Top Ten TV Episodes of 2013

You know my fifty favorite TV shows of 2013. Here are my favorite individual episodes. Now, for the record, there are many, many more episodes I wanted to include – the fact that Hannibal, Bunheads, Bob's Burgers, Justified, Scandal, Arrested Development and 30 Rock are all excluded from this list pains me. But if I cracked the doors a little more this would suddenly go from a ten-plus-episode list to a hundred-episode list, so I had to keep this club just a bit exclusive. Starting with a few runners-up I couldn't not mention, then rolling right into the top ten (with episode blurbs adapted from what I previously wrote in my monthly Best TV Episodes lists):

Runners-Up (alphabetical by show): Fringe, Season 5 Episode 13 - "An Enemy of Fate," Futurama, Season 7 Episode 26 - "Meanwhile," Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 4 - "And Now His Watch Is Ended," Orange Is the New Black, Season 1 Episode 11 - "Tall Men With Feelings," Spartacus, Season 3 Episode 6 - "Spoils of War," Spartacus, Season 3 Episode 8 - "Separate Paths"

10. Arrow, Season 1 Episode 23 - "Sacrifice"
Arrow had hands-down the best network season finale this spring. "Sacrifice" almost had a Buffy's "The Gift"-esque hugeness in scale and sheer climactic feel to it as Starling City began literally crumbling under the influence of the season's overarching supervillain plot. And Arrow didn't just tell, but showed buildings collapsing and streets imploding and anarchy abound, and it was huge and frightful and awesome. The episode had operatic, outsized action and emotion and a twist that floored me in its final minutes. "Sacrifice" is exactly what a pulpy action/adventure TV serial should look like.
9. Parenthood, Season 4 Episode 13 - "Small Victories"
"Small Victories" was a fantastic, achingly emotional hour of Parenthood that "took on" the abortion issue by refusing to "take it on" at all, instead depicting something overly politicized as the deeply personal choice it is. And the relative heaviness of that story was balanced by a comedic B-plot about body odor and pubic hair that had me laughing embarrassingly loud. This episode succinctly sums up everything that is good and vital about Parenthood.
8. Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 16 - "Felina"

(Spoilers follow!) Part of what makes Breaking Bad great (and stand out in contrast against most attempts at "quality television" that have followed) is that, for all its darkness and misery and its focus on consequences and its character arcs of supreme, literary power, it can be a really, really fun show with thick veins of pulp running through it. Always has been, from Walt destroying Tuco's office with magic bomb crystals to several instances of cool guys not looking at explosions to the half-Terminator/half-Anton Chigurh Salamanca twins to Two-Face Gus Fring fixing his tie before dying. And it's in that spirit that one of dramatic television's great narratives ends with its protagonist building and deploying a Nazi-killing robot. Awesome!

7. Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 9 - "The Rains of Castamere"

After patiently holding it in for three years, being able to finally shout "RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING!!!!!" at the top of my lungs across every corner of the internet felt so very, very good. I have nothing to add to the discussion surrounding this episode's infinitely-dissected final ten minutes (beyond one last good old-fashioned "Holy fucking shit!"), but even outside of that iconic, unforgettable sequence it was a great hour for the Jon Snow, Arya and Daenerys storylines too. It's an episode worthy of being called the spiritual successor to season 1's "Baelor."

6. American Dad, Season 8 Episode 18 - "Lost In Space"

Detaching entirely from the titular American dad and core Smith family, "Lost In Space" follows alien prisoner Jeff Fischer to a space station above Roger's home planet, where he tries to figure out how to escape captivity in a big, stylish, intergalactic musical action-adventure comedy extravaganza that might just be the year's most purely ambitious sitcom episode. It almost felt like a whole space opera compressed into 22 minutes (with jokes), complete with impressive alien design and massive, complicated "sets" that showed a hell of a lot of visual imagination. It had emotional depth and a bittersweet, melancholy ending you'd never associate with the MacFarlane animation empire.

5. Switched at Birth, Season 2 Episode 9 - "Uprising"

I mostly just think of ABC Family's Switched at Birth as a teen drama – a far above-average one, but just a teen drama regardless – so it was a pleasant surprise to see them produce this formally and emotionally ambitious hour. The students of Carlton School for the Deaf rise up in an occupation protest when the city moves to shut their school down, which is, except for a few spoken lines at the episode's beginning and one more at its end, depicted entirely in silence with nothing but subtitled sign language to better reflect the viewpoint of the deaf characters. It was unique and ballsy, but more importantly than having a great gimmick, it had a great gimmick rooted entirely in character, thematically relevant and tied to a strong emotional throughline.

4. Spartacus, Season 3 Episode 9 - "The Dead and the Dying"

Years ago I read about how the real historical Spartacus held his own gladiatorial games to honor a fallen brother, using captured Roman soldiers as gladiators, and I spent all of Spartacus: War of the Damned nervously eyeing the ticking-down episode count, wondering whether or not showrunner Steven DeKnight had just decided to skip this particularly juicy historical nugget. But it turns out, nope, he was just delaying our pleasure, saving one of the show's finest outings for its penultimate installment.

DeKnight tweaked history to bring our heroes into the action (rather than having the Romans fight each other, in the show they fight the former slave/gladiator main characters), and, to be blunt, it was deliriously fucking awesome. In a show that is normally one of the most thoughtful and contemplative and consequence-heavy on television in its depiction of violence, it was enormous fun to see an episode just kick back and let it rip with an hour of pure pump-your-fists-and-cheer-out-loud bloody spectacle for perhaps the first time since Gods of the Arena. Just awesome.

3. Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 14 - "Ozymandias"

The crucial flip side of Breaking Bad's deliciously pulpy essence – what raises it from entertainment to televised literature – lies in the darkness, the misery and the consequences on full display in "Ozymandias," which Vince Gilligan himself has declared his masterpiece and the best episode of the series. I'm not 100% sure I'm ready to go that far – I need to rewatch the entire series and see "One Minute" and "Full Measure" and "Crawl Space" and "Face Off" and "Dead Freight" again first – but it is as intense, brutal and harrowing an hour of television as I've ever seen. If "Felina" is the climax to Breaking Bad, the entertaining crime/thriller saga, "Ozymandias" is the climax to Breaking Bad, the bleak tale of a man losing his soul and the horrors he rains upon everyone around him. Beginning to end, "Ozymandias" is an episode about consequences, and karma brought its full fury against Walter White and his family in service of just that.

2. The Legend of Korra, Season 2 Episodes 7 & 8 - "Beginnings" (two-parter)

Easily the best episode (well, technically episodes, but they aired together and go together, so whatever) of The Legend of Korra to date and what would have to be in contention to be called the best episode of the entire Avatar franchise, "Beginnings" took us back to the prehistory of the Avatar world and showed us the life and genesis and battles of Wan, the first Avatar. And, as far as genre prequels go, let's call it the exact opposite of The Phantom Menace: Something great and beautiful and damn near perfect in every way. It enchanted me, it intrigued me, it thrilled me, it moved me, it left me both grinning like a dope and damn near on the cusp of tears. It's basically Korra's stab at a Miyazaki "concept episode," and it does Princess Mononoke proud.

If you were to pluck "Beginnings" from its home on TV and call it a movie, I don't know that I've enjoyed an animated film so much since... god, WALL•E, maybe? Very, very few episodes of television have made me feel giddy and excited and moved and just freaking in awe of the sheer potential of onscreen storytelling like this in years. Maybe ever. The animation? Beautiful, breathtaking. The emotion? Goosebumps all over my body. The action? Immensely badass. The sheer scope of its storytelling? It rivals entire epic fantasy narratives like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter in the space of about forty minutes of television. "Beginnings" is TV of mythic power. I love, love, love, love, love it.

1. Spartacus, Season 3 Episode 10 - "Victory"

I've already written and talked about 2013's finest television achievement at arguably excessive length and have little more to add on the subject. But I'll emphasize one last time that Spartacus' finale really had its cake and ate it too, providing a rich emotional feast and the conclusions to years of thoughtful character work and tying a totally satisfying thematic bow on everything while also remembering to give us a final battle sequence that made Game of Thrones' "Blackwater" look like the skirmish at the end of a Hercules: The Legendary Journeys episode. It's one of the best series finales and one of the best episodes of television I've ever seen.

Top Fifty TV Shows of 2013: #30 - 11

Alright, so things got a little hairy in the lower echelons of the #50-31 rankings last week. At points I actually felt more like I was writing a "worst of" list than a "best of." But you've reached the light at the end of the tunnel: While I may not consider the twenty shows below to have been among the ten best this year and I have my gripes about each, I can say with confidence that I like every single one of them. Let's get it started in here:

30. The Borgias (Showtime)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 10 - "The Prince" | New to List

Mix one part watered-down Game of Thrones with two-to-three parts The Tudors and you'll end up with Showtime's antihero Pope drama The Borgias, a show never exceptional but almost always pretty good. If you're looking for sex and violence and religion and scheming and sumptuous cinematography and set design and even a couple big battle sequences, it comes recommended, though with the caveat that it got canceled at the end of season 3 with no real, conclusive ending. The show has some problems, including the fact that it never convinced me our ruling-class heroes were the underdogs in any conflict it put them in, but I still wish I could see the fourth season that's never going to happen.

29. Awkward (MTV)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 20 - "Who I Want to Be" | Down 3 from 2012

Lauren Iungerich's droll, witty, energetic high school sitcom Awkward is unfortunately going to be entering its fourth season in 2014 absent one key ingredient: Lauren Iungerich. I'm unclear whether she quit or was pushed out, but one way or another Awkward is going to be missing its voice next year, which makes me fear we're in for a Community season 4 / Gilmore Girls season 7 scenario. But Lauren at least went out strong. Awkward season 3 remains far too obsessed with love triangles (my biggest problem with the show last year too), but takes its protagonist Jenna Hamilton through a dynamic emotional journey and wrapped up its season/year with one of the strongest, most moving episodes of the series.

28. The Office (NBC)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 9 Episode 23 - "Finale" | Up 8 from 2012

Like The Walking Dead and The Newsroom, The Office is this high on my list (and up from last year!) on the strength of exactly one episode: Its series finale. I don't think I'm being out-there or controversial when I say this show suffered massively from the loss of Steve Carell, but it remains an eternal fact of my own TV history that The Office was, for about a year or so, more or less my favorite show on television. Those emotional bonds can be fractured but are hard to shake entirely, and as such the emotion of "Finale" was felt deeply. Even Carell's return, while nice, ends up being largely incidental to the impact of the show's quiet and heartfelt final moments. There were literally dozens of Office episodes I found pretty damn bad by the end of its run, but it'll always be a show I remember fondly.

27. New Girl (Fox)

Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 8 - "Menus" | Down 4 from 2012

Weird fact: I consider New Girl's 2013 run to be superior to its 2012, yet somehow it's lower on my list this year. What's that about? Ranking pedantry aside, what I wrote last year still applies; New Girl was then and remains now "currently the best 'roommates in an apartment in the city' Friends-styled sitcom on the air." Hell, by an even bigger margin now that Happy Endings is dead. This year the show leaned heavily on the Ross/Rachel will-they-won't-they dynamic of Jess and Nick (and, as the above image indicates, answered it: they will), which isn't generally something I watch TV shows for or care about but in this case was mostly charming. Damon Wayans Jr. rejoining season 3 in a semi-regular capacity as Coach – last seen in the pilot! – has also been a boon to the show.

26. Homeland (Showtime)
Best 2013 Episode: Season 3 Episode 12 - "The Star" | Down 13 from 2012

A couple years ago, I reviewed the pilot of Homeland, calling it "the thinking man's 24." Roughly a year after that, I said that the show had lost what made it smart and different and essentially become "24 2." Now I'll offer a second amendment: Homeland is the pretentious man's 24; a twisty terrorism thriller that's mostly about cliffhangers and finding out who's gonna die next, only wearing a "moral examination of the war on terror" suit that, if you look closely, is cheap and ratty and barely holds together. Also, this season's Dana/Leo subplot is one of the shittiest things I saw on TV all year. All that said, the season finale "The Star" is a very good episode of television, one which thankfully has the balls to follow the show's story through to its only logical conclusion. If not for that episode Homeland would probably be ten ranks lower on this list.

Best TV Episodes, September 2013

10. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. / Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Season 1 Episode(s) 1 – "Pilot"

Respectively the strongest drama and comedy pilots of this new fall TV season, neither Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which are both, frankly, kind of annoying to type!) came exploding out of the gate on fire, but both show promise. A runner-up to the list could be Fox's Sleepy Hollow, which has a bit of a fun Fringe-y, Supernatural-y vibe to it, but unlike S.H.I.E.L.D. lacks a pilot written and directed by Joss Whedon. Stay tuned for more thoughts on fall's new lineup later in the year, once I've gotten more of a feel for everything.

9. Parks and Recreation, Season 6 Episodes 1 & 2 – "London" (two-parter)

I've been vocally down on Parks and Recreation over the last year or so – increasingly, I feel like the show hit a peak in the nine-episode stretch between "Media Blitz" and "The Fight" back in season 3 that it's never been able to remotely match again – so, unlike with most critics, it actually means something when I say that "London" was a great season premiere. Better than any episode of season 5, in fact. It's the first episode in a long time to put a legitimately delightful new spin on Ron's uber-manliness, and the way it temporarily wrote out Andy to accommodate Guardians of the Galaxy's shooting schedule was actually damn clever. And unlike Friends' trip to London the photography was beautiful too, both of the city and in the countryside with Ron.

8. Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 12 – "Rabid Dog"

Having now seen all of Breaking Bad season 5 1/2, I feel comfortable declaring "Rabid Dog" the weakest of its eight episodes. Which is to say it was merely very good instead of one of the best TV episodes of the last several years. It was clear even while watching the episode the first time that this was an hour dedicated to shuffling the pieces into place for the insanity soon to come – did anyone really think anything crazy was going to go down in that public square at the end? – but the bizarre, burgeoning relationship between Jesse and the Schrader family was just the right brand of strange and funny. I only wish we could see more of Jesse's confession tape!

7. Parenthood, Season 5 Episode 1 – "It Has to Be Now"

When it comes to Parenthood, the difference between an average, good or great episode often comes down to the absence or presence of one moment that reduces me from manly man to big dumb weepy baby. In the case of the show's fifth season premiere, said moment was found in the episode's final minute, where returning Afghanistan veteran Ryan York proposed to Amber, the preferred Braverman of all people with hearts, scored to Joshua Radin's "My My Love." No showrunner has ever used music as perfectly as Jason Katims, and that's as true in Parenthood season 5 as it was back in Friday Night Lights season 1.

6. It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Season 9 Episode 3 – "The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award"

Surreally and against all the rules of television, Always Sunny is, nine years in, just getting more and more ambitious. Once, it commented on how terrible these specific people were; now it turns its sights on the entire medium of television, as the gang finds themselves trapped in a shitty ABC-style sitcom as they visit another award-winning (i.e. Emmy-winning) bar, where the people are "likable" and the colors are bright and the banter is phony and the will-they-or-won't-they romance is gag-inducing. Unlike Community's semi-takedown of Glee, there didn't appear to be much winking or loving about this parody: It was downright scornful of the shitty comedies Emmy voters throw gold at. And it was glorious. One of my favorite Sunny episodes in years.

5. Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 15 – "Granite State"

"Granite State" was something of a schizophrenic episode: On the one hand, up in New Hampshire with Walt's story, Breaking Bad became as moody, quiet, introspective and methodical in its pacing (and snowy!) as we've just about ever seen the show. Even compared to similarly stationary episodes like "Fly" and "4 Days Out," Walt's story here lacked a goal or a purpose; he was just trapped, deteriorating. Rotting. Until he saw a certain TV interview, that is.

Meanwhile, back in the ABQ, with Jesse and all the rest, things went fucking horrifyingly nuts, with dead-eyed Landry Todd Alquist stepping up to join King Joffrey on the short list of contemporary TV's sickest, most unpredictably violent and terrifying villains. The two contrasting halves of the episode created an enjoyably odd mix, propelling events into the finale and ending with the show's first-ever onscreen use of the Breaking Bad theme song outside of the title card, which was just thrilling.

4. Futurama, Season 7 Episode 26 – "Meanwhile"

Futurama's last couple years may not have been what the show was at its peak – and, let's be honest here, a really freaking small handful of shows in TV history are what Futurama was at its peak – but "Meanwhile" was nevertheless just about all you could have asked for from its series finale. It was funny, it was emotional, it had crazy sci-fi time-warping shenanigans baked into its plot, and it wrapped up the series-spanning Fry/Leela arc in a way that was wonderful, joyful and just a touch bittersweet. It's one of the goriest episodes in the show's history and it leaves you with a smile on your lips and a tear in your eye. Classic Futurama right there.

It's also the first one of these long-lived animated sitcoms to have a true series finale that really feels like a series finale, wrapping up characters and story arcs in a manner that gives the impression of a finished story. The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy and American Dad live on and King of the Hill ended with a fairly non-eventful, non-climactic "life goes on" episode. But one day, those first four series will end, and "Meanwhile" gives them a good model for what kind of tone they might aim for in their final 22-minute slices.

3. Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 13 – "To'hajiilee"

(Spoilers follow!) The final ten minutes of "To'hajiilee" are, without question, among the most stomach-churningly suspenseful I've ever witnessed in television or film. I'm talking about everything after Uncle Jack's gang descends on Hank and Gomie, of course, but arguably even more importantly I'm talking about the minutes before they arrive. I mean, they're coming. You know they're coming. Hitchcock's bomb under the table is primed at ticking loudly when Hank is on the phone with Marie, delivering classic "I'm about to die" dialogue about how it's finally over and he loves her, and you just fucking know the Albuquerque desert is about to turn into Naziville, population Hank.

But all my years of 24 watching conditioned me to expect motherfucking SHOCK! moments (and Breaking Bad, too, has delivered a couple over the years), so I watched this on edge, every nerve ending alert, adrenaline pumping in a way no TV show should logically induce, ready for a gunshot to blow out Hank's brains out of nowhere. It turned out Vince Gilligan and company had something a bit different in mind, but still, holy fucking shit, what a sequence. What a set piece. I would be very interested to see what this episode's director Michelle MacLaren could bring to an action/thriller/suspense feature film once she's done with her work on Game of Thrones.

2. Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 16 – "Felina"

(Spoilers follow!) Part of what makes Breaking Bad great (and what makes it stand out in contrast to most attempts at "quality television" that have followed) is that, for all its darkness and misery and its focus on consequences and its character arcs of supreme, literary power, it's a really, really fun show with thick veins of pulp running through it. Always has been, from Walt destroying Tuco's office with magic bomb crystals to several instances of cool guys not looking at explosions to the half-Terminator/half-Anton Chigurh Salamanca twins to Two-Face Gus Fring fixing his tie before dying. And it's in that spirit that one of dramatic television's great narratives ends with its protagonist building and deploying a Nazi-killing robot. Awesome.

1. Breaking Bad, Season 5 Episode 14 – "Ozymandias"

However, the flip side of Breaking Bad's deliciously pulpy essence is all that other stuff I mentioned: The darkness, the misery, the consequences, and it's all on full display in "Ozymandias," which Vince Gilligan himself has declared his masterpiece and the best episode of the series. I'm not 100% sure I'm ready to go that far – I need to rewatch the entire series and see "One Minute" and "Full Measure" and "Crawl Space" and "Face Off" and "Dead Freight" again first – but it is as intense, brutal and harrowing an hour of television as I've ever seen. If "Felina" is the climax to Breaking Bad, the entertaining crime/thriller saga, "Ozymandias" is the climax to Breaking Bad, the intensely bleak tale of a man losing his soul and the horrors he rains upon everyone around him. Beginning to end, "Ozymandias" is an episode about consequences, and karma brought its full fury against Walter White and his family in service of just that.

Breaking Bad was brutal, fantastic, glorious brilliance. It is unequivocally one of the greatest TV series of all time. Now, internet, let's please try to maintain my love for it and frankly my sanity by shutting up about it for at least a year.