From Oprah's surprisingly low-key farewell to the year's most soul-crushing break-up on The Good Wife (Kalicia, no!), the year was packed with fantastic hours of television — pretty much all of which we watched. There were teary goodbyes (Friday Night Lights' Texas forever! Smallville's tights and flights!), tense face-offs (why can't all CIA interrogations take place on the front porch of a cabin, like on Homeland?) and of course we made room for a little Glee (because certain underdogs deserved it). Which made the list. Tune in all week for our top 25.
Here's the first batch in our weeklong countdown of 2011's best episodes...
FRINGE
"Lysergic Acid Diethylamide," Fringe
The title alone indicated that this episode would be a trip. When Olivia attempted to extricate William Bell's consciousness from hers by taking LSD, the world went topsy-turvy, and the episode switched from live-action to animation. The twisty, Inception-like hour also marked Leonard Nimoy's farewell to the series.
JUSTIFIED
"The Spoil," Justified
Here's the second batch in our weeklong countdown of 2011's best episodes...
It's hard to highlight a single episode of Margo Martindale's Emmy-winning season as Mags Bennett, but her rousing speech in "The Spoil." Martindale's effortless, smooth-as-Mags' homemade moonshine delivery reminds us how smart a villain she is, and how much of a fight she's willing to put up to protect her people's "way of livin' and dyin.'" And while Mags' icy mean streak didn't fully come out until the following episode, her actions in this hour put us on serious red alert.
DOCTOR WHO
Here's the third batch in our weeklong countdown of 2011's best episodes...
"The Doctor's Wife," Doctor Who
It takes fantasy/horror/sci-fi author Neil Gaiman to pen an episode that is preposterous to describe, yet heartbreaking in that signature Doctor Who way. Through a series of convoluted and nefarious events, his time machine, aka the TARDIS, shuts down and its matrix disappears, only to be incarnated in a daffy lady named Idris. The Doctor always did call the TARDIS "old girl," right? He and the TARDIS-possessed woman reminisce, banter, flirt and even kiss, and by episode's end, we've bought into their longtime, intimate relationship. Too bad the TARDIS can't remain in that body or ever have a voice again, but the affection we feel for that big blue police box has doubled.
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES
Here's the fourth batch in our weeklong countdown of 2011's best episodes...
"The Sun Also Rises," The Vampire Diaries
The second season's penultimate episode was filled with tears, culminating in Klaus turning Aunt Jenna into a vampire before ultimately killing her. Worse, watching Elena lose her only semblance of a parent and knowing she was responsible for the death was wrenching. We've felt terror, hysteria, and laughed pretty darn hard while watching this show; this was the first time we sobbed.
"Baelor," Game of Thrones
A pivotal event in this episode is so shockingly audacious that even now we'd like to issue a spoiler alert lest readers miss out on one of television's biggest surprises. HBO's epic fantasy series may have been hard to grasp at first -- a huge cast, foreign-sounding names, a feudal-type setting and baffling political intrigues -- but eventually we got to know the central characters, especially hero, patriarch and all-around upstanding fellow Ned Stark, played by Lord of the Rings' Sean Bean. We rooted for the morally high-minded right-hand man of the king, and so viewers could only watch (and rewind their DVRs) in disbelief as Ned was summarily beheaded in an act of betrayal -- with his two young daughters watching -- in a public square. What? Killing off someone who was supposedly the protagonist and emotional center of the show did not compute -- and drove home the fact that no one, not even the passive viewers, are untouched by the fantastical cruelty of this world conceived by author George R.R. Martin.
SMALLVILLE
Here's the fifth batch in our weeklong countdown of 2011's best episodes...
"Finale," Smallville
It took 10 years for Clark Kent to become Superman, but the series finale soared as the Man of Steel (in his super suit at long last!) took flight. Like a proud parent, our hearts swelled as we watched Clark realize his full potential after a decade's worth of trials, and fittingly, both of his fathers (Jor-El and an apparition of Jonathan Kent) presented him with the cape before he took off to save the world once more...
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