5 Favorite Episodes: 2024

It’s time for my longest-standing End of Year tradition: highlighting my favorite episodes of the year.

Film is an in-and-out trip, while TV stays in our lives for day-long bingethons, weeks, and years as seasons stretch on. Episodes are the smallest unit of TV, and at their best they tell stories that are both individual and part of a grander narrative. They’re like great soccer players, you can appreciate their singular greatness but only in the context of a team setting.

So every year I make a list of my 5 favorites (here’s 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 if you’re a Skip Intro completist I guess). The only rule: each show can only have one entry.

5. Fallout — “The Ghouls”

Last year I made a video about The Last of Us, which largely focused on the implicit conservative worldview at its heart. Yeah there was that commune they were in for like a single episode before leaving, but most of the show made it pretty clear that those who thrive in this world are the anti-social preppers, the ones who hoard resources and close their doors to the outside world. It was a bleak perspective that I felt had grown tired.

Enter Fallout, another video game adaptation of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but one that seemed tailormade to address my critiques. Lucy, our protagonist, has spent her life growing up inside a Vault, the epitome of this kind of close-yourself-off-from-humanity-to-survive approach, but chooses to leave it behind and learns that the vaults are much more cynical and capitalistic than she’d ever realized. She is determined to help the people she meets—sometimes to her own detriment.

In “The Ghouls” we see this idea put to the test. Lucy meets The Ghoul, played by Walton Goggins, a kind of radiated mutant who is mostly human if they keep getting their meds, but if they don’t they turn into what are essentially zombies. He’s been out in the wasteland for so long that he’s literally mutated by it, and when Lucy tells him about her guiding philosophy—The Golden Rule—he leashes her and makes her drink from an irradiated puddle.

“What are you?” Lucy asks.

The Ghoulggins (that’s Ghoul Goggins) responds, “I’m you, sweetie. Just give it a little time.”

Like so many in this genre, The Ghoul believes that there is only one way to be in this dog-eat-dog world, that the world will beat the humanity out of you as sure as shit rolls downhill,  and that if you’re not doing the killing or exploiting or hurting, then you’re destined to become a victim. 

But despite a truly depressing turn of events that forces Lucy to kill a turning ghoul in self-defense, Lucy refuses to let go of her hope or humanity. She gives the meds he needs to keep himself from turning, telling him “I may end up looking like you, but I’ll never be like you. Golden Rule, motherfucker.”

Whereas so many stories in this genre are about the death of innocence and humanity, this episode was about holding onto it. Her trust and faith in humanity aren’t character flaws that leave her vulnerable, but instead are one of her best survival tools: coalition-building.

4. English Teacher — “Powderpuff”

The second episode of English Teacher takes on the age-old tradition of powderpuff, where high school football players and cheerleaders swap roles for a game, with the girls playing football and the guys cheering. Of course, it’s 2024, so somebody has decided they find this tradition offensive and are protesting it. But it’s not any of the conservative parents who don’t want their sons dressing up as girls, it’s an LGBT advocacy group that are offended that these cool jocks are going to be making fun of drag rather than doing it authentically.

Evan, our protagonist, decides that he can work with this, and invites an old drag buddy of his to teach the football team how to do things right, introducing them to heels, breastplates, and death drops. Meanwhile, the girls learn about the violence of football. Well, not really the violence of football, more just about the violence women are threatened with on a daily basis. Their practices quickly turn into self-defense lessons as Gwen describes increasingly more ridiculously dangerous situations, including a mock proposal: “Boom, you’re dead. Your husband’s the most likely person to kill you.”

Unfortunately Evan’s drag queen friend is caught stealing just an absurd amount of stuff from the school, leading the principal to say “A criminal drag queen was brought into the school. You basically conjured a conservative talking point out of thin air.” It’s just not worth the hassle he’s getting from both sides, from the LGBT kids upset about authenticity to parents if they ever find out about the grand larceny.

But the show goes on anyway to universal acclaim. The kids are satisfied with what they view as a very authentic and all-out drag performance and the more conservative members of the audience just think it’s funny to see the boys dress up as girls. It’s a feel-good middle ground conclusion for what has become an incredibly heated issue in recent years, that treats everyone involved as people and not just caricatures. 

3. FROM — “There and Back Again”

FROM is an unpredictable show. I mean, the majority of the show is just trying to figure out what exactly is going on, from the mysterious town that nobody can leave to the ghost children whispering the word “anghkooey” to the monsters that arrive after dark to terrify and torture the people of the town. 

Here’s the gist: a bunch of people are stuck in a town. They all got there at different times and were all driving in different parts of the US when they took a wrong turn, saw a tree blocking the path, and ended up in a town and forest that can’t be left. Every night, monsters that look human harass and taunt the townsfolk. If they get their hands on you, they will kill you by tearing you limb from limb. Oh and guns are useless against them. Fun!

But by season 3, we’ve learned a few things. We know that it is possible to escape. We know that one character’s mother dreamt of the town before she ever arrived. And we know that when you see that tree in the road blocking your path, things are about to get pretty bad.

Tabitha, having escaped at the end of last season, wakes up in an ambulance after a car accident, only to find herself right back at that damn tree, the only person who understands the danger they’re in, but unable to explain it without being immediately dismissed as insane. 

While we’ve seen people arrive in town before and need to be convinced of just how weird and bad things in the town are, but never with people who are as stubborn and arrogant as a newly minted police officer. Officer Acosta proceeds to make bad decision after bad decision, handcuffing Tabitha to the ambulance because she’s “really freaking out,” watching both paramedics be brutally murdered without doing anything, abandons Tabitha in the ambulance once they’re attacked, and shoots wildly at the monsters (even after it’s well established that that does nothing), before a stray bullet strikes and kills a civilian. And all the while, she is so sure that she is in the right. If that’s not a realistic cop, I don’t know what is.

2. X-Men ‘97 — “Remember It”

There is no episode of television I rewatched as much this year as this one. It is probably best remembered (hehe) for turning four panels from Grant Morrison’s 2001 comic into a ten minute action sequence, but what makes this episode special is everything it does to set up that set piece. That’s because it’s not just a fight scene, it’s a scene of loss, and to understand that, we have to know what it is that was lost.

We’re introduced to the mutant island nation of Genosha, just as it’s being admitted into the United Nations. It’s a world full of life, with mutants freely expressing themselves and living side-by-side in harmony, even those that would have had no chance of passing as non-mutants in human society. It gives us a sense of their unique culture, fluidly mixing their powers into dance and music. As Nightcrawler tells Rogue and Gambit, this is “more than a place. A home.”

And we see the necessity of such a home. Back at the mansion, Cyclops is accosted by a reporter who just wants “a chance to show the world that mutants are just like us.” She seems as if she means well, and certainly isn’t one of the more hostile bigots the team has fought, but she’s hardly an ally. As Cyclops responds, he shouldn’t have to prove that he’s a person.

Sure, Genosha isn’t perfect. Gambit bristles at the price of goods and the council appoints Magneto as their chancellor. But mutants shouldn’t have to prove that they’re perfect anymore than they have to prove that they’re human. Most nations might not allow a terrorist to be their leader, but as Magneto points out “so many allow their leaders to be terrorists.” The point is that mutants have as much right to self-determination as anyone else, and that they don’t need to prove that they’re worthy of that right, because it’s a right.

Of course, this feeling is fleeting, and a Godzilla Sentinel begins its complete destruction of Genosha. But even in this moment, the focus of the action is not on fighting but on saving the Morlocks—the show’s representative for the “weirder” mutants who cannot pass as human in society. While the X-Men have had a contentious relationship with the Morlocks in the past, they do not hesitate, risking their lives to save them. 

It was hard to watch this episode in April of 2024 (or the rest of the year) without thinking about the on-going genocide in Gaza, from the way Magneto is singled out as a terrorist as a sort of justification to the indiscriminate bombing campaign carried out on civilians. But of course, this story of oppression that echoes throughout history is not unique to Gaza or the X-Men. As Magneto stands on the brink of death, trying to protect a Morlock, he looks down and says in German “do not be afraid,” a clear nod to his background as a survivor of The Holocaust. It makes me tear up every time.

This is all to say nothing of Gambit’s titular line and sacrifice, one that was equal parts bad-ass and heartbreaking.

1. Baby Reindeer — “Episode 4”

This is the episode where everything changes for Baby Reindeer. At first you think it’s just a story about a man being stalked by a bar regular, a gender-bending twist on the implicit violence of a man stalking a woman. Donny isn’t scared at first when he learns about his stalker, possibly because he pities her and she doesn’t seem physically threatening, possibly because he likes the attention. While those things are part of the equation, Donny has also been the victim of abuse in his past, having been repeatedly drugged and assaulted by a man he thought was helping him in his career.

It’s the first real onion layer that gets peeled back, showing us a horrifyingly real case of grooming—a career professional Donny looks up to preying on his need to be seen and acknowledged. It’s a double edged sword for Donny, because while he is being abused, he’s also being seen in a way that he so desperately wants. And it continues for so long that his shame becomes fully mixed in. It’s no longer just about needing to be seen or acknowledged, but also about hating himself for needing that so much that he’s willing to allow the abuse to continue.

For me, it is the only time I can remember being confronted with this combination of shame and the need to be seen and the way they can feed each other in a never ending downward spiral of self-doubt. Donny wonders, “Did he ever believe in me, or was this whole thing preplanned manipulation?” and later “I could never tell whether these feelings were because of him or whether they always existed deep down. Did it all happen because I was giving off some vibe I wasn't aware of? Or did what happen make me this way?”

I imagine Donny’s story is not one unfamiliar to many women and other victims of abuse, but I had never seen it examined with the added internalized shame of masculinity—an identity built on the shaming and rejection of the soft, empathetic, and feminine. Is he really being abused and stalked? Or is he being a whiny little bitch who just needs to suck it up?

It’s easy for us, on the outside, to see the truth, but when those calls telling you that you deserve it are coming from inside the house, it’s a lot harder to dismiss them.