Here we are, dear readers. All two of you. The tenth article for The Midpoint, not including the introduction. As this is the tenth article and the number ten and the transitive property, I figured it’s time for a top ten list! I love me a good top ten list. I realize arbitrary rankings are not conducive to rational discourse, but I like them because they force you to think about your favorite works in a new way. You not only have to think about the weak points of the pop culture you love, but also what you value and what speaks to you the most. Much like the Oscars, however, don’t take them too seriously. It’s just an excuse to talk about great TV.

So in making this whimsical ranking of TV episodes, I made some whimsical rules for myself:

One episode per TV show.
Creators can only be represented once. (An early version of this list had two David Simon and Dan Harmon episodes, and for whatever reason, it didn’t sit well with me that one writer could dominate so much of the list.)

Making this list was possibly the hardest thing I’ve done for this blog so far. After painstakingly combing through my memory, my DVD library, the internet, and the patience of my friends, I’ve finally arrived with a ranking I can live with. (At least for now.) You’ll notice that this list is mostly from the golden age television, and for that I apologize. Ideally it would’ve spanned all ages, but I’m a young man, and there’s only so much TV I’ve seen. I also wish this list had more comedy and animation, but alas, life isn’t perfect. Forgive my dark-leaning sensibilities and my millennial ways.

Beware, for there are major spoilers.

Runner-Up: Deadwood, “Boy-the-Earth-Talks-To”

The fucking golden age of television is steeped in fucking moral ambiguity. Thanks in large part to a television show we’ll be talking about later in this article, the limberdick cocksuckers that watch fucking television decided they were less interested in watching dumb fucking black and white morality, but instead, they wanted more of “the color": Gray. No fucking show has as much fucking gray as Deadwood.

At the end of “Boy-the-Earth-Talks-To,” Al fucking Swearengen stands on the balcony of his saloon, admiring the shit-heels and hoopleheads as they dance and fucking frolic about the thoroughfare during Alma and Ellsworth’s wedding. He grins a vast shit eating grin, and we’re left to wonder what the fuck he’s smiling about. Is it because he just fucking took control of the Chinese section of town? Is it because he scored better than Jarry and the rest of the fucking Yankton cocksuckers in the Dakota deal? Or is the fucking wedding just making him loopy? We can’t ever know for sure.

Most shows only give you the fucking illusion of interconnectedness amongst it's various storylines, but in Deadwood, everyone's actions effect each other, whether they know it or not. “Boy-the-Earth-Talks-To” has the usual fucking Deadwood politicking and swindling, but it also shows the town coming together for something other than bloodshed and rage. Some of the fucking unions end in merriment while others end in backstabbing and blood. But more importantly, as fucking Todd VanDerWerff wrote in his review of the episode, it has “a few moments of hard-earned happiness.” The only fucking reason this episode didn’t make the goddamn list is because there’s another episode of a different fucking show I think does it a little better. Still, this is a brilliant episode of television. You fucking cocksucker.

10. Review, “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes”

Forrest MacNeil is a rare example of a TV protagonist who already had it all figured out before the show started. He had a loving family, a home in a nice neighborhood, and now he has a TV show where he reviews randomly generated life experiences. It may seem boring, but for all intents and purposes, he had a life one could envy. Then Review happens, and we watch as he's stripped of all the happiness he’s earned in hilarious and increasingly horrifying ways. “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes” is where it all truly starts to fall apart.

The episode starts with Forrest reviewing the experience of eating fifteen pancakes. He finds the task beneath him and the process sickening, but he’s a professional, and he does his job. He says that he hopes his next review will be “more substantial,” and the words have barely left his mouth when’s asked to review divorce. Any sane person would refuse, but Forrest feels so beholden to his show that he actually goes through with it. Over the span of about eight minutes, we laugh at Forrest’s pain while we watch him lose his home and the love of his family.

Then he’s asked to eat thirty pancakes.

“Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes” aired only two years ago, making it the most recent episode on this list. The part of my brain that takes list making too seriously and cares too much about how I come off in this blog wanted to cut it because of its age. Then I watched it again, and I knew this episode had to be on this list. It’s just too damn funny and dark to leave off.

9. Battlestar Galactica, “Occupation”

There was a time in television stories when shenanigans would happen, but then you return to the status quo. If there was a change, it was because of events outside the fictional realm of the show. Actors or key staff leaving for greener pastures. Nowadays, status quo changes are not only common, but often necessary for a show to continue.

Battlestar Galactica is a show about the last remnants of humanity searching for an elusive planet called Earth after nearly being wiped out by its own creation: A cybernetic race called the Cylons. Soon they find a habitable planet. It isn’t Earth, but it’ll do. Everyone’s tired of running. At the end of Battlestar’s second season, they move down to the surface. A year passes. Some get married and have kids. Others find new work. Some are happy with their new lives. Some are sad. Then the Cylons find them again.

“Occupation” picks up four months after the events of the season two finale, and we find all the characters we know and love trapped in their own personal hell.

The Cylons occupy humanity’s new home. They run it like a police state with curfews and mass incarceration. Naturally, the humans start a resistance movement. They bomb military targets and the conflict gets bloodier by the day. The Cylons train a human police force. Human volunteers arrest other humans and perform tasks assigned to them by the Cylons. They’re seen as traitors, and all of this culminates in the suicide bombing of the police graduation. The episode ends with a haunting shot of dozens of dead bodies.

The invasion of Iraq began on March 20th, 2003. I was in middle school the night the invasion began. I was getting ready for bed when my mother started yelling that “Bush actually fucking did it.” I went downstairs and watched the bombs explode on the news. “Occupation” aired October 6th, 2006. I didn’t watch this episode until a few years after it aired, but every time I do, I think about that night. The allegory of this episode isn’t subtle.

8. Louie, "New Year’s Eve"

(EDIT 11/11/2017: This section was written well before Louis C.K.'s history of abusive behavior was made public. I'm writing this only a few days after the fact, and I still don't quite know how to feel about my relationship with the show, let alone this episode, other than a deep sense of sadness and anger. But I'll leave this up for the sake of remembering that even the most seemingly trustworthy people can let us down.)

Even by Louie standards, season three was pretty hard on our titular protagonist. (Continuity can be difficult to describe on Louie, but this season seems to imply more of it than usual.) He gets dumped. He makes a new friend in Miami, but then makes it awkward. He has an embarrassing encounter with his father. He meets a wonderful woman named Liz, but she soon disappears, and he’s been pining for her ever since. He recently tried to replace David Letterman after being told he's going to quit, but he finds out that he’s only being used as a pawn in an elaborate contract game. Things have not been going well.

And they continue to not go well in “New Year’s Eve.” His failure with the Late Show, as well as the nightmare that is Holiday shopping, looms over Christmas morning as his daughters unwrap their presents. He reads a picture book to his youngest daughter about a family of ducks that live on the Yangtze River. We don’t hear the end of the story, but we see a lovely picture of the sun setting over the water. His daughters leave, and it's back to loneliness and depression, which he gets to enjoy for a few hours before being forced into a trip to Mexico with his sister and her family. He gets on the bus and runs into Liz. All seems like it’s finally going to be alright, and then she promptly dies right in front of him.

He stumbles into the airport. Inspired by the picture from the book, he impulsively buys a ticket to Beijing in search of the river. Naturally, he doesn’t find it. (The Yangtze River is several hundred miles south of Beijing. It also looks astoundingly beautiful.) However, he walks into the home of a random family, who welcome him with open arms. They share a meal and enjoy each other’s company. He seems to have found what he's been looking for.

This is the episode I was talking about during the Deadwood section. True, this isn’t a moment of “hard-earned happiness” so much as a moment of “well-deserved happiness,” but I feel the same sense of joy watching the final scene that I do when watching “Boy-the-Earth-Talks-To.” I thought about finding a translation of what’s being said in the final scene, but I don’t think it really matters. The point is that he doesn’t have to worry about disappointing these people. Unlike all his other relationships, this one doesn’t seem doomed by absurdity or randomness or the defects of his personality. There’s no need isolate himself. He can be a part of the world.

Happiness on Louie is always fleeting, but for once, it seems to last a little while.

7. Firefly, “Objects in Space”

The first five or so minutes of “Objects in Space” teach us how to perceive the universe like River Tam. River’s brain has been severely tampered with by the Alliance, the oppressive government of the Firefly universe. It’ll be revealed in the next few minutes, or the movie if you saw that first like I did, that she can read minds. We walk through the ship with River as she encounters every member of the crew. They talk to one another and River listens to their thoughts. She seems to have trouble separating what’s being said and what’s meant to be left unspoken in between the pregnant pauses and suggestive looks. She then encounters a branch on the ground. She picks it up. “It’s just an object.” Then we cut to a terrified crew, as it turns out that “object” is a gun.

River knows what’s in front of her, but because of the way her brain perceives stimuli, she doesn’t attach any meaning to it. To River, a gun is a thing, just like any other thing. To the rest of us, it’s a machine that causes death, and we should be scared of it. It makes sense then that the show squares her off against someone with a similar defect: The incredibly named bounty hunter Jubal Early. As Jubal infiltrates the ship and takes Simon hostage, we spend time with him and learn his philosophy. Again, he can perceive space and people, but he doesn’t “imbue” any of it with any meaning. When Jubal threatens to rape Kaylee, he tells her that it “Ain’t nothing but a body to me.”

The difference between the two, however, is compassion. River understands that she’s connected to the “objects” and the people around her who love her. She knows she can demand more of herself. Jubal has no connection to anything. His philosophy is only in place for the sake of self-interest and to rationalize his detachment from the world around him. It’s because River understands her bond to others that she’s able to defeat Jubal by enlisting the rest of the crew.

Firefly is a show that understands its characters so well that it can reflect the way they think in the cinematography. Throughout “Objects in Space,” the camera tracks up and down, left and right through the walls and the floors. The walls separate the rooms and their potential “purpose,” but they also show the connective tissue that keeps the ship together. The wires and the ducts. The parts we know exist, even if we can’t immediately perceive them.

6. Community, “Modern Warfare”

Minus the gas leak and the Yahoo season, I own all the DVD sets of Community. I’ve listened to the commentary tracks for each episode multiple times. I’ve outlined episodes for my own educational purposes and I’ve passionately ranted to my friends about how they should watch it and I've done all the things you associate with annoying fanboy behavior. So yeah, I’m rather fond of Community. So much so that I considered seventeen different episodes of the show for this list.

One could argue that Community is “about” television and our relationship to the structure of sitcoms and what we hope to gain from watching them. As such, Community could appeal to many different tastes and TV watchers. If I’m picking the episode that made me laugh the most, I’d probably go with “Paradigms of Human Memory.” If I’m picking the most emotional experience, I’d pick “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas.” If I had to pick an episode of the show that falls into the category of, “Episode That Isn’t In The Pantheon Of Great Community Episodes, But Speaks To Me Personally Despite Being Admittedly Flawed,” it would be, “Basic Story.”

But ultimately, I went with “Modern Warfare” because of the unbridled joy I felt watching it for the first time. It was late winter/early spring of my sophomore year of college. I had the Community DVDs from Netflix, and I was going through the show at a pretty rapid pace. I had heard about the infamous “paintball episode,” but I didn’t know about the genre parody elements or the massive scope. Nothing beyond “There’s a Community episode with paintball in it.” I watched the episode, and I slapped my laptop shut to go get a soda at my college’s snack bar. On the way there, I remember thinking, “Holy shit, I fucking love this show.” Eloquent, I know, but I knew I found a new favorite show, and I was happy.

“Modern Warfare” may be an obvious episode of Community to pick, and I could write all day about the story structuring or the directing or just how funny it is. However, the ultimate reason I picked this episode is because of how excited it makes me feel about the idea of sitting back and watching some television. It’s easy to mock TV and our need to consume it, but there’s a reason we slavishly return to it over and over again beyond pure escapism. If these deeply flawed people onscreen can solve their problems, then maybe there’s a chance that I can as well. If Jeff Winger can win the paintball match so Shirley can spend more time with her kids, then maybe I can go out and do something extraordinary and good. There’s a joyous feeling I get whenever I watch “Modern Warefare.” It’s how I’m supposed to feel watching TV.

5. The West Wing, “Two Cathedrals”

At around the halfway mark of “Two Cathedrals,” Jed Bartlet stands in the middle of the National Cathedral and yells at God. (I normally don’t capitalize “god,” but Bartlett is a Christian man. It feels right.) His secret medical condition is about to be revealed to the public and it seems like he isn’t going to run for a second term. Earlier in the year, he was shot by a white supremacist. While he walked away relatively unharmed, Josh Lyman was also hit, and he nearly died. (“That was my son,” Jed yells at God.) On top of all this, Mrs. Landingham, who’s been a part of his life since he was a boy, was just killed by a drunk driver. Though he did lie, Jed has plenty to be angry about, and the consequences seem to far out weigh the crime.

Bartlet tells God he’s going to quit. He informs the world of his condition, and soon afterwards, Mrs. Landingham appears to him in a vision. She reminds him of his place in the world: A leader. A brilliant man with intellect and power who can make people’s lives better and do what’s right. His feelings don’t matter. Whatever happens to him next doesn’t matter. He’s part of something bigger than himself. He has a job to do. Now it’s time to do it.

Throughout The Sopranos, Tony repeats his admiration for Gary Cooper in High Noon. “The strong, silent type.” “Gary Coopers” make great TV characters because they're decisive and they move the story forward. Jed Bartlett is an Aaron Sorkin character, so it can’t be said that he’s particularly silent. But in “Two Cathedrals,” he's Gary Cooper. At the end of the episode, he asked if he’s going to run again. He knows the road to re-election’s going to be a hard one, but it has to be done. Rather than giving a lengthy speech, he does the same thing he did when he agreed to help Mrs. Landingham when he was in high school. He sticks his hands in his pockets, looks away, and smiles. The strong, silent type.

“Two Cathedrals” is an unorthodox episode of The West Wing, but it’s a showcase in how great characters think and behave. There’s obstacles ahead, and life’s going to get a whole lot tougher. Yet in the face of insurmountable odds, he makes a decision, and he moves forward. “What’s next?”

4. Breaking Bad, “Ozymandias”

Every TV show has a nightmare scenario. The audience’s worst fears for their beloved characters come to life, and the show plummets into a free fall. Most of the drama around a show revolves around preventing the nightmare scenario from ever happening. Case in point: There was an era in Showtime’s programing when most of their shows revolved around the protagonist protecting a massive secret. Nancy Botwin sells pot. Dexter Morgan kills people. Jackie Peryton likes pills. Were these secrets to ever come out, it would cost our protagonists their freedom and their relationships. It could potentially mean the end of the show.

Breaking Bad has seemingly dozens of nightmare scenarios, and they all come true in “Ozymandias.” The neo-nazis kill Gomez and Hank, Walter loses most of his money, Jesse’s forced into meth making slavery, Flynn (I think he’d rather go by “Flynn” after the events of this episode) finally finds out who his father is, and Walter finally calls the man who makes people disappear, never to see or feel the love of his family again. For the handful of you who haven’t seen “Ozymandias,” let’s just say it’s not a particularly pleasant episode of television.

I’ll guess that you have seen it though. From a content standpoint, you know why we’re talking about it. The main reason it’s on this list so high, however, is because of the standard it sets for what a TV show can accomplish in terms of its end game. Most shows, if any, will stand on the precipice of their nightmares, but rarely do they take the plunge. “Ozymandias” not only dives head first into the dark unconscious of Breaking Bad, but of TV in general. Television structure has taught us that our protagonists will eventually prevail. “Ozymandias” sets up a circumstance where that simply isn’t possible. The best die or get scarred for life and the worst get to live on another day. Though Walter eventually gets the last laugh, everything’s been taken away from him, and he knows it’s his fault.

An episode like “Ozymandias” has to happen to shake up the television world. Create a new standard and people will want to surpass it. Some shows have tried to match the fever dream of “Ozymandias,” but I don’t think we’ve had any true contenders. Still, I think this episode moved TV forward, and one day we’ll see what it inspired.

3. The Wire, “That’s Got His Own”

The David Simon style had to be represented on this list somehow. It played a huge part in forming my standards for television and writing. The problem with the Simon style however, at least from a self-indulgent list making standpoint, is that Simon shows are so novel-like in structure that picking one episode is like plucking a tiny portion out of a larger story. (The same can probably be said for every episode on this list, but none of the other shows are structured the same way.) Thus the first draft of this list included “Bomb in the Garden,” the series finale of Generation Kill, and not an episode of The Wire.

In the end, however, I think “That’s Got His Own” is the ultimate pay-off of the David Simon method of television. In layman’s terms, The Wire is a show about shit rolling downhill. A small decision made by someone in the police department will have devastating consequences for those who live in their care. Herc accidentally lets slip while interrogating a dealer that he spoke to Randy Wagstaff. The dealer tells Marlo, and Marlo makes everyone spread the word. Now Randy’s seen as a snitch. Herc goes about his day. Randy’s home gets firebombed, and he loses his foster-mother and his future.

Since the show has conditioned us to think this way about each and every event that happens, even the quieter moments have a hint of doom. The schools are running a fifty-four million dollar budget deficit. Newly elected Mayor Thomas Carcetti goes to the Republican governor to beg for help. The governor tells him offscreen that he’ll give him money in exchange for a tighter grip on Baltimore’s public schools, a move that’ll cost Carcetti precious political capital. He chooses not to take the money. There’s no immediate bloodshed, but the audience knows that some day, there will be consequences for someone we care about, and they will be dire. That’s how The Wire works.

Much like “Ozymandias,” or any late season episode written by George Pelecanos, “That’s Got His Own” is a devastating episode that explores the darkest depths of its characters. Randy’s home is set ablaze. Bubbles accidentally kills Sherrod. Michael joins Marlo’s crew and ends his friendship with Namond. Dukie’s forced to leave school. The difference, however, is scope. There is almost assuredly someone suffering in Albuquerque thanks to the drugs Walter White pumps out onto the streets, but the show doesn’t think about those people very often. The events in “That’s Got His Own” will not only cost those in the immediate aftermath, but in one way or another, everyone in the city.

Even seemingly positive advancements will have dire consequences down the road. Omar robs the drug shipment from the co-op board. Though he can now afford to live somewhere nicer, the robbery leads to more death, and the streets will eventually call him back.

2. Mad Men, “The Suitcase”

Everyone has a different set of emotional soft spots when it comes to TV moments. Some people go for the violent climax of a Game of Thrones season. Todd VanDerWerff likes a moment of hard-earned happiness. For me, it’s a rare moment of vulnerability between two people who care for one another. I’m not just talking about romantic relationships, mind you. I’m talking about simple emotional connection. The spoils of when a character takes the risk of opening up to another person.

Connection is hard to come by for Don Draper. He took another man’s name and deserted the military. He got to leave Korea, but as a result, he’ll never be able to be completely honest about who he is or where he’s from. There are times when he craves affection, but there's never anybody to turn to, even when he was married. At the end of “The Suitcase,” Don gets off the phone after finding out that Anna Draper, the only person left on this world who got to know the real Dick Whitman, has died. He looks up at Peggy.

We’ve followed Peggy since her first day on the job in the pilot. We’ve watched her rise in the ranks despite her own hardships. There’s something special about Peggy, and Don can see it. They often test each other. One of Don’s favorite pastimes when stressed out or angry is to take it out on Peggy, and Peggy’s been furious at Don all season for failing to acknowledge her work in his award winning Glo-Coat ad and making her feel worthless.

During “The Suitcase,” they spend the night in the office together, and after a big fight, they forgive each other. The next morning, Don makes his call. He looks up at Peggy, and he finally breaks down. Peggy asks him who died. “The only person in the world who really knew me.” Peggy puts her hand on his shoulder. “That’s no true.”

It can easily be argued that Peggy's wrong. She doesn’t know about the real Don Draper or anything about his life before Sterling Cooper. And yet, I believe her. I don’t think Don could’ve had this moment with anyone else on the show, and I don’t think Don is merely the sum total of his past. Don and Peggy’s relationship will always have peaks and valleys, and Peggy may never get to know about Dick Whitman. But at the end of the day, they love each other, and that’s all that really matters.

1. The Sopranos, “Long Term Parking”

Volumes have been written about the poisonous influence of our modern day TV anti-heroes, especially Tony Soprano.

In some ways, season five finds Tony getting a little better. (“Better” may be a bit of a stretch.) He handled the Feech La Manna situation before it spiraled out of control. He’s taken steps to win back Carmela, though if we take a look at that deal, we can see the irregularities around the margin. (See what I did there?) None of this spells redemption, but at the very least, I would argue that it says that Tony is capable of recognizing when he’s being trapped by his own personality. It would be impractical of us to believe that Tony would ever leave the mob behind, though it’s probably the only way his life won’t end in death, prison, or despair. I think on some level he's beginning to understand that in season five, and for him, that's a lot.

What I love about “Long Term Parking” is not only what it has to say about Tony, but about anti-heroes in general. The primary difference between the TV of now and TV of old is, as we discussed in the Deadwood section, moral ambiguity. We live in a time where shows ruled by chaos and disorder can reign and bad people can prosper for morally righteous reasons. These shows often go far out of their way to justify these character’s behavior. There’s always a family to feed or a supposed greater good to serve. Maybe it's just to feel good for a few seconds.

But at some point, there’s a right and a wrong. Tony Soprano functions in a world where his problems can be solved with murder and violence. The rules that apply to us don’t apply to him. As such, Adriana La Cerva gets a bullet to the head and Tony Soprano gets to hold his wife’s hand on his brand spanking new property. The land is ostensibly for Carmela to build a spec house, but we all know that there will come a day when Tony asks for his cut.

A person becomes dissatisfied or something befalls them, so they chose a life outside of normalcy. Sometimes that person stays within the bounds of societal rules. You run for president or start a TV show where you review life experiences. Others don’t, and turn to the mafia or drug dealing. It’s at this point that there’s a choice: Do what’s right, or don’t. I don’t think its a coincidence that those who choose the former get a happy ending. Bartlet runs for re-election with a clear conscience. River saves the crew. Don Draper forms a bond, and there’s hope that maybe he can connect with someone else other than Anna.

Those who choose the latter only bring more despair onto themselves and everyone around them. They embrace a worldview that they can’t shake, even with collapse staring them in the face. Walter White loses his family. Saul Tigh will eventually kill his own wife. Forrest MacNeil will let his own television show ruin his life. As for Tony Soprano, he gets a moment of peace, but as we see in the apocalyptic final season, it won’t last long.

It’s fitting that the show that arguably gave birth to the modern anti-hero also provides us with an answer to how the anti-hero’s story ends.