamn. That and Fry’s dog from Futurama were really upsetting. Edit: And Donna’s conclusion in Doctor Who.
this right here
“My whole world is gone.”“Now you know how I feel.”
“Because I look like her?”“Yes.”
“Would you like me to lie to you now?”“…yes. Thank you…yes.”
“Crash…Bandicoot?”
Angel Season 5, especially the latter half, was ridiculously good, maybe even more so because of the cut in budget forcing changes and adaptations on them.
Equally hilarious was in the prior episode where Wesley shot that guy in the leg for not working Miss Burkles case
Angel: Any episodes showing Wesley getting his kink on. What a surprise!!
For Buffy, I have to go with the three eps that close out Season 5: “Spiral,” “The Weight of the World,” and “The Gift.” They cover a single day in tight continuity and comprise a proper three acts as Dawn’s secret gets out, the gang goes on the run, and Buffy almost completely gives up before returning to her roots and making her stand.
If we’re talking Angel, I gotta go Smile Time-A Hole in the World-Shells…or Shells-Underneath-Origin.Just a shame “TGIQ” breaks up the near-perfect run before NFA.I do prefer S2 to Buffy S3, but Go Fish, Killed By Death and even Phases serve as similar coolers during near-perfect stretches.
Angel: “Smile Time”, “A Hole in the World”, “Shells”. That’s quite a lineup as well.
I did a Buffy rewatch recently and I was struck by how my opinions changed from the initial run. Season 2 remains the most powerful story, season 3 is the most well-done, and I’m one of those dorks that found season 6 to be the most consistently watchable. I really, really wish there had been no filler between Surprise/Innocence and Passion.
Not sure I’d call BBB “filler,” haha!But, seriously, if you cut Bad Eggs, Phases, Killed By Death and Go Fish, every other ep, starting with Halloween, either stands up with or surpasses the best S3 has to offer.I think S5 deserves a place on the list, though, in terms of having the best balance of S2’s “wham” moments with S3’s consistency – even considering the premiere and In the Woods, there’s not a single truly bad episode, and FFL, Crush, IWMTLY, The Body, Forever, Tough Love, Weight of the World, and The Gift are all fucking perfect, or nearly there.
I was 13 when season 3 aired and when I rewatched it last year, I realized that there was a lot I hadn’t grasped the first time around. I’m still not as enamored of the mayor-villain as other people are, but I appreciate the Faith/Buffy duality so much more now. As for S2, Passion might be the best episode Buffy ever did, though I also love After Life (the dialogue is beautiful) and Fool For Love. Surprise/Innocence was a formative TV experience for me, and I still remember how shocked I was when Buffy found out that Glory was a god. Just a great idea.
S5 has long been my favorite for many of the reasons you point out. Also, I think the introduction (or, at least, greater clarity about) Buffy’s darkness, her desire/need to slay, combined with the depth of her feelings about Dawn make for really compelling viewing, even across some of the weaker eps. I know many don’t like Dawn, or don’t like MT’s portrayal of her, anyway, but the way her presence makes the whole fight so personal for Buffy, and then how that plays out post-The Body, is, for me anyway, deeply emotional and still exciting and kick-ass and funny.I love the early high school stuff, and S03 might be the most consistently “good,” but the older I get, the more the final three seasons are the ones I think about most, and get the most out of on rewatch.
For Buffy, I think I’d go with “Selfless”, “Him”, and “Conversations with Dead People”. The first and last are stone cold classics, among the best episodes the show ever did, and while “Him” isn’t nearly on the same level, it’s still a hilarious, hijink filled farce.
The back-end of Buffy S3 is pretty strong, from Helpless all the way through Graduation Day II. Episodes include Ear Shot, Dopplegangland, and the Zeppo. The final three episodes-the Prom and then the two Graduation Day episodes- is pretty stellar
Buffy’s S06 has got a few dreadful episodes, but also a lot of really great ones – the whole first 9-episode run is pretty stellar, but “Once More with Feeling,” “Tabula Rasa,” and “Smashed” make a killer group. Also, the final six from “Normal Again” through “Grave” are epic, but I’d pick “Seeing Red,” “Villains,” and “Two to Go” —> once Dark Willow emerges, all the sins of “As You Were” are forgiven!
“After Life” has some beautiful dialogue.
I’d go Season 4 with Pangs, Something Blue, and Hush.
– Any Portrait in a Storm (1985) – Give the Boy a Hand (1985) – Saving Face (1985) St. Elsewhere Karen Austin, possibly best known for her one-season role on Night Court not long before this time, had a brief stint as Mary Woodley, a no-nonsense doctor taking over the ER. Woodley immediately clashed with Wayne Fiscus, who was, of course, fun-loving and goofy, easy to assume the worst of, but a good doctor at heart. Any obvious cliches of a hookup, or her character turning out to be a heroin addict, or not really a doctor, or a psycho ex-girlfriend, or what have you, were avoided, as the main focus was on their attempts to help a young couple, drug addicts, deep in debt, the girl being a prostitute…who was also pregnant. They pledged to get clean and have a fresh start. As often happened on St. Elsewhere, amidst a few moments of hope and joy, everything that could go wrong with them did, with the boy running off while the girl went into labor. Her baby died. She checked herself out of the hospital soon after. Woodley had bought a stuffed animal for the baby in a happier moment. Now she was the only one left to say goodbye. In a devastatingly underplayed scene, Woodley, completely numbed by all that had happened, quietly went to the morgue, opened the slab, placed the stuffed animal inside, and left.
Ozymandias, Granite State, and Felina from Breaking Bad’s final run. So much incredible acting, cinematography and direction, all wrapped in a satisfying conclusion to one of the best TV dramas of all time.
Had to scroll pretty far down here to find a BB reference.
Have we forgotten already, or was I the only one who watched an episode and said, “WTF?!?,” then couldn’t wait another seven days for the next one?
And that’s saying something, because every season of that show had great 3-episode chunks scattered throughout
I’d start this an episode earlier with To’hajilee as I don’t think Felina quite measures up to the three episodes that precede it. Other strong contenders: Mandala-Phoenix-ABQ, Abiquiu-Half Measures-Full Measure, Crawl Space-End Times-Face Off, and Buyout-Say My Name-Gliding Over All.Other shows:Deadwood: Complications-Something Very Expensive-E.B. Was Left OutThe Shield: Petty Cash-Possible Kill Screen-Family Meeting, with honorable mention to Smoked-Of Mice And Lem-PostpartumReview: Pretty much any three-episode stretch, no hyperbole.You’re The Worst: There Is Not Currently A Problem-Spooky Sunday Funday-LCD Soundsystem
Mandala-Phoenix-ABQ. It’s such a heartbreaking arc, and John de Lancie is so, so good in it.
I was somewhat unsatisfied by the finale of Breaking Bad. I’ll take the final three episodes of The Shield any day.
I might just go the first three episodes of Deadwood. Just being introduced to the locale and the characters so perfectly. I’ve never fallen in love with a show so quickly.
There are shows I’ve liked better than Breaking Bad, but I don’t know that I’ve enjoyed any four episodes of a show more than I enjoyed the last four episodes of Breaking Bad. Granite State is profoundly underrated in terms of its emotional power and importance to Walt’s journey as a character, and Felina is dream-like and haunting.
Old story but it came up in the little side feed so I’m commenting. The fact that I had to look this far down for Ozymandias – widely regarded as one of the best episodes of any TV show ever – is baffling. It puts every single other triple set mentioned here to shame, by itself. Step up, AVC commentariat.
Doctor Who:Ark in Space/Sontaran Experiment/Genesis of the Daleks Yes, the middle one is a bit weak, but still decent enough, and due to various issues, was filmed entirely on location, which makes for an interesting viewing experience. It also serves a bridge between the first and third stories, both of which were astonishingly good and had a much deeper emotional core than most of what came before or would come after. Ark in Space has a storyline everyone has seen before (a space station is taken over by evil aliens), but, even with a limited budget, there is a chilling sense of emptiness and the clearness of a vision for the future becoming a tomb. Psychological horror is prevalent, as viewers see a good person slowly becoming a monster. We feel like we are with him, yet we also observe his decay. This leads to a conclusion that is predictable but still surprisingly emotional. Meanwhile, Tom Baker is in full command of this show in spite of this only being his second story, as he has already captured all the murky bombast that can be Doctor Who in the right hands. Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan, bantering and silly, but also brave and deeply caring, are the ideal companions. Some of my favorite Doctor Who scenes of all time are in this story, whether it be the Doctor, with a mix of admiration and irritation, talking about how you just never can write humanity off, or the Doctor goading and belittling a nervous Sarah Jane until she manages to crawl through a tunnel – telling her he knew she could do it all along as she slaps him away. Genesis of the Daleks is, to use the old cliche, the GOAT of Doctor Who stories, one of the few stories in sci-fi to so successfully make hay of the “they’re just like Nazis!” trope, with a deeply disturbing and haunting villain, and moments of reflection and despair for our heroes, and – best of all since this is what Doctor Who should be at its core – the Doctor’s crushing realization that going in to change time “for the better” can be the worst decision of all. This story has one of my favorite scenes from the show, or any show, where Sarah Jane, who has been taken prisoner, decides to escape with various other prisoners. They slowly climb up various pieces of scaffolding and tower, guards shooting at them all the way. Sarah Jane keeps on, resolute, even as she hears the screams of the others around her, falling off, dying. She stops for breath and one of the men who stops to check on her is shot and dies in front of her. She and another man make it to the top, the only survivors…but are immediately recaptured. It seems so futile and so frustrating, yet you also have so much admiration for how strong and brave she was, all without cookie cutter “girl power” scenes of her kicking guards and tossing one-liners, all without other characters telling us at length how bad-ass she is, all without shots of her looking pensive in close-up as emo woe music plays loud enough to rattle the windows. Everything in this sequence is stripped way back and left to the incredibly talented Elisabeth Sladen, who gives a career best performance, and who went on to become a beloved figure for fans – and producers – for the rest of her life.
Yes, this is the right answer.
In nu-Who, I’d go Family of Blood/Blink/Utopia. Human Nature is the best nu-Who by miles, and Utopia is an immense setup for the sadly disappointing finale.
New Who’s inconstancy makes it real hard to give it a great 3 episode run. I can’t settle on Utopia because part 2 fumbles the setup so badly. It’s like half a story. While I agree with you that Blink and Human Nature / Family of Blood they are bookended by junk.
I’d go Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, Midnight, Turn Left. That’s a pretty bleak set of episodes too, now that I think o fit.
Now, unobjectively, my favorite three in a row are Capaldi episodes. Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, Hell Bent. If Moffett had only walked away and dropped the mic there…
If only Pearl Mackie had been in place for that season. She would have set the universe on fire with a script like Face The Raven.
Bill wouldn’t have ended up in Clara’s predicament. She would have asked the Doctor before getting that death tattoo.
I like all your recommendations.
“Silence/Forest”, “Midnight,” and “Turn Left” is a great trio from an incredible season. Such great ideas in all of them. “Midnight” is a perfect bottle episode and the main guest actress does some incredible work.
And I agree that “Raven”, “Heaven”, and “Hell” were outstanding together. “Heaven” is possibly THE high point of modern WHO.
Season 10 was really good though!
I’d go Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, Midnight, Turn Left. That’s a pretty bleak set of episodes too, now that I think o fit.I posted this as my answer, not knowing someone had beaten me to it. This is clearly the greatest run of individual episodes of the revived series.Now, unobjectively, my favorite three in a row are Capaldi episodes. Face the Raven, Heaven Sent, Hell Bent. If Moffett had only walked away and dropped the mic there…Uncontroversially, I think Heaven Sent is easily the best Capaldi episode and one of the best overall, and, controversially, I agree that Hell Bent is great as well, but I think Face the Raven is just alright.
The Human Nature/Family of Blood is definitely the best of new Who (I’d go as far as to say the scenes of “John Smith” weeping that he doesn’t want to go back to being the Doctor may be the best work of Tennant’s career).The awful, awful outcome of season 3 makes me think back badly on Utopia, but there are a lot of good scenes – especially Derek Jacobi, and the priceless moment of Martha and Jack bitching about the Doctor’s obsession with Rose.
I really like Human Nature/Family of Blood, but the book is better, and, perhaps unfairly, the comparison knocks it down a peg in my mind. The same goes for Dalek, which I thought was the Ninth Doctor’s best story until I heard the story it’s based off of, Jubilee.
I never liked Dalek, between the ludicrous concept of the goodness and purity of Rose causing some kind of moment for the Dalek, to the pure baked ham treatment of the evil American ruining us all (even if it’s true, it was done so clunkily I felt embarrassed), to the cringeworthy set piece of all the soldiers standing around in place so that the Daleks could electrocute them. To the Doctor’s big melodramatic speech which felt less like him and more like Christopher Eccleston reading an audition piece. It never felt like true Doctor Who to me. That was confirmed some years later when I saw the writer of the episode blathering on about how Caves of Androzani was so good because it wasn’t really Doctor Who. So basically, in his eyes, the only truly good version of the show is the one that has nothing to do with the show.
“Genesis of the Daleks” in any trio is tough to beat. Just a perfect WHO. And I actually really like “The Sontaran Experiment”, I think it’s a nice bite-sized intro to the awesome Baker/Sladen dynamic.Here are some worthwhile runners-up:
“The Face of Evil,” “The Robots of Death,” and “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” with Tom Baker. All feature Leela, who is not for everyone. But “Talons”(especially) and “Robots” are up there with “Genesis” as just perfect WHO.“Mawdryn Undead,” “Terminus”, and “Enlightenment” with Peter Davison. I have very positive memories of the so-called Black Guardian Trilogy, which is a rare arc that lasts 3 episodes.
Sadly, a lot of Pertwee’s and Baker’s strongest seasons were leavened with enough stinkers that a run of 3 great episodes in a row is actually tough to list.
Those are some great suggestions. I was half-asleep when I wrote up my DW trio so didn’t really pause to think of more, but yeah, Face/Robots/Talons is a hell of a kick, and when you think about how easily the last two in particular could have been seen as trite and cheesy and ridiculous, it’s amazing they work as well as they do. Hinchliffe was just an absolute genius. So much of his run holds up so well. That was also such a great run for Leela. I don’t think people today would appreciate what a hard task she had, coming in after such a beloved companion, and being so tough and strong in an era where this type of strength in women was often still just confined to a few superhero-type shows.
The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood. Or if you cheat the season-ending restriction, The War Games, Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians. (Swapping War Games for Ambassadors OF DEATH is also acceptable.)
The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, The Stones of Blood. Or if you cheat the season-ending restriction, The War Games, Spearhead from Space, Doctor Who and the Silurians. (Swapping War Games for Ambassadors OF DEATH is also acceptable.)If you’re cheating the season-ending restriction, I think Robots of Death/Talons of Weng-Chiang/Horror of Fang Rock is about as good as it gets.
I might be so bold as to put forth the E-Space three, followed by Keeper and Logopolis for a nice solid five. Not that I have anything against Castrovalva, but it’s not as strong as those others.
Technically that’s 12 episodes.Honestly, I went through the list and I can’t find a run of three serials in Classic Who that are all amazing, so this is probably as close as it gets.
The Prisoner: “Hammer Into Anvil”, “It’s Your Funeral”, and “A Change of Mind”
The great thing about The Prisoner is you could pick just about any three episodes and say they’re sequential. You’re just using the Blah-blah-blah viewing order.
Yeah, I was just going with original airdate order. The AVC episode order could have given me Hammer into Anvil and Living in Harmony on the same 3 episode list so I should have use that. 😀
Sopranos – Test Dream, Long Term Parking, All Due Respect
“The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies,” “Jack Frost,” and “Riding With Death.”Was tempted to go with “Space Mutiny,” “Time Chasers,” and “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” (from the same fucking season! Easily the best one they ever did) but my memories of “Riding With Death” are simply too fond.
I’ve got “Riding With Death” as the fifth-best MST3K episode ever, but it’s probably the one I most often show to newbies. Something about it is just so accessible.
It’s less daunting to watch two cheesy episodes of a failed 70’s show, artlessly smashed together, than a black-and-white Ed Wood-ian slog. Particularly by the time they’re in a later-season groove like 8. Still, nothing beats shorts for good first-timer fodder – I remember hooking a bunch of my friends on it in middle school by showing them “Cheating.”
The exact sweet spot for a great MST3K episode is actually a really fascinating question. There are people who swear by Manos or the Coleman Francis trilogy, but those movies are so bad that they make the episodes themselves really hard to watch.
Exactly. Manos is WAY too much to give to a newbie (unless you know this person so well that introducing them to MST will change their life forever).
Good choice, but now I need to hear your top four.
1. Pumaman2. Space Mutiny3. Invasion of the Neptune Man4. The Undead5. Riding With Death
Very solid top five. Guess you’re more of a Mike guy? Which I am too, just an observation.
Oh, yeah. My top 20 (which is as far as I go – I’m not a total crazy person) has maybe two Joel episodes. I thought Joel himself had a really dull, almost somnambulent vibe, and the early episodes lack the crispness and wit of the last few seasons.
Agreed. I’m mostly fine with Joel’s sleepy vibe in general, I could just never really get on board with the prop-comedy Invention Exchange bits.
Oh, no – My episode to show newbies is always “Pod People”! The cheapass E.T. ripoff, the obnoxious pop group, the even more obnoxious poachers, and the supposedly-adorable little boy with his pets who adopts the young alien Trumpy (who Crow brilliantly voices as Donald Pleasance!) – they’re so absurdly off-kilter that even casual viewers will on the floor howling with laughter.
It’s kind of a special case given the format, but I’d argue that “MST3K” is in that rare category of shows that have never really had a poor episode.
Some are funnier or just have more energy than others, but any ep is reliably entertaining.
Sometimes the movie was too boring for even them. See like The Starfighters.
The Castle of Fu Muchu would like to have a word with you. I also can never get thru Hamelt.
My pick is 902 through 904: Phantom Planet (an underrated classic), The Puma Man (sorry, I mean the Pyumayman) and Werewolf (my all time favorite episode of the series).804 through 806 is a good runner up with The Deadly Mantis, The Thing That Couldn’t Die and The Undead. Really though, you can pick any stretch of three episodes from seasons 8 and 9 and you’re guaranteed two if not three all time greats.
Wuurwolf?
Good choices. “Space Mutiny” and “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” might be my two favorite MST3Ks, but “Time Chasers” is pretty high up on the list too.
Is that the episode staring Sting, Debbie Reynolds, God, and had a hero named Blast Hardcheese?
Still my favorite two riffs from the series.
Yes, but you’re misremembering the hero’s name: it’s Buck Plankchest.
Oh, you’re right. I often get those two confused, along with Dirk Hardpec. They look so much alike.
I got my fiancee to watch Space Mutiny and she was kind of enjoying the first few scenes, but she absolutely lost her shit when the woman who died inexplicably came back a couple of scenes later. She was laughing about that the next day.
I notice nobody here seems to be talking much about the Jonah episodes…
I really want to like the new episodes, and I think Jonah is fine, but the rhythm of the jokes is just off. They feel rushed. And I’ve enjoyed Baron Vaughn in other stuff but his voice doesn’t seem right for Tom Servo.
Most of seasons 3 to 5 are perfect to me: I don’t know if I could pick a three episode block to be honest.
Nice picks. A cheesy trucker movie, one of the beautiful and strange Russo-Finnish episodes, and Sci-Fi’s answer to Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Pumaman, Werewolf, and Deadly Bees is also a strong contender. I love ‘em all, but the Sci-Fi episodes were glorious.
I’d go with the first three of season three, Cave Dwellers, Gamera and Pod People. Of course, if you have a preference of Mike over Joel, your mileage may vary.
“Space Mutiny,” “Time Chasers,” and “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” all aired back-to-back-to-back!!!!?
MITCHELL
Seinfeld: “The Bubble Boy,” “The Cheever Letters,” “The Opera”; or “The Cheever Letters,” “The Opera,” “The Virgin”; or “The Opera,” “The Virgin,” “The Contest”Sanford & Son: “Wine, Women & Aunt Esther,” “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” “Fred Sanford, Legal Eagle”Spaced: “Chaos,” “Epiphanies,” “Ends”
Good call on that Spaced run.
Sanford & Son-finally, someone with vision.
I’m with you on the The Virgin and The Contest, but The Cheever Letters was pretty weak.
I would go with The Implant, The Junior Mint, and The Smelly Car.
The Cheever Letters is great just for the moment Susan’s father announces that he was love with John Cheevers. Also because it’s a TV sitcom built around John Cheever. That’s not something you’ll find on most sitcoms
The entire run of spaced any three in a row
Duh.
I thought about those same three episodes of The West Wing. The first three episodes of season two are very strong contenders as well: In the Shadow of Two Gunmen parts 1 & 2, and The Midterms. These three episodes give you the arc of the shooting outside the town hall, Josh’s surgery, key flashbacks to the campaign and how all the characters came together, and then sets the story for the rest of the season with the results of the midterms.
Forgot to do Agents of SHIELD: “Nothing Personal,” “Ragtag,” and “Beginning of the End.” I can’t count the Agents of Hydra arc in Season 4 because that was longer than three episodes (it totals about six or seven episodes). But then there’s also “Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire,” “Lockup,” and “The Good Samaritan.”
I’m bad on episode titles…but I was thinking about the run where Simmons got sucked up by the monolith. The Simmons stand alone ep was movie quality, imo, but I’d put those episodes as the best of the series. 🙂
That S1 stretch is pretty solid (with Ragtag being the weaker link but still good). The final 3 episodes of both halves of S3 were pretty good also (although Maveth is mainly just fine for me and Emancipation is not super amazing). The final 3 of the first half of S2 are pretty good even if S2E9 is mainly just a bridge. Not the biggest Agents of HYDRA fan but I suppose 3 of those could be contenders (although the finale is a bit of a letdown and maybe S4E17 and 19 aren’t necessarily peak).
I would definitely count The Man Behind the Shield, Self Control, and What If . . . . I mean, Self Control was one of the best episodes of TV I’ve see in the past decade.
GOT – Hardhome, Dance With Dragons, Mother’s Mercy. Doctor Who – A Christmas Carol, The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon.+Lost – The Man behind the curtain, greatest hits, through the looking glass* Farscape – Revenging Angel, The Choice, Fractures +might be cheating as first episode is a Christmas special but considered part of the series 6 production slate *might be cheating is a two parter.
*might be cheating is a two parter.Nah, they were shown together. It still counts.
That’s a strong Farscape run. Not sure if I could come up with a better one
I went looking through Wikipedia specifically for a run for Farscape. It’s a show that has slowly been forgotten due to general Syfy-ness and lack of ability to convert to 16:9 for modern audiences. Hoping by keeping the name out there, and it’s new availability on Amazon Prime, people will start to check it out.
I’m going to follow William Hughes’ “a two-parter counts as one choice” and suggest Scratch’n’Sniff, Infinite Possibilities, Revenging Angel. Exemplifies how funny and weird the show could get, as well as how satisfyingly it could conclude multi-epsiode storyarcs.
In that case, I’d probably go Infinite Possibilities, Revenging Angel and The Choice, if keeping to 3. I thinking having the Arryn episode is important.
Those were the exact same episodes I was looking for, for GoT and Lost. 100% agreed
Farscape – Revenging Angel, The Choice, FracturesPerfect choices for Farscape, which had some pretty great runs. My other choice would be the “We’re So Screwed” trilogy:Fetal Attraction, Hot to Katratzi, and La Bomba.I even named myself after that last one.
All the Farscape multi-parters are great (even if princess drags since it was supposed to be a 2 parter).
Season 5 of Game of Thrones was terrible. We see that the fleeing wildlings are all on boats, so you’d think they’d all be sailing around the wall, but instead we find them on land so Alliser Thorne has to decide whether to let them in. And he’s supposed to regard Jon’s decision to let them in as justifying mutiny & assassinating him, but evidently that’s not sufficient to make him disobey the order of Jon while he’s stuck on the other side of the wall, thus making Thorne responsible for the very thing he mutinies over. That’s also the stretch that has Ramsay’s “twenty good men” somehow destroy all the provisions of Stannis’ army, as by this point nobody uses lookouts any more. Plus I didn’t even mention Dorne or Sansa’s storyline!
Yeah, S5 is not terrible. S5 has 4 of the best episodes of the series. I’m not going to fault a TV show for making dramatic choices over “logical” choices. Sansa was good drama. Dorne was worth it for Jaime and Myrcella alone. And neither of those arcs are any worse than Dany S2 or Theon S3.
Going to give Game of Thrones a nod here – I haven’t been as happy with the later seasons which abandoned pacing and slowly building a plot, but back in season 4, there were three episodes in a row with big moments that all felt earned. “The Mountain and the Viper” features the titular characters battling for Tyrion’s fate and to settle a personal grudge, “Watchers on the Wall” is an episode-long battle with fantastic moments, and “The Children” showcases a conclusion which brings Stannis to the Wall, Bran to the Three-Eyed Raven, and Tyrion killing his father and former lover and leaving Westeros.And the more impressive thing is you could shift the three episodes to include “The Laws of God and Man” which features Tyrion’s trial and / or “Mockingbird” which features Littlefinger sending Lysa out the Moon Door and I wouldn’t argue too much. S4 is the best season of GOT IMO because it features nonstop awesome moments which all feel well developed and earned.
Season 3 and 4 are the best simply because it was based on the best book of the series.
That’s true but doesn’t change that it’s an awesome stretch of episodes that epitomizes why so many people became obsessed with the show.
west wing. lol.
Allison! Plucking the answer right from my head (though “17 People” is extraordinary).
BoJack Horseman: Yes And, Escape from LA, Out to SeaI mean come on, what an arc.
I might go for the three that open Season 4 – See Mr. Peanutbutter Run, The Old Sugarman Place, Hooray! Todd Episode.
Oh that’s a good one: we are silly and can still work without Bojack….who rips your goddamn soul out your eyeballs….but ooo, Todd!
Ugh.“Why don’t I take you?”
I’d go the run from “The Amelia Earheart Story” to “INT.Sub”. “Free Churro” is just…
“I’m your son. All I had was you!”
“I will fucking kill you.”
The WireSeason 5, episodes 8-10Starting with the death of Omar and continuing to the series finale
I guess everyone is saving The Wire in case there is a Q&A on the strongest 60-episode run.
I don’t know, fake serial killer arc kinda hurts those last 10.
You didn’t appreciate how that got into the… Dickensian nature of it all?
Not enough to justify Freamon’s involvement in that storyline. Great show. Would still personally rank it higher on an objective list vs other shows (though it’s lower on my personal faves list). But, it’s not flawless. That arc is weak and S5 is generally not up to snuff with S1-4.
I have to agree. S5 was a bridge too far. S1-4 was an incredible run, though.
Also the boring Newspaper storyline.
The Sopranos – “Members Only”, “Join The Club” and “Mayham”.
MSt3K had a couple of particularly strong runs of episodes, featuring a combination of blistering riffs, legendarily bad films and great host segments. The late season six run consisting of High School Bigshot – Red Zone Cuba – Danger!! Death Ray – and The Beast of Yucca Flats is pretty amazing, but my favorite is the back half of Season 7: The Incredible Melting Man, Escape 2000 and Laserblast which for me represent the peak of the MST3K staff’s writing.
Incredible Melting Man has for my money the single best scene of riffing: After cutting away from a terribly-shot beheading kill, it’s two guys on a moving platform talking over the sound of the machinery. Every single riff in that tiny scene is to die for.
Oh I know! “Are we moving, or is it the building?”
And then there’s the crackers scene which couldn’t be more bizarre than if Bunuel had directed it.
Gonna go with Utopia and the Sound Of Drums 2 parter from the 3rd season of Nu-Who. You’ve got Ten, Martha, and Jack Harkness at the literal end of time, leading into John Simm’s master.That whole third season can get it, honestly.
Futurama, season four: “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” “The Sting,” “Bend Her.”Buffy, season six (sorry, haters): “Once More with Feeling,” “Tabula Rasa,” “Smashed.”Bob’s Burgers, season three: “Boys 4 Now,” “Carpe Museum,” “The Unnatural.” Or a five (!) episode run in season four: “A River Runs Through Bob,” “Fort Night,” “Seaplane!,” “My Big Fat Greek Bob,” and “Turkey in a Can.”
I don’t really like Smashed my memory, but Once More and Tabula Rasa are two of the best episodes of the show, so I can’t argue. I might go with Doppelgangland, Enemies, Earshot for my Buffy trio – there’s not really an accumulation effect as there are with other runs of the show, but they’re all great (and different) in their own right.
Season three had some great episodes. “Lovers Walk” and “The Wish” might be my all-time favorite consecutive Buffy episodes, but I think the episodes on either side of them aren’t strong.
Revelations is fairly meh, but I will go to bat for Amends, which I’d put on the list of most underrated Buffy eps. Honestly, I’m not a fan of where the First Evil wound up, but it’s a pretty great introduction.
sorry, hatersYou’re not sorry.
That is accurate.
Nice picks for Bob’s Burgers.Season 3: “An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal”, “The Deepening”, and “Tinarannosaurus Wrecks”. Season 4: Turkey in a Can”,“Purple Rain-union” and “Bob and Deliver”.
Those are great picks, too. Seasons three and four are really an embarrassment of riches.
Very nice. My pick for Bob’s Burgers… O.T.: the Outside Toilet/Topsy/Two for Tina.And awesome choice for Futurama. The wedding scene alone makes “Bend Her” a favorite and the other two are solid gold.
I don’t know, “The Why of Fry” is right before “Where No Fan has Gone Before” and I think it would make a better three with “The Sting.”
This question is too hard to answer, and but not in the sense that “I just can’t pick one”. I don’t think I’ve ever made a mental note of a great three episode run for a show. I’d have to just pick out shows I like, go check their schedule, and then try to pick some.
I lot of shows I love can offer this (at least a couple are even mentioned above), but I’ll go with two examples from one of my favorite shows since childhood, “Doctor Who”.
Series 3 of the current run gave us “Human Nature/The Family of Blood”, which mined terrific emotional heft from giving our alien hero the life of a normal human for a while, with a doomed romance to go with it. After he’s changed back, we’re reminded of how much the Universe gains by his sacrifice, when we’re shown him managing to save two lives WITHOUT EVEN BEING PRESENT.
This was followed by “Blink”, a terrific thriller of a form the show explored for a few years back then – that of showing us the adventures of people peripheral to the Doctor and his companions. It’s got a great premise, and lets Stephen Moffatt work his penchant for time-twisted stories without the burden that that sometimes became when he took over as show runner.
In Series 4, we got “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead”, another Moffatt thriller that introduced devouring shadows infesting a planet-sized book depository, and Prof. River Song, appealingly played by Alex Kingston, and who struck me at the time as one of the most interesting and exciting things “Who” had ever done.
Then, “Midnight” made the most of its bottle setting to give us what remains, for my money, the scariest “Who” story ever, involving predatory and gradual loss of self in a “HUMANS are the real monsters!!!” environment. The more I watch this story, the more I love it.
Came looking for this, Human Nature/Family of Blood is easily my favorite Doctor Who story, and being immediately followed by Blink is pretty incredible. I also quite liked the following 3 parter, so it was quite a shift after finding the first half of that season after the premiere to be one of the weakest run of episodes.
Also, I’m aware I’ve AGAIN managed to misspell BOTH of Steven Moffat’s names. No offense meant.
Midnight is no talked about enough as one of the best Doctor Who has to offer
It’s just an amazing little piece of television. With every little beat, you can see what they’re doing in terms of dramatic mechanics, and it’s beautiful.
Series 4, with Donna, was near perfection. I dropped that run as my favorite earlier before I read your post.
The only big problem is that awful finale.
The correct answer is Cheers. The best three episodes in a row are up for debate, but I would choose “The Bar Manager, The Shrink, His Wife & Her Lover,” “The Last Picture Show,” and “Bar Wars VII: The Naked Prey.”The last picture show has Woody Harrelson on his way to a drive-in marathon of Godzilla movies saying, “I don’t understand. Why would an actress leave a successful series half way through.”
Glad to see some Community love, and that Mad Men run is impeccable.For my money, no show did a three-episode run quite like Breaking Bad. Season 3’s ‘Más’, ‘Sunset’ and ‘One Minute’ are each as good as television gets.
Breaking Bad: Ozymandias, Granite State, FelinaThat is all.
The Americans: “The Rat”, “Travel Agents”, “The Magic of David Copperfield V: The Statue of Liberty Disappears”
Fuck yes!
The correct answer is Atlanta. “The Club,” “Juneteenth,” and “The Jacket.”Or “North Of The Border,” “FUBU,” and “Crabs In A Barrel.”
Atlanta Season 2 was doing everything right
sherlock season 2
Breaking Bad: “Ozymandias” “Granite State” “Felina”Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and The Viper” “The Watchers On The Wall” “The Children”Six Feet Under: “All Alone” “Static” “Everyone’s Waiting”24, 1st season: “9:00pm-10:00pm” “10:00pm-11:00pm” “11:00pm-12:00am”
Agreed on Six Feet Under, and “Ecotone”, which precedes those three is just as strong an episode. The fifth season of that show is masterful, and it’s a shame that AVC didn’t pick its TV Classic coverage back up for it.
Yeah, those final episodes are all just… just, holy shit
I had to laugh after recognizing all the others when I got to 24 and had no idea which episodes you meant.
LMAO those are the episode titles! I meant the final 3 episodes of 1st season. Really awesome stuff
For me, nothing beats the three episodes at the end of The Sopranos 5th season: The Test Dream, Long Term Parking, and All Due Respect. The entirety of the series’s ambition, humor, and violence in just 3 episodes.
It’s The Simpsons, how are we even discussing this? I’d probably go “Kamp Krusty,” “Streetcar Named Marge,” “Homer the Heretic.” But you can make a solid case for literally – literally – any three episode stretch in the 3rd, 4th and 5th seasons, and even a handful in 2, 6 and 7.
Halt and Catch Fire’s three closing episodes were great and stand as a fairly neat package, coming after SPOILER the death of a major character at the end of the episode before them.
Yes! That particular unfortunate incident still gets me every now and then. It even made me like Dire Straits. The hallucinations. The kids, Phoenix! What a show HACF was.
The correct answer is the first three episodes of Lost. The pilot was like nothing else on TV and immediately became appointment viewing.
Only if you count the two hour pilot as one episode you Walkabout is the third.
Firefly: Jaynestown, Out of Gas, Ariel.
Somebody had to ask or it wouldn’t be the AV Club.
I was so, so torn about whether to start with Our Mrs. Reynolds or end with Ariel, but I think yours is the correct answer. Our Mrs. Reynolds is funny but fizzles out a little, whereas Ariel fires on all cylinders top to bottom.
The Good Place season 2 – Janet And Michael, Derek, Leap To Faith. You could also start an episode earlier with The Trolley Problem. Or do the first three episodes of that season, though that includes a two-parter.
I’m of the mind the best episode they ever did was Dance Dance Resolution so I’d vote for the first three episodes of Season Two. They seem to be accepting two parters
that opening montage is basically flawless
That’s a pretty stellar lineup!
DANCE DANCE RESOLUTION
I think you can take almost any 3 episodes of The Good Place season 2 and make a strong case. For me it’s got to include Best Self. So I’ll bookend that with Leap of Faith and Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent which is pretty much nonstop jokes, all of which land.
Janet(s), Book of Doug, and Chidi Sees The Time Knife from season 3?
Janet(s), Book of Doug, and Chidi Sees The Time Knife from season 3?
Degrassi TNG: “Time Stands Still 1 &2”, and “Back in Black” from Season 4.Yes, it’s the infamous school shooting episode and the immediate aftermath, which birthed Wheelchair Jimmy & led to Sean’s departure from the series as a reluctant hero. Also marks Principal Radditch’s last appearance.Even though Degrassi would run for almost a decade after this, this string of episodes was undoubtedly its peak…it would never reach such heights again. It’s surprising how well these episodes were executed by everyone involved.
Just finished the last season of Travelers. The last three episodes, Archive, David and Protocol Omega were solid. Great ideas, well executed. Oh, and also, heartbreaking.
True Detective season one’s Who Goes There, The Secret Fate of All Life, Haunted Houses.Starts with the epic shootout with the biker gang, then the take-down of Reggie Ledoux and his accomplice at the backwoods meth lab and ends with Cohle & Hart’s relationship falling apart and the two fighting it out outside the Police Station, closing the flashback parts of the season perfectly.
More recently, The Terror’s final three episodes are perfect, starting with the crew’s thoughts of mutiny through to abandoning the ship, the trek across the ice and the devastating ending.
Good pick on The Terror. One of my favorite things I’ve watched in awhile!
Thanks for reminding me of the ending of The Terror and Lady Silence’s face when she sees Goodsir’s body. I’ll just be over here on the floor, devastated.
I’m not a huge fan of Doctor Who, especially the new series, but I love the 1-2-3 punch of “Human Nature”,“Family of Blood” and “Blink”.
“The Man Behind The Curtain”, “Greatest Hits” and “Through the Looking Glass” from Lost is a close second. IMO, these episodes redeemed a lackluster 3rd season.
The redemption started a little earlier than that for me, probably around half way through with “The Man from Tallahassee”
I’m a little worried that this is recency bias, but “Barry” chapters 6-8 are phenomenal television. Hilarious and heartbreaking.
Parks and Recreation: Smallest Park, The Trial of Leslie Knope, and Citizen Knope.
I knew someone else had to have felt the same as me in this, except mine starts with The Trial of Leslie Knope and ends with The Comeback Kid. These three episodes highlighted the genuine love these characters had for Leslie and each other. When they show Leslie the Parks and Rec gingerbread replica, it hits me in the heart every time.
Oh that’s a good choice too. Get On Your Feet! Claymash! I’m partial to any 3 episode stretch from End of the World thru Comeback Kid.
Ben’s “do you think a depressed person could make this?” while showing his little clay figurine and then his emphatic “no” was great. Seasons 4 and 3 were just so all around solid that it’s hard to pick only one set of three.
Seasons 2-3 were all pretty much great but I was thinking of S2’s Greg Pikitis, Ron & Tammy, and the Camel. That was followed by Hunting Party so that makes it four in a row.
The final three episodes of The Wire’s fourth season: A New Day, That’s Got His Own, Final Grades does everything that made the series great. Amazing drama, Greek tragedy, searing societal criticism, political commentary, cops and robbers fun, and Omar doing Omar stuff all neatly wrapped up in one package.
I couldn’t decide whether I should say this, the last three episodes of season 4 of Breaking Bad, or the last three episodes of season 5 of The Sopranos. I guess the best prestige dramas tend to hit their peak towards the end of their penultimate seasons.
The second halves of each Farscape season are terrific, but Season 2’s final sequence of Liars, Guns and Money 1+2 and Die Me, Dichotomy is nigh-on perfect television. Daring, heartbreaking and utterly thrilling.
The last 3 episodes of Season 2 of 30 rock. Tracy Jordan’s sex game, Sandwich Day, and the Sabor de Soledad.
Sandwich Day is one of my all-time favorites. Seeing Tina Fey scarf down a sandwich in one take made it A+ alone.
30 Rock is where my mind went too, but I’d go earlier in season 2 with “The Collection”, “Rosemary’s Baby”, and “Greenzo”.
My 3 favorites are earlier—-Rosemary’s Baby, Greenzo, Somebody to Love. But Sandwich Day…….man that is great tv.
The beginning of Simpsons season 5 is:“Homer’s Barbershop Quartet”“Cape Feare”“Homer Goes to College”That’s a very difficult trio to top, even for Golden Age Simpsons.
Jesus, what a murder’s row. Though to be fair, I think you could genuinely pick any 3 episodes from S3-7 that don’t include the clip show and I’d have the same reaction.
Yeah, that was really the secret to The Simpsons enduring fandom. Not simply that it could be excellent television, but that it could be such consistently excellent television for so many years on end.
Dude it’s really hard to argue against this … especially on 4.20.
Classic era Simpsons is just so so good. Not a lot of filler episodes.
Clerks: “Leonardo Leonardo Returns and Dante Has an Important Decision to Make”, “The Clipshow Wherein Dante and Randal are Locked in the Freezer and Remember Some of the Great Moments in Their Lives” and “Leonardo Is Caught in the Grip of an Outbreak of Randal’s Imagination and Patrick Swayze Either Does or Doesn’t Work in the New Pet Store”
Except they didn’t run together, ABC stupidly aired the series out of order and not at all for 2 of your eps, with them finally appearing on Comedy Central 2 years later. Stupid-ass ABC.
The fact that the second episode is a clip show referencing the first episode is genius, the fact that somehow the second episode was the first one aired, thus making absolutely no sense at all, is either the most terrible marketing decision ever or the most brilliant piece of Dadaist gonzo television programming ever.
Cheating a bit because two episodes are actually a 2 part story but.Doctor Who – Human Nature, Family of Blood, Blink
I’m going with the last three episodes of Season 5 of Schitt’s Creek – because they are fresh in my head and because they are good. The Roast is just a solid, silly episode that displays the best of the Rose family dynamic and has some great character development for Alexis, and a dance number for Stevie and Patrick. The Hike explores just how far all the Roses have come and has a very romantic subplot and then the season Finale Life is Cabaret has Moira’s triumphant production mounted and Stevie finally gets to shine – and a number of arcs for the final season are set up.
Big Love, Season 3: “Come ye Saints”, “Fight or Flight”, “Rough Edges”“Saints” IMHO is the best episode of the series, and sets in motion nearly everything that comes after it, while “Fight” and “Edges” essentially work to showcase the further fraying of the family ties, from Nikki’s infidelity and lying about birth control, Barb getting excommunicated, and Marge starting a long day’s journey into her MLM destiny.
This sounds like a discussion for Netflix binge-watchers only. My ability to recall an old series, the order I watched it in, and the episode title is rather limited. I’d be hard pressed to differentiate one episode of ‘China Beach’ from another 28 years later no matter how great the series. I do subscribe to VIKI Asian TV streaming service but nobody here’s heard of any of those series. Episodes 14, 15, and 16 of ‘My Ajusshi’! Eh, that means nothing to you.
I’m with you there, but I still enjoyed it, precisely because I don’t binge watch, never have, never will, and this let me test my memory and go back to some older shows that may not be as seen today. (also good to see another China Beach fan – the first two seasons were so good)
The arc leading up to Gretchen’s breakdown in season 2 of You’re the Worst. Goddamn that show deserved so much more recognition than it got.
Getting Drew Thompson in season 4 of Justified. How the fuck was that missed?
Falling Toward Apotheosis
The Long Night
Into the Fire
More love for B5 means more iron!
Person of Interest – Season 3, three episode arc: ep 8 ‘Endgame’, ep 9 ‘The Crossing’, epic 10 ‘The Devil’s Share’
Detective Josh Carter (Taraji P. Henson) is murdered by the 2nd-in-Command of HR, a secretive organizational group of corrupt police officers and public officials workIng to control & profit off organized crime in New York City. Det Carter had been trying to down the HR organization & bring justice against them for the many felony crimes they’ve committed. Head of HR is eventually /finally brought into Police Headquarters by Det. Fusco after protracted beatdowns. 2nd-in-Command is pillow-smothered to death while recovering in hospital by ‘Scarface’, principal enforcer, as Elias, the nascent crime boss, looks on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series)
****
‘Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Best of Both Worlds’
Darn, was only two episode arc. Thumbs up none-the-less.
‘In these episodes, the Enterprise must battle the Borg who are intent on conquering Earth, with a captured and assimilated Captain Picard as their emissary. Part 1 was the finale to season three, while Part 2 was the premiere of season four. “The Best of Both Worlds” comprises the 74th and 75th episodes of the series overall. The first part was originally aired on June 18, 1990, and the second on September 24, 1990 in broadcast syndication.’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_of_Both_Worlds_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
The Devil’s Share is my favorite episode of POI, so I would go along with thatI love that it starts, to Fusco’s horror, with John and Shaw both on their own, separate revenge rampages to get justice for the fallen Carter
I was going to mention POI, but I’m glad someone else did. It seems like half my posts on here are about POI, so I could be accused of being obsessed with the show. To which I would reply I absolutely am. “The Devil’s Share” is perfect front-to-back.
Glad someone else’s pick was Person of Interest! Just finished rewatching season 3 last night, and it is an excellent season of TV all the way around.
Yes, it is. One of the strongest 20+ episode seasons of television that has ever been made.
Yeah, Season 3 was an amazing season of TV, it’s not like 4 or 5 were bad, either, it’s just that season 3 was one of the strongest seasons of network TV I have ever seen
Seasons 2, 4, and 5 were all awesome, as were parts of 1. They’re all thought-provoking and ridiculously entertaining. Season 3 is the show at its peak of course. Seasons 4 and 5 were pretty close, but held back by annoying things outside the showrunners’ control (Shahi’s unexpected departure in Season 4 and network demands in Season 5). The show for me was quality almost from day 1 (“Cura Te Ipsum”). The show never went off the rails or found its way for me-at its core it was always great. Just that there were lots of peaks and the occasional valley (some episodes in the back half of 4).3(A+)>5=2(A)>4(A-)>1(B+). Series gets an A.
Cura Te Ipsum was a great early episode for the series. That was, what, episode 3?
*checks wikipedia* Okay, it’s episode 4? That was the first episode of POI that showed that it might be a special series.
I wish they could have gotten like 16 episodes for season 5 – then they could have fit everything into season 5 – like Control.
I’m ok with Control ending up where she is. Really though, I just wish that CBS gave them a full order and let them tell whatever story they wanted. Oh well. I still feel fortunate that CBS accepted the series in the first place-no other network would take it. I also think the 22-episode format (experimentation) and network restrictions (see Westworld for Nolan without restrictions) benefitted the series overall.
Control ending up where she was left was okay, but imagine if the schedules had lined up and they could’ve had her appear, even if it was just “yup she’s dead”
I watched a few episodes of Westworld a few months back, then I was like “I can easily see how this could go horribly wrong. At least we have POI”
It has a lot of problems, and falls into many of the pitfalls that POI avoided. I do not consider myself a big fan of it.
Yup!
*cries for Carter*
Oh good, I was hoping someone else would choose these.Devil’s Share is one of my favorite episodes of television ever.
I like your taste.
I would probably go “If-Then-Else” myself, but “The Devil’s Share” is one of those episodes where it’s difficult to find a single thing wrong with it. It is nearly flawless.
Anthony!
Yep, definitely Anthony, muscle enforcer & longtime childhood friend from neighborhood of Boss Elias, was name he was known by & not really ‘Scarface’ contrary to Wiki & my previous comment.
Six of one! I Googled “Anthony Marconi” before posting to make sure I remembered his name correctly, haha.So upset that he didn’t manage to take M’Baku down with him, and that Marlo was only injured.
One star for calling Gabe Wilson M’Baku.
So many Wire alums were on POI. It’s crazy. My favorite has to be the leader of HR, Alonzo Quinn.
Anthony’s death was legitimately one of the most tearjerking moments for me in the entire show. So *sniff* efficient.
That episode was shown today on PHL17 (Philly rabbit-ears antenna station 17.1) during their weekly Sunday afternoon back-to-back episodes broadcast.
I haven’t seen any PoI reruns. I hear that was the only way to catch up back when it was airing, thanks to CBS.
WGN has it, they air Elementary + POI
Only seen one episode of Elementary. Just my luck, it was apparently one its worst episodes.
Elementary is fun – it is definitely worth a watch. For the first two seasons, I believe, there was Person of Interest, then Elementary? It was an amazing combination
Yeahhh…..peak tv is kind of over.
It’s frustrating. POI aired when there was an absolute glut of great shows on. It got buried in the flood. Now, a few short years later, quanitity has surpassed quality, and there are only a few truly great shows on the air. POI already stood proudly amongst its far harsher competition. Now? It would demolish almost anything.
*quantity*
I recommend POI to everyone who asks me for something good to watch on Netflix. People come back to me and go “HOLY CRAP THIS AIRED ON CBS? HOW DID I NEVER HEAR ABOUT THIS”
Kevin Chapman said the same thing. People generally don’t think cool things air on network tv, especially not the network that airs The Big Bang Theory. If it was airing now, or had it aired on cable, it would have been much more popular. Oh well.
love Kevin Chapman, he needs to be in something good. He was great as Fusco.
Amy Acker, Jim Caviezel, and Michael Emerson all had great careers before POI and are probably getting work now. Taraji P. Henson’s took off like a rocket, and Sarah Shahi is doing fine as well. It’s sad that Chapman’s the only one who hasn’t had that much success.
Maybe he’ll get something soon.
I’m rooting for him. He only started acting at 37. I kind of see him as an underdog, even though I think he’s extremely talented.
One of those crime shows should cast him as a cop, start off as a one episode deal, they go “HOLY SHIT THIS GUY IS GOOD” and upgrade him to regular cast. then he becomes a household name.
He was in the Punisher Season 2 (which I didn’t see), but that went down with the Marvel-Netflix ship.
Oh, and yeah, I pretty much only use Netflix to watch POI episodes and Bojack Horseman when it comes around.
Addendum: Would add ‘Homicide – Life on the Street’ featuring Andre Braugher & ensemble cast to the list of TV series w/strongest set of 3 consecutive episodes. Couldn’t really narrow it down to which ones cause it was so long ago & don’t remember particular episodes though week after week, when originally aired, was always very good & worth the hour spent watching etc.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide:_Life_on_the_Street
That’s pretty much what I was thinking for PoI, and it leads into Lethe and Alethia which is a really strong pair of episodes as well.
I was going to post this re: PoI.
I was thinking “Oh, wasn’t The Day The World Went Away the 11th episode of final season?” Nope, turns out it was the 10th, Synecdoche was a fun episode, but not “three episodes rival Endgame Trilogy” amazing”
If it was, it would be a strong contender. But it isn’t, so the Endgame trilogy reigns supreme. But the Season 4 trilogy is awesome as well.
That Season 4 trlogy was amazing
If-Then-Else is one of the top episodes of TV of the decade.
Also, the last 3 episodes of Season 4 – Terra Incognita, Asylum, YHWH
Yup! I mentioned the last 3 in another post!
Why not include “Family” with the “The Best of Both Worlds”?
Yes, very good addendum to complete 3 ep arc. Thx.
Late to the party, but I’m glad this was brought up.Alternatively, I’d pick Devil’s Share, Lethe, Aletheia – since Devil’s share is the strongest of the 3, and the next two kick off the Samaritan plot, as well as introduce Control.
It’s too bad that they insisted on no season ending multi-parters for this, because you take out all of those great season ending cliffhangers that The X-Files did over its run. Anasazi/Blessing Way/Operation Paperclip still remains, to me, the strongest 3ep run of the entire series (and definitely the best of the mytharc episodes, before it became obvious that Carter and Co didn’t really have a plan for the entire thing, especially if their original plans of no more than four seasons were true, and whatever changes they had to make to account for Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy). I feel like that run took an already cult favorite show and exploded it into the mainstream and led into TXF’s strongest season, both for mytharc episodes, and MOTW episodes as well.And, for BSG, I’m not going to lie. The real answer for that is the first 3 eps of Season 1, 33/Water/Bastille Day. One, because it showed that the showrunners and writers could take the energy they had in the miniseries and move it forward in great ways. Great table setting both for the plot threads of Season 1: Sharon Valerii’s discovery of who she really is, both on Caprica and the Galatica, how this ragtag fleet was going to survive in hostile space against a masively superior force, the kinds of difficult and morally ambiguous decisions that the fleet would need to make to survive, and all the political intrigue that the show would be known for. Plus, that one scene in 33, alone, with Dualla in the hallway with all the pictures and remembrances that is meant to invoke all those scenes in New York City right after 9/11, has stuck with me in the fifteen years since the show premiered. Oh, and the introduction of Tom Zarek, a character that would add a lot to the show over the rest of its run. If the show had never started this strongly, we’d likely never have gotten far enough along for the New Caprica arc (weak, if you ask me, based on RDM cheating his way out of a much better exploration of things at the end of Season 2) and what followed. After the first two seasons, BSG was never any better than uneven at best. But the beginning of Season 1 still stands strong.
I have mixed feelings about BSG overall, but it really does get off to a great start. There’s a lot to be said for a show that avoids the usual prestige drama “Just slog through the first season and a half and then it gets good” problem.
Well it has the opposite problem. But it is admirable just how fully-formed the show arrived.
I agree that BSG’s direction after the excellent S1-2 was ultimately not satisfying. Up to that point (especially S1) it was like a superior and more thoughtful WING COMMANDER adaptation. S3 onwards it went too deep into its own mythology.
However, the S3 EXODUS arc mentioned in the original article was outstanding – the image/idea of Galactica’s atmospheric jump is something I will never forget, and the Tigh story was high drama. The rest of the season never came close to topping any of that. (Also, I was not satisfied where the series ultimately went with Saul Tigh in particular.)
33/Water/Bastille Day: so good
Yeah, you nailed it. 33 and Water of BSG are the best 2 hours of sci fi in any video video format, ever. Bastille is relatively weak, but the other 2 are more than enough. (And just to clarify for folks who haven’t seen it recently – S1 E1&E2 are actually the third and fourth episodes of the reboot. The mini-series had 2 episodes that kicked off the reboot, which I guess using my nomenclature are S0 E1&E2.)And New Caorica marked the beginning of the downhill slide for BSG. It’s only value was in creating the issues that had to be addressed later — how does a culture deal with collaborators after a successful revolt. But that was all poisoned by the hidden Cylon stuff having ceased to work and make sense.S5 office is a weird choice, given that S2 is up there with all time best sitcoms.I liked Community, but can’t imagine watching 3 episodes in a row and still tolerating it.I feel like there have to be better Simpsons runs than one that include a Selma-gets-married episode, but I suppose I shouldn’t quibble since it was the Planet of the Apes musical.
The best season I saw of any television was Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica. Many of those episodes are ones I’d seen upwards of 20 times. The first half of Season 2 up to the end of Resurrection Ship on average weren’t quite as good on average but the hiEghs were still very high. Then the wheels increasingly started to come off. I generally found the latter half of Season 2 to be a disaster. Things picked up a bit in Season 3 and of course, Exodus was excellent but unfortunately the last such episode I felt that way about.Just for me personally, the show tacked a particular path that remarkably somehow ended up hitting particular beats that made it my most hated TV show of all time. Yes, I’m still bitter. It was only in the last year I could rewatch any clips of the show at all, it managed to retroactively ruin everything I liked about the show. Funnily enough, I would have thought more of the show if it had been cancelled due to the Writer’s Strike leaving them on that beach with the last word being a bitterly said “Earth”.Instead, I grimly marched through the last 10 episodes which I watched the last 10 episodes once each (which I absolutely hated) and then never touched the show again bar a handful of very short clips (totalling <30 minutes) about a decade after it ended.I think the think that annoys me the most (and it’s a long list) is the fact that if the Colonials all stayed where they were and got killed, the human race would not only have survived, it would have had an even better chance. You know, that planet they reached right at the end where the people on it would have survived regardless.I just grew to hate how increasingly sloppy the show got with its own internal rules and continuity, never mind some very basic science, theology and astronomy incompetence that put my teeth on edge. Plus the storytelling and character consistency and execution increasingly sucked.Finally, all that All Along the Watchtower shit can fuck off. Never have I seen a show so completely disappear up its own asshole. Did I mention I’m still bitter?
I think BSG is quite overrated, including the New Caprica arc, but it did indeed start strongly enough for me to initially get how it got such acclaim.
I’m late to this party but I’ll take Pegasus and the two Resurrection Ship episodes as the peak of BSG.I was gonna go through my history to find the comparison I wrote a couple years back when there was a similar thread on io9 which pitched 33, but it’s nice out so scratch that. Essentially, though, the argument comes down to that the issues raised in that first arc – which largely evaporate over the course of the series – don’t encapsulate the heart of the show the way the Pegasus conflict does.Also, RDM admitted he seriously thought about keeping Cain around quite a bit longer since he was so blown away by Michelle Forbes but keeping her would have required tearing up the show bible, which balances out that Richard Hatch’s appearance essentially did the same thing for him (he noted that he actually appeared in more episodes of the reboot than the original, which wasn’t the original plan when he was cast) even though they never quite figured out the basis for his revolution.
Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2Tales of Ba Sing SeAppa’s Lost DaysLake Laogai
Also last three episodes of Hannibal season 2.
One thing that hinders Hannibal’s second season* for me is that it’s just never believable that Will has actually gone to the dark side. For one thing, you wouldn’t have a show any more! That being said, him making Alana suspicious of Hannibal via association with someone as sketchy as himself is a pretty bold move and the season finale is the best single episode of the show. I think I would still give a higher ranking to the last three episodes of the first season, because Will’s deteriorating mental state makes for great nightmarish horror (“I said it was mild” was the show’s comedic element at its best, underlining rather than undermining the horror), and the ending reveals his situation to be far worse than even the audience expected.
*Aside from the courtroom episode, easily the worst of the first two seasons, which fortunately doesn’t have much to do with your selection.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I really didn’t like the third season of Hannibal. (I only bring this up because you said Hassun was the worst episode of the first two seasons).I might agree with you that the last 3 episodes of Season 1 are stronger as a whole (Season 1 is fantastic and miles ahead of 3 imo), but “Mizumono” is far-and-away the best episode of Hannibal ever. My jaw was on the floor from it.
I hope your opinion becomes more popular, because I agree. I HATE the third season. It retroactively lowered my opinion of the show. I had confidence that the writers knew what they were doing with Bedelia du Maurier, but it appears they did not as they had to contradict what we’d seen earlier. And then there’s so much more to complain about, but I don’t want to think about now.
Yes, I was quite surprised to find out there were basically no major reviewers who agreed with me. It seemed like everyone was loving the series just as much as always. I thought it was a pretentious, boring slog. The stylistic elements added style to the story in Seasons 1 and 2-in 3 they replaced the story. It should have ended with “Mizumono”. Seasons 1 and 2 are amazing. 1 has fewer flaws, but 2 has that finale and the best episodes of the series.
I agree with you to such an extent that I now wonder if I’m been blacking out and commenting under a different name.
Ha! I’m always glad to bash Hannibal Season 3. I liked the beginning of the first episode with Hannibal in France and Italy….but that’s about it. I recently re-watched an episode to see if I was being too harsh on the season……and nope. It is just as awful as I remember.
I brought up Bedelia du Maurier earlier, and the intro gives me the opportunity to elaborate. She was earlier said to be “the smartest person in the room” because she got out of Dodge once Hannibal started seeming sketchy. In the premiere of the third season we see that she’s living under the identity of a woman Hannibal killed & ate (with Hannibal taking the husband’s identity), she sees him kill somebody who catches on to the false identity, she realizes that Hannibal is feeding her things specifically to make her tastier when he kills & eats her, then when he goes to Palermo to create a murder tableau SHE JUST STICKS AROUND. If they had revealed that he’d already eaten some of her brains like Paul Krendler then her behavior might make a lick of sense.
Her motives remain murky. How much did she know from the beginning and why did she get on that plane with him at the end of Season 2? Was it consensual or not?
It’s ambiguous at the end of season 2. In season 3 they reveal that she had him at gunpoint after he used her shower to clean up all the blood he was covered in, and ran off to Europe with him because she felt like it, completely unlike the character in season 2.
Also, do you like snow leopards, and are you a fan of Batman? If so, you may be me…..
I was a huge fan of Batman (the Adam West version) as a kid. I’ve never had strong feelings one way or another about snow leopards.
Snow leopards are majestic. I’m not a big fan of ordinary house cats (dogs all the way), but snow leopards are undeniably awesome.
Dogs are considered man’s best friend for a reason. Cat fanciers all must have toxoplasma gondii affecting their reasoning.
Good choices, that’s definitely peak A:TLA
Yea, Book 2 is my favorite from Avatar, but the 3-episode run I favor from that season is:
2.06 “Blind Bandit”- 2.07 “Zuko Alone”- 2.08 “The Chase”Gotta go with that Toph, that Zuko and that Azula love. All three happen to be in my Top 10 episodes of the show.
You could also go “The Blind Bandit”, “Zuko Alone”, “The Chase”.
Frasier: “The Maris Counselor”, “Ski Lodge”, and “Room Service.” The first is a bittersweet episode where Niles finally calls it quits with Maris, the second is a brilliant door-slamming farce, and the third is another top-notch Lilith episode. “Food in the bathroom?
Ski Lodge is one of my top episodes of TV, period. I love when a comedy has nothing on it’s mind other than being true to the characters and being funny.
Ski Lodge also has the delicious cruelty of the ending when Frasier realises to his horror that through all the farcical relationship misunderstandings, no one was chasing him.
Going to chime in on Community, just to give love to the show’s 6th season (yahoo season), because I think that season doesn’t get the love it deserves:Lanmower Maintenance & Postnatal Care: the Dean and VR (JESUS WEPT!!!)Basic Crisis Room Decorum: solid episode, some worthwhile gags, the attack ad on the dog and Dean’s texting the Japanese teenagers thinking they’re Jeff, and ends on a nice note reminding us why City College is specialQueer Studies & Advanced Waxing: Jason Mantzoukas directing a stage play of the Karate Kid. C’mon! A highlight of the season and series!And just to add some love to a couple other shows, Deadwood, the 2, 3, & 4th episodes of the 1st season of that show. These episodes quickly entrenched us into Milch’s vision of the wild west, and quickly spinned in a lot of big story elements, with Powers Booth showing up with the Bella Union, killing off Alma’s husband, Bullock and Hickok’s meting out justice, and culminating in the death of Wild Bill, which at the time blew my mind (pun intended?). I was watching that show falling in love with the charisma of Keith Carradine as Hickok and imagined the show would be playing on that for a while. I honestly had no conception of how the show could possibly continue after his death.And you could almost randomly pick any 3 episodes of Freaks & Geeks and have a strong string (starting with the 1st 3, with the geeks confronting their bully, Lindsay’s house party, and the Halloween episode). But maybe cause the geek part of the show resonates so deeply with me, my pick for 3 would go to The Diary (the geeks overcome being picked last all the time, I remember genuine anxiety as to whether Bill was going to catch the fly ball at the end), Looks and Books (the sequence around Sam’s blue jumpsuit was eerily similar to a freshman year fashion choice I made regarding bright purple pants), and the Garage Door (with Neal having to come to terms with the flaws of his father).
My favorite Community run is also from season 6. Modern Espionage, Wedding Videography, and Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television
I had the first 3 episodes (season 1) of Orphan Black waiting for me on the DVR. I was enthralled watching the first set that I went back and watched them all over again. Episode 1 opens with the main character watching someone, looking identical to her, walk in front of train. Episode 3 ends with an familiar looking assassin exposing her self-mutilated back craved into a pair of wings. Loved this series.
There’s a great 3-4 episode arc in Season 3, too, in the rendition camp, with the high point being “Certain Agony of the Battlefield” leading into “Community of Dreadful Fear and Hate.”
Legends of Tomorrow season 3 has back to back to back, “Beebo the God of War,” where the team has to save Christmas from the Vikings–the episode where the show really embraces its insanity, and also Jax’s departure from the team; “Daddy Darhkest,” with Constantine joining the team and them trying to save/ exorcise young Nora Darhk; and “Here I Go Again,” the episode where Zari is stuck in a time loop (my favorite episode).
The way the show weaves comedy and drama in ‘Beebo God of War’ is nothing short of phenomenal.
I agree with Alex. The 3 episode stretch ending The Leftovers is probably my favorite.
Starcrossed JL season 2
I have four simple words for you: My…Mother…The…Car. Now, take your pick of any three episodes.
Quantum Leap, if we can count episodes that aired across two seasons (but WEREN’T part of a serialized story, per the question requirements…).Season two finale M.I.A., then two-part season 3 premiere, The Leap Home I & II. Three episodes all dealing with the consequences of trying to fix one’s own life. M.I.A. is a TV all-timer (especially with the original “Georgia on My Mind” that closed the episode) and the two-part premiere digs deeper into the themes while exposing Sam’s own (understandable!) hypocrisy immediately following Al’s major emotional moment.And there’s the beat where Sam sees Al in the POW camp and realizes that he would’ve been freed years earlier if not for his self-serving actions.
Not just the first three, but I would put the first six eps of The OC against any six eps of any TV show. Not kidding.
Obviously there are many, many good Seinfeld episodes out there, but I’m very partial to this stretch in the 7th SeasonThe Soup NaziThe Secret CodeThe Pool GuyPool Guy contains the Independent George bit. I love the Secret Code for the high amounts of Peterman and George repeatedly getting stuck with him. Soup Nazi speaks for itself
Just finished rewatching Person of Interest season 3, and there are quite a few 3-episode blocks I could pick from it.The wrap-up of the HR plotline of “Endgame,” “The Crossing,” and “The Devil’s Share” is excellent, but I would personally rate the run of “The Devil’s Share,” “Lethe,” and “Aletheia” even higher. Love how they continued to flesh out the backgrounds of key characters and the mythology of the show while also dealing with the fall-out of the death of a major character and the end of a key arc with the demise of HR. The two-parter case of the week with Claypool was also well done. The four-episode run to end the season: “Death Benefit,” “Beta,” “A House Divided,” and “Deus Ex Machina” is also superb as Samaritan Rises and Team Machine becomes the hunted. It just resets the entire show’s premise while feeling completely natural and earned. Also nicely grapples with some deep and dark philosophical themes about justice and privacy without seeming preachy or bogging down the action.I usually consider The Good Wife season 5 as just about the best season that network TV has to offer, but Person of Interest season 3 really gives it a run for its money. But I can’t really think of a 3-episode run from TGW season 5 since it is individual episodes from that season that stand out.
I went for the end of S2 on TGW, but if I were going for S5 I’d use “A Few Words”/ “Dramatics Your Honor”/ “The Last Call”. we get Alicia’s introspection and a hope spot to the end of her war with Will before they drop the damn hammer.
Oh that was a good run of episodes for TGW—both end of season 2 and that point in season 5. I loved how TGW handled the fall-out from Alicia’s decision to leave the firm. It’s an interesting might have been for how she and Will might have settled into an uneasy acceptance of each other as worthy foes. 🙁
Also, I recently re-watched “Most Likely To….”, and it’s so great as well. Hilarious, and action-packed. POI Season 3 has so many great episodes.
Haha Yes, that one was a lot of fun! So many great comedic moments.
Also, the end of Season 4 of POI could get it as well: “Terra Incognita”, “Asylum”, “YHWH”.
I started season 4 last night and am looking forward to those episodes! I remember really liking them, but I must admit the specifics escape me.
Don’t want to ruin anything, but you’re in for a treat.
Thanks! It dawned on me when I was typing up the list that I’d probably have some additions to my post once I had finished the series. 🙂
It’s an amazing series that’s stuck with me like no other. I’ve watched it two times fully, and have re-watched singular episodes and arcs countless times. I think it’s because the show has no ‘bad’ seasons-it lulls from time to time, like in the first half of Season 1 or the back half of Season 4, but it always rights itself soon. It also told an amazing story over 5 seasons that helped it maintain its quality all the way to the finish.
I got to watch it in bits and pieces during its original run—was in college and grad school, so my viewing was spotty, though I really did like what I saw. This rewatch has been so nice since it is uninterrupted. Think the show does a magnificent job of crafting compelling characters and balancing it with plot. I don’t easily cry, but it has probably brought me to tears more than anything else I’ve watched in a long time because I got that invested in the characters.
Same here, same here. I don’t cry at tv shows. But there were a lot of moments that seriously got to me. Pretty much anything written by Denise Thé. The Crossing, 6,741, return 0, Asylum, If-Then-Else….
The redemption arcs and friendships are so good! I love how this little disparate group of cynics, oddballs, misfits, and loners come together and become friends (and kick ass).
Honestly, who doesn’t love a story about a group of broken individuals and misfits who find a family in each other?
I just finished “The Devil You Know.” What a superb episode. And now I’m crying again! :‘(
RIP Anthony. That shot of Elias walking down the boardwalk alone, mirroring the end of “Witness”? Oof. That awesome Shaw-Martine mall shootout? Yup.
I love the callbacks to previous episodes. I didn’t pick up on those when I first watched since my own viewing was so spotty. It’s a show that’s definitely rewarding to revisit. :)And RIP Anthony, indeed! I always enjoyed Elias, but I had never really thought of Anthony as anything more than a very competent minion—until season 3 when he waltzed into the aftermath of that shootout to retrieve the money and jewels like a BAMF to Nina Simone. He was a favorite ever since. Watching Elias get emotional made me tear up, but I didn’t actually lose it until Reese said he was sorry.
They also played a Nina Simone song at the end of “Witness”. “Sinnerman”, to be specific. Anthony took out the Russian mob. “Veni, vidi, vici”.
In addition to all the other things we’ve raved about, the music choices in the show are always awesome and on point.
I remember kinda groaning at the leadup to that Galactica run, because (in stark contrast to everything the show gave me any good reason to expect) I was anticipating some rah-rah, “FREEEEEDOMMMMM!” shit. I was glad to see it work out so much more harshly and more thrilling.
the end of The Good Wife’s second season, “In Sickness”/ “Getting Off”/ “Closing Arguments”, in which we get Alicia’s confrontations with Kalinda and Peter, Peter’s return to politics, visits from Patti Nyholm and Nancy Crozier, a judgekiller’s trial, and Will/Alicia.Person of Interest season 4, “The Cold War” / “If-Then-Else” / “Control-Alt-Delete”, in which the team appreciates they’re in a full-on AI war that’s going to get them all killed. Bonus points that “If-Then-Else” is perfect.
Boy, when I saw the setup for this Q&A I thought for sure that it would include The Good Place. The finale of S1 and the first two episodes of S2 are some of the best writing I’ve ever seen on TV. In such a short span they reset the premise of the show twice, taught it’s audience to never know what to expect, while also being hilariously funny.
There’s a lot of great answers in the article and in the comments, but nobody has singled out Star Trek: Deep Space Nine yet. That’s understandable because it’s never gotten the respect it deserves, but I’ll throw out great runs from each season.From season 1:
– Dramatis Personae
– Duet
– In the Hands of the ProphetsHere we have Trek learning from TNG’s mistakes, making sure that season 1 has good episodes that showcase its best assets: a great ensemble with good actors, creative writing, and bold new directions. Zealotry, forgiveness, tragedy, infighting, these episodes sell it so well.From season 2:
– Blood Oath
– The Maquis: part I
– The Maquis: part II
– The Wire
– CrossoverTake any 3 in a row there and you’ve got winners. But it’s the Garak episode The Wire which does so much with just a few characters in a room, and Crossover which reinvents Trek’s mirror universe that really shine the brightest.
Season 3:
– Through the Looking Glass
– Improbably Cause
– The Die is CastThis season shows how tricky DS9 can be, and all 3 have you shocked at the way characters behave time and time again without feeling like you’re being mislead or cheated. This Garak 2-parter is one of the best Romulan stories ever.Season 4:
– Our Man Bashir
– Homefront
– Paradise LostSeason 4 introduces Worf, which is some great stuff, but these three really are the strongest, with a really fun episode and then a pair of incredibly thoughtful and exciting episodes about the core of the Federation not being as strong as it thinks.Season 5:
– The Begotten
– For the Uniform
– In Purgatory’s Shadow
– By Inferno’s Light
– Doctor Bashir, I PresumeSeason 5 has a lot of good episodes sprinkled about, but these 5 really take the cake, with the latter not being a favorite yet telling a very human story with the cast and guests turning in some fantastic work. It’s really the second Garak 2-parter that shines the brightest, though, with another story that’s got excitement, twists, and powerful reveals.Season 6:
– A Time to Stand
– Rocks and Shoals
– Sons and Daughters
– Behind the Lines
– Favor the Bold
– Sacrifice of AngelsSeason 6 starts with an amazing 6-part story of the war, the titular station under Dominion control, and Sisko’s need to take it back while Kira and friends run a resistance from within the station while Odo falters. It’s the last great Gul Dukat arc, as well. This season has some other great episodes, including some controversies that have well outlasted the series itself.Season 7:
– Treachery, Faith, and the Great River
– Once More Unto the Breach
– The Siege of AR-558The guest cast in these 3, including Jeffrey Combs, Raymond Cruz, Bill Mumy, and TOS’s John “Kor” Colicos, really carry the day with these 3 varied yet excellent tales. The first two seem light at first, yet get very real and powerful by their ends; the last is the face of war that Trek has never before DS9 thought to show, and it’s got impact and repercussions that really matter. And that’s impressive since…The last 7 episodes of DS9 are also incredibly powerful, with few missteps along the way, and feature some fantastic writing, directing, and definitely acting moments. The only reason I didn’t single them out is that not everyone agrees that the finale sticks the landing (the ep is better than I remembered, though), and the 3rd from last, “Extreme Measures,” is only above average, compared to the excellence around it.This is a series that has so many great runs that it almost cancels itself out, and so few have discovered it even 25 years later. It may be nearly-forgotten as Trek, controversial as sci-fi, but it’s damned good television.
It feels like it’s been 2 eternities since I watched shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men, which were definitely appointment TV in their earlier seasons. So I’m sure there were great runs in both, but I can scarcely remember what happened in each episodes.Arguments could definitely be made for various runs of Seinfeld or The Simpsons, but I’ll go with a lesser appreciated show:The Middle: A Simple Christmas, Taking Back the House, The Big Chill
Bob’s Burgers – Season 4“Mazel Tina”, “Uncle Teddy”, “The Kids Rob a Train”.Really it is a 4 episode run of greatness, with “The Frond Files” kicking off the episode run. But since we are limited to 3 here, I cut The Frond Files. That way the best two episodes of the entire series are represented.That would be “Uncle Teddy” and “The Kids Rob a Train”, in case you were wondering.
Mazel Tina is my favorite episode of B’sBs.
I love “The Kids Rob a Train” and the triumphant return of the greatest fictional character of all time, Regular-Sized Rudy
I had just posted Gwen’s Mad Men choice on Twitter two hours ago. Great minds think alike?
I’ll advocate for The Expanse:Static, Godspeed, & HomeStatic has Naomi and Drummer dancing & playing handball (cementing a friendship), Amos using a pedophilia analogy, and Miller reshaving his mohawk – then suggesting the crew hijack the Nauvoo.Godspeed: “I like this plan!” – AmosHome: Everyone on Earth shits themselves & Miller finally meets Julie Mao face to face. Beautiful, heartbreaking, & epic.
I need to do a rewatch of The Expanse. I’ve only been through it the one time, but by the time Miller met Proto-Julie and the asteroid crashed into Venus, I knew this show was going to be something special.
The last three episodes of Breaking Bad season 4: “Crawl Space,” “End Times,” and “Face Off.” There doesn’t need to be a Breaking Bad movie because these three episodes together *are* the Breaking Bad movie.
Person of Interest: Endgame, The Crossing, The Devil’s Share (my favorite run of episodes from one of the best and most underrated shows of the last decade)Arrow: City of Blood, Streets of Fire, Unthinkable (phenomenal endrun to the best season of comic book television)The West Wing: What Kind of Day Has It Been, In the Shadow of Two Gunmen I& II (I know Two Cathedrals is beloved, but I lean more toward this run of episodes – especially having to wait over the summer with the cliffhanger and then to have the show come back in spectacular fashion)Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus, Resurrection Ship I & II (Resurrection Ship is probably my favorite episode of the series, and everything with Cain and Adama trying to kill each other while working together to take down a major Cylon ship is just gold)The Office: Drug Testing, Conflict Resolution, Casino Night (the last two because they’re collectively a high point in the series, and Drug Testing as the last bit of status quo that neatly sets up some thematic elements which play into the grand finale)
Trying to pick one for DS9: probably Favor the Bold, Sacrifice of Angels, You Are Cordially Invited. Successfully wraps up the fantastic opening arc for the season in devastating fashion (I totally cried when Ziyal died) and then has a wonderful palate cleanser in Worf and Dax’s wedding, which behaves almost like a sitcom wedding and therefore is kind of perfect.(Also maybe Improbable Cause, The Die is Cast, Explorers?)
AAAAHHHH!!! TOTALLY AGREE re: the DS9 retaking the station arc. You could pull 3 amazing episodes from any point in the big honking Dominion war arc at the end of the series but I always preferred the former. It feels smaller and more tense (I mean did we ever truly doubt that the Federation was ever going to win the war?), and I’m always on the edge of my seat even after seeing these eps 42,697 times.So many great moments, Sisko finally realising where he was meant to be (his speech to Admiral Ross about calling Bajor home), the Klingons showing up right on time, Sisko finally standing up to the Prophets (“if you’re going to be gods, BE GODS!”), poor Garak’s face when we realises what happened to Ziyal (her death being a turning point for Gul Dukat that leads him to the Pah Wraiths). Not to mention the kick ass space battle. Freaking LOVE that whole arc.Also, the damn Klingon wedding ceremony makes me tear up EVERY TIME
Don’t know if “The Way of the Warrior” counts as one or two, but if that’s two, followed immediately, by “The Visitor”, it’s a tough three hours to beat. If it’s one, then we can extend the run to include “Hippocratic Oath”, which is still a solid episode.
I go “Way of the Warrior” (riveting start to the best run of Trek ever, DS9 Seasons 4-7), “The Visitor” (masterpiece of television), “Hippocratic Oath” (extremely underrated-a low-key but excellent episode on all fronts). Or “In the Cards” (best Trek comedy ever), “Call to Arms” (amazing finale and start to the Dominion War), “A Time to Stand” (does a superb job at setting the tone for the final two seasons). You could switch the last one to include “Rocks and Shoals”, a top ten DS9 episode.
For me it’s “Inquisition,” “In the Pale Moonlight,” and then either “Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night” or “His Way” on either end of those two.In the Pale Moonlight is my favorite episode of DS9, and maybe of all of Star Trek.
You can’t go wrong with ‘In the Pale Moonlight’ on your list.
My DS9 picks would be ‘The Visitor,’ ‘Hippocratic Oath,’ and ‘Indiscretion.’ I think there’s a lot of stronger arcs and multi-part episodes but that’s one of my favourite and strongest group of 3. And coming off the fourth season opener / successful soft reboot of ‘Way of the Warrior’ too!
That run of episodes on Arrow season 2 was incredible. Those episodes were so thrilling that on initial watching I thought they must be almost over and would check the time and only like 15 minutes had passed, but they had already contained so much excitement
For several years, “Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus, Resurrection Ship I & II” would have been my choice for top 3-episode run. In addition to excellence in the acting and a gripping, tense plot, there is the epic scoring of Bear McCreary. From a music standpoint, I’m not sure there is an answer to the climax of “
Arrow Season 2 is definitely the best season of live-action superheroics ever made…..if you don’t count Person of Interest. Which I kind of do. So I’d put POI Season 2 over it. Besides that, the animated DC shows like JLU would also probably blow it out of the water.
I can’t wait for the best shows of the decade article that the AV Club will inevitably publish so I can gush more about POI. It was like the modern day X-Files, that really great genre show that can sustain long-term character arcs and quality over an extended run. (I could also put several more trilogies from POI (“Firewall”-”Bad Code”, “The Devil You Know”-”If-Then-Else”, etc.).Nice episodes from the best season (or Season 3, whatever your preferences) of The Office, as well.
When it comes to gushing about PoI, I imagine you’ll have a lot of company there.
The AV Club was one of the only sites that gave the show its due (I mean, except for the fact that they dropped coverage right as it was getting good and they left it off pretty much every list, but oh well. Probably just means most AV Club writers didn’t watch it. Their loss).
Arrested Development S1: Top Banana, Bringing up Buster, Key Decisions
I’d need to do a rewatch to get the perfect answer, but Season 3 of Fringe had a run of something like nine or ten episodes in a row that were just total mindblowers. Probably one of my all-time favorite seasons of television ever.
Still bummed I didn’t jump on Fringe when it was on Netflix since I bailed on the show’s initial run after episode 3 or 4.
It’s on the free app IMDB freedive.
I can’t recommend it highly enough. The fucking incredible John Noble does feature film quality work on every damn episode. There is a musical episode. There is an animated episode. There is an episode where the lead character is on acid and in an immersion tank the entire time. The actors who played Hurley and Desmond on ‘Lost’ have bit parts. There is talk of transplanting Leonard Nimoy’s soul into a cow at one point.It’s SO weird, and SO wonderful. If you’re still interested, hunt it down and devour it.
I’m gonna have to give the later seasons of Fringe another shot. The show started to lose me when the focus shifted away from Olivia and more toward Peter.
The back half of season 3 until the end (it ran five seasons) are craziness. I love it.
The middle of Season 2 to the middle of Season 3 is an incredible run of episodes. If it wasn’t for the good-but-not-amazing “Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver.” breaking them up, “Jacksonville”/ “Peter” / “White Tulip” would be a hard trio to beat.
Very much so. ‘Peter’ is probably the best episode of the series.I think Fringe is probably the only routinely good-to-great thing that Akiva Goldsman has ever been involved in. It always blows my mind when I see him churn out absolute garbage after his involvement with this show. He wrote or co-wrote a LOT of episodes.
The final 3 episodes of The Shield. You can go back as far as the final 6. The most “anything could happen” stretch of TV ever…
The animated header image is super-annoying and I can’t wait till it’s gone from the main page; this is pretty much the first/only time that shitty-old-Kinja’s tendency to shove stuff out of the front page way too fast is actually a positive.
You can almost pick any three consecutive episodes of The Twilight Zone and they’ll top anything you can come up with, but I’ll go with “It’s A Good Life”, “Deaths-head Revisited”, and “The Midnight Sun”.
Also episodes 1-6 of the second season of Eastbound & Down are the best comedic television I’ve ever seen.
Wow, that is some pretty great eps all packed together.
I’ll do you one better — the entire final season of Person of Interest.
My own list is also a trio of Simpsons episodes: in fact it’s a trio of episodes that aired just a couple of weeks after Erik’s choices. “Much Apu About Nothing” gives us The Simpsons at its satirical best, with an episode about Apu’s immigration status that feels even more relevant now than when it aired. It really nails how timeless the show has become.
Homerpalooza might be chock full of mid-90’s rock star guest voices, but it doesn’t feel dated either, because its main story about Homer worrying that he’s lost touch with “the people…the young people!” is so universal. It also features perhaps the biggest truth bomb to ever air on network television:And finally, “Summer of 4 ft. 2″ gives us the best episode of the entire series. At once a sweet and emotionally powerful story about Lisa dealing with her isolation, the show’s best use of the “Simpsons go on vacation” format (even if the place they go to is fictional this time around) and an endless source of quotable lines, even by this show’s standards. It’s a masterpiece; all three of these are.
The Simpsons should probably get a whole question on its own. What is the best 3-Episode run from the Simpsons? I’m partial to one of these three sets:
Season 2: “Bart Gets Hit by a Car”, “One Fish Two Fish Blow Fish Blue Fish”, “The Way We Was”
Season 3: “I Married Marge”, “Radio Bart”, “Lisa the Greek”Season 4: “Whacking Day”, “Marge in Chains”, “Krusty Gets Cancelled”
I thought of buffy S3 the prom, graduation P1/2
“breaking bad” – all of it
Episodes 4,5 and 6 of season 1 of The Oblongs.
I came here to post about that three episode arc of community in season three as well. Amazing stuff.
You could almost certainly do this with any three-episode stretch of the 3rd or 4th seasons of The Wire.
DoppelDEANER
I’ve gotta go with the final three episodes of The 100, Season 2: “Bodyguard of Lies”, “Blood Must Have Blood, Part One”, and “Blood Must Have Blood, Part Two”.We go from the excellent character work of “Bodyguard of Lies” that launched a thousand shippers, to the high stakes action/adventure and gut-punch ending of “Blood Must Have Blood, Part One”, to the inevitable but devastating conclusion of “Blood Must Have Blood, Part Two”.Those episodes are what transitioned me from a fan of The 100 to someone absolutely OBSESSED with The 100.
This is pretty typical modern AVClub trash.
The three-episode run of the Parks And Rec “future” season where we see the feud between Ron and Leslie is my fave. Extra point for it being resolved in the future Pawnee Parks And Recreation offices, after all the other characters agree the only way to resolve it is to lock them in until they stop fighting and come to their senses. ttps://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVjnidcT2ts
“Are you telling me I’ve had a child’s toy on my desk for the last ten years?”“… Are you telling me you thought you had an actual land mine on your desk for the last ten years?!”
From Halt and Catch Fire: “Goodwill”, “Search”, and “Ten of Swords.”How do you continue after the loss of a best friend? A husband? A beloved boss? A father? How the series ends after the loss of who was, more or less, its main character is simply beautiful and easily some of the most affecting television I have ever watched.
I’m going to need to rewatch HCF again. Such an amazing, underrated show.
I made the same suggestion elsewhere. Those three episodes are a big part of why Cameron and Donna would be high on my list of “best TV relationships”.
South Park, Season 7…Christian Rock HardGrey DawnCasa BonitaAll About Mormons…Take. Your. Pick.
On a game show level, I will either go this Tues-Wed-Thurs on Jeopardy, or Wed-Thurs-Fri.James Holzhauer is obsoleting the game show of Jeopardy as you knew it.I’d probably have included all five episodes this week (in which he nearly doubled the one-week record from before he got on the show — only held by Ken Jennings — by winning over $430,000 on a show in which only Jennings had ever won that much in regular play at all!!) if it had gotten to five.But part of the reason I actually would consider W/Th/F on this is that he made Thursday and Friday so effortless (or that he was tiring), he wasn’t even TRYING — and he still had two of the top ten winning scores for one day in the history of the program. He now holds all five top spots on that list, and #8. In just 12 shows. But T/W/Th would encompass no short of his second $100K+ win, and then Wednesday just obliterating that old record completely by winning over $130,000 — a feat no less than spoiled by ESPN several hours before it aired on the West coast.He is 2-3 shows from becoming the next game show millionaire, and there is no basis, right now, to believe he’s going to lose anytime soon.
I’d say you could go with any 3 from season 5 of Lost. Just strong storytelling. Season 3 of Xfiles gave us Piper Maru, Apocrypha, and Pusher.
Lost was a tricky show.
Season 3 started strong, then fell apart for me. But all of sudden, with “The Man From Talahasse” and “The Man Behind the Curtain” Lost rose to an unforseen level of greatness. It stayed at that level for much of seasons 4, 5, and the quality first episode of 6. Then, things were a bit uneven. Until, perhaps, “The Candidate.”
The eventual backlash against “Lost” is really from the season 6 letdown “Across the Sea.” It was here that people realized just how much was going to be left on the table, forgotten or unanswered. Sad, really, because “The End” was a spectacular, gripping finale.
I’m a big Lost defender (even though I prefer Fringe). I think the crux of the viewer outrage was that people felt tricked when Lost let its freak flag fly and revealed it was actually a full-on nerdy genre show. I also think the show basically made sense – people had been landing on the island since the beginning of time and leaving traces of their cultures there. “Our” people were only a footnote in the history of the place. I did a rewatch recently and I was surprised by how thoroughly it held up.Buffy, on the other hand, doesn’t hold up as well. During my rewatch I kept wishing the show had been delayed by 20 years, until the age of 13-episode seasons. Even revisiting the X-Files now is a foreign experience. It’s mind-blowing in a minor way to encounter a 26-episode season of television. A show like Millennium – 3 seasons – was considered a failure despite hitting around 70 episodes.
That moment you mention in S3, when it all kicks off again and the show then remains pretty stellar throughout the next couple years (I’ll also defend S6, but get why some don’t), is probably also a key moment in the development of current approaches to TV narrative. The showrunners/writers realised they had a story to tell and they wanted to tell it in a specific way, with a specific number of episodes, conventional TV-season structure be damned (the writers’ strike helped, actually), and the network let them do it. Seems to me, really successful series post-Lost are those that know the story they want to tell and do so in the number of episodes required; whereas less successful shows, even if they’re good, still try to churn out 13 or 20 eps a season, and we always get that mid-season bloat.
“The Pleasure Protocol”, “Coats or Keys”, and “Outliers.”
“Masters of Sex”, Season 4.
I thought people stopped liking that show after the first season of it, another curse of Showtime dramas degrading over time.
All three of those episodes are equal or better than anything in Mad Men’s fabulous peak season 5 (including “The Other Woman.”) There is a stunning episode, “Topeka” of higher quality than any of those. “Masters of Sex” season 4 was something special. Excellence in acting, in screenplay, in pacing, and the direction is flawless. That and “Daredevil” are two shows inexplicably cancelled after truly exceptional seasons.
any three episodes of The Wire?okay fine here’s some honorable mentions while I spend way too long coming with the perfect Wire triptych:Breaking Bad – Rabid Dog, To’hajiilee, OzymandiasMad Men – Waldorf Stories, The Suitcase, The Summer ManArrested Development – Top Banana, Bringing Up Buster, Key DecisionsThe Leftovers – Lens, A Most Powerful Adversary, International Assassin
The final three episodes of The Wire Season 4 are the peak of the series imo. Or the final 3 of Season 3.
yep these were my first two ideas as well and right now im leaning towards S4. cant go wrong with either though really.
Nope. Such an excellent series overall, but those two are surely the two best seasons. Season 1 was a little tough to get into, Season 2 was a worthwhile but jarring shift, and Season 5 has the serial killer plot. Seasons 3 and 4 don’t really have any flaws though.
Home Movies: Camp, Bye, Bye Greasy, and The Heart Smashers. Start of season four. Cloudchaser. Big Rig and Jesse.
True detective S1 episodes 4-7Breaking bad comes to mind also but it’s such a stellar multi year run I can’t put it together
You could pick just about any three consecutive episodes from seasons 2 and 3 of the Office, but they go with season 5? Even season 4 had Deposition, Dinner Party and Chair Model.
Yeah I don’t understand that — especially because there’s the wonderful Michael Scott Paper Company/Cafe Disco/Company Picnic run at the end of the season, which was probably the last time they could crank out more than one good episode at a time.
If the question was best 2.5 episode run I’d go with Safety Training/Product Recall/Women’s Appreciation. Women’s Appreciation falls off considerably in the second half, but for me the first half might be the funniest 10 minutes of the entire series.
There’s a million good ones above… but a few favorite runs:Fringe: “The Abducted,” “Entrada,” “Marionette”The Office: Either “Christmas Party,” “Booze Cruise” and “The Injury” OR “Women’s Appreciation,” “Beach Games,” and “The Job”Alias: “The Solution,” “Rendezvous,” “Almost Thirty Years”Mad Men: “The Other Woman,” “Commissions and Fees,” “The Phantom”Gilmore Girls: “Sadie Sadie,” “Hammers and Veils,” “Red Light on the Wedding Night”
If I was going GG I would do – help wanted, lorelai’s Graduation day and I can’t get started. Lots of good grandparents stuff, Rory and Jess, and I hate him but Christopher and Lorelai had good chemistry.
Excellent choices. I might have to watch those again soon.
South Park – Imaginationland
The correct answer is Samurai Jack Season 5, Episodes 1-2-3.The whole season (and series) is fantastic, but all three episodes are compelling and meaningful in a way that’s unique and unmatched by anything else in the show. This is in large part due to Season 5 being produced for Adult Swim instead of Cartoon Network, which allowed the show to explore more mature themes and subject matter than it had ever been able to before.
You could pick almost any three episodes from Party Down’s first season, though I’m going to go with the last three: “Celebrate Ricky Sargulesh”, “James Rolf High School Twentieth Reunion”, and “Stennheiser/Pong Wedding Reception”. Ron’s projectile vomit at the end of ‘James Rolf’ is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.For Freaks and Geeks, I’d pick the three episodes of disc five: “Chokin’ and Tokin’”, “Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers”, and “Noshing and Moshing”. Lindsay tries marijuana! Coach dates Bill’s mom! Daniel becomes a punker! It’s so good.On 30 Rock, I’d have to do the season-two run with “The Collection” (Steve Buscemi!) followed by series highlight “Rosemary’s Baby” (Carrie Fischer!) and then the only too eco-friendly “Greenzo”.And for Arrested Development, I’ll say another season-two run, this time with “Out on a Limb”, “Hand to God”, and “Motherboy XXX”, which includes the eps where Buster loses his hand to a loose seal.
My Mother the Car, Storming the Castle, Pier Pressure was my immediate thought.
Cheers: I Do, Adieu, Home is the Sailor, I on Sports.
Cheers season 5 didn’t end on a cliffhanger. In I Do, Adieu they definitively settled the Sam and Dianne will they/won’t they. The writers set the template for how that kind of relationship can be handled and brought to a close: by taking it seriously. They acknowledge that while these two people might be attracted to each other and have real chemistry, they really shouldn’t be together. By the end of that episode everyone who watched the show and were cheering them on knew that it really could only have ended with them not together, even though Shelly Long never recovered from the backlash brought on by her leaving the series.
In season 6 they realized that they had to reset the status quo for the series to move on by changing things, but not too much. They did so brilliantly with Home is the Sailor. This episode is where Sam has his breakdown – but it’s all offscreen and explained by Fraiser in the opening stinger (and accompanied by two great one liners from Woody). He sold the bar and bought a midlife crisis boat, the bar’s gone corporate, and even Cliff and Norm are gone. Eventually everyone comes back to the bar and while the relationships remain fairly unchanged it’s all just different enough to give the show some new juice. It also introduced Rebecca and set the show up to be able to run another five years.
Finally, I on Sports proved that the show could still be just plain funny. It feature Sam’s slow deterioration as a TV sports commentator. Carla’s reactions to his more and more desperate attempts to be taken seriously and be relevant are played perfectly straight and make the cringe comedy really work.
Aslo: Columbo: “Short Fuse” “Blueprint for Murder” “Etude in Black”
John Cassavetes may have been a genius but he did the worst fake orchestra conducting I’ve ever seen.
That’s one of the things I love about the episode. The mystery is just ok and the “gotchya” among the weaker in the series. The whole thing, though, has the air of two friends hanging out and having a blast. They got a killer supporting cast too: Myrna Loy, Blythe Danner (with Gwenyth Paltrow), Pat Morita, James McEachin, and introducing a dog as Dog. It isn’t Columbo’s strongest episode but it’s among the most entertaining.
Kind of feel like there’s a lot better run of the Office episodes as s2-s3 are all pretty consistently great. Such as S2’s Christmas Party, Booze Cruise, and the Injury. S2 has a pretty great start too: the Dundies, Sexual harassment, and the Office Olympics (followed by the Fire and Halloween). There’s also S3’s The Convict, a Benihana’s Christmas, and Back from Vacation. S3 also ends really strongly with Women’s Appreciation, Beach Games, and the Job
I found the following consecutive strings of three or more great Star Trek: Voyager episodes.S2E21 Deadlock: Voyager splits into two parallel Voyagers in parallel universes that much like Siamese twins can’t separate. Just as it seems that the more damaged version will take the fall, the intact version is boarded by Vidiians. Harry Kim and newborn Naomi, both dead in the damaged universe, are the only ones who get to be saved from the intact universe. S2E22 Innocence: A mysterious and secretive race seems to be sending off their children to die on a strange moon, almost as a form of sacrifice. It is ultimately revealed that these are not children, but elders suffering from dementia and that this is the natural end of their life cycle. S2E23 The Thaw: Largely regarded as one of the greatest VOY episodes, it describes the frantic efforts of the crew to rescue some aliens trapped in a nightmarish virtual reality. The main baddie gives a performance of a lifetime, and his duel of wits with Janeway really makes this a highlight episode. S2E24 Tuvix: Another of the great VOY episodes (a pretty remarkable run for a largely forgettable S2). A transport malfunction melds Tuvok and Neelix into one person, seemingly encompassing the best traits of both. Janeway makes a controversial decision to end Tuvix’s life.S3E21 Before and After: Kes, dying at an old age of 8, undergoes an experimental procedure which makes her travel back in time. An amazing episode which finally puts the character to good use (just before she was unceremoniously booted from the show) and in a dramatic fashion foreshadows the Year of Hell. S3E22 Real Life: The Doctor creates a virtual family. Sure, it’s a filler episode, but the contrast between his ideal family and a more realistic family where the wife is aloof, the son is into Klingon music/culture and the daughter is playing a dangerous sport is really top-notch sci-fi comedy, right before the somewhat contrived, yet pretty heartbreaking conclusion. S3E23 Distant Origin: This is one of the greatest Star Trek episodes, hands down, right up there with ‘’Inner Light’’ and ‘’In the Pale Moonlight’’. A somber re-imagining of the story of Galileo, where a hyper-advanced yet still dogmatic civilization refuses to consider the lowly Earth as its place of origin, despite the overwhelming evidence for the truth of this claim.S4E12 Mortal Coil: One of the most existential VOY episodes, and one of the first times I have ever seen atheism being taken seriously on network TV (as a legitimate stance and not some form of ‘anger at God’). S4E13 Waking Moments: An extremely fun episode where you’re never sure if you’re dreaming or in reality. S4E14 Message in a Bottle: Another classic episode showcasing the Doctor and another EHM trying to outwit the Romulans. Honorable Mentions: ‘’Blink of an Eye’’, ‘’Virtuoso’’, ‘’Memorial’’ and ‘’The Gift’’, ‘’Day of Honor’’, ‘’Nemesis’’.
Just went back and looked, the the final third of the second season of Voyager is really strong Trek. I’m not 100% sure I agree with you on Innocence, and Resolutions (the penultimate episode of the season) is a clunker, but outside of those two, the entire run from Meld to Basics is very entertaining.I guess they needed to make up for unleashing Trashhold on us somehow.
X Company, Season 3: “Masquerade,” “One for the Moon” and “Promises” and also “Naqam” “Friendly Fire” and “Remembrance”.I wish more people watched this. It’s one of my favorite series ever.
In a modified version of this question, I’d crown “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards,” and “The Winds of Winter” as the best 3-episode consecutive run of directing credits.
The writing credits, on the other hand, deserve no acclaim, even though they did win an Emmy.
It’s interesting to me how many of my favorite shows I can’t find do this with. Old-fashioned shows with 20-some-episode seasons almost invariably hit a lull at some point in any three-episode sequence. I went down the entire episode list of both Buffy and Angel and couldn’t find any three episodes in a row that don’t include at least one relative dud.Deep Space Nine did include at least one sequence that held up for me, from its 26-episode second season: “The Wire”/“Crossover”/“The Collaborator.” Though I know I’m in the minority regarding “The Collaborator,” which most people don’t like but I think is among the three or four best episodes of the whole series.I was also surprised not to find more streaks to argue for in more recent prestige series that run for fewer episode. In those cases it’s not because I would run into a dud, exactly, but because some episodes are so strong that eventually you run into an episode that’s merely very good. For instance, I was sure I’d find a streak in season 6 of The Americans, but after the brilliant “Harvest” and “The Summit” and before the stellar “START” is “Jennings, Elizabeth,” which doesn’t quite rise to the same level.Mad Men has a few places where the show goes to 11 in three successive episodes. I agree with Gwen Ihnat’s pick from season 3, but probably the best in my opinion is from season 5: “Mystery Date”/“Signal 30”/“Far Away Places.” Those are all such fantastic and also such different episodes, going from horror to intimate character study to timeline-bending turning point.
The idea that less episodes = more quality is one of those that is repeated over and over to sound intelligent or profound, but often isn’t true. In the case of shows like Doctor Who, as beaten, badly budgeted, and obviously dragged out as many of the original show’s stories were, I would still say they often hold up better than many episodes of the revival.
100% agreed
For me, it’s always been West Wing S1e22 to S2e2. You get the assassination attempt and all the hospital drama (including Abby Bartlet teasing the big secret that will the central conflict for the next couple of seasons), but then you get one of my favorite origin story sequences ever, showing the staff coming together during the primaries. So many great moments – Josh and Donna’s first meeting, Josh’s face through the glass telling Sam that Bartlet is the real deal, etc etc.
Doctor Who: Human Nature, The Family of Blood, Blink, then even Utopia.Babylon 5: Messages from Earth, Point of No Return, Severed Dreams.
There’s probably decent 3 ep arcs in TNG and DS9, Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, The Expanse, I could go on.
The only answer for the office is the episodes with Michael Scott paper company
An almost criminal lack of Archer season 2: Stage 2, Placebo Effect, El Secuestro
Fresh Meat, season 2, episodes 4 (the rager at JP’s house), 5 (the break-in), and 6 (the geology field trip).
Parks and Rec, season 3 – Harvest Festival, Camping, and April and Andy’s Fancy Party. Fight me.
My first thought was X-Files Azasazi-Blessing Way- Paper Clip. The “mythology” was coming into sharp focus before blurring later, the characters and partnership was top notch and I recall being absolutely riveted even on repeated viewings. Would mention also Star trek: TNG Best of Both Worlds 1/2 then Family. I have always thought Family was a terrific episode and for the first time really made it serial rather than episodic.
“Communication Problems,” “The Psychiatrist,” and “Waldorf Salad,” from the comedy GOAT, Fawlty Towers. The first episode of the second season (or “series,” as they call them in the UK) opens with the greatest Rube Goldberg contraption of escalating jokes. The one-liners alone are memorable – “I know…nothing…,” “C.K. Watt?,” “Fish wife?,” “You’ll have to sew them back on first…” – and that’s just the first show. The visual and physical gags are hilarious throughout, and all three episodes feature Basil’s desperate need to maintain his dignity, a battle he lost a long time ago.
‘’Waldorf Salad’’ is one of the most subtly revolutionary episodes in the history of comedy. It is difficult to remember that not too long ago the expectation of good service was very much only an American thing, and a relatively novel one at that, and that the average treatment anywhere else was much closer to the way Basil Fawlty treated his guests. Back then, people in the service industry had absolutely no problem being completely insulting to their guests for any number of reasons, including merely being in a bad mood, and you essentially had to beg and scrape for these people to do their job properly and more or less apologize for the inconvenience you’ve caused them if you had a legitimate complaint. The effect was even more drastic in communist countries where everything was state-run and you usually had absolutely no other options.
‘’Waldorf Salad’’ is one of the most subtly revolutionary episodes in the history of comedy. It is difficult to remember that not too long ago the expectation of good service was very much only an American thing, and a relatively novel one at that, and that the average treatment anywhere else was much closer to the way Basil Fawlty treated his guests. Back then, people in the service industry had absolutely no problem being completely insulting to their guests for any number of reasons, including merely being in a bad mood, and you essentially had to beg and scrape for these people to do their job properly and more or less apologize for the inconvenience you’ve caused them if you had a legitimate complaint. The effect was even more drastic in communist countries where everything was state-run and you usually had absolutely no other options.
Although I’m usually quick to disparage the US, my Dutch cousins say the customer service is better here.
Members Only/Join the Club/Mayham
I’ll mention the tragically under-appreciated ReBoot, because no one ever does even though it was brilliant on so many levels.
Season 2’s closing trio, “Gigabyte,” “Trust No One,” and “World Web Wars”.Or just about any sequence of episodes from there on, but most certainly season 3’s “Showdown,” “System Crash,” and “End Prog” or season 4’s “Cross Roads,” “What’s Love Got To Do With It?,” and “Sacrifice.”
I’ll do one most here wouldn’t think of/consider:Beast Wars: “Code of Hero” (best TF episode of all time)“Transmutate” “Agenda” (cheating a bit as this is a 3-part finale)
The Sopranos – The Second Coming, Blue Comet, Made in America
Smile Time, A Hole In The World, Shells from Season 5 of Angel. The funniest episode the show ever produced followed by the two saddest and most powerful episodes the show ever produced. You could also start at A Hole In The World and go through Underneath if you just hate yourself and want to be sad. Still great.
Honorable mentions for Lullaby, Dad, Birthday and Loyalty, Sleep Tight, Forgiving, both from Season 3.
Buffy also has a number of good three episode runs in the running, but if I started listing those we’d be here all day.
Allison is the only smart person here.
No multi season arcs seems unfair. A perfect contender, stargate sg1 the last two episodes of season 1 and episode 1 of season 2.
Atlanta season 2: Barbershop, Teddy Perkins, Champagne Papi, then they followed it up with Woods, North of The Border, and Fubu.
This might be more Oliver Sava’s turf, but it’s hard to come up with a three-episode run with bigger stakes or more desperate situations than the stretch of Justice League Unlimited that includes “Flashpoint”, “Panic in the Sky”, and “Divided We Fall”. The arc begins with the obliteration of a small city in New Mexico, and ends seconds from the US government ordering a nuclear strike — on Washington. And by that point, it’s plausible. Animation, yes, but at a level not seen before then, and the basis of a lot that’s been done since.
Community is one of my all-time favourite shows, and “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design” is the first episode I saw (I immediately went back and started from the beginning). While I do think there are better episodes in the show, or at least episodes that are just as good (Remedial Chaos Theory, the paintball two-parters, Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism, etc.), I keep coming back to that one, Cooperative Calligraphy, and Mixology Certification. I think they showcase the best and worst of these characters, and how their friendship prevails through all their various mishaps and fuck-ups. I love this show a lot, and I think this is some of its best work.
I just gotta say, picking The Office and The Simpsons for the best 3-episode run of TV EVER is… really kind’a sad. Not (off the top of my head) Brideshead Revisited or Twin Peaks or Ally McBeal or Fringe or Gilmore Girls or The Event or Boston Legal or LOST or Roots or Crime Story… but The Office and The Simpsons?
Hey, The Office and The Simpsons had their moments, man. But Roots, Lost, and Fringee are some good calls, though.
American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson had 1.04 “100% Not Guilty”- 1.05 “The Race Card”- 1.06 “Marcia Marcia Marcia” that might be the triple of Ryan Murphy’s career
I watched Ally McBeal for a few seasons. It was never anywhere nearly as good as The Simpsons.
The Simpsons ran for so many episodes that there are just a lot more 3 episode runs to choose from.
Please never write kinda like that again, I’m begging you.
Gilmore girls?? Boston legal?? I get what you’re saying but those are some pretty weak suggestions for replacements.
Halt and Catch Fire: “You Are Not Safe”, “NIM”, “NeXT”.
What, no love for STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE’s great Season 2 opening Three-Parter – “The Homecoming”, “The Circle” and “The Siege”? Imprisoned Hero of the Revolution Li Nalas comes to DS9 completely terrified of and unwilling to assume the hero’s mantle he’s been granted, and a Bajor for Bajorans group tries to rid itself of the Federation. Brilliant story with twists, turns, action scenes and enough humor to carry the entire arc, and Richard Beymer’s Li Nalas integrates into the main cast well enough that you start to think of him as part of DS9’s crew…. ::oops::
Arrested Development – The One Where They Build a House, Amigos, and Good Grief in season 2 show the series at the height of its ability to pile on gags at an unthinkable rateSeinfeld – The Dinner Party, The Marine Biologist, and The Pie from season 5 is as good a run as the show had, all with memorable intersecting plotlinesPossibly cheating – the first 4 episodes of Lost, the run of Come on God, Halloween, Eddie, and Duckling from Louis’ 2nd season (Halloween is good but the other three episodes are so great it feels wrong not to mention them here)
The three episode West Wing run culminating in “Two Cathedrals” could be expanded into a five episode run if you include Manchester, Part One and Two from the beginning of Season 3.
Excellent Mad Men pick. I would also go with Indian Summer, Nixon vs. Kennedy and The Wheel.I’m a big fan of Babylon 5, Intersections in Real Time, Between the Darkness and the Light, and Endgame is a pretty great run of an under appreciated show.Another under appreciated show is Halt and Catch Fire, and its final three episodes, Goodwill, Search and Ten of Swords are moving as hell.
I want to see a squad of AVClub writers that’s all people who remember the 20th century. Three episodes of Barney Miller or whatnot (I did appreciate someone thought of Cheers). I’m getting tired of reading another way of rehashing The Office, Battlestar Galactica, Community, Buffy and (surprised it’s not here) Parks and Recreation. I grew up on syndication (and, I’m old) and would love to hear some takes on Bewitched.
Person Of Interest:Endgame / The Crossing /The Devil’s ShareEpisodes before, during & after Carter’s death.This is the only applicable answer.
LOST, From Season 3 – “The Brig” > “The Man Behind The Curtain” > “Greatest Hits”. And those 3 phenomenal episodes lead up to what is probably the best episode of the entire series, “Through the Looking Glass”- but since that’s a double episode, I wasn’t sure if I should include it…And from Season 5 – “This Place Is Death” > “316″ > “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”. That pod of episodes has always really stood out to me as LOST at its best. (Interesting trivia: “316″ & “Bentham” were written more or less simultaneously, and “Bentham” was originally intended to air first. For the production codes, “316″ is actually episode 507, and “Bentham” is 506. Supposedly, one could watch them in either order.)THE SOPRANOS, from Season 6 Part 2 – “Kennedy and Heidi” > “The Second Coming” > “The Blue Comet”. Three hours of shit coming to a head and conflicts boiling over and erupting into violence. Its the most exciting the show ever got, and those last few episodes have stood out in my memory as the greatest Chase & co. ever produced. And then, of course, the series finale follows, which could also make the cut…but in the end, “Kennedy” is a stronger episode and deserves to be part of it more.
i feel like batman: tas had some insane multi-episode runs but i leave that up to you, the viewer, to decide.
Ignoring the season-ending rule
Doctor Who: “World Enough and Time” “The Doctor Falls” and “Twice Upon a Time”
With the rule in place:
Supernatural: “Changing Channels” “The Real Ghostbusters” and “Abandon All Hope…”
“Kō No Mono, Tome-wan and Mizumono from Hannibal Season 2.
So many great picks. From the staff I gotta with Alex and The Leftovers. I actually prefer the Matt episode over the finale, but it’s hard even for me to find a stronger run of episodes than those. (In recent years, anyway. My memory gets fuzzy about older shows). I’m unsure if the question is strongest “of all time” or strongest “of any given show” so I have a lot.This was tough. I have bunch of “almosts” from the likes of Fargo, Buffy, Friends, and Stranger Things. (damn you, 2.07!) And a lot of ‘back-and-forths’ within shows (Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, LOST, and yes, X-Men the animated series all have great 3-episode runs throughout most of their seasons). But I want to go with a few I haven’t seen with many mentions yet:I think Daredevil did the impossible when it first started: It gave superhero TV some prestige. Plus, it was a major rebound for the character, coming off the poorly-recieved movie. Thanks to clever showrunners, great writing, and a mature tone, 1.01 “Into the Ring”, 1.02 “Cut Man”, and 1.03 “Rabbit in a Snowstorm” set the bar for this genre that still hasn’t been matched.The Good Place is in the awkward position of being an already superfluous show yet, weirdly also having to settle for ‘underrated comedy’ status. To me, 1.07 “The Eternal Shriek”, 1.08 “Most Improved Player” and 1.09 “Someone Like Me as a Member” are the reasons it should have been considered an Emmy contender from the beginning.
As a slower burn, it took a while to gt there, but if ever there were a time when Better Call Saul matched its predecessor, it started to happen in season three. 3.03 “Sunk Costs”, 3.04 “Sabrosito” and 3.05 “Chicanery” are as good as the best of Breaking Bad, and last year’s 4th season kept them going strong. I can’t believe they are taking a year off.
Finally, I’ll throw some love at The Legend of Korra. The show found its stride in Book 3, with a lot of its best animation, fighting, and philospohy, thanks to a villain like Zaheer, and an ending that left our hero both physically and emotionally crippled. Check out 3.11 “The Ultimatum” 3.12 “Enter the Void”, and 3.13 “Venom of the Red Lotus.”
Holy shit, that West Wing clip is like a parody of existential crises. Sorkin is such a limited writer.
y’all really gonna do the mortis trilogy like this?
30 Rock: The Rural Juror, The Head and the Hair, Black TieI don’t really want to argue the merits of the middle episode, more acknowledge that two of the funniest episodes of a legendarily funny series were released within 3 weeks of each other.
All The Way, Once More With Feeling, Tabula Rasa – Buffy
The Simpsons pick is really hard to argue with.
How about that. I haven’t seen any of them. And have no desire to see any of them. And anybody who would hold up The Simpsons as the best of anything should be shot.
Doctor Who – Human Nature, The Family of Blood, Blink. Admittedly a two-parter in there, but what a two-parter. You could even add in Utopia to make it four episodes on the trot… as long as you don’t pay too much attention to the latter story’s continuation episodes.
Maybe not strongest, but certainly favorites of mine:HIMYM: Not a Father’s Day/Woooo!/The Naked Man; Three Days of Snow/The Possimpible/The StinsonsSouth Park: Free Hat/Bebe’s Boobs Destroy Society/Child Abduction is Not Funny; Manbearpig/Tsst!/Make Love, Not WarcraftAs for The Simpsons, I gotta go with Itchy and Scratchy Land/Treehouse of Horror V/Sideshow Bob Roberts. Just a brilliant collection (out of many possible ones for that era).
“Messages From Earth” / “Point of No Return” / “Severed Dreams” (Babylon 5). The tension — political, military, personal — just builds and builds until the glorious but oh-so-temporary catharsis of the latter.
Series 4 of Doctor who1. Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead2. Midnight3. Turn LeftI know the first story is a two-parter, so obviously my list is doubly disappointing, but these three stories are all terrific, and having them appear back to back to back pretty much cemented this as the best season of New Who.
Watching that scene from ‘The West Wing’ makes me remember how wonderfully written that scene was and how poorly directed it was.
The Americans:Divestment; Do Mail Robots Dream Of Electric Sheep?; Stingers
Archer’s Heart of Archness.
Fringe – “Peter”, “Olivia. In the Lab. With the Revolver” finishing with “White Tulip” but it could also work starting with “White Tulip” followed by “The Man from the Other Side” ending on “Brown Betty”. This is where the show went from “really cool” to the best thing on television. The first three episodes of Season 3 (ending on my series favorite “The Plateau”) would also work.More recently I would give it to The Haunting of Hill House with “The Twin Thing”, “The Bent-Neck Lady” and “Two Storms”. They build up Nell’s arc in heartbreaking fashion and end devastatingly with the filmmaking virtuosity of “Two Storms”.
Excellent choices, as four of these shows are among my favorites of all time. I think the end of The West Wing season 3 also deserves a mention, if we’re giving Community two entries. I love Community, but I’d argue “The Black Vera Wang”, “We Killed Yamamoto”, and “Posse Comitatus” are collectively better than the season 3 Community episodes mentioned.
I’ll give you a whole season: Tom Baker’s first. Robot is pretty damn good for a regeneration story, The Ark in Space is top notch, the Sontaran Experiment is really solid, Genesis of the Daleks is a classic, and . . . eh, okay. Revenge of the Cybermen is probably the odd man out. Not bad, not great.
I’m not trying to be different, but I am picking Psych, before Shawn became overbearing. The second half of season one, and all of season 2 are just money. They hit their stride before trying some “other” things, which may or may not have worked.But towards the end of season two, they had ‘There’s something about Mira’, guest starring Kerry Washington, ‘The Old and the Restless’, and ‘Lights, Camera, Homicido’All 3 episodes are light on the crime, quick witted, with a lot of 80’s references, and were just a lot of fun.
Season 4 of The Simpsons (my favorite season) almost has the most perfect three in a row (for me) but somehow the worst episode of the 1-12 era is right in the middle. I’m talking of course about: Marge v. the monorail (I don’t even have to talk about this classic. It’s fantastic.)Selma’s Choice (The sandwich. I am the lizard queen. Duff Gardens!)Brother From The Same Planet (THE WORST EPISODE OF ALL. According to the commentary it’s All Tom Cruise’s fault as he wanted to be on the show and then they wrote him a character and then he pulled at the last minute. Supposedly someone said to never made an episode this bad again.) I Love Lisa (Krusty Comeback Special! The Monster Mash is a love song).
I’m having difficulty believing that not one person has even so much as mentioned “The Wire,” which is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.My answer is episodes 10, 11, and 12 of Season 3 of “The Wire”. This was right in the heart of The Wire’s run and had everything you could ask for in terms of a complex, interwoven story with fully developed characters. This was also the 3 episode arch that led up to and included the murder of Stringer Bell.“Reformation” – Lots of political machinations in this episode surrounding the beginning of a mayoral run by a Martin O’Malley-esque young white guy. Then there’s the whole situation with a police commander who basically said, “Fuck it” and legalized drug dealing/use in parts of his district that comes to a head. Finally, as part of yet another story, they did something really outstanding and fearless as creators; they teed up a story line about a closeted police commander by showing him a gay bar chilling and then proceeded to not mention it at all for the next two seasons. “Middle Ground” – Things reach their boiling point with Hamsterdam being found out by the police brass and Stringer Bell getting ripped off by shady politician clay Davis. They also throw in a scene that shows how law enforcement is easily manipulated by having McNulty getting help from the FBI by simply saying someone’s first name is “Ahmed” and shaking loose resources because their investigation is “terrorism related”. Two mass murders (Omar & Brother Mouzone) connect and end up killing Stringer Bell in a huge gut punch.“Mission Accomplished” – Weakest of the three episodes because it’s a lot of political machinations and they were wrapping up for the season, but it still had a painful chapter in Cutty’s redemption arch where even though he’s turned his life around he’s still rejected by an old girlfriend. And they show how any kind of innovation in policing is quickly overcome by politics and bullshit.
Friday Night Lights, either: Mud Bowl, Best Laid Plans, and State or The March, Texas Whatever, and Always.
Apologies if somebody’s already mentioned this, but here’s my suggestion:It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: The first three episodes of season 7: “Frank’s Pretty Woman”, “The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore”, and “Frank Reynolds’ Little Beauties”. The fourth episode (“Sweet Dee Gets Audited”) was another cracker. They then followed the four up with perhaps the worst episode in the series (“Frank’s Brother”), but I can’t remember a better run for the show.
I know I am late to this article, but the correct answer is Babylon 5 Season 3: Messages from Earth – Point of No Return – and the Hugo Winning Severed Dreams.OrBeast Wars Transformers: Beast Wars Part 1 and Part 2, Maximal No More and Code of Hero. I realize these are from 2 different seasons, but it tells the story of Dinobot and the true hero he becomes. Shit, just thinking about Code of Hero makes me sad.
Futurama got off to a pretty good start with “Space Pilot 3000″, “The Series Has Landed” and “I, Roomate”.
“Janets” “The Book of Dougs” Chidi Sees The Time-Knife” from the Good Place. D’arcy needs that Emmy now!
When this was first posted I hadn’t yet watched Halt and Catch Fire. So now I’m going to add Goodwill, Search, & Ten of Swords to the list.
Man, I’m sorry, but there’s no way the best string of Office episodes is even as late as season 5. That was a series that peaked pretty early. As in, by season 4 it was already losing steam.
Jaynestown, Out of Gas, Ariel– VERY surprised this didn’t pop up somewhere.