Name the best and worst episodes in any TV series

[SheSaidSheSaid]

I don't think this needs to be confined to the existing TV thread, but if the mods do, then by all means.

Anyway, just as simple as that. Pick a television series with which you're quite familiar, and name its best and worst episodes.

I'll start with perhaps the series that has the most widespread consensus for both answers - Star Trek: The Next Generation

Best - "The Best of Both Worlds" This epic two-parter is TNG's biggest battle with arguably the most enigmatic and gripping foe in the entire franchise, the Borg. Captain Picard's assimilation leads to one of the greatest cliffhangers I have ever seen/heard - "Mr. Worf, fire!" (Never mind that that amounted to a fat lot of nothing in part 2 ) This is rightfully regarded as a true television classic, not just a Star Trek classic. In 1995, TV Guide ranked it #70 on their list of the 100 best episodes of any television series.

Worst - "Shades of Gray" Simply put, it's the only clip show in Star Trek history. Borne of the 1988 WGA strike leaving the show's producers one episode short of the 22-episode order for season two, they hastily cobbled together a story about Riker succumbing to an infection that caused him to "relive" past events. The episode had about ten minutes worth of new footage. It is savaged by Trekkies.

The Simpsons

Best - "Cape Feare" Kelsey Grammer is spot-on as Sideshow Bob as he stalks the family to a houseboat on "Terror Lake" in a delicious parody of the classic film. From Bart's final wish to hear the complete score of the "HMS Pinafore" to Homer failing (repeatedly) to respond to his new undercover identity Mr. "Thompson" to Bob's repeated run-in with the rakes...god, it's all so perfect.

Worst - "The Frying Game" There are numerous Simpsons episodes that are just kinda sorta not that funny. This is the only one I can ever recall that was downright offensive. Homer is arrested and imprisoned for killing a rare species of slug, and he's sentenced to death. Just as he's led to the electric chair, while tearfully expressing his eternal love for Marge....it's all revealed to be a reality show farce. Crap. Utter crap.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Best - "In the Wee Small Hours" The best thing this show has ever done was do a two-parter. It allowed for more in-depth investigation and interrogation from Sherlock Goren, always amazingly fun to watch. This episode was also a crossover featuring all four detectives who featured on the show at the time (Goren, Eames, Logan, and Barek, though the latter pair's role was a bit limited), likewise a compelling novelty for the episode. Also features a great guest role from Star Trek alum Colm Meaney.

Worst - "Loyalty" Ironically, this is also a two-parter. I rank it as the series' worst episode because it was the episode that signified the shift to Jeff Goldblum and Saffron Burrows as the one and only detective team. I have nothing against either of them individually, or perhaps even as a tandem in theory, but L&O:CI standard-bearers they are not. Seeing Goren and Eames walk away (and Ross be killed) was just a punch to the gut. Luckily that mistake was rectified for the all-too-brief tenth season.

The Dick Van Dyke Show

Best - "Coast to Coast Big Mouth" An indelible classic, as Laura leaks on national television the secret that Alan Brady wears a hairpiece. Alan's freakout to first Laura and then Rob is just comic genius stuff.

Worst - "The Bad Old Days" This episode begins with Buddy wistfully telling Rob about the days of yore (the turn of the 20th century) when roles in the household were...shall we say less evolved. Dick Van Dyke himself often said this was his least favorite episode of the series, and when you've got a long dream sequence (that could not realistically be filmed in front of a live audience) which rested on jokes about spousal and child abuse...yeah, it's just not good.

Star Trek: Voyager

Best - "Unimatrix Zero" Some fans consider Seven of Nine's arrival to be Voyager's "jump the shark" moment. I can see that line of thinking, but I don't really agree (for me, it's the Seven/Chakotay romance that did it), there are numerous spectacular episodes that not only take place after her arrival, they directly involve her. This two-part episode involves a "virus" among the Borg that allows them to act as individuals while regenerating (basically sleeping), but whose effects wear off when they wake up. The Borg had become a bit less of an "ultimate enemy" by this point (they had appeared and been defeated {by one means or another} more than a dozen times already), but this is still a hugely gripping story because it works on two levels. The destruction of the big bad enemy and the restoration of drones to their former status as individuals. If you can't root for that, you can't root for anything.

Worst - "Threshold" Oh my effing god this episode. It involves Lieutenant Paris breaking some sort of 'warp threshold' that is explicitly stated to be scientifically impossible in the episode's teaser. Yet they just, um, break it anyway. Mmmk? And doing so causes Paris to be transformed into a lizard creature of some sort. Makes sense, don't it? :S Fans commonly regard this show to have never even happened.


What are your picks? Feel free to repeat a series that has already been mentioned.

[Cubecubed]

Lost

Best: "The Constant"- Just pure brilliance, really.

Worst: "Expose"- Nikki and Paulo....just ugh.

Justified

Best: "My Brother's Keeper"- absolutely stunning and dark episode.

Worst- "Pilot"- While I don't think Justified has a bad episode to its name, this one was a little too much like a cop procedural.

The Simpsons

Best- "Marge vs. the Monorail- One of the best 30 minutes of comedy ever made, and the Simpsons at its absolute peak.

Worst- Honestly any one with the whole "Nedna" thing. Just Terrible.

Community

Best- "Remedial Chaos Theory"- One of the best sitcom episodes of all time, and absolutely hysterical, to boot.

Worst- "Regional Holiday Music"- This one did not connect with me...at all.

Game of Thrones

Best- "Baelor"- This episode shows everything GoT can be. It is by alternate turns Tragic and Horrifying, and it showed that GoT was not just another fantasy series.

Worst- "Lord Snow"- Not bad by any means, but just a little unfocused.

Breaking Bad

Best: "Face Off"- One of the best hours of television ever made. It's actually kind of stressful to watch, and the conclusion had my mouth literally agape.

Worst: Don't think I can pick an hour of this show that is less than uniformly excellent.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

"Exposé" below "Stranger in a Strange Land" ? At least "Exposé" killed off Nikki & Paolo, SIASL had no purpose whatsoever Definitely agree on "The Constant" though. Desmond rox.

[abynormal]

Cowboy Bebop

Best - "Ballad of Fallen Angels" - It's the first time we see Spike come into contact with people from his past, and we are introduced to the enigmatic Vicious. Who didn't get chills when Spike walked into that church with that music playing, knowing he was walking into a trap. This and the ensuing gunfight showed just what the show was capable of, and it's only the fifth one! The setting, the music, the characters, the violence; this was Cowboy Bebop at its best.

Worst - "Waltz for Venus" - Saying Cowboy Bebop even has any bad episodes is borderline blasphemy, but this one's only fault is how it fails to really stand out. Maybe it's because it was the episode that seemed to be on the air more than any others, but this episode never did much for me.

Elf Princess Rane

Best - Episode 1 - Some of the funniest 24 minutes of anime you will ever see. Do yourself a favor and track this rare gem down!

Worst - Episode 2 - Just as amazing as episode one, with one catch: there is no episode 3. The OVA was canned after the second episode was released. And no amount of re-watching the Butler's message at the end will change that.

[Dante1847]

Lost
- Best: "Exodus, Pt 1". Very emotional episode, with Jack learning of Sawyer's run-in with his father, Sun and Jin reconciling, and the beautiful send-off of the raft.
- Worst: "Expose" for reasons already mentioned. **** Nikki and Paulo

Battlestar Galactica (the reimagined one)
- Best: "Pegasus". No question. Easily the best season-ending episode of any show I've watched. I mean...ANY. (In fact Season 2 BSG as a whole--not to be confused with 2.5--deserves a place in best seasons ever delivered on TV). The part where Adama gets pissed off and says "I'm getting...my men" always gives me the chills.
- Worst: "Sacrifice". Lame hostage situation that just felt corny the whole time. Billy deserved to die too...lame character dies in a lame episode. Lame.

[Lowlander2]

The Simpsons:

Best: I don't know. When they were great, they were really great. My heart says the Snake Whacking Day episode, though. So ridiculous and yet so lifelike.

Worst: Marge Gamer, where Marge is addicted to an MMO. It's a trite concept by this point, and I figured we'd be sick of reusing the same side characters in our alternate reality episodes by now. American Dad did it better. This and the Christmas musical episode effectively killed my interest in the show.

Lost:

Best: Pilot. Do you even need to ask why?

Worst: The Finale. Do you even need to ask why?

Family Guy:

Best: The Thin White Line/Brian Goes To Hollywood. Excellent two-parter with Brian losing faith i his family and moving out to become an adult film creator. Most of the episodes with Brian as the mainstay are excellent, but this was emotional and funny all in one.

Worst: Something Something Something Dark Side. This "episode" is comprised of lies. It's not a Star Wars parody. It's a generic mishmash of other pop culture references (the reason why people hate this show nowadays). As much as they pick on Robot Chicken at the end, it easily won the second round.

Robot Chicken:

Best: Umm...one of the first ones? That one with the giant race at the end?

Worst: Season 4, I think it was, had way too many sex and dick jokes in it. It got very tiring watching all of these episodes, which I suppose misses the point in itself, but it still would have worn thin. More material next time, guys.

[Mega-Tallica]

Seinfeld:

Best: The Contest, in no contest. In my opinion, one of the most genius episodes in the history of sitcoms. Seinfeld at its absolute best.

Worst: The Voice. Just felt like Jerry was out of ideas for the show. Without Larry David counteracting him, the show became very mediocre and this episode (and really the last 2 seasons of the show) proved it.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

It's amazing how with Seinfeld so many of its plots seem quaintly outdated after really-not-that-much time has passed. So many of them are predicated on no one having a cell phone. They're still funny, if you suspend disbelief a little or 'take yourself back' as it were, but I've always thought Seinfeld to be a show that hasn't aged quite as well as everyone thought it would have when it first premiered.

I'd have a tough time picking a least favorite, though. All of them make me laugh a lot

[Der_Lex]

I agree with SheSaid on ST:TNG and with Dante on Battlestar (although "Unifinished Business" was pretty terrible as well).

Some others (I'll add more when I have time).

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Best: "In the Pale Moonlight"
This episode is a prime example of why I prefer DS9 over any other Trek series. A strong cast of both main and supporting characters (who doesn't love Garak?), character depth and development, an ongoing storyarc where changes matter, and it shows nicely that the Federation can't afford to be all goody two-shoes all the time.

Worst:
"Let He Who Is Without Sin..."
Part soap opera, part morality play, all awful. As much as I like the way DS9 developed its characters, having an entire episode dealing solely with the characters' relationships simply didn't work.


Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Best: "Hush"
Is having an episode without any spoken dialogue a little gimmicky? Sure, but that's not a bad thing when the premise actually works. The slideshow explanation scene is one of the funniest in the series' run, and the Gentlemen are villains that are genuinely scary and creepy.

Worst:
"Where the Wild Things Are"
Season 4 had the worst overall storyarc in the series (although the 'addiction' storyline in season 6 comes very close), in no small part because boyscout Riley was an incredibly boring and uninteresting character that only emphasized the more boring aspects of Buffy herself as well. Even an episode basically centered around the two of them doing it for 45 minutes couldn't change that, and made for some very boring TV instead.


Angel

Best: "A Hole in the World"
Extremely tragic, but in a beautiful way. Really showed off what both Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof are capable of. Really captured Angel's theme of 'you won't ever be able to really defeat evil, all you can do is do your best to fight it and don't let it corrupt you', and showed what price there was to be paid for the gang's takeover of Wolfram and Hart.

Worst: "She"
A weird, out-of-place episode that's a very preachy, heavy-handed metaphor about female genitl mutilation. It just doesn't work.


Community


Best: "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons"
I have to love an episode that's centered around a game of D&D and gets a lot of great jokes out of it without making fun of the game itself or the people that play it. Every character gets their change to shine as well, with Pierce's fantastic villain role and Annie's muted 'sex scene' as high points.

Worst: "Pilot"
Although I still don't think there has actually been a bad Community episode, the pilot definitely feels a bit 'off' compared to what would come after. It felt like the writers were still trying to find their feet.

LOST:

Best: "The Constant"
Moving, great writing, great acting. The Desmond episodes have generally been the best of the show.

Worst: "The End"
I've said enough about this in the Lost thread on here, so I won't get into it further. Season 6 as a whole was pretty bad, but the finale was a terrible way to end the series.


The West Wing

Best: "Two Cathedrals"
Another tragic but beautiful episode. Martin Sheen's rant in the church is one of those great moments in television where stellar writing meets a brilliant performance, and is breathtaking to watch.

Worst: "Isaac and Ishmael"
I understand the need why they had to do a 9/11 episode and appreciate what they managed to get out in the limited time they had, but for me it simply doesn't work all that well and feels a bit overly preachy.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

The exact title of that DS9 episode, Lex, is "In the Pale Moonlight," and HOLYCRAP are you right about it being the series' best.