LogFAQs > #929977620

Best TV Episode of the 2010s: Twin Peaks: The Return - "Part 8"
Runners Up: Breaking Bad - "Face Off," Game of Thrones - "Blackwater," True Detective "Who Goes There," Atlanta - "Champagne Papi"

The 2000s saw the rise and apex of Golden Age television--shows that mastered the art of the slow burn, shows that shed decades of serialized television orthodoxy in favor of a deeper, more complete season-long (or longer) arcs that were a perfect fit for the medium. The 2010s, as I mentioned, saw a different trajectory. Streaming capabilities geared the average viewer more toward binge-watching, where those gradual, 20+ episode arcs were sliced down to satisfy our bloodthirsty desire for media consumption. To me, this has been a negative change in the overall quality and philosophy of television; however, it did open up one new advent: the "prestige" episode.

These are episodes that many shows (particularly dramas) throw their entire budgets and all of their creative thinking at in order to generate buzz and entice any late-comers to join in on the binge-watching zeitgeist. This has led to a decade of the best single episodes in television history, even if the seasons and shows overall may have featured dips in quality.

The best of these fall into two camps. Episodes like Game of Thrones's "Blackwater" (yes, this was better than Hardhomme or Battle of the Bastards) or the midseason thriller of True Detective's "Who Goes There" are those big-budget, highly choreographed masterpieces that can convince even the most snobbish of reviewers that TV now has as much power as the big screen. In the other camp are episodes like "Champagne Papi" in Atlanta and "Part 8" of the Twin Peaks revival--highly avant garde, narratively unique episodes where the show runners were given full creative liberty to do something different and cool, which would never have happened in decades past. (Breaking Bad's "Face Off" is the exception to this rule, as this was one of the last examples of the Golden Age structure--a tremendous build-up to create one of the most perfect season finales ever made.)

The winner of episode of the decade is hands-down the greatest episode in television history. Twin Peaks: The Return took all of the strange charm of the original Twin Peaks and removed the awful ABC executives to allow David Lynch to David Lynch. And what transpired is one of the most mesmerizing things ever put to screen--a 2001: A Space Odyssey-like trip through the desert to find the abstract and surreal origins of the show's main antagonist. For fans of the show, it was an intensely satisfying entrant in a mythology that many thought would be left unexplained. For fans of art, you will find one of the most unique and brilliant metaphors for good and evil in any medium. It's an art film that serves as a bottle episode in the middle of a season, but somehow wraps everything together perfectly without sacrificing the abstract mysteries we've grown to love. All due respect to Breaking Bad, but nothing will ever top this.
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