TV was our desert oasis in 2020, and these were our favorite coconuts.
There were a lot of shows we loved this year, and you can read all about them here. But when we really looked at 2020's TV landscape, we found there were so many individual standout episodes that really stuck with us, that we just had to give them their own list. Some of these shows didn't quite make it onto one of our other lists, like the best sci-fi and horror of the year or the best comedies, but all of these episodes made our 2020 brighter, scarier, or simply more bearable in one way or another. We have no doubt you've seen some of these. Does the name "Jackie Daytona" ring a bell? We'll never forget what he did for our volleyball team. Do you have a favorite "quarantine episode" of a show produced from home this year? We do. Keep reading to find out all about those and more individual episodes of television that we loved this year, then check out some of our other best-of-2020 galleries:
"The View From Halfway Down"
Bojack Horseman Season 6 Bojack has touched on plenty of some tough topics throughout its six season run as Bojack deals with addiction, codependency, being on both ends of abuse, and more. For a show as filled with bright colors and animal puns as Bojack is, it's one of the darkest, too. No show has quite so genuinely captured the depths of depression the way "The View From Halfway Down" does. The episode ventures into Bojack's subconscious as he drowns in the pool of his former home. He confronts his victims and victimizers alike as water and ooze drip down from above. It's a hard watch, but it helps the show's final season cash in on the many lessons Bojack has endured throughout the show, demonstrating that he is the way he is in part because of his mistakes, but without ever absolving him of that responsibility. - Eric Frederiksen
"Chapter 15: The Believer"
The Mandalorian Season 2 Disney's first major foray into streaming content was bursting at the seams by the time the credits rolled on the finale. The once-grounded show has now featured multiple Jedi and name-dropped some major Star Wars personalities. Our favorite episode, though, is the one that re-grounds the show, even if for just an hour. The season's penultimate episode, "The Believer," has Mando borrowing one of his old enemies, Migs Mayfield (Bill Burr) from his prison sentence. Together, the two capture a truck hauling explosives. Not only does the episode feature one of the few wheeled vehicles ever seen in Star Wars, it's almost certainly a tribute to a movie that Star Wars Episode IV crushed at the box office in 1977, Sorcerer. Director Rick Famuyiwa (DOPE) gives us a tense ride into an Imperial base where Mando realizes he'll have to bend and twist at his boundaries to save Grogu, and gives us a rare look at the way the Empire's war crimes scar their survivors. It's here that Bill Burr proves he's a great actor as well as a comedian. - Eric Frederiksen
"The One Where We're Trapped on TV"
Legends of Tomorrow Season 5 Those of us who watch the CW's Arrowverse shows have a love-hate relationship with most of them. Perhaps the most consistently shiny jewel in the network's crown is DC's Legends of Tomorrow, a show that has long since forgotten that it has anything to lose and does its own thing. The latest season had the Legends stuck in the hands of the literal Greek Fates. At their whim, the characters end up trapped inside television shows after the Fates rewrite reality, and the characters have to work through parodies of Friends (Buds), Downton Abbey (Highcastle Abbey), and Star Trek (Star Trip). The show switches between visual styles and tones of each parody, but always makes sure those moments resonate with those particular characters. Sara and Ava end up trapped on Star Trip, in the role of co-leaders. It works both as a parody of the Kirk/Spock relationship that literally spawned the concept of slash fiction, while also forcing these characters to consider what it means to be a leader and to make sacrifices. - Eric Frederiksen
"Sex Patrol"
Doom Patrol Season 2 Doom Patrol uses silly nightmares to poke fun at the worst excesses of X-Men and superhero soap operas, but never forgets to put its characters first. It's not afraid to use the most absurd and horrifying concepts to tell its stories.The season's fourth episode kicks off when the Dannyzens--outcasts who lived on the sentient, genderqueer street named Danny--return to try to bring Danny back from the brink of non-existence. One character's ecstasy attracts the attention of a periscope-headed sex demon named The Shadowy Mr. Evans, while a Ghostbusters-themed crew called the SeX-Men show up to defeat him. This is all incredibly silly, and the show uses these stories to deal with things like Rita's sexual trauma, Cliff's physical inability to feel things, and a thousand reasons why an 11-year-old girl shouldn't be living with any of these broken people. - Eric Frederiksen
"Rewind 1921"
Lovecraft Country The worst thing that one can accuse Lovecraft Country of is being too ambitious. The show has the feel of a creator who's worried she might not get another shot at this; she has to tell everything she can in a limited amount of space. But in its penultimate episode, "Rewind 1921," Lovecraft Country gels together. It uses the burning of Black Wall Street as its frame; that was the night that the Freeman family perished during the riots and the Book of Names, which they needed to save Diana's life, was destroyed. Our heroes travel back in time and meet their ancestors--not early enough to prevent their fiery fate, but early enough to ensure that the next generation will survive. Elsewhere, Tic makes peace with Montrose. Thanks to time loop paradoxes, it was he who saved his uncle's life, all those decades ago. And it ends with a slow motion walk through fire, as Leti (played by Jurnee Smollett, in an Emmy-worthy performance) walks, invulnerable, down the main street as the planes drop bombs. The loss is palpable. - Kevin Wong
"The Spite Store"
Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 10 We're ten seasons deep into Curb Your Enthusiasm, and it's incredible how consistently funny and clever the show remains. Maybe the secret is in its triviality. This show has never pretended to be about more than the most granular, rich people problems that Larry David can conjure up; the insularity is the joke. In its season finale "The Spite Store," it all blows up beautifully and karmically in Larry's face. All the stupid, little decisions over course of ten episodes--nailing the tables to the floor, not installing a bathroom, hoarding a massive cache of Purell bottles, adds up to a massive fire that burns Latte Larry's to the ground. “If I was trying to tell someone how to burn a place down, I would suggest every step you took in your business," says the fire chief to Larry. "You did so many stupid things, it looks like arson.” Ouch. Spited by his own spite store. - Kevin Wong
"Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker"
The Boys Season 2 This was a tough one to narrow down, because I loved every single episode of The Boys Season 2. But when you look back at the season as a whole, there's one clear standout: Episode 7, "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker." The whole hour is strong, with Stormfront and Homelander's abduction of Ryan, Hughie and Lamplighter's infiltration of Vought Tower to rescue Starlight, and Butcher's confrontation with his dad. All these threads carried the theme of families in various states of chaos. But then it all ended with one of the most gruesome and unexpected bloodbaths we've ever seen on TV, cementing The Boys as one of our favorite shows ever, and this episode as one of the show's best. - Mike Rougeau
"Quarantine"
Mythic Quest Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, production shut down on many TV shows and movies. And morale across the country was down, so there were plenty of "Quarantine specials" from various shows. Because Mythic Quest is a workplace show, the special revolves around the Mythic Quest team working from home, trying to adjust to this new world. They deal with all the problems we've dealt with over the course of 2020: adjusting to working alone--or working from home when you have children--personal hygiene when you don't have to go into an office, the never ending brigade of video meetings, and most importantly, dealing with being depressed and isolated. It has an incredibly touching moment between Poppy and Ian that every single person could relate to during this year. Mythic Quest's quarantine episode completely encapsulates the gamut of emotions we all had during this very rough year. Also, it's the only show with the gusto to end its episode with the best statement of 2020, "F*** you, coronavirus." - Mat Elfring
"On the Run"
What We Do in the Shadows What We Do in the Shadows is consistently one of the funniest shows on TV and nothing quite exemplifies its strengths quite as well as "On the Run," the debut of the now iconic "Jackie Daytona," a regular human bartender. Of course, Jackie is actually Laszlo (Matt Berry), who is--you guessed it--on the run from a debt in the form of a vampire played by Mark Hamill. Rather than pay off what he owes, Laszlo opts to high tail it to Pennsylvania ("because it sounds like Transylvania, and we all know that sounds cool") where he takes over Lucky's Bar and Grill and blends in to human society with a pair of blue jeans and a toothpick. In a show as consistently hilarious as What We Do in the Shadows, believe us when we say this one was something special. When you're Jackie Daytona, you can do whatever you want--because you change lives. - Mason Downey
"The Way It Came"
The Haunting of Bly Manor The fourth episode of The Haunting of Bly Manor encompasses a very specific fear, and it's probably not the sort you'd expect--sure, there are ghosts and tragedy to go around, but the crux of the episode, the real spine-chilling moment, comes from the open and honest exploration of Dani Clayton's closeted sexuality and the root of her trauma. In "The Way It Came," we learn that Dani broke off an engagement to a childhood best friend on the eve of their wedding, not because she'd fallen in love with someone else, but because she realized that she couldn't keep pretending to be happy. "It just became something we were doing," she explains, tearfully, as her fiance tries to put the pieces together. It's the sort of queer coming out story that gets glossed over in favor of the melodrama and theatricality of more easily packaged angles--ones where people come into understanding their sexualities through some sort of forbidden crush or torrid love affair--but it's one we desperately need to see more of. - Mason Downey
"Episode 7"
Devs Devs is a tricky show to break down episode-by-episode, with its dense and high-concept ideas flowing into one another in a way that really lends itself more to a binge than a weekly watch. However, if pressed to pick a favorite that could stand alone, the penultimate "Episode 7" does the trick in really exploring everything the show does best. The creeping existential dread of the Devs system actually working builds and builds to one of the most haunting moments of the show: Stewart's recitation of Philip Larkin's poem, Aubade. "Most things will never happen," he reads over a montage of the show's characters experiencing tragedies of their own, "this one will." - Mason Downey
"How to Cook the Perfect Risotto"
How to with John Wilson Executive produced by Nathan Fielder (Nathan for You, Canada business school graduate), How to with John Wilson is HBO's docuseries following Wilson as he explains how, well, do things, and while the show is hilarious, there is a ton of heart to it. The season finale takes viewers on a journey as Wilson tries to learn how to make the perfect risotto for his loving elderly landlord. However, throughout Wilson's journey, he tries to quit vaping and meets someone with a truck that pollutes the air. He keeps trying to make this perfect rice dish as he goes through nicotine withdrawal. Then, reality hits as during Wilson's attempt to make risotto, the coronavirus hits New York City. It's a grim and shocking reminder of when the world came crashing to a halt. Wilson explores stores that are empty and checkout lines that wrap around the entire building. People don't know what's going on, and it is an important documentation of how everything changed in America. - Mat Elfring
"The Vat of Acid Episode"
Rick and Morty Rick and Morty had an uneven fourth season, and not just because half of it released in 2019 and half in 2020. But it had some of the show's best episodes ever as well, and "The Vat of Acid Episode" belongs firmly in that category. What starts as a typical tiff between the titular characters grows into something totally unexpected. Morty goes on a life-changing journey, and the way it ends is both tragic and predictable. To top it off, the pay-off is maybe the hardest-earned in the show's whole history. Naturally, it all goes back to one small slight against Rick, who will do anything to make a point--and so he does. - Mike Rougeau
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