The best sitcom episode of all time

[jr/shotglass]

Few sitcom episodes have ever affected me as strongly as Henry Blake's last episode.

 

[DanOregon]

MASH is a tough one, very much a dramedy - but the episode filmed as the POV of the injured soldier was a good one.

 

[mpcincal]

Turned the clock forward so he didn't die on Christmas.

The young Swayze being told he has leukemia was a year-jerker, too.

I remember once, just for the hell of it, making a list of well-known actors (well-known at the time or later in their career) who had done prominent guest shots on M*A*S*H, and I always thought Swayze's performance in that episode was the best of the bunch. He was a wounded soldier who the doctors found out had leukemia and were going to send him to Tokyo for treatment, but he insisted on staying put for his als0-wounded buddy. The writers also did a great job at the end tying up that story with the other subplot of Father Mulcahy hosting and trying to impress a religious higher-up and being upset that that things weren't going quite right during his visit.

 

[tea and ease]

I changed my vote because the word "best" began to change meaning as others voted. So now I defined "best" as the one episode that has stayed in my heart, and I've thought about since it's airing. It's a MASH episode where Hawkeye reveals, through therapy, a time when they need to be silent and a woman's chicken is bawking.

 

[mpcincal]

I changed my vote because the word "best" began to change meaning as others voted. So now I defined "best" as the one episode that has stayed in my heart, and I've thought about since it's airing. It's a MASH episode where Hawkeye reveals, through therapy, a time when they need to be silent and a woman's chicken is bawking.

That was part of the 2 1/2 hour final episode.

 

[Hermes]

I think "Dinner Party" and "Monorail" (Simpsons) are my two favorite pieces of television writing.

"Dinner Party" was as close as the American version of The Office got to the cringe of the UK version without crossing the "so uncomfortable it's unbearable" line (crossed by "Scott's Tots" episode, which I cannot watch again.) It's note for note perfect.

 

[tea and ease]

That was part of the 2 1/2 hour final episode.

Gosh, I then wrongly
remembered that as probably 3/4 through the series. No matter, the reveal stays.

 

[Slacker]

I changed my vote because the word "best" began to change meaning as others voted. So now I defined "best" as the one episode that has stayed in my heart, and I've thought about since it's airing. It's a MASH episode where Hawkeye reveals, through therapy, a time when they need to be silent and a woman's chicken is bawking.

That storyline doesn't fit in with "sitcom," though. ... Epic drama, hell yeah.

 

[HanSenSE]

I remember the episode of Cheers around Woody's wedding being really funny.g s

The All In The Family episode when Maude shows up to help them get through the flu was great too.

Was hoping someone would mention that Cheers episode. All-time laughfest for me.

As for WKRP, have always liked the one where the staff does a jingle for a chain of funeral homes.

 

[playthrough]

The WKRP episode where Johnny and Venus participated in a police demonstration about how alcohol dulls your senses and reflexes. Except Johnny gets better the more he drinks.

Also the phone cops episode.

There's a WKRP podcast where they made a Johnny Fever "aircheck" episode, where they strung together every clip of when he's "on the air." It's about an hour and fantastic, from the pilot to the police demonstration and on and on. Of course many times he's coming out of a song or leading into one, so it's also a sort of time capsule for music in that era (plus other stuff Howard Hesseman wanted for Johnny, like Chuck Berry, etc.).

 

[Brian J Walter]

There's so many funny shows I've completely forgotten about, so I could never definitively say like I could for a drama ("Half Measures" from "Breaking Bad" is the greatest thing I've ever seen.)

I'm going to go ahead and agree with that and I have no idea which episode that is (gonna look it up next), because nearly everything I saw on that show was the greatest thing I've ever seen. Wish BB would have gone on and on but at the same time I'm glad it didn't because it's absolutely perfect.

 

[outofplace]

The Simpsons, like Seinfeld, is another show you could fill an entire list with and there would be no wrong answers.
Besides Marge vs. The Monorail, you could easily put "You Only Move Twice" (the Hank Scorpio episode), Treehouse of Horror III and V, the Stonecutters episode, "22 Short Films About Springfield" and at least a dozen others.

Among the animated shows, though, I think my vote would go to Futurama's "Parasites Lost." Fry gets worms in his colon and the crew has to shrink down to microscopic size and go inside him to get them out, in an homage to "Fantastic Voyage."
Every little zinger and throwaway line ("Gumbercules? I LOVE that guy!") and small sight gag (Fry getting in an elevator button inside his body and the buttons read brain, lungs and ball room) connect, and they're fired out non-stop. The jokes have some wit to them, and the entire story actually advances the plot of the series a bit. It's a darn masterpiece.

Another great one is the Season 1 Venture Bros. episode "Tag Sale! You're It" The amount of world building they do in 22 minutes is staggering. They introduce several great background characters and long-running plot lines, and have about eight different subplots boiling at once, yet somehow tie everything together at the end. You can watch that one episode without having ever seen another and have a great time, but as you do watch more of the series you realize how much they established in that one episode. You could teach a clash in story plotting from that one.

"Parasites Lost" is great. Reading your post, I immediately remembered Fry trying to play the Holophonor a the end.