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"FacebookPinterest\n\n Game of Thrones, Season 1, Episode 6 - \"A Golden Crown\"\n\n I'm going to cheat a little and throw in the last half of episode five, \"The Wolf and the Lion,\" which includes perhaps the most jaw-dropping scene of the first season (and that's a high bar): Lady Arryn of the Eyrie breast-feeding her creepy nine-year-old son Robin. It also sets the stage for the shock and awe of episode six. I was liking Game of Thrones until this point; here's where I seriously fell in love. I shall count the ways, hopefully without spoiling too much for those who have (inexplicably) never seen HBO's ambitious and gloriously realized adaptation of George R.R. Martin's epic series of fantasy novels.\n\n 1. During the first season, female fans seemed to fall in two camps: Those who preferred the reticent, greasy-haired virility of Ned Stark (Sean Bean), and those who enjoyed the more, uh, compact manfulness of Tyrion Lannister, aka the Imp, whose best weapon is his razor wit. In a show with a lot of brawn\u2014and swordplay and mud and blood\u2014I find Tyrion's more cerebral charms (and attention to lady genitalia) infinitely more appealing. In episode six, his cunning and wit come center stage, when he out-maneuvers the seriously wacko Lady Arryn.\n\n 2. We also briefly meet Mord, Tyrion's monosyllabic jailer (he of the \"No Gold! Fuck off!\"). I haven't read the books and I fear that's the last we see of him. If so, I think a sitcom spin-off is in order.\n\n 3. In one of the grossest scenes of the season (and I mean that in the best possible way), the newly pregnant Daenerys Targaryen must eat the raw heart of a horse in front of her husband Khal Drogo, King of the dumb and hunky Dothraki. She nearly pukes the whole thing up (hell, I nearly puked it up), but in keeping the bloody mess down, Daenerys not only proves she's got the balls to be queen of the horse-worshipping Dothraki, she finally gains the upper hand with her bullying, petulant baby-man of a brother, Viserys. (Am I the only one who thinks these names are straight out of Star Trek?)\n\n 4. Speaking of Viserys, although we will miss his mincing and whining, he comes to one of the small screen's most spectacular ends. I won't give it away, but there's a clue in the title of the episode.\u2014Mary Kaye Schilling\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Louie, Season 2, Episode 5\u2014\"Country Drive\"\n\n Louis C.K. threw the television equivalent of a perfect game this year. Every episode of his show's second season had at least one \"holy shit\" moment. And it wasn't just the funny stuff, either. I remember watching the series premiere of Louie back in 2010, expecting little more than a translation of the best stand-up act in comedy\u2014an outcome I would've been totally fine with, by the way\u2014and instead I was stunned by the conceptual daring of the show, its willingness to mess with the rules of television, of storytelling, of character, of tempo, of comedy... I remember thinking, \"Wow, he's really trying to do something here.\" That was season one. And season two blew that away. The \"transcendent season\" is a new development in the history of television, and season two of Louie has already joined that rare crop that culture geeks talk about in shorthand, with the kind of awe that used to be reserved for movies of the 1970s: the first season of The Sopranos, the third season of Seinfeld, and the fourth season of The Wire. The second season of Louie.\n\n Now here comes the hard part: picking a single episode. Picking the show was a no-brainer. Picking the episode is almost impossible. I'm not trying to be all Sophie's Choice about this, either. There's a structural reason it's so tough to decide: each episode of Louie is pastiche of two or three \"mini-episodes\" that often don't intersect at all. An easier task would be to Frankenstein together my favorite sequences\u2014the bit where Louie's moment of grace listening to a subway violinist is wrecked by a fat, fetid homeless guy bathing himself on the platform a few feet away; the bit where Louie's daughter cheerfully explains to him why she much prefers his ex-wife's house; the startling, art-imitating-life-imitating-art confrontation with joke-thieving nemesis Dane Cook\u2014but one episode beginning to end? Oy.\n\n After way, way too much time spent mulling what is, let's face it, a pretty trivial matter, I went with \"Country Drive,\" partly because it's the most conventionally \"episode-y\" episode of the season (in the sense that its three segments all fit clearly and neatly together) but mostly because it's so, so not conventional in every other meaningful way. The opening scene, in which Louie drives his two young daughters to meet a distant, aging relative before she dies, is easily the wildest stretch of television I saw all year. After The Who's \"Who Are You\" comes on the radio, Louie begins loudly singing along, air-drumming, blissfully rocking out, while his daughters stare desperately ahead, trapped in the car with this overgrown doofus, a thousand future humiliations foretold in the blank, dejected look in their eyes. But what's amazing is Louis-the-director's commitment to the bit: he does the whole entire song, start to finish. Four solid minutes. No cuts. No interruption. One take. The damn-it-all confidence to stick with it, the quiet anti-payoff at the end\u2014I've never seen anything like it.\n\n The episode's middle segment is set at the aging relative's house, and rather than spoil the magic, I'll just say that it's a hilariously awkward portrayal of what happens when an old lady, in the presence of two young girls, starts casually salting the conversation with the worst racial epithet in the book. And then comes the episode capper: an atypically long bit of stand-up from Louie\u2014probably the fullest stretch of stand-up in any episode to date. It's a bravura riff about reading Tom Sawyer to his daughters and getting terrified when Huckleberry Finn\u2014reckless, racist, shit-stirring Huck Finn\u2014makes an unwanted cameo in the book. More generational dread, with more nuance than the novels he's joking about.\n\n Everything I love about Louie is on display in \"Country Drive\": its inventiveness with storytelling, its fearlessness around racial taboo, its pure comic inspiration, its unrivaled gift for the syntax of stand-up. The whole thing is just\u2014there's that word again\u2014perfect. And there were 12 other episodes this year that were every bit as good.\u2014Devin Gordon\n\n Breaking Bad, Season Four, Episode 12\u2014\"End Times\"\n\n The throat-slitting premiere was flat-out bad-ass. Breaking Bad slipped the slightest bit after that. Then episodes five through 13 were one of the most electric, unpredictable strings of television in recent history\u2014as pure as Walter White's blue meth. Walt's \"I am the one who knocks\" monologue? Mamet can't touch that. Those stone-cold opens with the chicken-truck murders? Eat it, Michael Mann. The Grand Guignol malice of Gus's cartel mass-murder? Tarantino, take note. That viciously sloppy brawl between Walt and Jesse? That was no-holds-barred naturalistic nastiness to rival the UFC. And that bell-ringing finale, when the invincible Gus gets half his face blown off, then straightens his tie? It was just the hasta la vista that hermano deserved.\n\n But the best episode was the penultimate, \"End Times,\" which flaunted everything that made the show the best drug on TV All the best actors\u2014Cranston, Paul, Esposito, and Norris\u2014get their moments. The script is cookie-full-of-arsenic sharp. (\"There's gotta be another way,\" says Skyler. \"There isn't,\" says Walt. \"There was. But now there isn't.\") The white-knuckle pacing of the show, which has always been its most audacious trademark, is thrillingly headlong: Jesse goes from pointing a gun at Walt's head to planning Gus's murder in less than a half hour and you barely doubt it, even as you're being conned along with him. Cranston has often been as good but never better than he is in that critical scene with Aaron Paul, when Walt convinces Jesse that he's helpless (\"Gus has been ten steps ahead of me at every turn\"), especially since the finale reveals that the whole desperate monologue is manipulative bullshit. Giancarlo Esposito's walk to his car is almost unbearably tense, but it's that final, perfect shot\u2014one of several I'd stack up against any Oscar contender\u2014that gets you: Beaten and bruised and defeated, Walt stares up at the sky above the parking deck. That throbbing, clanging song (Apollo Sunshine's \"We Are Born When We Die\") swells and rises, then cuts out completely, leaving Cranston, and all of his fans, breathless.\u2014Logan Hill\n\n The Killing, Season One, Episode 4\u2014\"A Soundless Echo\"\n\n God, do you remember how good this show was at first? It's hard since the rubble of that finale seems still smoldering\u2014the bitter flailings of showrunner Veena Sud's backtalk (\"We never said you'll get closure,\" etc.) having left not such a good taste in our mouth. But before the season's unhinged, unplotted tumble toward the finish line, there was the wrenching, artful stacking of four pretty perfect television episodes to open the series. Those four hours, after all, were what filled us with the untenable expectations.\n\n \"A Soundless Echo,\" the fourth (and final) great episode of The Killing, was so fresh and strange and riveting that re-watching it makes me hurt for what could've been. For those of you who followed the show, \"A Soundless Echo\" contains: that video tape of the squish-faced rich kid and his cracked-out best bro double-teaming a girl who appears to be Rosie in that creepy high school dungeon; Rosie's parents shopping for her casket; legitimate intrigue in the mayoral race\u2014including the introduction of a Mark Cuban-esque Seattle billionaire; the honeymoonish clackety-clack between partners Linden and Holder; the first glimpse of Papa Larsen's mob ties; the show's best episode-wrapping reveal\u2014the one implicating the teacher for the first time; and probably my favorite sixty seconds in the whole season: an over-the-shoulder shot of Sterling walking through the halls of her high school with her earbuds in, listening to Belle and Sebastian's Sleep the Clock Around,\" privately mourning the death of her best friend. All while attempting to carry on with the miserable ritual of gloomy mid-week classes, even as male classmates make rape jokes (\"Remember Sterling, 'no' means 'yes.'\") at her expense.\n\n If ever you've experienced a death at a high school\u2014a friend of yours, a peer of your child's\u2014you know the impossible mechanics of it. The teachers reluctantly asking students if they'd like to discuss their feelings. The disastrously uncomfortable private grief counseling. The makeshift shrines at the locker. And looming largest (what I remember most vividly, at least): the music. The one or two songs that make the rounds, that sort of drown out attempts at conversation. I'd argue that The Killing lost its way when it moved away from the high school; it was the part of the show that felt most clearly rendered and darkly nerve-plucking. When this episode ended, I thought I'd found a new TV love. But then, like some '70s radical, she left school, got into drugs and terrorism, drowned some hookers, got a little too paranoid for her own health, and, naturally, ended up shooting the mayor.\u2014Daniel Riley\n\n Ancient Aliens, Season 2, Episode 9\u2014\"Alien Devastations\"\n\n If I counted all the ways in which I love the History Channel's Ancient Aliens, the world would end before I finished, so let me cut straight to the central reason why it's so addictive: it is the best-kept secret drinking game on television.\n\n The premise of the show is simple: experts (i.e., unaffiliated investigative journalists, scholars, and folklorists) take turns rewriting history as the interplay of warring, egomaniacal extra-terrestrials. In this particular episode, they explain how all those little events we call \"natural disasters\" are really the product of alien intervention.\n\n What? Here's a quick crash-course: throughout time, angels, gods, and winged bird-people have taken trips to earth to gather stuff\u2014gold, slaves, our DNA for fun science projects. Evolution is actually a lie. Aliens are to thank for mankind's progression. They're building a master race among us. And every time they take a vacay down to the Green and Blue, they leave little destructive presents that wipe out the weakest.\n\n Maybe.\n\n You see that's the most fun part of the show (and why it's an ideal gulp-fest): watching how the History Channel leaves just enough room for suspicion so as to avoid a lawsuit.\n\n Every statement is punctuated by a summary in the form of a question. Did aliens upgrade 80% of our race's DNA with their own? Was Leonardo da Vinci really the secret informant of highly intelligent beings? Are those unidentified objects flying in the formation of a mysterious V-shape\u2014clearly, without a doubt, because what else could they be?\u2014alien aircraft? Maybe!\n\n Here are three ways to get real sauced during your viewing. If you're a lightweight, take a sip every time a scientist is interrupted mid-thought by a video editor. For a little more juice, drink when they scan over a work of destructive renaissance art produced by, or in the spirit of, Hieronymus Bosch. And for the ultimate, black-out experience, gulp at every mention of the word \"skeptics.\" You just might forget what alien gift is scheduled to arrive on December 21st, 2012.\u2014Andrew Richdale\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n Friday Night Lights, Season Five, Episode 13\u2014\"Always\"\n\n After years of disappointment I've learned to check my expectations with regard to series finales. Even dependably smart shows fuck it up. (Remember The Sopranos's finalus interruptus? Never has a show left its devotees with such a painful case of televisual blue balls.) But Friday Night Lights ended in July with the perfect encapsulating moment. It's the final minute of the fourth quarter and the Texas State Championship has come down to a Hail Mary for the Lions. The team's nervous energy materializes in a series of successive exhales visible against the West Texas night sky. Per usual, the show's brilliant emotional atomology is at work\u2014at the core of one tiny pass is something life-changing and epic. Vince drops back and fires East Dillon's last chance into the air. As the ball flies across the field in slow motion, the camera visits almost every major character we've grown to love over the last five seasons. There's a newly engaged Julie and Matt following the arc wide-eyed; Tami Taylor, hands clutched in prayer; Buddy Garrity reduced to uncharacteristic silence; Becky, Luke, Jess, all immobilized; and Coach, raising his eyebrows ever so slightly as he watches the ball begin its downward slope. The emotion is heady. This is the show, in one heave. My heart was full. But I can't say my eyes stayed clear.\u2014Lauren Bans\n\n FriendZone, Season One, Episode 1\n\n I've run out of adjectives for the second season of Louie, and can't even pick my favorite episode, so all I'll tell you is that the one where Louis C.K. \"............\" and \".......\" was \"....,\" \"....,\" and holy fucking shit was it \"... .\" Then there's the uncanny, unsettling final five minutes of Margo Martindale's last episode of Justified. Plus, I have a soft spot for the trilogy that wrapped up Fringe's third season in May, where the tiny, terrible story of two abused children finally forgiving the mad scientist dad who abused them is played out as a big, weird, gross, lunatic sci-fi saga about treacherous doppelgangers and killer shapeshifters from alternate dimensions.\n\n But the TV episode I keep thinking of? That I can't get out of my head? The pilot of MTV's FriendZone, which is produced by SallyAnn Salsano, the Margo Martindale-like den mother/evil genius behind Jersey Shore. Have you seen this show? Kids want to confess their real feelings to the best friends they secretly love, so they stage fake blind dates, ask their crushes to join them as wingmen/wingwomen as they choose outfits, buy flowers, and get their hair cut. Then after much sweating and fretting, they reveal, \"This date's actually for you. Because I've been crazy about you since math camp or 7th grade or freshmen orientation.\" Sometimes it works out swimmingly for these Harrys and Sallys. Sometimes, though, their feelings are 100% not reciprocated: In one episode, the dude can't even confess and, after his ladyfriend leaves him to his nonexistent blind date, he just sits at the bar and weeps. In the pilot, Conner tells Brittanie, \"The first thing I think about when I wake up is you.\" To which she responds, \"Of course I had a crush on you before but then I let those feelings go away.\" He forces her to take a gift bag of chocolate-covered strawberries, and then runs around the corner to cry.\n\n This sort of show demonstrates why MTV is still so remarkable, even now that it doesn't play music and turns sweet, addled Jersey kids into sociopathic mini-celebrities. The teens on FriendZone are tall, fat, short, funny-looking, gorgeous, skinny, awkward, gay, straight, sharp or dim, all of them terrifically imperfect but bursting with so much love for one another. And FriendZone is courageous enough and clear-eyed enough to show them not only finally, adorably happy but also completely crushed, their hopes dashed and their friendships ruined. It's like high school, all over again.\u2014Mark Lotto\n\n Homeland, Season 1, Episode 7\u2014\"The Weekend\"\n\n I watch too much TV. I can see the seams and the undercarriage of most plotting. And I'm not talking about the moment when David Caruso peels a pair of aviators from his face and growls some lousy pun on CSI: Miami. I mean good shows with gifted writers. Then what to make of Homeland, Showtime's legitimately disorienting and thrilling drama, which ripples with consequences and depth and shaded agendas every single week? It's a Sunday crossword puzzle on a Wednesday morning\u2014how is this thing so tricky?\n\n The best episode of the season so far (there's still a finale on the horizon), is a tale of two couples, one engaging in a forbidden tryst, bonded by distress and loss and the temptations of uncertainty. The other is forced together by the law, but in its way, no less tender. For suspicious C.I.A. agent Carrie (Claire Danes, a jitterbug of sexual anxiety) and returned P.O.W. Brody (the haunted, wounded, terrifying Damian Lewis), the true consummation of their frantic do-si-do moves from neo-Nazi-pummeling joyride to cabin-in-the-woods drunken body thrusts to sober, clear-eyed confessions. It's hard to know who we're meant to root for on Homeland, if anyone. Carrie is a pill-popping dervish whose best intentions are often overwhelmed by her blustering, protocol-busting style. She might be the most annoying great character on television. Brody's a married war hero who might actually be a turned terrorist operative. He also might be the most inscrutable. That they found each other in this way offered the first genuine \"Yes, do it guys!\" moment on a very tense, grim show. Of course, it all comes apart when Carrie, who'd been illegally spying on Brody for weeks, slips, revealing she believes he's a double agent after accidentally letting on that she knows his favorite tea, Yorkshire Gold. The little things kill. What happens from there\u2014shouting, guns, revelation, a different sort of terror\u2014are the sorts of decisions that make this show easily the best of the new season, and one of the most uniquely honest depictions of love (or is lust?) in a time of war.\n\n The other tale in the episode is between two other relative strangers, one a C.I.A. agent, the other a suspected terrorist. Clever, that mirror image. But here, senior officer Saul (the great Mandy Patinkin, about as far from Broadway as Afghanistan) and Aileen, a fugitive rich girl with Muslim extremist sympathies, are not nearly in a sexually compromising position. She's been apprehended fleeing to Mexico after taking part in a failed assassination plot. Rather than roll with the Federales, Saul's come to take her the 30-hour car trip back to Washington D.C. They bond over, as Saul puts it, their marriages to a \"brown-skinned\" spouse\u2014his wife, Mira, is leaving him. They come to understand each other, tentatively at first, as the granite-tough Aileen cracks and cleaves along their trip. Ultimately, she flips. It's all an unspoken testament to the power of communication. The C.I.A. is rarely portrayed as a paragon of emotional resolution, but here we get two agents talking through pain, and saving a country in peril. And doing so in ways we never see coming.\u2014Sean Fennessey"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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