This has been an absolutely stunning year for television, and in fact it has been especially stunning when it comes to individual episodes. This entire list, especially the top half, is full of deliriously great episodes that frankly dwarf the previous editions of this list.
10. “How To Clean Your Ears”
How To With John Wilson
season 3, episode 2
stream: Max
John Wilson dedicates this episode to the sounds of New York City. There’s an awful man with large cannonlike features on the back of his pickup truck who fires them off all day and sometimes at night (he also often shoots a massive flamethrower), and all of his neighbors despise him. There’s a couple who can’t conceive that other apartments might not appreciate the loud birthday party they’re throwing for their one-year-old (at one point John asks them to give them an example of what music they play, and the smash cut to the music kills me every single time). A lady claims to have dated a serial killer. You know, the usual How To fare. But then, John flees to Green Bank, West Virginia, a town with no wi-fi or cell phone service due to the nearby massive radio telescope. Here John meets a bunch of weirdos who think they have electromagnetic hypersensitivity, who all seem to hate each other and all have to deal with the same shitty slumlord. “How To Clean Your Ears,” unlike many How To episodes, is really pretty focused on its theme of sound, and it draws out some of the weirdest, most annoying people you’ve ever dreamt of. Peak How To.
9. “Jerry”
Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake
season 1, episode 8
stream: Max
One of the great joys of Fionna and Cake‘s trip through the multiverse was finding other versions of Adventure Time‘s crazy cast of characters, and in “Jerry,” we stumble upon the motherlode. Fionna, Cake, and Simon end up in a version of Ooo not unlike the one we’re familiar with, except the Lich won and wiped out all life. Only BMO is left, and BMO spends the entire episode being extremely fucking weird and talking about their good friend Jerry. The vibes are cursed all episode, and everything goes haywire by the time BMO finally introduces us to Jerry. Fionna and Cake has a great core idea for each episode, but none is so striking as the apocalyptic wasteland of “Jerry.”
8. “Episode 1”
Pluto
episode 1
stream: Netflix
Pluto is wildly interesting out of the gate. Right away Europol Detective Gesicht learns of the deaths of renowned robot rights activist Bernard Lanke and the powerful but gentle and beloved robot Mont Blanc. Right away, Pluto is intensely psychological and enrossing.
However, this entry is here not just for the strong start but for its second half, where we follow another of the earth’s most powerful robots, North No. 2. North No. 2 lives a life as the butler of a famous blind musical composer Paul Duncan, and North No. 2’s attempts to understand and replicate creativity offend Duncan to no end. However, their relationship evolves as North No. 2 begins to genuinely catch on to not just Duncan’s music, but the inner workings of Duncan himself. And then it reaches a climax that finally ties back into the main story. Pluto, which is an unconventional anime that sports an hourlength runtime per episode, starts things off with a bang, and while there’s nothing else like this North No. 2 story, the show never relents.
Also considered: “Episode 6” (episode 6)
7. “The Fairy Isle”
Hilda
season 3, episode 8
stream: Netflix
Hilda’s father, recently back in the picture, has gotten trapped in the “fairy mound” that Hilda’s mother had a bad experience in as a child. By venturing into this dangerous territory, Hilda learns about her mother’s past and the true nature of the dangerous and mysterious “fairies” in her great aunt’s town.
In this era of Western all-ages cartoons, most shows are going the Gravity Falls and Steven Universe route of motivating the usual cartoon hijinks with a serialized story. Sure, Amphibia might have a bunch of episodes that don’t matter, but there’s always a pretty clear story goal. And shows like Amphibia, Infinity Train, and The Owl House are all great, but Hilda gives itself a distinct-in-this-era flavor by not going anywhere in particular. Its big moment episodes – “The Midnight Giant” in season one, “The Fifty Year Night” and “The Deerfox” in season two – have not really had implications on the way things are moving forward. Sure, Hilda still often builds to these things by gently inserting little beats in leadup episodes, but its greatest moments are stories that stand on their own.
This finale’s implications for Hilda and her family are enormous. It bowls you over like no other Hilda episode, including the one about Twig that makes you cry. But while Hilda‘s third season does tee up its wonderful series finale, this does not feel like a culmination of the series so far, nor does it need to. “The Fairy Isle,” like the great Hilda episodes before it, focuses squarely on telling a great story unto itself. It’s a refreshing approach we don’t see as often, and it’s always been a perfect vehicle to capture the protagonist’s sense of wonder in the natural world.
6. “Cary & Brooke Go To An AIDS Play”
The Other Two
season 3, episode 5
stream: Max
The moment you really fall in love with The Other Two is the gay brother song. Since then, its satire on the entertainment industry’s use of and regard for gay men has consistently been at the heart of its best material. “AIDS Play” is the apotheosis of this strength. I can’t comment on how successfully it satirizes Matthew Lopez’s similarly ambitious play The Inheritance, but watching the cast sit through 8 Gay Men With AIDS: A Poem in Many Hours, The Other Two‘s world has kind of a cynical reverence for gay prestige and mostly only has room for AIDS stories when it comes to that. There’s plenty going on in this episode – Chase is set up with Kiernan Shipka but falls in love with an ordinary teenager instead while Brooke tries to put a stop to it, Cary tries to set up his always-method actor boyfriend with a role that will finally allow the two of them to have sex – but the play itself is probably the funniest gag the show has done (tied with the gay brother song). As the curtain falls on the first day of 8 Gay Men, AIDS and HIV have not yet been named or even discovered, and a scientist declares, “We finally know what it is: a great big mystery!”
5. “Their Choices”
Heavenly Delusion
season 1, episode 8
stream: Hulu
In post-apocalyptic Japan, tensions come to a head between an activist group and the hospital they think is conducting human experiments. But inside, the doctor leads our heroes to the so-called experiment: a quadruple amputee woman only kept alive because in death she would become a monster. The doctor requests that Maru use his power to help her go peacefully. All the while, the protesters break into the hospital.
“Their Choices” is a wildly emotional gut-punch of an episode. It also gives us a brief glimpse into the Takahara Academy storyline that makes up the other half of Heavenly Delusion, which doesn’t curb the sadness of the episode but at least makes it emotionally satisfying.
Also considered: “Kiriko and Haruki” (season 1, episode 3)
4. “Connor’s Wedding”
Succession
season 4, episode 3
stream: Max
I’ve tried hard to ride for “America Decides” as the peak of this season of Succession, and while that is an incredible episode of television that deserves exactly this place on this list, I must concede that “Connor’s Wedding” is likely the defining moment of this entire show, a television event so epochal that, for a moment, we returned to that horrible 2019 atmosphere when Twitter ruined every new episode of Game of Thrones for you.
Unlike Succession‘s discourteous online fans, I will be vague and just say that this episode perfectly captured the way a bombshell piece of news travels and reverberates. This is also probably the most appropriate thing to ever happen to actually-eldest boy Connor Roy.
Also considered: “America Decides” (season 4, episode 8), “Church and State” (season 4, episode 9)
3. “Mother and Children”
Oshi no Ko
season 1, episode 1
stream: HIDIVE
It’s really hard to know how to write about a series premier when it’s a real home run (see my To Your Eternity write-up from the 2021 list), as that usually means there’s some incredible twist that comes with the entire premise of the series. “Mother and Children” has about five of those, so here’s my best attempt to set the stage without ruining anything: Gorou Amamiya is a young doctor specializing in gynecology, but he’s also a massive nerd, so he’s shocked when his favorite pop idol, Ai Hoshino, shows up at his hospital secretly pregnant. Gorou spends the next few months caring for Ai, but on the eve of her delivery, Gorou’s encounter with a stalker of Ai’s sends his life careening upside down.We are still several plot twists away from explaining the basic premise of the series.
This oversized premier, a whopping 90 minutes instead of the standard 22, is an ambitious approach to adapting the short opening arc of the manga, and while the general thrust of the series’ plot only solidifes by the episode’s end, “Mother and Children” is still an intense tour through the insanity and façade of the Japanese entertainment industry.
Also considered: “Egosurfing” (season 1, episode 6)
2. “Long, Long Time”
The Last of Us
season 1, episode 3
stream: Max
Despite the greatest strength of The Last of Us being Joel and Ellie and the performances behind them, they’re largely absent from what’s easily the show’s finest hour. Though Bill and Frank are present in the source material, “Long, Long Time” is a complete reinvention of their story, instead foregrounding the beautiful life these two manage to have in the very worst of conditions. Nick Offerman is obviously a natural at playing Bill’s survivalist weirdo, and Murray Bartlett gives an equally strong turn as Frank. It feels rare for gay men to be at the front of such an important moment in television, and even rarer for it to be in a video game-related series (indeed, check out which episodes didn’t sit as well with the gamers that tuned in). In that respect, “Long, Long Time” is probably easily the most important episode of 2023.
Also considered: “When You’re Lost in the Darkness” (season 1, episode 1), “Left Behind” (season 1, episode 7)
1. “Forks”
The Bear
season 2, episode 7
stream: Hulu
This could just as easily be “Fishes,” but while that pressure cooker of an episode could just as easily top this list, it’s “Forks” that really got me. Richie has been the confounding factor on The Bear, the one asshole who has not decided that he wants to become a happier person. So he exists as a walking tornado of anger management and volume control issues.
So when Carmy sends him off to refine his hosting duties at a very highbrow restaurant for a week, Richie perceives this as Carmy getting him out of his hair. He’s made to clean forks for the first several days, and he hits rock bottom when he calls his ex-wife to tell her he got an extra ticket to the Taylor Swift concert so that she could join him and their daughter only to find that she’s gotten engaged to her boyfriend.
Someone calls out Richey’s shit when he’s putting no effort in cleaning the forks, and from this point, he completely turns around and learns to love what he does through the power of self-respect. And then comes a needle drop so wild and perfect that I just didn’t know what to do with myself. Something about it just shifted me into another dimension.
Some of my other favorite TV moments involve assholes waking the fuck up. Tsuki’s big block in Haikyuu!! comes to mind. But The Bear built an entire transcendent episode of television around this previously slow-burning character development. In a bewilderingly great year for TV and an even greater year for TV episodes, “Forks” stands out as the finest.
Also considered: “Honeydew” (season 2, episode 4), “Fishes” (season 2, episode 6), “The Bear” (season 2, episode 10)
Honorable Mentions
“A Connected Bond: Daybreak and First Light,” Demon Slayer, season 3 episode 11
“A Powerful Mage,” Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, season 1 episode 10
“Elora’s Dad,” Reservation Dogs, season 3 episode 9
“Episode Six,” Happy Valley, season 3 episode 6
“Episode #1.3,” Telemarketers, episode 3
“Freedom Day,” Silo, season 1 episode 1
“I Am A Cage,” BEEF, episode 7
“It’s Been A While,” Invincible, season 2 episode 4
“Joan Is Awful,” Black Mirror, season 6 episode 1
“Local News,” What We Do In The Shadows, season 5 episode 5
“Oath,” Vinland Saga, season 2 episode 9
“Qui,” Yellowjackets, season 2 episode 6
“Rest In Metal,” Poker Face, season 1 episode 4
“Return of the Sword King,” Ranking of Kings: The Treasure Chest of Courage, episode 10
“Sunflowers,” Ted Lasso, season 3 episode 6
“The Fall,” Scavengers Reign, season 1 episode 6
“To Ed,” Somebody Somewhere, season 2 episode 7
“Watching and Dreaming,” The Owl House, season 3 episode 3
“Wonders That Cannot Be Fathomed, Miracles That Cannot Be Counted,” The Righteous Gemstones, season 3 episode 9
“wow,” Barry, season 4 episode 8
“2 Scott 2 Pilgrim,” Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, episode 7
Joey Daniewicz 