Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Good First Episode

I don't have time to do the full Key Episodes treatment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the moment, but last week I introduced a new person to the show and the episode that I chose to introduce him turned out to be a good one. Remembering that season one can be off-puttingly low-budget and nineties for some modern viewers, I skipped to 2x3 "School Hard," the episode which introduces fan favorite villain Spike. In addition to setting up the season 2 big bads, this is an episode that gives every recurring character at least a little something to do, from Willow and Xander and Cordelia's comic relief, to Giles's portents of doom, to Angel's confusing ally-or-not/boyfriend-or-not status, to Buffy's mother's warm but concerned parenting, to Principal Snyder's suspicious interference.

It's also an episode that focuses on the central conflict of the show: Buffy's struggle to balance her roles as teen girl and Chosen One vampire slayer. She actually has to be in two places at once in this episode, hosting a school event while preparing for an apocalyptic vampire feast, plans which are disrupted when the vampires literally come and invade her life. Buffy's friends, family, and assorted schoolmates at first seem like liabilities, causing her to worry and to have more people to protect, but ultimately help and save her, readily participating in plans at their own risk and coming to her rescue when she's down. To me, that's the message of the whole series, right there. A loving, supportive team of allies is always more powerful than any one person working alone, no matter how much of a superhero she may be.

Finally, when you come down it, this is a fun Die Hard type adventure with lots of crawling around ducts and getting increasingly dirty, and who doesn't like that?

The Big Bang Theory

The Big Bang Theory (2007-present, creators Chuck Lorre & Bill Prady) is a sitcom about what happens when nerds meet sex, wholeheartedly designed to appeal to and capitalize on geek culture. With its four-camera filming, laugh track, misunderstanding-heavy episodes, and perennial sexism, it has an old-fashioned feel which juxtaposes oddly with its up-to-the-minute geeky pop culture references.

The show originally focused on put-upon "nice guy" Leonard (Johnny Galecki in a much less appealing role than David on Roseanne) and his attempts to date the much cooler but airheaded aspiring actress next door, Penny (Kaley Cuoco). The show quickly realized its fan favorite character was Leonard's irritable roommate, Sheldon (Jim Parsons), and basically ran with it. Nowadays, with the welcome addition of female brains (and the gradual geekifying of Penny), the show basically follows the formula of a group of six friends, some of whom are coupled, all of whom are nerds.

Key Episodes

1.4 "The Luminous Fish Effect": Sheldon darts manically from project to project after he is fired, prompting Leonard to call in the big guns: Sheldon's mother (Laurie Metcalf, another Roseanne alum). I love Metcalf's warm performance as a Christian mom full of homespun wisdom, and it's fun to learn about Sheldon's surprisingly down-to-earth background.

1.6 "The Middle-Earth Paradigm": Leonard and Sheldon fundamentally misunderstand Penny's invitation to her Halloween party, asking about the costume parade, etc. Leonard is proud of his Frodo costume until he meets Penny's musclebound ex-boyfriend. After he leaves, humiliated, Penny follows him and gives him a drunken kiss, in the first actual sign that Penny is interested in Leonard and it's not just going to be a weird unrequited thing forever. Even though it mostly is.

3.23 "The Lunar Excitation": Howard (Simon Helberg) and Raj (Kunal Nayyar) create an online dating profile for Sheldon, and everyone is surprised when it turns up a perfect match--the equally nerdy Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Byalik, TV's Blossom). Bialik's performance is delightful and her addition to the show really kicks things up in the next few seasons. Meanwhile there is some other business with Penny and Leonard, as usual.

Bonus Episodes

1.5 "The Hamburger Postulate": Leonard is used for casual sex by his ex, the extremely logical Sheldon rival Leslie Winkle (Sara Gilbert, in another bit of amusing Roseanne reunionry).

1.11 "The Pancake Batter Anomaly": The guys get sick and Penny takes care of them; a standard sitcom plot notable for the first signs of a surprising amount of warmth between Penny and Sheldon.

1.17 "The Tangerine Factor" & 2.1 "The Bad Fish Paradigm": A two-part episode flirts with the idea of putting Leonard and Penny together, but although they enjoy dating briefly, Penny is hurt when Leonard says she isn't smart.

2.8 "The Lizard-Spock Expansion": Leonard has a relationship with a non-Penny woman, a likeable doctor (Sara Rue), and Sheldon comes up with an expanded version Rock-Paper-Scissors.

2.11 "The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis": Sheldon goes nuts trying to think of a Christmas present for Penny, and Penny gets him the perfect one. Am I Sheldon/Penny shipper? Should I be?

2.15 "The Maternal Capacitance": Leonard's mother turns out to be the kind of brilliant, cold, neglectful scientist that we all expected Sheldon's mother to be, which sort of explains a lot about why Leonard is so subtly messed up.

3.1 "The Electric Can Opener Fluctuation": The guys return from an arctic expedition from the end of season 2 (don't worry about it), and Penny and Leonard get together.

3.5 "The Creepy Candy Coating Corrollary": One of the things TBBT likes to do is to have geeky guest starts. In this episode, Sheldon sparks up a rivalry with Wil Wheaton. In another important deveopment, Penny introduces Howard to a friend, Bernadette (Melissa Rauch), who will become a major character, and sleazy Howard's first real girlfriend.

3.6 "The Cornhusker Vortex": I'm including this episode with Raj and Howard flying kites together because I remember it being pretty gay. Raj/Howard is second only to Sheldon/Penny in the fanfic grand prix.

3.9 "The Vengeance Formulation": Howard tries to decide between Bernadette and all the other theoretical girls he might like, including Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff, who appears in a fantasy sequence.

3.19 "The Wheaton Recurrence": Penny and Leonard break up because Penny can't say "I love you" and something to do with Wil Wheaton.

4.10 "The Alien Parasite Hypothesis": On a girls' night out, Amy Farrah Fowler develops a crush on Penny's ex, which leaves her flustered and overanalytical. Here, Amy, introduced as the female Sheldon, begins developing her own traits, notably her libido, which more-or-less-asexual Sheldon definitely doesn't share.

4.20 "The Herb Garden Germination": Sheldon and Amy's experiment in gossip results in the reveal that Howard and Bernadette are engaged.

And now it's season five.

Roseanne

Roseanne (1988-1997) was a family sitcom, originally structured around Roseanne Barr's comedy act, notable for focusing on a struggling blue-collar family and for its increasingly serious and frank treatment of issues such as unemployment, teen sexuality and abusive relationships. While the VSEs could get cheesy and soap-opera-ish, the show was generally grounded with Roseanne's (Roseanne Barr) snappy wisecracking and the essentially good and stable relationship with her stand-up guy husband, Dan (John Goodman).

Two issues make Key Episodes difficult here: the long run of the show and the incredibly weird final season. Roseanne is famous for its crazy ending. In the final season, the family wins the lottery, essentially rejecting one of the central issues of the show (money problems) and totally changing the dynamic. Then, in the final episode, Roseanne (in character) reveals that the last year or so of the show has been fictional, a story she wrote to distract her from her sadness; the family never won the lottery, and Dan is dead. Overall, I find this experiment in meta-fictionality hollow and unsatisfying, and I consider the final season or so non-canon, which is why you won't find the ending in my key episodes even though it is arguably culturally important and I just explained it here in detail.

Key Episodes

1.1 "Life and Stuff": This is a show where I think the pilot sets everything up pretty well, a sort of slice of life episode with a strong focus on my favorite character, tomboyish middle kid Darlene (Sara Gilbert).

4.1 "A Bitter Pill to Swallow": Eldest daughter Becky (Lecy Goranson) asks Roseanne to take her to a gynecologist to get on the pill and Roseanne and Dan fight about what to do when a child asks for birth control, standing in for parents everywhere and probably making the network groan, "I thought this was a comedy." This aired in 1991 and I have a feeling it would still count as edgy now.

5.1 "Terms of Estrangement Part 1" & 5.2 "Terms of Estrangement Part 2": Becky and her boyfriend Mark (Glenn Quinn) run away together, while Dan's business goes under.

5.19 "It's a Boy!": When Darlene asks if her gentle boyfriend David (Johnny Galecki) can move in, Roseanne laughs it off, but when she visits David's house and realizes his mother is abusive, she finds herself welcoming David to the fold.

Bonus Episodes

1.19 "Workin' Overtime": Roseanne's job is one of the things that changes most in the show. This episode is a good slice of life of her season one job, the assembly line of a factory supervised by a young George Clooney.

2.2 "The Little Sister": Roseanne's sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) applies for police academy, a decision which Roseanne mocks relentlessly until she breaks down in tears, afraid for Jackie's life. An emotionally strong Joss Whedon-written episode.

2.14 "One for the Road": The VSE in which Becky and a friend experiment with alcohol. Wheee!

2.16 "Born to Be Wild": Roseanne and Dan's old friend Ziggy (Jay O. Sanders) blasts into town, revealing their biker pasts.

3.4 "Like, A New Job": This is one of Roseanne's employment turning points as she gets a job as a waitress at a diner in the mall, and one of Darlene's as she stops sharing Becky's room and moves into the basement, but really, I'm key episoding it because Alyson Hannigan (Buffy, How I Met Your Mother) is in it briefly.

3.25 "The Pied Piper of Lanford": Ziggy reappears, convinces Roseanne and Dan to leave their jobs to start a bike shop, then disappears again.

4.3 "Why Jackie Becomes a Trucker": Another job change for Jackie as she's drawn to a new butch career--truck-driving--and the show attempts to up its edginess quotient again by revealing that Roseanne's boss Leon (Martin Mull) is gay.

4.4 "Darlene Fades to Black": Darlene leaves her tomboy stage and enters her dark goth stage in an episode that is actually about as sensitive, frustrating and realistic about depression as you can get in 22 minutes.

4.18 "This Old House": Roseanne and Jackie visit their childhood home, revealing backstory about their abusive father.

4.23 "Secrets": Dan, until now Mark's biggest opponent, feels sorry for him when he sees how upset he is about the break-up and ends up defending him.

5.3 "The Dark Ages": The electricity gets cut off when Roseanne can't pay the bill. Darlene spends the night at David's and gets upset when everyone assumes they had sex.

5.8 "Ladies' Choice": The episode where we find out that Roseanne's friend Nancy (Sandra Bernhardt) is a lesbian. Personally, I was always rooting for Darlene, but I'll take what I can get.

5.13 "Crime and Punishment": Roseanne discovers bruises on Jackie's back and realizes she's being beaten by her boyfriend. Meanwhile, youngest son D.J. (Michael Fishman) gets in trouble for bringing obscene material to school, which turns out to be a comic book Darlene is making with David.

5.22 "Promises, Promises": I love a sex on prom night episode called "Promises, Promises." Classic 90s.

5.25 "Daughters and Other Strangers": Darlene wants to go to art school in Chicago, to the dismay of Roseanne, Dan, and David. D.J. has a new friend nobody likes (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

There might be some stuff in season 6, but that's as far as I got in the rewatch before Netflix took it away.