Welcome back! I have a lot of
big posts to write and not much time to do them. I have a special catch up time
to do in this month and the next one. I might even do some of this in March as
well. I want to keep up on this blog now that the hiatus is over. And this
post, once to be the last post of 2021, is the first one that’s going to do it.
Now when it came to ranking
the top 25 episodes of 2020, there were some changes with the pandemic and what
happened with it. This meant that some episodes were made to focus on the
pandemic and there were a lot of good ones of these that we wouldn’t have
otherwise seen. We also got at least one episode on the racial injustice. And some
sudden season finales were good episodes that might not have stood out as much
otherwise. Now let’s get to the episodes.
#25 Chapter Seventy-Three: The
Locked Room (Riverdale): This almost wasn’t on the list as I was going to
instead include an ABC news special on the pandemic instead. But then I
remembered just how good this episode was and how it belonged on the list. While
I missed the first half of this season, this was one of the reasons why it was
good to come back for a while as I could see some of what had happened on the
show come to fruition as one of the arcs on the show came to an end. Jughead
explained some of what had gone on while identifying those who would have had
him murdered. It was just what we needed to see to end this arc of the show in
a great way.
#24 Saturday Night Live at
Home (Saturday Night Live): One of the few socially distancing episodes that we
saw, it was nice to see the cast perform and do stuff even without a live
studio audience. While most people hated such a thing as zoom meetings and
whatnot, we never would have seen such a great time like this without it.
#23 Fasten Your Seatbelts
(Manifest): The season 2 premiere of this show, it provided a lot of great
twists and turns throughout the whole episode as it continued the previous
season’s cliffhanger in a good way while also setting up a surprise ending and
giving a good episode the rest of the way as well. For a show that kind of
jumped around in quality when I saw it, this was a good standout.
#22 Fade Out (Arrow): The
series finale of the show did what I wonder if it should be done more often or
if I should ever do as a showrunner of a show: end the series with the funeral
of the protagonist. There was more in there than just the end of Oliver’s arc
to the franchise as we saw other characters in the show’s history reunite and
include the last major mission involved with the show.
#21 Pilot (Big Sky): As I
think about just how far in quality and content the show has strayed from its
original plot and purpose, I still think that the way this show started was a pretty
good way to set up all of the major plot elements of the original episodes and
its arc.
#20 The Clue in the Captain’s
Painting (Nancy Drew): What became the first season finale had quite a lot of
interesting parts to it as it had cliffhangers going into what would become its
next season. That wasn’t all that was good about it, but in a TV season where
most shows couldn’t get out the cliffhangers that they were wanting to, this
one happened to have a good set up for the future making fans even more
disappointed that there would be an even longer wait until we got it. But that’s
what a good season finale cliffhanger does: leave fans wanting more as we
eagerly wait to see what happens next.
#19 Aloha (Hawaii Five-0): This
series finale made the list as a lot of them did as it provided a good way to
end the series at hand. It makes you glad that they were able to finish filming
the series before the pandemic related shutdowns. Speaking of which…
#18 Clueless (Schooled): For a
show that didn’t know that this episode would end the season, much less the
whole series, it provided a great homage to the movie Clueless while also
ending the series nicely in a way it otherwise might never have done.
#17 Pilot (9-1-1: Lone Star): Here’s
a great way to start a TV series. It shows you why the leads in the show got
together where they did in the place that they did while also talking about
series issues like PTSD and missing persons. There was a lot in there, which is
why it became a two parter, but you never felt like you were missing much of
anything in it.
#16 Frontline (The Good
Doctor): This two parter focused on the pandemic in the show’s season premiere
and first episode filmed right after it had started as we saw this show’s take
on the whole thing at hand. I quite liked it and felt that it was a good way of
addressing this.
#15 3 Seventeen Year Olds
(S.W.A.T.): Focusing more on the recent racial injustice than the pandemic, it
was nice to see this season premiere go in a bit of a different direction than
focusing on the other main issue of the year instead going into a cultural reckoning
of today’s times versus those in the past and how they related together.
#14 In the Air Tonight (NCIS:
New Orleans): Set in March of 2020, one of the strangest times in the whole
world, another two part episode focused on the pandemic and how it changed a
lot of things in the world including how these people were reacting to it. It
was a strong start to what became the final season of the show.
#13 Whenever You’re Ready (The
Good Place): The last episode of the show may have had some issues as it seemed
to imply that one would want to erase their own existence in eternity due to
the boredom that you would succumb to there, it still had a great send off to
the characters that we would know and love throughout the whole series.
#12 Like Father… (Prodigal
Son): Officially the best cliffhanger of the year, it was shocking to see the
twist at the end of Malcolm’s sister turning into a killer and all of the
events leading up to it. Just the way that she did it in addition to knowing
that it needed to be done as well made the season’s end even more shocking than
we otherwise would have gotten.
#11 My Corona (Bull): This was
the best of the episodes focusing on the pandemic as we got to have a more humorous
look at it than just a serious one. While this episode was largely just instead
the head of Bull given his dreams while suffering from covid, he was still able
to do what he knew he needed to in the reality of this world where people
randomly burst into song.
#10 Day of Death (The Rookie):
I had taken a bit of a break from this show to focus on watching the final
season of Madam Secretary and not even bother trying to record it. Sometimes
when you come back to a show after a break from it, you see a really good
episode that makes you wonder why you ever gave it up in the first place.
Ultimately, following the cliffhanger of the midseason finale, we got to see
one of the characters try to outwit her captor and stay alive even while buried
in a barrel and wanting for the rest of the team to get to her in time. It was
a wonderful episode to see.
#9 Save+The+Dam+World
(MacGyver): There wasn’t much not to like about this episode where the Phoenix
foundation had to continue with the threat of Kodex with some of them having infiltrated
it and the other part worried that they might have turned with even one of the
villains willing to save their own planet in the end.
#8 Pilot (Stargirl): A lot of
shows that aired on the CW after this one had terrible origin stories in their
first episodes. This was what a show should strive for when creating a first
episode. There was a lot of back story into the characters at hand as we saw
the beginnings of the main character’s turn at being a superhero in the end and
start the series.
#7 Deus Lex Machina
(Supergirl): Episodes like this makes me think that Jon Cryer missed his
calling. He never should have been in comedy. He should have always been a
dramatic villain. This show explained a lot about how Lex Luthor was living in
the post crisis world and managed to make people believe that he was a hero
with few people knowing the truth at the time.
#6 My Hangover’s Arrived
(Dynasty): In what was a clear homage to The Hangover movie, the clear
difference between that movie and this episode is that this episode was
actually good in a very fun way as it set up a lot for the future while also providing
a whodunit of sorts as they sought to piece together some of what had happened
over the previous day and night.
#5 The One Where We’re Stuck
on TV (Legends of Tomorrow): If you had told me that I would have wanted to see
what effectively a crossover between Friends, Downton Abbey, Star Trek, and
Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, I would have thought that you were either crazy or
telling me what you think the plot of an episode of Legends of Tomorrow should
be. And this was a great episode, going as far as using the filming styles of
each show and making sense in the world of the show. It even combined the high
stakes of the previous episode Doomworld while also combining the fun of
Legends of To-Meow-Meow and being one of the best homages to TV ever made.
#4 Out of the Past (Marvel’s
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.): As much as I wanted to include the series finale of
the show in this list as it did just about everything right a finale could do,
this episode was better in the final season of the show that was better than
all the rest, rising above the occasion to be a good end to the series. This episode
finally resolved the cliffhanger ending of Agent Carter while providing a great
link for the future of the series with a new character as part of it.
#3 Leave a Light on (Grey’s
Anatomy): Perhaps the most controversial part of the list as it is not only on
the best episode list, but this high on it, this episode explained what
happened to Alex Karev in a way that many didn’t like, but I felt was one of
the best episodes in terms of character development that we ever saw in TV
history. Everything actually made sense about this episode in terms of where we
last saw him in the series, why he would have left, and why it would have been
so hard to explain what had happened to him. He narrated perhaps the most
heartbreaking episode of the series where no one even died, but it still
provided a satisfying ending to his arc on the show.
#2 The Arizona (NCIS): In a nod
to World War II and a quest to right potential wrongs, a man goes to drastic
lengths in order to get the award he deserves for serving his country and
proving that he could. Christopher Lloyd was spectacular in this as was the
rest of the cast with the writing top notch.
#1 Dancing at Los Angeles (All
Rise): I have no idea just how short
turnaround this episode got, but it was great how the writers of this show
could do a virtual episode so quickly with the actors able to accommodate and
the show going out around the time when it was and would be one of the most
topical episodes in TV history.