10 Favorite Episodes of Your Favorite Show

My favorite show (Puella Magi Madoka Magica) is only 12 episodes long, so I'll go with Cowboy Bebop instead.

1. Hard Luck Woman (Episode 24)
2. The Real Folk Blues (2 parter - Episodes 25-26)
3. Speak Like a Child (Episode 18)
4. Toys in the Attic (Episode 11)
5. Ballad of Fallen Angels (Episode 5)
6. Ganymede Elegy (Episode 10)
7. Asteroid Blues (Episode 1)
8. Mushroom Samba (Episode 17)
9. My Funny Valentine (Episode 15)
10. Brain Scratch (Episode 23)

I'll have you know that the ORIGINAL Batman is Adam West!

The Sopranos:

1. Whoever Did This (4x09)
2. Long Term Parking (5x12)
3. Whitecaps (4x13)
4. Funhouse (2x13)
5. Soprano Home Movies (6x13)
6. Kennedy and Heidi (6x18)
7. The Second Coming (6x19)
8. The Blue Comet (6x20)
9. Made in America (6x21)
10. College (1x05)

The Wire:

1. Middle Ground (3x11)
2. Bad Dreams (2x11)
3. Storm Warnings (2x10)
4. That's Got His Own (4x12)
5. Final Grades (4x13)
6. All Prologue (2x06)
7. Mission Accomplished (3x12)
8. The Hunt (1x11)
9. Late Editions (5x09)
10. -30- (5x10)

Deadwood:

1. Boy-the-Earth-Talks-To (2x12)
2. Here Was a Man (1x04)
3. Sold Under Sin (1x12)
4. Something Very Expensive (2x06)
5. A Two-Headed Beast (3x05)
6. E.B. Was Left Out (2x07)
7. A Lie Agreed Upon, Parts 1 and 2 (2x01) + (2x02)
8. Amalgamation and Capital (2x09)
9. Tell Him Something Pretty (3x12)
10. The Catbird Seat (3x11)

Hardhome, though.

The Winds of Winter, though.

Quite possibly my fave of the whole series. 

Seasons 5-8 had a couple great moments to be sure. Like two or three and Hardhome was one of them, but everything post-"The Children" is bookended by so much frustrating nonsense that it dampens them relative to earlier great episodes in great seasons. It's just not the same.

I am, thank you! Actually more interested in a lighter/easier watch right now, though. Don't exactly have much free time with work and grad school.

Ha makes it easy then. Just have to say all of them! 

Season 2 just dropped a couple days ago.

As the board's resident anime nutter, I recommend each of these! They may not be easy, but most of them are quite short (which is a big part of why I like anime - it tells full stories with real character arcs instead of never-ending hooks to keep you focused on what happens next).

Anne of Green Gables (50 episodes) - Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli fame directed this, and in my opinion this is his best (keep in mind that I consider Takahata to be arguably the best director ever). This is a carefully paced coming-of-age tale that perfectly captures the way time passes in a child's life. You can watch the full show here in some parts of the world. As far as I know, it has never received a DVD release outside of Japan and isn't available on any streaming services but this one channel on Youtube.


Baccano! (16 episodes) - The title is Italian and translates to "Ruckus!" in English, which is as good of a description as I can give you. A gangster story involving thieves, hitmen, bootleggers, thugs and information brokers in prohibition era New York, filtered through an absurdly intricate non-linear narrative that would make Christopher Nolan blush in envy.


Cowboy Bebop (26 episodes+1 movie) - Style over substance, but even at a glance there's a lot of substance here. You can take this as a fun action show, but slowly it begins doing fun things with narrative conventions and changing the way we see the characters, so that by the end we've been on quite the journey.


Kino's Journey (13 episodes+3 bonus episodes) - "The world is not beautiful; therefore it is." This is a show about a philosophy. Kino travels from place to place, seeking beauty in the people around her... and sometimes (most of the time) what she sees is not beautiful. But there is, nonetheless, beauty in everything she observes, if she searches for it. This is a calm, contemplative work, and one of my all time favorite pieces of fiction. I'm aware that there is a recent remake as well, but the show I'm talking about is the 2003 version.


Paranoia Agent (13 episodes) - Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Paprika) made one foray into television, and it is this strange anthology-ish show about people getting whacked on the head with a baseball bat. Ranging from police procedural to slapstick comedy, Kon mixes up the formula with each new protagonist (who will shortly become a victim of said bat to the head). Despite the seemingly random nature of the show (episodes vary WILDLY in tone), Kon has never been more focused than he is here: he has something to say, and dammit he will come out and say it! This unity of vision keeps the show grounded and tight.


Princess Tutu (26 episodes) - Now THIS is how you do a fantasy story geared towards kids. Complex without being needlessly complicated, with characters that grow and change drastically over the course of the story. You could take the characters at the beginning, middle, and end, and you will be shocked to see three entirely different groups of people. On the surface this seems like a goofy fantasy story for young girls (and it is!), but it also works as a meta examination of writing, as a tragedy, and as a coming-of-age tale.


Puella Magi Madoka Magica (12 episodes+1 movie) - Classical tragedy at its finest. It is NOT easy watching by any means - this is one show that earns the moniker of cruel for what it puts its characters through - but it is a magnificent deconstruction of "good people" doing "good things" for "good reasons," while never condemning them for their faults.


Serial Experiments Lain (13 episodes) - Do you wanna see David Lynch make a cyberpunk show about man's disengagement from reality, hiding themselves behind computer screens and arguing about movies instead of dealing with the world? Well, this isn't David Lynch (this is possibly weirder), but Lain may scratch that itch anyway. Definitely artsy-fartsy kind of stuff, but it's a surprisingly touching snapshot of a pre-Y2K attitude towards the internet.

Anything with Gillian Anderson is good by me. Sex Education is definitely on the list.