Best TV episodes of 2020

2020 was nothing if not the year that television kept us sane — if only just. With no shortage of excellent new shows, and buzzworthy binges, we looked back on what felt like a century’s worth of content (The Good Place ended this year? What??) to find the best episodes of the year.

In no particular order, here are the 15 best TV episodes of 2020.

1. The Crown, “Terra Nullius” 

If it’s possible to sum up one of the most famous love tragedies of the twentieth century in just one episode of television, The Crown‘s “Terra Nullius” did it. Following Prince Charles and Diana on their royal tour of Australia (complete with stellar costume work by Amy Roberts with plenty of Diana recreations), the episode works at a microcosm of their whole doomed relationship: her inexperience on the world’s stage giving way to adoring crowds, alongside Charles’ growing jealousy and envy at his wife making him incapable of using her star power as part of a team effort. It’s tragic and moving and compulsively watchable — even as you wish for a different ending than the one we all know is coming. –Erin Strecker, Entertainment Editor

Where to watch: Netflix

2. Harley Quinn, “Something Borrowed, Something Green” 

For all its gleeful villanousness, Harley Quinn has always had a soft, sweet core in the form of Harley and Ivy’s relationship. In Season 2, that previously platonic friendship got kicked up a notch with spontaneous hookups, grand gestures…and, finally, in the finale, a kiss, an exchange of “I love you”s, and a Thelma & Louise style ride off into the distance. Look, we feel bad for Kite Man that this all had to go down at what was supposed to be his wedding to Ivy, but it’s impossible not to melt in the face of Harley and Ivy’s true — if delightfully off-kilter — love. – Angie Han, Deputy Entertainment Editor

Where to watch: HBO Max

3. The Queen’s Gambit, “Middle Game”

The Queen’s Gambit was a brilliant surprise. While chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) comes of age while rising to the top of her game throughout the series, episode 4 marks her biggest step toward self-reliance — a theme that simultaneously helps and haunts her future.  In “Middle Game,” Beth faces a string of new competitors in Mexico City while growing disconnected from her mother who finally meets a man she’s been exchanging letters with for years.

This episode has all the things that make The Queen’s Gambit great: vivid costumes, fancy locations, and Beth’s gradual ascent to greatness. But it’s also distinctly quiet and introspective as Beth ponders her fragile success, her mother’s blossoming new romance, and her complicated relationship with drugs and alcohol. Beth goes to Mexico with her mother. She leaves alone. –Brooke Bajgrowicz, Entertainment Fellow

Where to watch: Netflix

4. I May Destroy You, “Ego Death”

Not once since its inception was Michaela Coel’s brilliant “comedy” miniseries anything close to conventional. After 12 episodes of tortured introspection and recovery, Arabella (Coel) returns to the site of her sexual assault and sees her rapist at the bar. 

What follows is one of the most striking half hours committed to television. Arabella and Terry (Weruche Opia) conspire to turn him in — or to redeem him, or to kill him? All three scenarios play out, the episode resetting each time to before the night begins. We never find out if Arabella even saw him again, let alone how it played out, as Arabella the writer revisits and retools the events before our very eyes. When we catch up with her months later, we see the only thing that matters: A survivor who managed, mercifully, to find a way back to herself. –Proma Khosla, Entertainment Reporter

Where to watch: HBO Max

5. Lovecraft Country, “Sundown”

Wherever you may fall on how the rest of the season unfolded, Lovecraft County certainly got off to a great start. The opening episode does a staggering amount of heavy lifting: It introduces a sprawling cast, sets up a story that defines the season, establishes a unique visual tone, and foreshadows both the themes and twists that shape every subsequent hour of TV. 

More to the point, it makes that lift seem effortless. From Tic’s roadside conversation about John Carter, racism, and reconciling our problematic faves to “My name’s not girl, it’s Letitia fucking Lewis” and cabin in the woods-style horror, the Lovecraft premiere is a beastly (in more ways than one!) hour of TV. –Adam Rosenberg, Senior Entertainment Reporter and Weekend Editor

Where to watch: HBO Max

6. Pen15, “Opening Night”  

Pen15 has always been remarkable when it comes to translating the harrowing emotional experience of being a middle schooler, but the mid-season finale “Opening Night” brought the show to transcendent new levels. After a rough half season where boys, family problems, and jealousy forced Anna and Maya apart, the opening night of the (hilariously inappropriate) school play brings them back together with a glittery interpretive dance that proved these two best friends will always be there for each other. –A.N.

Where to watch: Hulu

7. Monsterland, “Palacios, Texas”

Season 1 of Monsterland features witches, aliens, revenants, shapeshifters, and many other things that go bump in the night, but its best episode was the (almost) love story between lonely fisherman Sharko and a carnivorous mermaid he found on the beach. “Palacios, TX” mixes an environmentalist message with a dash of “be careful what you wish for,” throws in one of the year’s best love scenes, and takes home the award for Best Shirtless Monologue About Being The King of the Ocean. Actor Trieu Tran’s performance as Sharko is a highlight of the episode and Monsterland as a whole, which makes watching misplaced hope replace the simmering rage his character feels at the beginning of the episode all the more compelling when the mermaid’s true nature comes to light. –A.N.

Where to watch: Hulu

8. Steven Universe Future, “I Am My Monster”

All of Steven Universe Future served as a lovely coda to one of the best animated television shows of our time. The penultimate episode “I Am My Monster” successfully condensed six seasons and a movie’s worth of Steven’s personal growth by having him finally, finally break down and confront the trauma he inherited from his mother and his unasked-for role as the savior of the universe. His trauma emerges in his corrupted form, a gigantic pink kaiju that threatens to undo the reparations he’s worked to implement from his Diamond legacy, but the simple power of his chosen family’s love makes him realize it’s OK to stop helping other people and admit he’s in pain. –A.N.

Where to watch: HBO Max

9. Kidding, “Up, Down, and Everything in Between”

The premiere of Kidding’s second and now tragically final season demonstrates the magnificent Showtime comedy’s unparalleled skill in balancing darkness and light. After Jeff (Jim Carrey) hits Peter (Justin Kirk) with his car, he’s immediately overcome by guilt and overcompensates by volunteering his liver for the emergency surgery. During the transplant, Jeff and Peter find themselves in a shared consciousness that looks exactly like Mr. Pickles’ Puppet Time, complete with foul-mouthed puppets (“Au revoir, cocksucker!” screeches the sad baguette), phantasmagoric imagery, and spontaneous musical numbers. It’s the kind of comedy that feels like a magic trick, and we were lucky to have it while we did. –P.K.

Where to watch: Showtime (available with Amazon or Hulu add ons)

10. Solar Opposites, “Terry and Korvo Steal a Bear”

Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan had some pretty big lab coats to fill when making Solar Opposites — Hulu’s unofficial companion cartoon to Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, centered on a family of aliens living in middle America. While the series’ entire first season exceeded expectations, episode 7 firmly cemented my faith in the Solar Opposites universe and its tremendous potential for storytelling greatness. 

An action-packed crescendo to a series’ long subplot (that surprisingly features none of the show’s main characters), “Terry and Korvo Steal a Bear” chronicles a rebellion within a microscopic dictatorship. It’s got heart. It’s got bloodshed. It’s got a really cute mouse wearing a bow. Oh, and that final act twist? One of the best of the year. –Alison Foreman, Entertainment Reporter.

Where to watch: Hulu

11. The Great, “The Beaver’s Nose”

The Great‘s entire first season was of Catherine the Great’s rise to power in 18th century Russia, and its tumultuous finale was the show’s crowning moment. Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult brought intense pathos to the final confrontation between Catherine and her husband Emperor Peter, and much of the season’s rising tension finally exploded in a bloodbath that took out beloved (and some not so beloved) characters in one raging, violent swoop. Top the finale off with Catherine’s absolutely incredible pink dress and a well earned appearance from the French philosopher Voltaire, and you have The Great‘s unabashedly great finale.* –A.N.

Where to watch: Hulu

12. Ramy, “They”

In a season that explicitly interrogates its shitty protagonist, the standouts of Ramy were once again those that step away from the titular character and focus on his family members. Maysa (Hiam Abbass) finds herself in a situation she’s ill-equipped to handle gracefully when she picks up a non-binary passenger in her Lyft. Dena (May Calamawy) scolds her mom about pronouns and tells her to leave it alone, but Dena tracks down the passenger anyway and only makes matters worse. The problem, Dena tells her, is that she insists on saying something in situations where she would be better served to say nothing. Words are powerful, and potentially hurtful, and Maysa loathes the idea that she could be as intolerant or verbally uncontrollable as Trump. 

This leads to one of the series’ best scenes: Maysa’s citizenship ceremony, in which she launches a quiet but determined verbal tirade against the President of the United States while everyone around her vows to defend the U.S. and its values. “I will not be like you,” Maysa spits. “I will vote you away, you peace of fucking fuck-shit. I’m here to stay, bitch.” * – P.K.

Where to watch: Hulu

13. Midnight Gospel, “Mouse of Silver”

Netflix’s The Midnight Gospel, an experiment in podcasting plus animation from Duncan Trussell and Adventure Time’s Pendleton Ward, remains one of the most emotionally intelligent series of the year. Adapted from Trussell’s popular podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, The Midnight Gospel follows spacecaster Clancy as he interviews beings throughout the cosmos — pairing philosophical and spiritual conversations with technicolor cartoons for a profoundly transformative (if not, slightly overwhelming) viewing experience. 

In the Season 1 finale, titled “Mouse of Silver,” Clancy has a conversation with Deneen Fendig, Trussell’s late mother, about growing up, growing old, and passing on. It’s a discussion so personal it can, at times, feel invasive to witness. Still, Trussell and Ward present the conversation in a way that’s universal enough for audience members to relate to. Plus, that ending shot opened up some amazing opportunities for Season 2. –A.F.

Where to watch: Netflix

14. Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, “A Dark Quiet Death”

The magic of “Dark Quiet Death,” Mythic Quest‘s fifth episode, lies in how it distills all the big ideas the series explores down into a genuine and heartfelt 30-minute journey. This is a comedy series about game development, but in that half hour we see how this huge topic — encompassing the passionate butting of heads, the tension between art and commerce, and the struggles of making a project work after one person’s idea starts to be further shaped by a small army — is ultimately analogous to, and hinges on, interpersonal relationships. 

In the end, it’s the touching journey of Doc and Beans that keeps us moored, and the thing that makes Episode 5 such a great place to start for series newcomers. We root for these two from the very first moment, even as the differences that will eventually drive them apart splash across the screen in full view. Their relationship dies a dark, quiet death in the end. It’s not a love story, but it’s very much a story about love. –A.R.

Where to watch: AppleTV+

15. Unorthodox, “Part 1”

The entire Unorthodox miniseries is gripping, but the first of its four parts has a pulsing magnetism to it that wraps itself around the viewer to bring them into a world that many may be aware of but most don’t really understand. The series focuses on Esty Shapiro, a young woman who flees her ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn to Berlin in order to start a new life. The first part of Unorthodox focuses on Esty’s confusing-yet-freeing first days in Berlin juxtaposed with her husband’s frantic scrambling back in Brooklyn and flashbacks to her life in the Satmar community leading up to her wedding. 

Unorthodox is a fascinating and heart-pounding story of family, community, and individualism with incredible performances and attention to detail inspired by a true, similar story.* -Kellen Beck, Entertainment Reporter

Where to watch: Netflix

*This episode blurb appeared on a previous 2020 list.