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Great TV series can run for dozens or hundreds of hours, but we still experience them a piece at a time. This list is dedicated to those pieces: a handful of the best episodes that Mike Hale, Margaret Lyons and I saw in a year of professional viewership.<\/p>\n
As usual, this list isn\u2019t comprehensive \u2014 it wouldn\u2019t be if it were 10 times as long. And as usual, I avoided repeating shows that were on my Best of 2023 list<\/a>. So I could have, but didn\u2019t, include standout installments from \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d (\u201cLong, Long Time\u201d), \u201cSuccession\u201d (\u201cConnor\u2019s Wedding\u201d) and \u201cThe Bear\u201d (for me, \u201cForks\u201d not \u201cFishes,\u201d nothing against the latter). Consider it a starting point, and feel free to add your own. JAMES PONIEWOZIK<\/p>\n \u201cAustralian Survivor\u201d has been outplaying the U.S. version for a while now, and nowhere was that more evident than in this jaw-dropping episode from the \u201cHeroes vs. Villains\u201d season. The episode\u2019s final tribal council featured a masterstroke of psychological manipulation by George Mladenov, or \u201cKing George,\u201d who emerged as one of the most telegenic antagonists of any version of the show. American \u201cSurvivor\u201d is still a delight, but this iteration currently wears the crown. (Streaming on <\/em>10play<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> PONIEWOZIK<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s a rare comedy that can maintain quality, and even improve, going into its 14th season. It\u2019s an even rarer one that, this long into its run, can pull off a striking and effective departure from form like this side-character spotlight. Shunting the Belcher family to the wings for most of the episode, this half-hour dove into the family history of the anxious grade-schooler Regular-Sized Rudy (voiced by Brian Huskey) as he searched for a magic trick that could save an awkward dinner with his divorced parents. Funny, poignant and ultimately uplifting, \u201cThe Amazing Rudy\u201d showed that this burger joint can pull off a distinctive special of the week. (Streaming on <\/em>Hulu<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> PONIEWOZIK<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You could fill this list with episodes of \u201cBob\u2019s Burgers\u201d; from the past 12 months, \u201cThe Plight Before Christmas\u201d and \u201cThese Boots Are Made for Stalking\u201d also come to mind. The Season 13 finale typified the Fox comedy\u2019s embrace of eccentricity, individuality and generosity of spirit, as the compulsively competitive fourth-grader Louise (Kristen Schaal) agonized over a multimedia report on her hastily chosen hero, Amelia Earhart. Her eventual triumph was a satisfying and gently comic victory for all ambitious, difficult, undervalued girls and women. (Streaming on <\/em>Hulu<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> MIKE HALE<\/p>\n To the burgeoning genre of big-hearted apocalypse stories (\u201cStation Eleven,\u201d \u201cThe Last of Us\u201d) add this adult animated series<\/a>, set in the months before a looming planetary collision, which arrived too late for my annual best-TV list. Through a series of home-video snippets, this episode follows the introverted Carol (Martha Kelly) on a hiking trip with her exuberant sister, Elena (Bridget Everett), as the mismatched siblings try to bond before doomsday. (Streaming on <\/em>Netflix<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> PONIEWOZIK<\/p>\n I could probably have picked any of the five ridiculous episodes of this history mockumentary<\/a>, but I\u2019m partial to the Renaissance installment. In it, Philomena Cunk (Diane Morgan<\/a>) walks us through some of the major events between 1440 and 1830 or so, with her dopey and bizarre questions. She and a da Vinci expert look at \u201cThe Vitruvian Man,\u201d and she asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s it for?\u201d In praising the artist\u2019s Last Supper, she marvels, \u201cYou almost feel like you could crawl inside it and betray Jesus yourself.\u201d As for the French Revolution, she explains that \u201cThe guillotine was specifically designed to be the most humane way to decapitate someone in front of a jeering crowd.\u201d \u201cCunk\u201d is dorky buffoonery at its best. (Streaming on <\/em>Netflix<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> MARGARET LYONS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The fictional-autobiographical FXX comedy about the rapper Lil Dicky (Dave Burd<\/a>) can be raunchy and scatological and outrageous. This third-season episode, however \u2014 well, it was still all that but also insightful and sweet. As the title character returns home to shoot a video about a childhood romance \u2014 cast with a slew of child-actor versions of himself as well as his actual young love, now grown up \u2014 the ensuing chaos becomes a reflection on celebrity, memory and the responsibilities of memoir. (Streaming on <\/em>Hulu<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> PONIEWOZIK<\/p>\n In \u201cExtraordinary,\u201d<\/a> everyone on earth gets a superpower on their 18th birthday; Jen (M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad Tyers) is 25 and hasn\u2019t gotten hers yet. While the humiliation and confusion she feels about this drives some of the show, it is secondary to the loving but bickering friendship with her roommate and bestie, her tense relationship with her mother and her budding romance with a shape-shifter who entered her life as a stray cat. This all comes to a head in the season finale, when a big, messy party pulls together all the show\u2019s quirky characters and plot lines \u2014 and then just when things are feeling happy and resolved, it ends with a perfect record-scratch twist. Ah, the best kind of hurts so good. (Streaming on <\/em>Hulu<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> LYONS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This unaffectedly brutal documentary, filmed by the Associated Press video journalist Mstyslav Chernov, belongs on every list of the year\u2019s best movies; through the good offices of \u201cFrontline,\u201d which was involved in its production, it can be included here. In backyards, on debris-strewn streets and in the ruins of a bombed-out maternity hospital, Chernov records the anger, despair and utter bewilderment of Ukrainian civilians during the early days of the Russian invasion. And as he and his team sprint across open areas and hunker down in flimsy stairwells, he narrates their desperate efforts to get the news to the world. (Streaming on <\/em>PBS.org<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> HALE<\/p>\n Claudia O\u2019Doherty gave one of 2023\u2019s best comedic performances in Peacock\u2019s capitalism satire<\/a>, as Jillian Glopp, a gig worker turned partner in a struggling saw palmetto farm. In the second season\u2019s second episode, the theft of her beloved car \u2014 a budget Kia she\u2019s named \u201cMallory\u201d \u2014 cracks her sweet disposition, turning her into a raging vengeance seeker and unleashing the frustration of years scraping by in a dog-eat-dog economy. O\u2019Doherty filters her character\u2019s crackup through a blazing beam of Aussie sunshine. (Streaming on <\/em>Peacock<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> PONIEWOZIK<\/p>\n Alexander Cary\u2019s miniseries<\/a> dramatizing the last days of friendship between the traitorous British spy Kim Philby (Guy Pearce) and his fellow agent Nicholas Elliott (Damian Lewis) emphasized subtle, complex psychology over spy craft (though it had that too). This may be why it didn\u2019t receive the notice it should have. The penultimate episode, in which the full dimensions of Philby\u2019s downfall became apparent, was \u2014 like the entire series \u2014 a clinic in naturalistic acting by Lewis, Pearce and their co-star Anna Maxwell Martin. (Streaming on <\/em>MGM+<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> HALE<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Everything about the case of the middle-aged dad Lawrence V. Ray and the group of bright young college students he drew into a cultlike miasma of mind control, sexual exploitation and indentured servitude is hard to fathom. Zachary Heinzerling\u2019s thorough, judicious documentary series made the events both more comprehensible and, in its attempts to understand some of the victims, more opaque and mysterious. The final episode, which came out during Ray\u2019s trial (he is serving a 60-year sentence<\/a> for sex trafficking and other crimes), was a heartbreaking, mesmerizing summation of the case\u2019s contradictions. (Streaming on <\/em>Hulu<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> HALE<\/p>\n From its opening moments, HBO\u2019s \u201cTelemarketers\u201d<\/a> is all about shaggy veracity: When we meet our protagonists, Sam Lipman-Stern (also one of the show\u2019s directors) is shirtless in bed, and Patrick J. Pespas is high in the front seat of a car. The two worked together at a telemarketing company, small cogs in a despicable grift, but the office itself is home to real camaraderie \u2014 and real chaos, thanks in part to pervasive drug use. Lipman-Stern\u2019s grainy footage from his teenage years captures the outrageousness of his workplace but also Pespas\u2019s intense, charismatic vitality. While the subsequent episodes expose more of the telemarketing industry\u2019s shadiest work, the first installment is an instant, startling immersion into its subjects\u2019 perspectives. (Streaming on <\/em>Max<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> LYONS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n There are dozens of poignant, personal moments in \u201cWrestlers,\u201d<\/a> a documentary series about a low-level professional wrestling league. Humor, passion, ambition \u2014 plenty of all of those, too. But one episode is a genuine jaw-dropper, and its climax is a death match between a mother and daughter. Marie was a young mom and went to jail while her daughter, Haley, was a child. They never really reconciled, but now they\u2019re in the same wrestling league, where Marie is a doting veteran and Haley, now also a young mother herself, a fast-rising star. Marie says Haley is a \u201ccarbon copy\u201d of her; Haley does not see it that way. But they both like turning one kind of pain into another kind of pain, and they bring all their anger and grief into the ring. They also bring folding chairs, a trash-can lid and thousands of thumbtacks, and by the end of the match, they\u2019re both battered, and Marie\u2019s face is covered in blood. It is perhaps the most visceral catharsis I have ever seen. (Streaming on <\/em>Netflix<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em> LYONS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u2018Australian Survivor\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 8, Episode 7: \u2018Return of the King\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Bob\u2019s Burgers\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 14, Episode 2: \u2018The Amazing Rudy\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Bob\u2019s Burgers\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 13, Episode 22: \u2018Amelia\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
‘Carol & the End of the World\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 1, Episode 4: \u2018Sisters’<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Cunk on Earth\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 1, Episode 3: \u2019The Renaissance Will not be Televised\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Dave\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 3, Episode 2: \u2018Harrison Ave.\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Extraordinary\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Surprise!\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Frontline\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 42, Episode 5: \u201820 Days in Mariupol\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
‘Killing It\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 2, Episode 2: \u2018Mallory\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018A Spy Among Friends\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 1, Episode 5: \u2018Snow\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 1, Episode 3: \u2018Larryland\u2019<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Telemarketers\u2019<\/h2>\n
Part 1<\/span><\/h3>\n
\u2018Wrestlers\u2019<\/h2>\n
Season 1, Episode 5: \u2018Mother’<\/span><\/h3>\n