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Straight from TV Blend's gang of series addicted television addicts.
 published: 2012-04-23The Mentalist's Best Episode: Strawberries And Cream Red John’s power doesn’t lie in his savage nature. It lies in his ability to turn Jane into a reactionary character, one of those loose canons the consultant spends most of his time apathetically hunting. The bloody face on the wall doesn’t just signal carnage, it signals a role reversal, a cat and mouse game in which Jane is the one more often being toyed with. It’s in these episodes that The Mentalist, both the show and character, are at their best   published: 2012-04-16Battlestar Galactica's Best Episode: The Oath BSG is some of the finest fictional programming about war ever created, and "The Oath" is the apex of BSG's war episodes. It's impossible to watch it and not feel for all perspectives, and wonder, in the same situation, on which side you'd fall.  published: 2012-04-09Veronica Mars' Best Episode: Leave It To Beaver I like to think that, if done right, a series will make a promise to its viewers in the pilot episode. It offers a hint of its potential with the assurance that, if the viewer keeps watching, they will be rewarded with a satisfying conclusion. Many shows fail to live up to that, while some aim but miss the mark, and others lose their way entirely. “Leave it to Beaver” hit the target perfectly, laying to rest the ghost of Lily Kane and offering various other pieces of resolution as a reward to faithful viewers.  published: 2012-04-02Bones' Best Episode: The Hole In The Heart Bones has always been great about mixing its season up, splitting the episodes between lighthearted, playful plot lines and more serious drama. This intermixing combined with the show’s forensic anthropologist outlook allows Bones to have a tone unlike any other crime drama on television—a little odd, a little good-humored, a little dramatic and above all, extremely investing. Despite loving the laughs and the relationship-oriented side plots, the most gripping episodes of Bones have always been the more harrowing ones.  published: 2012-03-26Curb Your Enthusiasm's Best Episode: The Baptism It’s extremely rare for the best of a series to fall within the first few seasons since shows almost always have a pubescent stage, struggling through an initial awkward voice until everything hopefully falls into place. However, those so-called growing pains were nonexistent for Curb Your Enthusiasm, partly because we were already well versed in its style, tone and characterization thanks to Larry David’s influence on Seinfeld.  published: 2012-03-19How I Met Your Mother's Best Episode: Slap Bet In addition to having the best, funniest, most surprising ending that the series has ever had, “Slap Bet” rises to the top of the heap thanks to hilarious, intelligent writing, a wonderful impact on the show at large and one of the best TV-created pop songs of all time.  published: 2012-03-12The West Wing's Best Episode: 17 People And this brings us...to "17 People," The West Wing's best episode. It was hard to rate it ahead of the fantastic sniper drama and multiple plate-spinning plot of "What Kind of Day Has It Been" (fun fact: every Sorkin show's first season finale is titled this) and the death-and-rebirth, "will he or won't he run again?" high-wire act of "Two Cathedrals." But I had to give it up to Season 2, Episode 18, "17 People," penned by Sorkin himself and directed by Alex Graves. It hits all the right marks that became The West Wing's trademark.  published: 2012-03-05Angel's Best Episode: A Hole In The World The best episode should be a start-to-finish gem of great writing and acting that encapsulates the greatness of the series and demonstrates everything that made Angel stand out, not merely as a solid spin-off, but also fantastic drama series. “A Hole in the World” does that beautifully, while at the same time, using the series’ own formula against us, creating what may very well be the most effective, gut-wrenching death scene in the series, if not the entire Whedonverse.  published: 2012-02-27Six Feet Under's Best Episode: Everyone's Waiting HBO’s Six Feet Under followed the lives of the Fisher family from 2001-2005. In that time, the Fishers became a great TV family: a family that audiences could invest in, could practically dwell within its greatest ups and sinking downs, its births and deaths, its most distorted mentalities and its freest moments. Unlike most great television families, however, the Fishers did not prescribe to a reality that is wholly genuine - they saw the ghosts of loved ones and extrapolated out relationships in dreamscapes.  published: 2012-02-20The Sopranos' Best Episode: Long Term Parking Its sad and painful look at mafia life makes “Long Term Parking” The Sopranos’ best episode; its greatest achievement. The episode is, at times, laugh out loud hilarious, unapologetically devastating, brilliantly acted, flawlessly scripted and a perfect embodiment of the series as a whole. It is television at its very best.  published: 2012-02-13South Park's Best Episode: You're Getting Old As the years have passed, Parker and Stone have matured, keeping the show funny, but also commenting on the awful, odd, stupid things that happen in our world. Unlike most long-running shows that keep the same formula year after year and eventually get stale, South Park has grown as its youngest audience has. And no episode in the show’s 15-year run shows that off better than “You’re Getting Old.”  published: 2012-02-06Grey's Anatomy's Best Episode: Yesterday Entitled “Yesterday”, Grey’s Anatomy’s greatest episode aired partway through the second season. It didn’t feature bomb scares or main character deaths or exam failures. It simply turned three of the biggest I-wonder-why’s into three incredible remember-when’s and still found time to offer three fascinating medical cases perfectly reminiscent of the Grey’s formula we’ve all come to love.
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