Runners-Up (alphabetical by show): Bob's Burgers - "Bad Tina," Game of Thrones - "A Man Without Honor," Parks and Recreation - "Bus Tour," Revenge - "Reckoning," Veep - "Catherine"
10. The Legend of Korra, Season 1 Episode 6 – "And The Winner Is..."
There are some Avatar: The Last Airbender fans who miss that show's looser structure and occasional standalone episodes in sequel series The Legend of Korra. I sympathize, but I also love Korra's lean, mean storytelling, and I love that they wrapped up the pro-bending story that fueled the first half of this season quickly, unconventionally, and really goddamn excitingly. The final aerial showdown in this episode was some crazy next-level animation for a Saturday morning cartoon.
9. 30 Rock, Season 6 Episode 20 – "Queen of Jordan 2: Mystery of the Phantom Pooper"
I'm frankly shocked to be putting the sequel to "Queen of Jordan," a season 5 Real Housewives parody I didn't enjoy much at all, on this list, but there's no denying that I bellowed with laughter through the whole thing. Airing the week after a vastly superior live show to last year's, this was just a killer season for direct sequel 30 Rock episodes. "Rude!"
8. Game of Thrones, Season 2 Episode 6 – "The Old Gods and the New"
It's all about Theon Greyjoy. I mean, I also enjoy Jon and Ygritte, Arya and Tywin, and crazy King's Landing riots where The Hound guts people (as for Robb and Talisa – well, that's more problematic), but, without going into spoilery specifics, I'm a big fan of how the Game of Thrones producers have handled Theon's arc this season, and I think Alfie Allen is kicking ass in the role. It's a fearless, fiery performance of one of TV's most aggressively pathetic characters that deserves real Emmy consideration.
7. Mad Men, Season 5 Episode 11 – "The Other Woman"
Anyone who talks TV with me is probably aware that I'm not part of the cultish, vaguely creepy masturbation circle TV critics have formed around Mad Men. But, at a certain point, damn good television is just damn good television. And what Matt Weiner and team pulled off with Peggy Olson and Joan Harris in this episode, sending them careening in entirely different directions from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's inner circle, is something that deserves respect indeed.
6. Community, Season 3 Episode 21 – "The First Chang Dynasty"
I love Community's more emotionally and thematically ambitious half-hours (more on that later down the list), but I'm also not averse to the show just kicking back and having some delirious, balls-to-the-wall fun. You know – since it does so better than all but two or three other sitcoms in the history of television, and all that. This Ocean's Eleven / general heist film parody was one of the funniest, most lightning-paced sitcom episodes I've seen in years, and a perfect capper to this season's Chang arc.
5. The Vampire Diaries, Season 3 Episode 22 – "The Departed"
Vampire Diaries showrunner Julie Plec just writes a damn good soap opera, and she knows how to deliver an explosive season finale that changes the game dramatically. I can't say much of anything about this episode without a diarrhea torrent of spoilers, but I'll just say that it was a great finale that did a lot to redeem an occasionally draggy season, replete with a final moment – like, literally the last two seconds of the episode – that goes down as one of the series' most haunting images.
4. Community, Season 3 Episode 19 – "Curriculum Unavailable"
Speaking of sitcoms making good with sequel episodes, hey, Community! Last season's paintball finale, while not quite "Modern Warfare," was the best sitcom finale of spring 2011 by a mile, and this season's blanket fort two-parter, particularly "Pillows and Blankets," against all odds and logic managed to one-up season 2's masterpiece "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design." So, it should come as little shock that the show's second fake clip show more or less equals the first, last season's "Paradigms of Human Memory." It's wackier and more scattershot, but god does it deliver the laughs. A fantasy sequence set in an insane asylum is probably the best TV moment of 2012 so far.
3. Game of Thrones, Season 2 Episode 9 – "Blackwater"
Yup.
2. Community, Season 3 Episode 22 – "Introduction to Finality"
I'm about to make two consecutive controversial claims about Community, the first of which is that part of me wishes this had been the series finale. I mean, don't get me wrong – in a brightest timeline where Dan Harmon was continuing on the show, yes, I'd absolutely be salivating for more Community. But that timeline is not our timeline, and in our timeline I believe that if Community had wrapped up with its 71st episode, "Introduction to Finality," I would look back upon the series as the second greatest live-action sitcom of all time. This episode launched Troy, Shirley, and Pierce into promising new futures, yes, but beyond that, it completed Jeff Winger's character arc. Jeff is now thankful he was sent to Greendale, thankful for the family – the community – that he has become a part of. And that's beautiful.
1. Community, Season 3 Episode 20 – "Digital Estate Planning"
Here's controversial claim number two: I think that "Digital Estate Planning" might be one of my favorite TV episodes of all time, and my favorite episode of Community's third season. If you didn't notice when I advocated the living shit out of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, I have a bit of a soft spot for films and television that pay tribute to classic video games. (Fittingly, "Burgerboss" is my favorite Bob's Burgers episode by a truly colossal margin.) And when I say "pay tribute to," I mean "pay tribute to," not "reference." There's a big, big difference, and it's a difference that almost none of the films or shows that have set scenes to guys playing first-person shooters have ever grasped.
That's what I figured Community's "video game episode" was going to be when I first heard about it, honestly. That's what Community even did once back in "Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy." Even when I heard it was going to involve traveling into a video game, I figured, sure, poor-man's-Pixar CGI people, first person shooter. Maybe a World of Warcraft parody, territory South Park already marked years ago.
So when I saw that it was going to be a tribute to 8/16-bit gaming, complete with visible pixels and NES-styled chiptunes, a tribute that could only be made by people who truly love and understand gaming, a wave of gratitude that a show like this could sneak on the air, and get the budget and the toys to do the amazing, ambitious things it wants to do, swept over me. That the episode was staggeringly fucking funny, a visual and musical nostalgic feast, and tied seamlessly into Pierce's long-running character arc raises the bar for what sitcoms can aspire to to an almost unfair level.
It says a lot about this episode's almost incalculable greatness that the presence of Breaking Bad's fourth season MVP Giancarlo Esposito was just gravy on top. Perfect television. Don't expect to see but one or two more sitcom episodes this ambitious this decade.
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