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 Ten TV Shows of 2013

And we arrive at last at the best of the best. This top ten has me more melancholy than last year's, as three of these shows are now gone from the airwaves, resting forever in the annals of TV history, and a couple more are officially getting up there in years. But where there's clouds there's a silver lining, because a few of these shows are yet newborn babes just getting their runs started. On to it:

10. American Dad (Fox)
Best 2013 Episode: Season 8 Episode 18 - "Lost In Space" | Up 2 from 2012

My highest-ranked comedy this year, American Dad – despite being a downright ancient show that's been on since less than a year after I graduated high school – is still swinging for the fences. Oh, it had plenty of bad episodes this year. As many as anything else in my top twenty. But the four or five times a year that its producers really buckle down and decide they want to make something great, they're capable of churning out half-hours of such ambition, imagination and artistry that I bow before them. "Lost In Space," which follows Hayley Smith's kidnapped stoner husband Jeff to the mothership of the aliens who took him, is my favorite sitcom episode of 2013. It packs a whole great animated sci-fi action-comedy musical with its own mythology and epic settings into just 22 minutes, and, even if it weren't funny, would be something to behold on account of sheer scale alone.

For the record, American Dad and Bob's Burgers were neck and neck in these rankings – the latter even a touch ahead – until Dad's December 1st episode "Independent Movie," a sendup of indie coming-of-age flicks and the Fox Searchlight formula that calls to mind Galaxy Quest and "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" in how note-perfect a spoof it is. But the two shows really function as yin and yang; Bob's as the warm and realistic animated sitcom and Dad as the dark and surreal one. I watch both back-to-back every week and they complement each other perfectly. They're milk and cereal, baby.

9. Parenthood (NBC)
Best 2013 Episode: Season 4 Episode 13 - "Small Victories" | Down 4 from 2012

I'll admit first thing that Parenthood had its problems this year. This fall, I should really say, as the big albatross around season 5's neck has been Kristina Braverman's mayoral run, something which dragged the show in a very weird West Wing-lite direction that just isn't what I watch this bighearted family drama for at all. I'd almost compare it to the "Landry murders a rapist" subplot in Jason Katims' last show Friday Night Lights in how weirdly perpendicular to the premise of the show it seems (in fact, the parallel is almost spookily exact, with the offending subplots both being introduced in season premieres of each show and wrapped up in episode 9 of the same seasons).

But I'm willing to overlook mayoral shenanigans and top ten Parenthood (yes, "top ten" is a verb now!) the third year running for two reasons: One, that subplot is over. Two – and this is something I can't even say about several shows above Parenthood on this list – I care. You see, I'm a pretty emotionally guarded guy when it comes to fiction and forming true, genuine emotional investments in characters. I'm not generally a crier when watching TV, not a gasper or an applauder or any of that shit. You could count with fingers and toes to spare the number of TV shows ever made where I actually care about the characters on that level. Parenthood is one of those shows. I ache for the characters' pains, I cheer their victories; I'm invested in their lives top-to-bottom with all my heart. And that's why Parenthood, story problems aside, remains one of my favorite shows on television.

8. The Legend of Korra (Nickelodeon)
Best 2013 Episode: Season 2 Episode 7/8 - "Beginnings" | Same Rank as 2012

Oh hey second consecutive show in my top ten that was riddled with pretty significant problems this year! Yes, the first half of Korra's second season is animated by the same studio who does Naruto, whose work is clearly inferior to Studio Mir's. Many episodes are just messes of disconnected subplots. And the season's climactic final battle is won via a deus ex machina that makes the end of The Matrix Revolutions look smartly-foreshadowed and narratively logical.

But then... "Beginnings." The two-part Studio Mir-animated prequel episode that takes us back ten millennia in the Avatar universe to show us the genesis of the Avatar. I'mma be straight with y'all: I fucking love this episode. I love it as much as anything I've seen on TV all year. As much as anything I've seen in a movie theater all year. As much as any sex I've had all year. I love it for how visually inventive it is, and how emotional it is, and how epic in its timeframe and geographical span and impact on this fictional universe it is, and just how narratively and thematically and mythologically satisfying it is. One particular moment at the end (when Raava says "We are bonded forever." and the thirty seconds immediately after) literally gave me goosebumps. I watched this two-parter four times before the next episode hit.

It's time to cut the shit and call "Beginnings" what it is: The best animated medieval fantasy film since Princess Mononoke came out in 1997. A short, roughly 45-minute film, sure. But a masterpiece nonetheless. (Though I will say that Disney's great new princess flick Frozen is no slouch either.) And that's why The Legend of Korra is in my top ten.

7. Arrow (The CW)
Best 2013 Episode: Season 1 Episode 23 - "Sacrifice" | Up 17 from 2012

The CW and former Everwood producer Greg Berlanti's vigilante/superhero drama Arrow is my hands-down, far-and-away, nothing-else-even-in-contention pick for 2013's most improved TV show. Starting in the last few episodes of season 1 and continuing all through season 2, this Green Arrow adaptation stepped it up about twenty notches in almost literally everything from what it was last year: Character development and character dynamics, humor, cinematography, action scenes, excitement, pacing, thematic depth; all now firing on all cylinders. A year ago my overall stance on Arrow was "It's not bad." Today? I count the hours until new episodes and devour each one as a ravenous beast.

That Arrow is a better superhero show than Marvel's Agents of N.C.I.S. S.H.I.E.L.D. goes without saying. While that show futzes about with its disposable little cases of the week, Arrow is a layered, propulsive serial. While that show's wooden cast continues to feel like they're reciting lines at each other, Arrow's characters have become rounded and engaging, with real dynamics. And while that show is restricted to barely even using the Z-list Marvel characters no one's heard of, Arrow delivers the DC Comics goods: Barry Allen (aka The Flash), Black Canary, Deathstroke, China White, Count Vertigo, Deadshot and Solomon Grundy just this year. It's even namedropped Ra's al Ghul! (Though he hasn't appeared yet and when he does it's admittedly pretty damn unlikely he'll be Liam Neeson.)

What may go less without saying – but stands no less true – is that Arrow is the best onscreen superhero story of 2013, period. You can keep your Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel and The Wolverine and Thor: The Dark World. I'll be over here watching Arrow, which is engaging in storytelling more vital than any of them. With a Flash spinoff coming next fall from the same team I can officially say I'm a million times more interested and invested in Greg Berlanti's televised DC Comics universe than Zack Snyder's cinematic one. Fingers crossed we get to see Berlanti's take on Wonder Woman one day.

6. Orange Is the New Black (Netflix)
Best 2013 Episode: Season 1 Episode 11 - "Tall Men With Feelings" | Debuted 2013

I always found Weeds – even its reportedly best seasons – pretty tough to sit through, and after the Girls and The Americans incidents I've become super wary when it comes to TV critics jerking off to new shows all over the internet before they even air. So you'll understand why I was hesitant and held off a few weeks when it came to hitting play on the first episode of Weeds creator Jenji Kohan's new women-in-prison drama Orange Is the New Black, less despite and more because of all the critical adulation.

But hey, stopped clock, twice a day and all that. I eventually did fire up the pilot episode "I Wasn't Ready," and proceeded to inhale the rest of the first season in the space of about a week. Goddamnit if Orange Is the New Black isn't just as good as everyone said.

A lot of why I adore this show probably has to do with tone. In a year when damn near every new non-broadcast drama from The Americans to House of Cards to The Bridge to Low Winter Sun seemed to be trying to one-up all that came before it in how utterly bleak and despairing and joyless it could be, Orange Is the New Black is glorious sunlight bursting through the clouds. It has fleeting moments of darkness and violence, sure, but they're earned, and it is ultimately a show about community, about finding joy in the mundane, about the bonds between us rather than the antihero bullshit that drives us apart. Granted, said bonds are forced on the characters by the shackles of prison, but aren't so many great TV shows about people forced together by circumstance? High school-set teen dramas, workplace sitcoms, and so on – Orange Is the New Black is a new and wonderful spin on classic formula.

Best TV Episodes, June 2013

10. Defiance, Season 1 Episode 11 – "The Bride Wore Black"

I'm gonna level with you guys: Despite scratching a certain nostalgic '90s-style cheesy sci-fi itch, Defiance isn't really all that great a show. But the thing about summer is that the ol' TV schedule thins out in a fucking hurry, so suddenly shows like this that wouldn't have made the cut in January through May suddenly find themselves on my "Best TV Episodes" lists while far superior shows like New Girl and Scandal, thanks to their in-season airing schedule, languish unranked. It ain't fair, but it's life. So here's a decent episode of Defiance about the human and alien frontier town of Defiance coming together for a human/alien interspecies wedding. Hooray!

9. Mad Men, Season 6 Episode 11 – "Favors"

As I've discussed before on this blog, on Twitter, on forums and in person with people who know me, I am, to the best of my ability to tell, literally the only person on the planet earth who watches and likes Mad Men but who has never at any point considered it to be one of my favorite shows. And, you know, that's fine. Everyone got their own opinions and shit. This episode probably wouldn't have made my top ten cut any other month this year either, but it was good. Sally discovered some harsh truths about Don, and the jolt it gave her character arc was genuinely engaging stuff.

8. Orphan Black, Season 1 Episode 10 – "Endless Forms Most Beautiful"

Though Orphan Black's finale isn't the season's best episode – that would be episode six, "Variations Under Domestication," which detailed the craziest, clone-iest suburban house party ever – I am glad to find room for this little genre gem, one of the best out-of-nowhere surprises of 2013. Sure, its fans can go a little overboard, but that's just what genre TV fans do. Berating them for it is like berating a dog for barking. The show's debut season ended strongly, bringing simmering Sarah/Helena tensions to a head and of course continuing Tatiana Maslany's unbroken streak of greatness.

7. The Fosters, Season 1 Episode 3 – "Hostile Acts"

Outside of the aberration that is Parenthood over on NBC, ABC Family is (fittingly, given their name) pretty much the only network on television working to keep the classic non-genre, non-life-or-death-stakes family drama alive. First there was Switched at Birth, and it was good. Now there's The Fosters, and I'd say it's pretty damn good too. Granted, part of why I like it is because it presents a Republican's feverish nightmare vision of contemporary American life – lesbian moms with an interracial family, holy shit! – but it's also written with emotional clarity and authenticity that I wish more shows would strive for. (I realize there's little discussion of this specific episode here, but that's because I doubt anyone reading this has seen this show yet. You should, though!)

6. Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 10 – "Mhysa"

Game of Thrones' third season finale had about fifty storylines, as is par for the course with the saga of Westeros, but my favorites would probably be (spoilers, as if everyone doesn't already watch this show) Samwell and Bran meeting up, which has the fun feel of a crossover event, Arya and the Hound getting rough with some Frey men, and one scorcher of a King's Council scene as Tyrion learns about the bloody events of the previous episode. One of the best Tyrion/Tywin scenes of the series, which is saying something.

5. Mad Men, Season 6 Episode 13 – "In Care Of"

This was the best episode of Mad Men's sixth season (and the first episode on this June list that has a shot at making my top fifty TV episodes of the year) mostly because of Don Draper's journey, which is definitely something unusual for me to say as Don's relatively static inner life across six years of television is the main reason I can't really call Mad Men a show I love. But the end of this episode did a surprising and moving job of remedying that, and successfully sets the stage for a very different and very interesting final season next year.

4. Hannibal, Season 1 Episode 12 – "Relevés"

As is the case with many a half-"mythology," half-episodic show, Hannibal dropped the cases of the week and focused in on the big picture as it entered the home stretch, in this case bringing the twisted and oddly emotionally affecting three-way relationship between Will, Hannibal and Abigail Hobbs to the fore. And I daresay they did a surprising and effective job moving towards closure on it, further securing Hannibal's almost inevitable legacy as the greatest new show of 2013.

3. Hannibal, Season 1 Episode 13 – "Savoureux"

Great season finale. I don't want to say much for fear of spoilers, but I have a whole podcast on the subject available to make love to your ears. The one thing I'll say is that I really loved the episode's use of "Vide Cor Meum" from Ridley Scott's Hannibal movie, a use vastly more memorable and effective than in the film it was originally composed for. Hell, creating that song and lending it to Hannibal the show might be Hannibal the film's greatest contribution to popular culture.

2. Hannibal, Season 1 Episode 11 – "Rôti"

One last hurrah for the more episodic side of Hannibal before the myth arc took over in the season's penultimate and finale episodes, "Rôti" is the sequel to the series' sixth episode, "Entrée," bringing Eddie Izzard's Dr. Gideon back into the fold. Gideon may not create corpse totems or cello men or mushroom people, but his unhinged lunatic style has its own charm, and between Columbian neckties and living vivisection and organ harvesting, I doubt "Rôti" left anyone wanting in the gruesome violence department. Will's mental problems deepened and all that good character development stuff, but first and foremost I'd say this episode kicked ass.

1. Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 9 – "The Rains of Castamere"

Ok, I've been patiently holding this in for three years, so here goes: RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING RED WEDDING. THANK YOU.

Man, that felt good to get off my chest. As everyone else on the internet has already discussed and dissected this episode's final ten minutes a million times over, I have nothing else to add to the conversation beyond a good old fashioned holy fucking shit!

Best TV Episodes, May 2013

10. Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 8 – "Second Sons"

While I love Game of Thrones – and the sheer novelty of a high fantasy series on this scale on the small screen continues to delight – there's been some drag in Westeros this season, and several instances where I've found myself thinking, "Ok, feel free to step up the pacing any moment now." Thankfully, "Second Sons" did just that with a relatively tight focus on King's Landing, Dragonstone and Yunkai, capped off with a nice little Sam vs. White Walker tag. Tyrion and Sansa's wedding and especially its reception were great set pieces full of tension and humor alike, and as an added bonus this episode is the first in a long time that actually measures up to Game of Thrones' generally hyperbolic reputation for extreme nudity.

9. Arrested Development, Season 4 Episode 1 – "Flight of the Phoenix"

Despite initially claiming Michael's second spotlight episode, "The B. Team," to be my preferred of Arrested Development season 4's Michael episodes, I'm afraid I'll have to prove what a noncommittal coward I am by going back on that just a week later. On reexamination and a little rewatching, I've decided that the fourth season premiere is actually one of the season's better episodes, if only for the pleasure of initially catching up with everyone, seeing Sudden Valley fill in with houses (but not people), Gob force-feeding Michael a forget-me-now and of course Michael mistakenly being voted out of a four-person housing situation. It's a strong kickoff with a strong focus on Michael and George Michael's relationship, perhaps the series' bedrock.

8. Arrested Development, Season 4 Episode 9 – "Smashed"

I wasn't especially crazy about Tobias' first season 4 spotlight, which got way too bogged down in DeBrie and Fantastic Four spoofing, but those very same elements were turned into things going in favor of Tobias' second episode. We get a great Tobias/Michael scene, Tobias acting as a analrapist theralist onscreen at length for the first time ever, and the return of the sung "Mr. F!" stinger. By all means, read more thoughts here.

7. Hannibal, Season 1 Episode 8 – "Fromage"

Hannibal turned its sights on the musical arts in this episode about a killer who very much enjoys crafting the strings for violins and cellos from human entrails. The beheaded "Cello Man" was one of the series' more chilling instillation-artist-kills to date, we pushed Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter's twisted friendship along nicely, and this normally patient and methodical series even found time for an amazingly kick-ass fight scene at this episode's climax. As an added bonus, "Fromage" also featured Dr. Lecter preparing some truly delicious-looking bread pudding, which I venture is probably even safe for non-cannibals to enjoy.

6. The Office, Season 9 Episode 23 – "Finale"

The Office's very good series finale at the tail end of two seasons I cared very little about is like a sudden orgasm seventeen minutes after you've lost interest in the sex you're having: It'd have been better much earlier, but still, you're glad for it. I'll miss the show very much and at the same time I'm so fucking relieved it's finally over. "Finale" wasn't often laugh-out-loud hilarious – sitcom finales rarely aspire to be – but managed to leave the show's entire cast in emotionally satisfying places. It went out with the bittersweet tang I'd always imagined this show, which was once one of my favorites on television, would have and should have. And yes, a salt-and-pepper Michael Scott showed up for a cameo, extended enough to be emotionally affecting but quick enough not to steal the show from anyone else. Thumbs way up.

5. Arrow, Season 1 Episode 23 – "Sacrifice"

Keeping in mind that we haven't seen what Hannibal has up its sleeve yet, Arrow has hands-down the best season finale of any network show so far this spring. It 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 big supervillain plot. And the show didn't just tell, but showed buildings collapsing and streets imploding and anarchy abound, and it was huge and scary and awesome. The episode had big action, big emotion, big reveals and a twist that floored me in its final minutes. This is exactly what pulpy action/adventure TV serial season finales should look like.

4. Arrested Development, Season 4 Episode 12 – "Señoritis"

As I mentioned in my review of "Señoritis," I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Maeby's sole season 4 spotlight, as she'd never really been one of my favorite main characters in the original series. But this messy yet extremely enjoyable episode smooshes together a whole lot of character development, misunderstandings, Hollywood satire, reveals about previous episodes and Maeby and George Michael into of one the season's most entertaining and fast-paced half-hours. It also, in its final moments with the return of "Hey, whatcha tryin' to say to me?", contains one of the season's best callbacks to the original series.

3. American Dad, Season 8 Episode 18 – "Lost in Space"

American Dad is a maddeningly inconsistent series which, in any given run of four episodes, usually averages about one mediocre-to-crappy episode, two moderately enjoyable outings and one that's among the best sitcom episodes of its month, animated or live action. Those in the lattermost category include last year's "Ricky Spanish" and "Adventures in Hayleysitting," and now "Lost in Space," which isn't just good but phenomenal and one of the best episodes of the entire series.

Detaching entirely from the titular American dad and the core Smith family, this episode follows alien prisoner Jeff Fischer back 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 comedy episode. It almost felt like a whole space opera compressed into 22 minutes with jokes added, complete with a lot of really impressive alien design and massive, complicated "sets" that showed a hell of a lot of visual imagination. It had emotional depth that you never really associate with Seth MacFarlane and a bittersweet, melancholy ending. If only they'd ended the season here instead of one far lesser episode later.

2. Hannibal, Season 1 Episode 7 – "Sorbet"

Aka the dinner party episode. I have a whole podcast where this episode and my thoughts on it are discussed at respectable length, but suffice to say I thought the whole thing was chilling, gorgeously rendered perfection. The show – and this food-centric episode in particular – is simply intoxicating in a way that I rarely associate with TV. Or really any fiction, for that matter. The atmosphere is so thick, the visuals so elegantly rendered with a care for framing and color and craftsmanship that puts most feature films to shame, and Mads Mikkelsen's performance so charismatic and frightening (Hugh Dancy is also great, of course, but "Sorbet" is clearly Dr. Lecter's hour) that the show simply demands respect. It's stellar fucking television.

1. Arrested Development, Season 4 Episode 7 – "Colony Collapse"

Will Arnett was put on this earth to play Gob Bluth and it's no surprise that I loved catching up with one of the greatest television characters of all time. It's a massively enjoyable episode, possibly the only installment of season 4 that I'd truly stack up against the show's original '03-'06 run. More thoughts here! And with that I'm announcing my retirement from writing about Arrested Development until late December when it comes time to do my yearend wrap-up, because I adore the show, but at a certain point, goddamn do you burn out typing about one show no matter what it is. But do check out my season 1-3 rankings if you haven't seen them yet.

Best TV Episodes, April 2013

10. Supernatural, Season 8 Episode 20 – "Pac-Man Fever"

I've discussed a couple times now how, despite its season and series-spanning arcs growing stale over the years, Supernatural is still capable of busting out a thunderously entertaining case-of-the-week, and that stands true up to its eighth season's last standalone episode, "Pac-Man Fever." Marking the third appearance of Felicia Day's geek hacker chick Charlie Bradbury but the first that has told a primarily dramatic rather than comedic story about her (outside of an Inception–esque trip into a zombie shoot 'em up game in her mind, anyway), the episode's final scene between Charlie and her comatose mother made my heart hurt in a way that only TV at its best does so well these days.

9. Community, Season 4 Episode 11 – "Basic Human Anatomy"

Though I enjoyed bits and pieces of its documentary and puppet episodes (the balloon song from "Intro to Felt Surrogacy" has been stuck in my head for weeks), it is, of all things, its body swap episode (!!) that comes closest to capturing how insanely well Community executed its "gimmick" episodes under the reign of Harmon. It was emotional and tied deeply into characterization and character development, but was also quite funny (Exhibit A: The Dean's Jeff Winger impression), and Jeff flicking the lights on and off during the final "body swap" scene reminded of him picking up the imaginary hats in "Pillows and Blankets," one of the sweetest scenes of the entire series.

8. Bob's Burgers, Season 3 Episode 20 – "The Kids Run the Restaurant"

I don't know that Bob's Burgers is ever funnier than when Tina, Gene and Louise are all allowed to share a single storyline isolated from their parents, so when they teamed up to build an underground casino in the restaurant's basement – spearheaded by Louise – it was unsurprisingly funny as hell from beginning to end. Bob and Linda's story was hilarious too, with Bob's Burgers coming closer to "dark" humor than it usually gets in Bob's hand injury spraying blood all over Linda and everything else. As I've said before, this show is the sitcom to beat in 2013, and I doubt any show will.

7. Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 5 – "Kissed By Fire"

"Kissed By Fire" was, after the awesome and fiery opening sword fight with the Hound, one of Game of Thrones' lower-action episodes, but I loved it. I can't guess about or speak to how people who haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire might feel about it, but as a fan of Martin's books for years before the show came along this episode contained a shitload of scenes I've been waiting to see for a long time, from the Hound's fight to Robb dealing with the Karstark situation to Jon and Ygritte's cave tryst to the shocking, slightly hilarious wedding reveals of the final scene (and while leaving out this season's more redundant Bran and Theon stories). Nikolaj Coster-Waldau's monologue in the Jaime/Brienne bath scene was Emmy-worthy. The whole hour was a treat for book fans.

6. Justified, Season 4 Episode 13 – "Ghosts"

While I had my issues with Justified season 4's Drew Thompson story arc in its early going, once it revealed Thompson's true identity the season almost immediately buckled down and delivered a lot of solid entertainment. Its season finale was structured in an interesting, almost defiantly backwards way, kicking off nearly immediately with its most tense, thrilling and bloody sequence, then actually winding the action down through the hour to a contemplative ending that, while not sad or "bad guys win" or even necessarily dark, has been haunting me since in a way the quippy and fun Justified doesn't usually aim for. Looking forward to season 5 already.

5. Hannibal, Season 1 Episode 2 – "Amuse-Bouche"

I don't think I've seen five shows this decade kick off as immediately spectacularly as Bryan Fuller's Hannibal. It's my favorite horror show in years by an astronomical margin, one of my favorite shows of 2013 and (feel free to declare this blasphemy) has probably already trumped 1991's Silence of the Lambs as the definitive screen depiction of Hannibal Lecter for me. I really, really love it. Though I could have found room for several of its first five hours on this list, episode 2 gets the nod because its case-of-the-week, involving a killer who turns his victims into living mushroom fertilizer for months while they're kept alive via IV, has been swimming in my nightmares for weeks.

4. Community, Season 4 Episode 8 – "Herstory of Dance"

I already wrote a full review of Community season 4's crowning achievement, but I'll just quickly reiterate here that it was a massively warm, pleasant half-hour of television that just made me feel happy. If I could travel into the brightest timeline alternate dimension where Dan Harmon was never fired from Community's 22-episode fourth season, this episode and "Basic Human Anatomy" are the two I would want to take with me unchanged to air as part of that season (though I would also want to take the Greendale Babies cartoon from the premiere and the trout farmer from "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking").

3. Game of Thrones, Season 3 Episode 4 – "And Now His Watch Is Ended"

2. Spartacus, Season 3 Episode 9 – "The Dead and the Dying"

It was several years ago that I read about how the real historical Spartacus held his own gladiatorial games to honor one of his fallen brothers, using captured Roman soldiers as gladiators, and I've spent all of Spartacus: War of the Damned nervously eyeing the ticking-down episode count, wondering whether or not 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 best episodes for its penultimate episode.

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 (despite what TV critics who hate thinking may claim) is normally one of most thoughtful and contemplative and consequence-heavy on television in its depiction of violence, it was a enormous fun to see an episode just kick back and let it rip with an hour of pure pump-your-fist-and-cheer-out-loud bloody spectacle for perhaps the first time since Gods of the Arena. Just awesome.

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 more 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 Thirty TV Shows of Q1 2013

As a means to publicly organize my thoughts, here are, ranked mostly without commentary, my thirty favorite shows of the year so far based solely on episodes aired between January 1st and March 31st, 2013. I don't even like the first few shows on the list that much, so if anything didn't make the cut you can safely assume that either, one, I haven't seen it (Enlightened falls in this category), two, it hasn't premiered yet (Breaking Bad, etc.), or three, I don't like it. I've seen at least a little of pretty much everything, so most missing shows fall into category three (fuck you, The Following!).

30. The Americans (new)
29. Glee
28. The Office
27. Revolution
26. Archer
25. The Walking Dead
24. Nashville
23. Vikings (new)
22. Gravity Falls
21. Revenge
20. Hart of Dixie
19. Parks and Recreation
18. Happy Endings
17. Arrow
16. American Dad!
15. Game of Thrones *
14. Scandal
13. Switched at Birth
12. 30 Rock
11. Supernatural
10. The Vampire Diaries
9. New Girl
8. Community
7. Banshee (new)
6. Justified
5. Fringe
4. Parenthood
3. Bunheads
2. Bob's Burgers
1. Spartacus: War of the Damned

* I love Game of Thrones and give it a 99% chance of being higher than this on my eventual best of 2013 list. But its ranking here is predicated on a single episode consisting mostly of setup, which, considering, I think actually makes being at #15 pretty impressive.

Top Fifty TV Episodes of 2012

Unlike my top fifty shows, which I found a very fun list to compile, picking my fifty favorite episodes of the year was agony. There were countless great hours and half-hours of television to choose from, and while I eventually whittled things down to about fifty (give or take a few pairings of back-to-back Mad Men and Game of Thrones and Legend of Korra episodes I lumped into single slots because I'm weak and cowardly), there were no less than twenty episodes of 2012 TV I adored and deleting from my rough draft list felt like chipping away pieces of my soul.
Also, I myself was surprised by what shows did and didn't find their way onto my final list. While all of my top ten shows are represented by at least one installment, a full seven of my #30-11 shows failed to make the cut (and, for the record, exactly one show of my #50-31 has an episode listed). All the same, both my fifty shows list and fifty episodes list are totally genuine and from the heart, so I guess it just goes to show that we're all bundles of contradictions. Or at least I am, anyway.

Final quick disclaimer: The bottom thirty or so of this list is all pretty arbitrary and could be mixed up in more or less any order and I'd still be ok with it, so don't take it too serious. Also, just for fun, I've placed asterisks next to episodes that are season finales (there are no series finales on the list, though there are three series premieres). Here goes:

Top Ten TV Shows of 2012

We come to it at last. The great top ten of our time. You could probably switch my #10 pick with The L.A. Complex or American Dad! and I'd be ok with it, but I feel very comfortable with the placement and ranking of my top nine, the nine shows you could whittle all of television down to and it'd still be my favorite medium. Best of all, though three are ending (one in January) and one lost its original showrunner, all ten of these shows are continuing in 2013. Enough foreplay, let's get down:

10. Justified (FX)

There's been grousing on these here internets about Justified's third season not quite measuring up to its phenomenal second, and I can agree with that. (I didn't see Justified season 2 until it hit DVD, but when it did I wound up shotgunning the entire season in two sittings; five episodes the first night, eight the next.) Though actor Neal McDonough did the best he could, season 3 antagonist Robert Quarles just wasn't up to snuff with season 2's legendary Mags Bennett.

But when it comes to the day-to-day of pulpy crime fiction, no show does it better. Seriously – it can tell a fine serialized story, but when it goes straight cop procedural, Justified leaves the entire rest of that genre choking on the exhaust of its superiority (with the only two other examples on this list being Awake at #25 and Longmire at #46, and TV's million other cop procedurals being way down below my top fifty).

Part of this is due to Timothy Olyphant's charisma, even more due to the show's redneck noir Harlan County settings, but the biggest contributor has to be its lineup of lovable white-trash villainy: Ever-scheming Dickie Bennett, poor dumb Dewey Crowe, and especially Walton Goggins' sometimes-villain/sometimes-ultra-dark-antihero Boyd Crowder, one of the most unstoppably watchable characters on all television. I wouldn't say he overshadows Olyphant to the same extent Ian McShane did on Deadwood, but three seasons in there remains a giddy, tingling thrill to every scene he's a part of.

Best TV Episodes, May 2012

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.

Top Ten TV Shows of 2011

No need for essay-length preamble, you know the drill. Also, standard "I haven't seen everything" disclaimer applies (perhaps most notably I haven't yet seen the acclaimed second season of Justified), so if your favorite show is missing there's no need to stress; it might just be on my to-see list and wasn't excluded deliberately.

Unless of course your favorite show is The Walking Dead, in which case I excluded it extremely deliberately. Sorry. Starting with our runners-up:

Noble Runners-Up (in alphabetical order)


30 Rock (NBC) – Between the freewheeling absurdity of "Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning," the satirical edge of "TGS Hates Women," and the show's slightly masturbatory but still hugely entertaining love letter to itself in its hour-long hundredth episode, "100," the fifth season of 30 Rock ended strong last spring, keeping its reputation as one of TV's funniest and most irreverent sitcoms rightly intact.

Awkward (MTV) – Likely the year's biggest surprise for me and the tiny handful of others way outside MTV's target demo who caught it, Awkward emerged from nowhere to instantly become one of the best high school sitcoms ever. It's not necessarily doing anything that teen movies haven't been since the 80s, but it's an exercise in high school underdog formula executed with remarkably fresh, youthful, and sometimes cheerfully vulgar energy, and lead Ashley Rickards feels like a star on the rise.

The Chicago Code (Fox) – The most tragically canceled one-and-done season of television to air in 2011 came from the very same executive producer behind 2010's tragic one-and-done Terriers, Shawn Ryan, a man on a simultaneously hot and cold streak of artistic success and commercial failure. Nevertheless, these thirteen episodes did a fine job telling a thrilling, complex, and more or less complete story about the intersection between police and politics, with Delroy Lindo giving one of TV's meatiest, most entertaining performances of the year as corrupt Alderman Ronin Gibbons.

Fringe (Fox) – Network TV's best sci-fi show remains network TV's best sci-fi show, and not by a little. Despite the fourth season's controversial new direction (though few will deny the greatness of "And Those We've Left Behind," one of the best episodes of the series), Fringe's 2011 run continued to command cultish love even as it alienated mass audiences with its hard sci-fi, alternate timelines, parallel universes, and animated episode, all while Anna Torv kept delivering not one but several of television's quietly great performances as the many versions of FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham.

Louie (FX) – Comedian Louis C.K.'s loosely-connected series of short films masquerading as a TV series continued to demand respect with its remarkable confidence, command of tone, and week-to-week unpredictability in its second season. Once a comedy, Louie now blurs genre lines unlike anything else on TV, having one episode build in its entirety to a massive fart while other episodes included straight-faced, relatively unsmiling depictions of Louie traveling to Afghanistan to entertain the troops and trying to talk a failed comedian friend out of suicide. 

The Vampire Diaries (The CW) – TV's best supernatural soap (fuck off, True Blood!) kept its foot on the gas and blew through 2011 without letting up on its alarming pace of jaw-dropping plot twists, agonizing cliffhangers, cool violence, nasty villains, and major character deaths for a second. Marrying the outer trappings of a teen drama to the internal combustion engine of a relentless thriller, The Vampire Diaries kicks ass.

Top Ten TV Shows of 2011

Tim's Trailer Talk: Game of Thrones Edition

In lieu of an ordinary Tim's Trailer Talk I thought this week I'd highlight the teaser for Game of Thrones, HBO's upcoming adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. I've been looking forward to this series since they first announced it a couple years back so it's exciting to finally see some footage. I'd also recommend the novels to any fantasy fans who haven't read them, with the important caveat that Martin seems to have some horrific writer's block and hasn't published a book in five years, leaving us stuck on a multitude of cliffhangers. But the books we do have are some of the finest pulp I've ever read, eschewing the evil overlord, heroic quest, and magical MacGuffins of traditional fantasy in favor of a lot of moral ambiguity, political intrigue, plot twists, sudden deaths, sex, and bloodshed.

I actually read the pilot script that was floating around Hollywood a couple years back, which shifts and truncates some dialogue but is an otherwise incredibly accurate scene-for-scene recreation of the first hundred or so pages of the first book. This teaser is equally reassuring, with almost every shot recognizable as a moment from the novel. Sure, nerds will nitpick over hair color and facial hair and exact wording of dialogue and other bullshit that isn't particularly important, but all that would be skirting the fact that this seems poised to become the most accurate book adaptation in the history of television. The city of King's Landing looks sunnier and less traditionally western European than I pictured it, but as long as the political intrigue and deaths that go on there remain intact that's no problem.

Sean Bean's performance looks predictably excellent (even if his politician character being all "I was trained to kill," while technically accurate coming from a former soldier, will gravely disappoint anyone who tunes in hoping for Boromir-brand badassery — there'll be plenty of violence, but Bean the instigator of very little of it), but the real X factor is the litany of unknowns playing the younger characters such as Arya, Robb, Bran, Sansa, Dany, Jon, and Joffrey, who are not window dressing but largely drive the plot. This other miniature promo seems to mostly highlight Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, Michelle Fairley as Catelyn Stark, Kit Harington as Jon Snow, Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, and Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, which seems about right for the first season. Hopefully Harington and Clarke are up to the task.

I'm not gonna start counting chickens before they hatch because lord knows I've been let down by film and TV projects I've been excited about before, but the actors look spot-on and the production values gorgeous and expensive and if they stick to the text and keep the content harsh (which, seeing as this is HBO, should be no problem) then I think this teaser could be the prelude to an awesome series. Hey, last time they adapted a fantasy epic of this magnitude we got The Lord of the Rings, which I thought turned out pretty damn well.