The Top TV Episodes of 2021
The episodic nature of television series makes the medium a fundamentally inconsistent one. Even with the very best shows, some episodes will be better and more memorable than others, which is why we still talk about, say, the Teddy Perkins installment of Atlanta rather than the one where Paper Boi is booked to play a college. But the plus side of that reality is that any show — even one that isn’t generally considered among the best of the best — is capable of leveling up in individual episodes where everything comes together just right.
Any attempt to make a list of the best TV episodes of 2021 would naturally include work from a lot of shows that made our top 20 series list for the year — from that electric Succession finale to the Atlantic City heist episode of What We Do in the Shadows. But, rather than revisit excellent series whose praises we’ve already sung, we thought we’d compile a list of great episodes from the rest of the year in television (presented here in alphabetical order). Some of these will be highlights from shows that were serious contenders for the top 20 series list, while others are from shows that weren’t great overall, but had a shining moment this year that we just can’t forget.
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‘Big Mouth’ (Netflix): “The Shane Lizard Rises” (Season 5, Episode 2)
Image Credit: 'Netflix The raunchiest show ever made about middle school had several terrific options for this list, including a Christmas anthology episode framed by sequences where a puppet version of Nick Kroll’s Maury the Hormone Monster promised (not inaccurately) that we would see Santa Claus’ penis. But the pick here features the return of David Thewlis as the Shame Wizard, who preys on the anxiety of Andrew, Missy, and the other kids in an unnerving body horror tale that would likely impress even David Cronenberg.
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‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ (NBC): “The Last Day” (Season 8, Episodes 9 and 10)
Image Credit: John P. Fleenor/NBC The cop comedy spent much of its final season grappling with policework in a post-George Floyd world, with mixed results. The hour-long series finale left those messy questions behind for one more heist story, this one revisiting significant characters like Chelsea Peretti’s Gina (and not-so-significant characters like Fred Armisen’s Mlepnos) and events from throughout the series. “The Last Day” underlined that what made Nine-Nine special wasn’t the cop stories, but the characters and the silliness they got up to every week.
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‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ (HBO): “The Watermelon” (Season 11, Episode 4)
Image Credit: HBO Curb in its later years is a fundamentally uneven show, but one still capable of reminding us why we sit through Larry David’s awful behavior for 30-plus minutes a week. “The Watermelon” is quintessential Curb, including well-deployed guest stars (Woody Harrelson as himself; Kaley Cuoco as a littering optometrist whose relationship with Vince Vaughn’s Freddy Funkhauser is ruined by Larry), and a central conceit — Larry goes to great lengths to apologize to a Klansman whose robes he accidentally stains — that would only make sense with this man and this show.
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‘Gangs of London’ (AMC/AMC+): “Episode 5”
Image Credit: AMC/SKY The British crime drama was pretty dull whenever anyone was talking, but incredibly thrilling whenever they were trying to shoot, stab, or otherwise mutilate one another. This episode, directed by Gangs co-creator Gareth Evans (The Raid), offered nearly nonstop action, including a prolonged, ultraviolent siege of a militia compound in the countryside. None of the characters involved in the big set pieces were that important to the larger story, but it didn’t matter, because Evans’ direction was the real star attraction all along.
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‘Hawkeye’ (Disney+): “Echoes” (Season 1, Episode 3)
Image Credit: Marvel Studios Speaking of action, it’s a bit odd that the Marvel Cinematic Universe — the biggest action franchise of the last 15 years (and the biggest thing in pop culture over that span) — generally features forgettable fight sequences. There have been rare exceptions, though, like the bus brawl in Shang-Chi or, even more recently, the absolute banger of a car chase featured midway through the run of Hawkeye. In this one, Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton is behind the wheel of an old sedan while protégé Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) is firing all of his trick arrows at the tracksuit-wearing criminals in hot pursuit through the streets of New York. It’s impeccably staged and shot by the directing team known as Bert & Bertie, and more exciting and fun than all but a handful of similar scenes throughout the more expensive MCU movies. And the episode surrounding that chase included a poignant origin story for villain Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), and more endearing bonding between the once and future Hawkeyes. More like this, please.
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‘How to With John Wilson’ (HBO): “How to Appreciate Wine” (Season 2, Episode 2)
Image Credit: HBO Even by this docu-comedy’s typically digressive standards, no one could have been prepared for the way that Season Two’s second episode somehow moved from Wilson learning about wine into the territory of another HBO docuseries, The Vow, with a flashback to Wilson in his college days running afoul of the NXIVM cult during an a capella event in upstate New York. Is this the most ambitious crossover event in history?
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‘I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson’ (Netflix): Season 2, Episode 2
Image Credit: NETFLIX Spotlighting any one episode of Robinson’s deeply uncomfortable, explosively funny sketch-comedy series almost feels like missing the point, since the show lives or dies by individual bits. My favorite sketch from Season Two starred Patti Harrison as the table-wielding main character of a confusing series of driver’s-ed videos, but the rest of that episode was hit-or-miss. Every now and then, though, Robinson and company put together an episode that’s all killer, no filler, like this installment, technically titled “They have a cake shop there Susan where the cakes just look stunning.” It features Robinson as a businessman spending his company per diem on overpriced shirts with complicated patterns, then as a dad enlisting a stranger (Bob Odenkirk, note-perfect as the simultaneous subject of both comedy and tragedy) to tell his daughter an escalating series of lies, and finally as a reformed “piece of shit” thinking back on his days ordering “sloppy steaks” with his crew. Every ITYSL sketch is in some way about a person overcommitting to an idea; “They have a cake shop there Susan where the cakes just look stunning” is a time when the show consistently committed throughout.
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‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ (FX): “Man Handled” (Episode 6)
Image Credit: Tina Thorpe/FX " The long-delayed third season of American Crime Story came and went with very little attention, in part because it wasn’t available to stream while it aired (it’ll wind up on Netflix eventually, as part of a deal made before the FX-Hulu partnership), in part because it wasn’t all that good. But in between the fat suits, SNL-level impressions of Clinton-era figures, and other weird stylistic and narrative choices, there was Beanie Feldstein giving a genuinely moving performance as Monica Lewinsky. This Monica spotlight, taking place on the day she was first approached by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s team and then implicitly held captive in a hotel room, suggests a far better version of the story than what we got through the rest of the show’s run.
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‘Mare of Easttown’ (HBO): “Sacrament” (Episode 7)
Image Credit: Sarah Shatz/HBO MAX The Kate Winslet-led crime drama was excellent throughout as a character study, a mystery, and a generator of memes about DelCo accents and heartily-consumed hoagies. But its final episode was a cut above even that, wrapping up both the mystery and Mare’s internal struggle in satisfying, often profoundly moving fashion. Julianne Nicholson’s performance in the hour as Mare’s pained best friend is as raw and riveting as anything on the small screen this year.
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‘The Nevers’ (HBO): “True” (Season 1, Episode 6)
Image Credit: HBO MAX This series about a collection of oddball superheroes in Victorian London struggled for most of its first season to justify its existence — and not just because its creator, Joss Whedon, walked away after principal photography ended (and right before he became radioactive in the business for his past treatment of actors). But the meandering nature of the early episodes was replaced with real purpose and clarity in the bracing season finale, which traveled to the distant future, and then to events before the series had even begun, to explain exactly what was happening, who the show’s chief heroine Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) really was, and why anyone should care about any of it. Hopefully, Whedon’s successors can carry that momentum into a second season.
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‘Pose’ (FX): “Take Me to Church” (Season 3, Episode 4)
Image Credit: Eric Liebowitz/FX The Pose series finale was pretty wonderful in its own right, in the show’s proudly sappy style. But for this list, we’ll pick an earlier chapter. In “Take Me to Church,” Billy Porter’s Pray Tell learns he only has a few months left before he’ll die of AIDS and returns to his Southern hometown to say goodbye to his loved ones — several of them played by Black sitcom stars of decades past, like Anna Maria Horsford (Amen), Janet Hubert (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), and Jackée Harry (227). A simple, touching final spotlight for the show’s breakout performer in Porter, and also a nuanced look back at what growing up queer in a small, conservative community would have been like for Pray Tell.
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‘The Pursuit of Love’ (Amazon Prime Video): Episode 1
Image Credit: Amazon Studios Emily Mortimer’s three-part adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s novel of the same name — about two English cousins coming of age in between the two world wars — was a joy, particularly in its high-energy opening chapter, which played like someone had hired Wes Anderson to direct a Masterpiece Theatre. Mortimer’s work was bursting with style: artful tableaux of hopeless romantic Linda (Lily James) and sensible Fanny (Emily Beecham), a soundtrack mixing period-appropriate music with classic rock and modern pop, and colorful performances by James, Beechman, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, and more.
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‘Scenes From a Marriage’ (HBO): “The Vale of Tears” (Episode 3)
Image Credit: JOJO WHILDEN/HBOMAX This remake of the groundbreaking Ingmar Bergman tale of a crumbling marriage was a stellar acting showcase for Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, but also a frustrating watch for most of its five-episode run. The chief exception: the middle chapter, set after the marriage has ended, with Chastain’s Mira and Isaac’s Jonathan revisiting all their old arguments in a way that felt vital and raw, where so much of the rest of the limited series seemed too abstract to work. (An honorable mention shoutout here also to the third season of Netflix’s Master of None — something of an unofficial Scenes remake that didn’t entirely work either, outside of its spectacular fourth episode, which chronicled one half of the failed partnership going through IVF treatments on her own.)
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‘The Simpsons’ (Fox): “A Serious Flanders” (Season 33, Episodes 6 and 7)
Image Credit: FOX In its fourth decade, The Simpsons is of course not as consistently great as it was back in the Nineties. But it’s become more stylistically inventive in its advanced age, and a few times each season will churn out episodes that wouldn’t feel out of place in the animated comedy’s heyday. Case in point: This two-part parody of prestige-TV antihero shows in general and FX’s Fargo in particular. “A Serious Flanders” is about as dark, violent (RIP, Disco Stu, Fat Tony, and Mr. Burns, among others), and out-of-continuity as the show gets, outside of its annual “Treehouse of Horror” stories. It’s also devilishly clever in the ways it shines a light the many clichés of this era of cable and streaming drama.
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‘Ted Lasso’ (Apple TV+): “Manchester City” (Season 2, Episode 8)
Image Credit: Apple TV+ Ted Lasso went darker and more ambitious for its second season, which explored the limitations of Ted’s kindness when it came to lifting up both his team and the people working for it. Much of it worked, and some of it didn’t (particularly anything to do with romance and/or Santa Claus). But the epic-length “Manchester City” showed just how effective Ted could be in this new and more introspective mode, as a lopsided loss forced powerful epiphanies from Jamie, Roy, and especially from Ted himself.
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‘Yellowjackets’ (Showtime): “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
Image Credit: Paul Sarkis/SHOWTIME Whatever stumbles this first-year drama has made in more recent installments (take the New Jersey state senate campaign — please), it had a real knockout of a debut episode. Directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, the pilot smartly sets up the show’s two timelines — a girls high-school soccer team’s plane crash in the remote Canadian woods in 1996, and the travails of the adult survivors 25 years later — and various mysteries in enticing ways, and introduced two great sets of actors (including Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis at the top of their games in the present-day section). Hopefully, the season’s concluding chapters can get back to the pilot’s level, rather than crashing in their own way.