My Favorite TV Episodes of 2018

It's almost 2019, and it's been, in my opinion, a pretty darn good year for television. Unfortunately, there were a lot of shows I would've loved to talk about more that sadly never got written about on my part, either because I was too busy, or because my ability to write about them was far outside of my normal range of "shows at steady moderation of intensity." However, I thought I would just make a short list of the episodes of television, and their respective shows, that really stood out to me. There are, of course, plenty of shows that I missed that would've probably made it on here if I had more time, and this list is far from definitive (especially since it only really consists of comedies by some definition of the term), but I just want to pin them down here as recommendations.

The shows will be listed chronologically in regards to their air date instead of ranked by some hierarchy of my enjoyment, because that would make all of this far too difficult (aside from a very clear #1 and #2). Further, I'm only writing about one episode per show, even if there are multiple episodes of one that are far better than those of another. Without further ado, here are the episodes that made my year.

"The Vegging" - The Amazing World of Gumball 
Air Date: January 15th, 2018 - Cartoon Network

Look, it was inevitable that Gumball would come up at some point, and anyone who follows my reviews would probably be able to very easily figure out which episode would be my favorite of the year. This past season has been an interesting one, starting out stronger than ever but quickly falling into a midseason slump which, while conceptually daring, often struggled to truly elevate the premises making up each episode, and while there was plenty of charm, it often felt like the writing was on autopilot. "The Vegging," though, is an episode that takes a simple premise, and proves that Gumball—when its heart is in the right place—can make anything magical.

In this case, the entire episode is pretty much about Gumball and Darwin's struggle to do absolutely nothing, and a day that refuses to let them. Every minute of the episode is comedy gold, including perhaps one of the funniest gags that the show has ever produced, with Gumball and Darwin repeatedly tuning their brains out for so long that the post-apocalypse happens around them, then they save the universe, then Gumball gets married to an alien... all in the span of less than a minute. "The Vegging," as a whole, is relentlessly rapid-fire.

All of this culminates in Gumball and Darwin having to get out of their house and rescue their family, who is dangling near-death off the edge of a bridge in the family car. Even then, though, our protagonist's vegetation knows no bounds, and they do everything they can to ensure that their lethargy remain uncompromised, all the way down to mailing themselves to their family in swivel chairs. Even at the point when the car is about to go off the edge, Gumball prioritizes his veg, and his ability to ultimately save the day just goes to show that his apathy knows no bounds.

Other highlights: "The Faith," "The Founder," "The Spinoffs."

"Tips" - Apple & Onion
Air Date: March 2nd, 2018 - Cartoon Network

It's somewhat hard to describe what makes Apple & Onion so appealing. It's the sort of show that elicits reactions ranging from "surprisingly charming" to "excruciatingly unemotive," but I think the easiest way to describe the show is just that it's different, in a very simple and sweet way. Never overly-saccharine, it's a show that rides on an incredibly deadpan sort of optimism, with each episode monitoring the day-to-day life of two dudes who live in an apartment together, Apple (show creator George Gendi) and Onion (Richard Ayoade), in a city inhabited by talking food. Nothing is overly complex nor narratively-charged, instead serving as a thoughtful, slice-of-life sort of show with visual panache and musical sensibilities. It's basically an animated Flight of the Conchords, to those familiar.

"Tips" is a perfect example of the show's tone and overall vibe, involving Apple and Onion trying to get money to go on a hot air balloon ride, eventually getting a job at their friend's pizza restaurant and chasing after tips. The pair go through an expected level of trial and error due to their eclecticism and varied idiosyncrasies (one attempt to get tips has them hanging over and whispering into customers' ears repeatedly to ensure they're dutifully taken care of), but the show finds its identity in its witty visual presentation and songs. The episode's main musical number is all about tips, and that's where my ability to describe it begins and ends. Elsewhere, "Tips" finds fun ways of making every shot enjoyable, featuring a number of silly sequences, establishing shots, and montages. If Apple & Onion isn't overly-funny, it's a show with a voice that lets it find an admirable little niche.

Other highlights: "Block Party," "Bottle Catch," "Hot Dog's Movie Premiere."

"Blenanas" - Adventure Time
Air Date: March 18th, 2018 - Cartoon Network

There's not a lot of other shows that I have as much respectful ambivalence towards as Adventure Time. It's a fantastic show, and it deserves all the credit that it gets, but it's never really clicked with me, especially as it expanded into an incredibly lore-dense show that was constantly changing the status quo, a decision that many argue as captivating but I found tiresome, indecisive, and self-important. The Adventure Time I enjoy most is the Adventure Time that stays true to its comedic roots, especially when things get conceptual, allowing its journeys to become short character studies and musings on its own medium and decision-making.

"Blenanas," the last episode of the show before diving deep into its culminating narrative, is a meditative respite from the show's otherwise intense story-telling, becoming a sort of meta-commentary on the show's sense of humor and comedy in general (which, unsurprisingly, went right up my alley). The whole premise is that Finn, inspired by Bleh, a humor magazine, seeks validation for a joke caption he writes for one of its illustrations after BMO fails to react to it, eventually teaming up with the like-minded Ice King on a journey to Bleh Headquarters to prove his weight in comedic gold. When they find the headquarters to be abandoned and filled with skeletons, though, they decide to make their own Bleh magazine, disheartened by the perceived gap between its humor and that of your average Joe or Josephine. Perhaps this is the show commenting on the idea of itself and how it's changed overtime, with Finn's insistence on his non sequitur being met with indifference. Maybe it's an ode to creation in general, and to the idea of giving a shock to the system through the evolution of art. Adventure Time, as usual, is heavily interpretive, even in its low-key affairs. At the end of the day, though, all it takes Finn to prove that he's still got it to BMO is a slip on a couple of banana peels and some ripped pants—no matter how much comedy changes, there's always something enjoyable about something so simple.

Look. This isn't the best Adventure Time episode out there, let alone this year; we just had its series finale, for God's sake. But there's something quaint about "Blenanas" that let it leave a mark in the back of my mind in the same way that only a few other episodes could (see: "Root Beer Guy," "Food Chain," "Jake the Brick," "Bad Jubies," "The Hall of Egress"). Plus, this is my final chance to write about the show at all, most likely, and having a strong episode just makes that undertaking a little bit easier.

 

Other highlights: "Come Along With Me," "Jake the Starchild."

"Teddy Perkins" - Atlanta
Air Date: April 5th, 2018 - FX

There are few episodes of television that I feel are complete monuments of the craft with the ability to withstand time, but watching "Teddy Perkins," I felt its importance in the history of contemporary television as soon as it started, and by the end, I was convinced it was one of the best episodes of television I had ever seen, a use of the medium so bold and captivating that it defied my ability to even grade; to compare it to anything else would be a disservice.

Atlanta, though, is the rare show that can just make something like that happen. It's an incredibly difficult show to describe, but in brief, it's about an up-and-coming rapper in Atlanta, Alfred "Paper Boy" Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), and his trials and tribulations through his rising fame alongside his cousin and manager, Earn (Donald Glover) and eccentric right-hand man Darius (Lakeith Stanfield). It's important because it paints a gritty but realistic portrait of what it's like to be a black person living in America, commentating on what fame means and waxing on the shadiness of the music industry, as influenced by Donald Glover's experiences as an rapper (Childish Gambino, for the uninitiated).

Every character is explored thoroughly, going on their own quests for fulfillment while generally going south—Alfred copes with the death of his mother and the tortures of fame (every episode has the running gag of having someone ask to check out their mixtape), Earn struggles to find validation or purpose and struggles with his on-and-off girlfriend Van (Zazie Beetz), and Darius is the glue that holds everyone together, a source of comic relief against the general melancholia. Each episode, too, is directed beautifully, with every frame looking like a stunning photograph (credits to director Hiro Murai), and the show finds interesting ways of incorporating magical realism to hilarious and often deeply metaphorical effect.

But what's the deal with Darius? Throughout the series, he seems to get off relatively easily while the others constantly struggle with themselves and the world around them. Well, "Teddy Perkins" is the answer to that question, pulling the character through the deepest horrors of the show in the form of a journey to obtain a colored piano belonging to an unsettling former child star named Teddy Perkins (Glover in impeccably terrifying prosthetic). Unfortunately, at the risk of spoiling everything about the episode, I'll pretty much stop right there in terms of describing what actually happens.

The episode, though, is masterfully-crafted. When it originally aired, there were no commercial breaks, with the episode's half-hour running time effectively trapping you alongside Darius; even though you're not there, you feel like there's no escape, and nothing to take the tension off. That Atlanta is able to effectively pull of an episode that is legitimate horror, too, without it being tonally-jarring, is a testament to the show as a whole. All in all, "Teddy Perkins" is, without a doubt, my personal choice for best television episode of the year, and it'll stick with you for years to come.

Other highlights: "Money Bag Shawty," "Barbershop," "Woods," "North of the Border."

"Chapter Eight" - Final Space
Air Date: April 23rd, 2018 - TBS

Final Space is an interesting show, especially for me. As someone who has long been a diehard fan of show creator Olan Rogers, a YouTuber with a superb knack for storytelling, I, at times, feel like I was actively rooting for it to succeed, far more than other shows I've seen. For a show in its first season, there were undoubtedly some rough patches, and it's a show that I find difficult to recommend due to its fairly juvenile humor that occasionally comes at the cost of its luscious narrative, but that's what should be expected of a show in its first season, and Final Space, through its occasional hiccups, made a strong case for itself to become a pretty big show.

While the final episode is probably the show's strongest, ending the season on a cliff-hanger that defies clear interpretation, I'll always circle back to "Chapter Eight" as my favorite. Final Space is a show without a status quo, meaning every episode has to accomodate to the fleeting needs of its constantly-evolving cast of characters, and "Chapter Eight" is arguably the last big shove, in that regard, before the show reaches the height of its drama. Whereas other episodes are generally adventures through space in accordance to a linear timeline, though, "Chapter Eight" is more of an intimate character portrait, putting Gary, our protagonist (voiced by Rogers), through the wringer by dissecting his mind with the help of Bolo, a Titan (though his place in the show is otherwise fairly unimportant). What we get, ultimately, is Gary being able to reunite with his father, John Goodspeed (Ron Perlman), whom he hasn't seen since he was a child. Explaining the nuances of the episode is taxing because of the nature of the show and how intense its plot arcs are, but it's a tear-jerking moment in a series that knows how to earn its fair share of tear-jerking, and by the end, it unites the show's other, ragtag heroes with Gary stronger than ever before.

The episode also, rather interestingly, examines the timeline of the show's events, creating an interesting bit of cyclicality, with it serving to explain how many aspects of the series came into play, including how the show's main villain, the Lord Commander (David Tenant), turned evil, and how Gary's sidekick, Mooncake (also Rogers), came into existence. As a whole, this is an episode that is wonderfully-written, and a highlight in a series with too many highlights to count; to put it simply, there's not a lot of other shows I'm looking forward to returning as much as Final Space.

Other highlights: "Chapter Three," "Chapter Six," "Chapter Ten."

"Donald Glover / Childish Gambino" - Saturday Night Live
Air Date: May 5th, 2018 - NBC

In case you needed more proof that Donald Glover is one of the most talented and charismatic people in the entertainment industry, in addition to creating Atlanta, he also hosted what was, in my opinion, the best episode of Saturday Night Live in the past year.

To the uninitiated, SNL is a sketch comedy institution given the task of writing, directing, and broadcasting a live sketch comedy show every week that it's produced, all built around a different host brought in to lead the night. Unsurprisingly, Glover, someone with a sketch comedy background stemming from his work on Derrick Comedy which shot him into the public eye, brought out the best in the show. One sketch finds him as a lawyer defending Jurassic Park in light of a tragic dinosaur attack; another finds him as "Razz P. Berry," an R&B singer who monologues in-song to his once-lover before realizing that the woman he was talking to was someone else entirely. Perhaps the best sketch of the evening, though, was "Friendos," where he, accompanied by Chris Redd and Kenan Thompson as a member of a Migos-esque hip-hop due, goes to group therapy to resolve their personal tension.

SNL, as a show, succeeds or fails on the basis of unpredictability, and I'd be a liar to say that the past two seasons have been perfect. Trial and error, though, is crucial to the show's DNA, and watching a whole show come together in the span of around five days—the outcome of which I had the privilege of doing a few months ago—is amazing.

Oh yeah, Glover also works overtime here as the musical guest, his alias Childish Gambino, performing the world premiere of song-of-the-year "This is America" and a very underrated R&B track, "Saturday." It's the little things.

Other highlights: "Will Ferrell / Chris Stapleton," "John Mulaney / Jack White," "Matt Damon / Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus."

"Chapter Seven: Loud, Fast, and Keep Going" - Barry

Air Date: May 6th, 2018 - HBO

If "Teddy Perkins" is my choice for the best episode of the past year, Barry's "Chapter Seven" is a close second, an engagingly tragic portrait of its main character at his lowest, and together, both shows have proven to be an immense gift to the screens over the past year.

Barry, of course, is an incredibly different show. Leading man Bill Hader (of SNL fame) plays Barry Berkman, a former marine working as a hitman under his handler, Fuches (Stephen Root) for a Chechen mob, but tired of his life, he finds solace in acting in a class taught by "legendary" acting coach Gene Cousineau (the Fonz himself, Henry Winkler). The show then becomes a constant internal conflict as his work as a hitman intensifies and he grows increasingly discontent in the battle over both sides of his life, while his work inevitably complements his performances. (The title of each episode, too, is thematically intertwined, with each one named after a chapter in Cosineau's book while also containing grim parallels to Barry's work.) "Chapter Seven" is the climax of that internal conflict, finding the character deep into tragedy and at a point of no return, all before being thrust on-stage for a rendition of Hamlet.

Similar to Atlanta, though, this is a show that I can't really disclose too much information on, as its linearity makes every episode important in understanding how its narrative flows as a whole. Aside from being deeply dark and dramatic, too, the show has fantastic flashes of comedy, especially in its supporting cast, with Winkler doing some of his best work as Cosineau and Anthony Carrigan's acting as Noho Hank, one of the Chechens Barry works with, being a complete gift to the show. (A large chunk of the episode's opening scene, for instance, is dedicated to his endorsement of self-help books).

Basically, Barry is a fantastic show, and "Chapter Seven" is another of those elusive episodes that I refuse to evaluate. You should check it out.

Other highlights: "Chapter Three: Make the Unsafe Choice," "Chapter Five: Do Your Job," "Chapter Eight: Know Your Truth."

"Joe Pera Takes You On A Fall Drive" - Joe Pera Talks with You
Air Date: May 20th, 2018 - Adult Swim (Cartoon Network)

Joe Pera Talks With You is a show whose charm is almost impossible to describe. It's a series of episodes where the main character, Joe Pera (as a fictionalized version of himself), takes us through his day-to-day existence and life philosophy as a "soft-handed choir teacher" living in Marquette, Michigan, enjoying the simplest things in life. Each episode is framed as a lesson on a different subject or a means of interacting with his audience, though almost all of them end with him making personal revelations. The first episode, for instance, "Joe Pera Shows You Iron," starts out as a geology lesson, but ends with Joe finding beauty in his surroundings after teens prank him by putting a "For sale" sign on his property, causing him to almost leave his home by accepting that new reality; the season finale, meanwhile, "Joe Pera Answers Your Questions About Cold Weather Sports," doesn't discuss cold weather sports at all.

"Joe Pera Takes You On A Fall Drive," though, is a rare instance of Pera adhering to the task at-hand, taking us on a fall drive as he waxes on questions such as "How come jack-o-lanterns scare me so damn much?" As his neighbor Gene (Gene Kelly) tells him, carving pumpkins causes you to lose one-sixteenth of your soul, and the episode becomes a mission to grow that part of his soul back. Unlike other shows, though, Joe Pera is unrelentingly sincere, with its beauty coming not from the visuals or the cinematography (though they certainly help) but from Joe himself, a character so humble and immensely lovable that he just about makes me want to move into Marquette myself. It's a show that demonstrates the beauty of a perceptively humdrum life, and a show about a character at a constant state of inner peace, at one point saying, "Probably the biggest thing that changed about myself in the past ten years is that I now allow myself to eat in the car."

Joe Pera is the sort of show that'll get you through the dark times. It's a show that, however cheesy it sounds, makes you realize how beautiful life can be, no matter how unembellished Joe's is. If there's any show on this list that I would recommend without a speck of doubt, it's this one. Please, please, please watch this show. It's amazing.

Other highlights: "Joe Pera Shows You Iron," "Joe Pera Talks You Back To Sleep," "Joe Pera Reads Church Announcements," "Joe Pera Answers Your Questions About Cold Weather Sports."

"102" - Who is America?
Air Date: July 22nd, 2018 - Showtime

I'm not gonna lie when I say that Who is America? is a show that, as a whole, I found myself somewhat disappointed by. The first show in well over a decade by Sacha Baron Cohen (y'know, the Borat guy), America? found the famed chameleon weaseling his way into interviews with some of the highest politicians and public figures in the US disguised as various personalities, with the goal simply being to see how far he can make them go in his attempts to drag them down to his level. My issue with the show, though, was that its first few episodes—such as "102"—primed it to be an important show, while later episodes fell into an iffy game of "gotcha" with more failures than successes. That, however, doesn't detract from just how compelling, and often mind-blowing, the first few episodes of the show were, and few shows really set off a media storm as much as America? did.

For better or worse, "102" will always be remembered as the Jason Spencer episode, and for good reason. Disguised as Israeli anti-terrorism expert (and inconspicuously former terrorist) Erran Morad, Cohen took Spencer, a Republican state representative of Georgia, through some self-defense classes, successfully goading Spencer into, most damningly, shouting the n-word four times, and later charging at Morad (roleplaying as a terrorist) with his underwear down, butt-first, shouting "I'll touch you! I'll make you a homosexual, you drop that gun right now! USA! USA!" The ease with which those n-words roll off of Spencer's tongue is chilling, and the excerpt from the show is singlehandedly responsible for destroying his political career in one fell swoop (though his threats that one of his opponents might go missing in a swamp for opposing Confederate statues later didn't help much).

That bit alone from the show ensures that "102" gets on the list. It's one of those moments of television that just leaves you completely shocked, not in the fiction it creates but in the ugly reality it exposes. The rest of the episode, though, isn't inherently bad; for instance, Morad later interviews former vice president Dick Cheney, goading him into signing a waterboard kit. The episode ends on a delightful (not the best choice of words, I suppose) high note, too, with Cohen, as far-left diehard Dr. Nira Cain-N'Degeocello, assembling a meeting in racist-ass Kingman, Arizona to propose building the largest mosque in the world. Penned, in part, by Nathan Fielder, creator of Nathan For You (one of the greatest shows of this century, no doubt), it quickly becomes an unbridled, racist mess, the peak of which is a man saying, "I am, I'm racist towards Muslims" after Cohen stresses he doesn't believe anyone in the room to be racist. Wild times.

Other highlights: "101," "103," "110."

Best shows of 2018 (that I've seen): #1 - Atlanta; #2 - Joe Pera Talks With You;  #3 - Barry; #4 - The Amazing World of Gumball; #5 - Final Space.

What were your favorite shows and episodes of 2018 that I didn't cover? What are you looking forward to in 2019? Feel free to leave a comment because I'm always looking for leads of shows to get on top of!

That's all I've got. I'll see all of you next year, and I can't wait to see what television is gonna look like in 2019!