The magic is in how Mac and series creator Larry Wilmore tweak those well-worn tropes, adding welcome edge and imagination. Anthony Breznicanīernie Mac’s first episode has cute kids, potty humor, a comedian playing a heightened version of himself-a good amount of material from the standard sitcom playbook. All we know for sure is that Christopher and Paulie go through a long night of the soul, turning on each other and questioning every decision that led them to this lowly, merciless place. Did the Russian survive? We never find out. The episode, directed by Steve Buscemi and written by later Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter, is particularly memorable for its enduring mystery. They call Tony, who is straining to keep his own temper in check after fighting with an emotionally explosive new girlfriend ( Annabella Sciorra) to come to their rescue. Paulie and Christopher battle their Rasputin-like rival in a shovel fight and shoot-out, but he vanishes into thin air and they end up lost in the freezing woods. The only problem: The Russian isn’t dead. Things go wrong, badda bing, badda boom, the Russian ends up wrapped in his own carpet and stuffed into a car trunk, and the two hapless gangsters venture into the piney winter wilds of lower New Jersey to dispose of the remains. It’s a delicate situation because James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano is aligning with the Russkies to launder money. Michael Imperioli’s Christopher and Tony Sirico’s white-winged Paulie were given one job: retrieve a few thousand dollars from a man in a Russian gang. Story by Terence Winter and Timothy Van Patten written by Terence WinterĬonsider this the mobster version of Waiting for Godot. Admits Crane decades later, “It should’ve been called ‘The One With the Two Tests.’” - Savannah Walsh Both of the episode’s storylines lurch toward consequential outcomes-Phoebe’s positive pregnancy test and the apartment shake-up that comes as a result of the game Ross ( David Schwimmer) devises. After an argument about who knows who better, the quartet engage in a quiz that weds familiar character traits with fresh information, like Chandler’s job title, which even the most devoted Friends fan realizes mid-setup they do not know. Despite the gravity of Phoebe’s ( Lisa Kudrow) efforts to get impregnated with her brother’s baby (it’s not like that, Giovanni Ribisi’s Frank assures), it is an increasingly high-stakes personal trivia match amongst the other friends-Rachel ( Jennifer Aniston), Monica ( Courteney Cox), Joey ( Matt LeBlanc), and Chandler ( Matthew Perry) that makes the episode soar. “Why on earth did we call it ‘The One With the Embryos’ and not ‘The One With the Contest?’” cocreator David Crane asked in a 2018 oral history of what’s now considered one of the sitcom’s best episodes. (Remember those days, when you had to watch TV…on a television?) “The One With the Embryos,” Friends These are the gems we’re still debating and swooning over and giddily rewatching, even years after they originally streamed or aired.
So, which classics most deserve to be labeled perfect episodes? Let’s start with these 25 unforgettable titles, culled from the past quarter century of TV-including canonical series like The Sopranos, Mad Men, Lost, Friends, and Breaking Bad, as well as instant standouts like Atlanta, Reservation Dogs, and Insecure-and presented in chronological order. But after it was done, we couldn’t stop thinking about more of TV’s best episodes-the stand-alone chapters that push an ongoing narrative to new heights, the self-contained but sweeping stories that best exemplify what makes television so special. It’s a killer collection, spanning comedy, drama, and whatever category The Bear belongs to.
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Earlier this year, Vanity Fair compiled a list of eight perfect TV episodes from the 2022–2023 season.
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