The X-Files - "The Post-Modern Prometheus"

Season 5, Episode 5

Original Airdate: November 30, 1997

Writer/Director: Chris Carter

Executive Producers: Chris Carter, R.W. Goodwin

Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, John O’Hurley, Chris Owens

It’s impossible to choose a “best” episode of “The X-Files” because there are legitimately too many great ones to choose from. More than that, many of the great episodes are scary, some are funny, and others are fantastic mind games. Others are all of the above. Even masterworks like “The Sopranos” and “Seinfeld” have that one episode that can stand as a representation of everything the show can accomplish, but that’s not so with “The X-Files.” The stories, and voices of its writers, are just too varied to allow one hour to represent it. The only other show I can think of off the top of my head like that is “The Twilight Zone,” which puts this program in good company. I chose “The Post-Modern Prometheus” not because it is the show’s “best,” but it’s because it is my favorite.

Each episode would involve FBI Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigating the unexplainable. Mulder is a true believer in alien abduction, vampires, demons and the forces of evil. Scully, despite being proven wrong in almost every episode, continues to be cynical. The unexplainable occurrence here involves a version of the Frankenstein monster who breaks into women’s houses and inseminates them over the course of several days (he uses termite tents as a way to ensure he’s not caught). Oh, and he has a Cher fetish. Yes, that Cher. If you didn’t grin from ear to ear reading that summation, then there’s just no talking to you. Yes, this is one of the lighter “X-Files,” feeling much more like a fairy tale than a horror movie.

Writer/Director Chris Carter (also the show’s creator) chose to shoot in black-and-white as an homage to James Whale’s two Universal “Frankenstein” films. And indeed the skies are painted grey like in those films, and villagers with pitchforks serve a big purpose in the climax. But there are also numerous nods to Mary Shelley’s original novel, beginning with the name of the episode and in several lines of dialogue (yes, I know Mulder gives us the wrong ending to the novel…shut up!). Despite most of the episode’s characters being, uh, a few watts short of a working lightbulb and mainly obsessed with getting on “The Jerry Springer Show” (Springer has a cameo), the episode is one of the smartest of the series. Every time I revisit the show after a few months or years, I’m always pleasantly surprised by the intricacies of the dialogue, and how the writers never shy away from allowing their two protagonists to sound smart (really, really smart), even if some of the language goes over the heads of viewers. Big words are more and more of a “no-no” in today’s television landscape, and that’s such a shame because, looking back on the literacy of shows like “The X-Files” is almost like visiting a foreign planet (ugh, I’m so sorry for that pun, but not sorry enough to erase it).

The subject matter and the tone of “The Post-Modern Prometheus” prove just how versatile the series can be and what kinds of chances it was willing to take on a regular basis (I did mention the Cher fetish, right?). The black-and-white was a brilliant decision, and Joel Ransom’s work as cinematographer is absolutely sterling. The world is gorgeous to look at, and Gillian Anderson has never looked lovelier than here.

One thing that I don’t think “The X-Files” gets enough credit for is its inherent humanity. For a show that is, at its base, about scares and little green men, a lot of screentime and effort is taken to develop its one-off characters who may or may not survive ‘til the end of the hour. Similar horror shows treat them simply as monster bait, but here the writers genuinely attempt to make us care about these victims…and in the case of this episode, its monsters as well.  In the final act, the monster (Chris Owens, later to play Jeffrey Spender) gets a chance to explain his actions and the horrors he has apparently acted out to his “victims.” The scene is beautifully written and staged, but the kicker is what comes next. Carter ends the episode set to Cher’s cover of “Walking in Memphis,” with the monster actually getting to attend a Cher concert, where Cher (be still my heart) embraces him and takes him onstage with her. Totally unrealistic? Sure, but who cares? This is a fairy tale, and no one wants realism in one of those. Bonus points for letting Scully smile, which is something which doesn’t happen often enough in the show’s 202 episodes.

Yes, 202 episodes (plus two movies). It’s shocking how consistently great the show was during its entire run. The final few seasons got a lot of criticism while still airing for not being up to the standards of earlier episodes, but re-examining them today with fresh eyes reveals that the show remained great up until the very end. Episodes like “Roadrunners,” “Via Negativa,” “Daemonicus” and “Improbable” easily stand with the best “X-Files.”

“The Post-Modern Prometheus” just eeked its way past “Home,” “Triangle,” “Bad Blood” and the Darin Morgan installments to be the first “X-Files” episode I wrote about, though I’m sure several of the above will have their own columns soon. The fantastic thing that allowed “The X-Files” to last so long and work so well in different tones and genres was that it could be about anything just so long as it was something we, as human beings, cannot understand yet. Yes, that involved a lot of darkness, but it had a lot of hope as well. It is also one of the shows that made me want to be a writer.

“The Post-Modern Prometheus” is available on DVD, iTunes, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime.

My So-Called Life - "Pilot"

Season One, Episode One

Original Airdate: August 26, 1994

Writer: Winnie Holzman

Director: Scott Winant

Executive Producers: Marshall Herskovitz, Edward Zwick

Cast: Claire Danes, Bess Armstrong, A.J. Langer, Wilson Cruz

“You agree to be a certain personality or something for no reason. Just to make things easier for someone. But when you think bout it, how do you know it’s even you?”

This is the same question just about every teenager asks him or herself, and here it’s articulated by Angela Chase (Claire Danes) in a voice that helped to define an entire generation of teenagers. I remember in high school when we did a special edition of our newspaper focusing on our generation, the cover featured Danes’ unreadable face staring out at us. Angela is the person we all see part of ourselves in, pretty or not. We fall deeply, madly, fully in love with her over the course of the pilot of “My So-Called Life,” which is a huge accomplishment because, at times, we don’t like her very much at all.

At first glance, Angela is your “average” high school student in just about every way. She’s not too popular but not unpopular. She’s pretty but isn’t getting too many glances from the boys. She is part of a few clubs but not the head of any. She doesn’t make fashion statements. She has had the same best friend since who-know-when. Sickened by this life and this world she has created for herself, Angela begins to change. She tries new things, like a haircut and red dye job. She drops her best friend in favor of two edgier, crazier cats named Rayanne (A.J. Langer) and Rickie (Wilson Cruz). She quits yearbook. She alienates her parents, in particular her mother (Bess Armstrong). And yet it doesn’t make her any happier. So who is she, really? The question is left beautifully and brilliantly up in the air as the pilot fades to black.

Winnie Holzman wrote the episode, and was unafraid to show us all the dark, shallow, stupid sides to Angela’s personality as well. She doesn’t think “The Diary of Anne Frank” is so tragic – after all, the girl is stuck in an attic with a cute boy for a few years. And when Holzman cuts from Angela’s point-of-view, we get some real insight into how her mid-quarter-life-crisis is affecting those around her. Her mom is depressed by Angela’s actions and demeanor, finally admitting to her husband, “She loves you more and I accept it,” even though what mother ever could? Angela’s immaturity is even more underlined in a fight she has with her former best friend Sharon (Devon Odessa). You see, Angela never had a conversation with Sharon to explain her newfound rebel status – she simply stopped talking to her, which hurt Sharon deeply. When Sharon confronts her and begs to know what she did wrong, Angela can only respond, “It’s not like that! It’s not just one thing!” as her excuse, which infuriates Sharon even more, and rightfully so.

And yet, we continue to love Angela. Because who among us doesn’t wonder what would happen if we just changed our life one day, out of the blue? Because many of her thoughts, while shallow, are also surprisingly sharp and insightful. Like this one:

“My parents keep asking how school was. It’s like saying ‘How was that drive-by shooting?’ You don’t care how it was. You’re lucky to get out alive.”

She speaks for us in ways we can’t quite articulate. She pays attention and notes the small stuff that sounds silly but takes up so many of our thoughts. You have a feeling that she will, indeed, discover who she is and turn out more than alright in the end, even if her taste in men at the present time leaves a lot to be desired.

Holzman’s writing is consistently excellent throughout the episode…hell, throughout the entire series. Because Angela is so quiet with most of the people in her world, Holzman provides us with ample voiceover, but not the overwritten, faux-insightful dialogue you’d see on most other television shows. This voiceover sounds exactly how Angela sounds when she speaks, full of stutter-steps and silly observations that perfectly reflect her personality. In addition, Holzman gives us amazing voiceover descriptions of the supporting cast of characters. For example, here’s her summation of her first true “love” Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto):

“He’s always closing his eyes, like it hurts to look at things.”

And here’s how Angela describes Rayanne:

“Rayanne always knows who is going to be there.”

She doesn’t tick off personality traits or types. Instead, Holzman provides viewers with the smallest of details and lets the viewer fill in the rest of the information himself. And, in many ways, isn’t that better than being spoon-fed how to feel about a character? What can you read into “He’s a brooding, soulful ne’er-do-well” anyway? What does that really tell you about the object of Angela’s affection?

It’s extremely rare for a television show to have a “perfect” season. By that I don’t mean flawless, I mean a season in which every episode is indispensible, beautifully rendered and emotional resonant. I think of the second season of “Gilmore Girls,” the third season of “Friday Night Lights,” the first season of “The Good Wife,” and the entirety of “My So-Called Life.” The show lasted for only a single season of nineteen episodes, and each is like a master class in writing, acting and direction, even the silly Halloween and Christmas episodes that involved ghosts and guardian angels. Each one deserves a column on this blog (and I’m sure a few others will), and in some ways I’m happy that there isn’t a whole bunch of closure at the end of the show, because that wouldn’t be honest. In life, so few things get the nice little bow on it, and there’s often rarely a defining moment where a person realizes who he or she “really” is. Instead, we are left with the question posed by the pilot still unanswered. Who is Angela Chase? Every time I sit down to view the series, I think I know, but then she always manages to surprise me.

The pilot of “My So-Called Life” is available on DVD, Hulu, Amazon Instant Video and iTunes.

Friends – “The One With the Embryos”

Season 4, Episode 12

Original Airdate: January 15. 1998

Writers: Jill Condon & Amy Toomin

Director: Kevin S. Bright

Executive Producers: Kevin S. Bright, Marta Kauffman, David Crane

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow

Over the decades, the “Game Show” episode has become a touchtone for most long-running comedies. It provides viewers with a chance to see their favorite characters behave surprisingly under immense pressure without there being any real stakes, and often the results are memorable fan favorites. There’s “The Odd Couple” episode entitled “Password,” “The Game Show” on “Maude,” “The Brain Game” on “Popular,” and “Grab That Dough” on “The Golden Girls,” to name a few. But the best version of this chestnut is by far “The One With the Embryos” from “Friends’” fourth season.

After Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Joey (Matt LeBlanc) guess every item in Rachel’s (Jennifer Aniston) shopping bag, Rachel and Monica (Courtney Cox) challenge them to a game of “Who Knows Who Better?” This example of the “Game Show” formula transcends the others for several reasons. First, it keeps the game intimate by having it be, essentially, a variation on “Jeopardy” done by the characters in their home instead of injecting the gloss of an actual game show set. Second, the episode concerns trivia about the characters instead of random facts the viewer has no attachment to. Finally, the storyline blossoms into having legitimate, real stakes (Monica and Rachel must swap apartments with the guys) instead of vague cash prizes that you know they won’t win.

More than that, this episode came at the right moment in the series. The viewers knew the gang enough that the writers, Jill Condon and Amy Toomin, could throw in some sly in-jokes (hey, what is Chandler Bing’s job?) while creating bits of trivia that serve as more than punchlines – they feel like natural extensions of our characters that we just didn’t know about yet.

"Noooo...!"

As with other “Game Show” episodes, watching the characters suffer through immense pressure under the guise of a game is fantastic for the viewer and allowed the actors to do some fascinating things with their characters. Look at the way the group repeatedly becomes exasperated with Ross’ (David Schwimmer) impression of a Game Show host, or Aniston’s awesome reading of the simple line “Ooh, that’s interesting.” However, nothing beats Monica’s completely (purposely) over-the-top shriek of “Nooooo…!” when she loses the game.

Also interesting is how the studio audience feeds off of the energy of the game as if it is a real Game Show. There is applause at the end of every round, and the laughter becomes more gleeful as the game evolves. It’s one of those rare episodes where the audience’s laughter almost morphs into a character – the same way the audience did during “I Love Lucy’s” infamous egg tango.

If all that wasn’t enough, what makes the episode transcendent is the B-story, involving the embryos of the title. Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) has agreed to be a surrogate for her brother and sister-in-law (Giovanni Ribisi and Debra Jo Rupp), and here we follow the implantation of the eggs and the eventual reveal that Phoebe is, indeed, pregnant. What gives the arc some dramatic weight is that this is the only chance they’ll have at trying surrogacy, because all their savings is tied into those eggs (“They are literally putting all their eggs into my basket,” Phoebe opines). Phoebe was always a close cousin of Katherine Hepburn’s character in “Bringing Up Baby,” and here Kudrow gives us some of the best work of her career. There’s a beautiful scene where she’s speaking to the embryos that are about to be implanted. Her speech is some of the best writing in the history of the show, perfectly balancing the sentimental with the laughs:

“Hello tiny embryos. I’m Phoebe Buffay. Hi. I’m hoping to be your uterus for the next nine months. You should know that we’re doing this for Frank and Alice – who you know. You’ve been there. You know, they want you so much, so when you get in there really grab on. Okay? And I promise that I’ll keep you safe and warm until you’re ready to have them take you home. Oh! Also, next time you see me, if I’m screaming, don’t worry, that’s what is supposed to happen.”

There isn’t a joke in the monologue that feels forced, and nothing feels like a punchline. Kudrow’s delivery gives the awesome writing another level of humor and heart. At this point most viewers have seen the series and know there will be that heartbreaking scene in the one-hundredth episode where Phoebe is holding the triplets after giving birth and must give them away, which gives this entire episode a beautiful, bittersweet quality.

The episode also features one of the very best lines in the history of the series. After Phoebe takes a pregnancy test and it’s positive, her brother proudly screams at the top of his lungs: “My sister's gonna have my baby!”

There isn’t a wasted moment in “The One With the Embryos,” and the writers ensure that the aftermath of the game is just as enjoyable as the build-up. At once heartfelt and genuinely funny, this episode underlined what set “Friends” apart from the hundreds of sitcoms that have tried to rip off its formula and characters in the years since its broadcast. Instead of being happy with just taking classic sitcom scenarios and doing a good version of them, the “Friends” writers twisted and toyed with the clichés until they were new and innovative again. It’s also a show that never shied away from taking storytelling risks that could have alienated the core fanbase (pairing Monica and Chandler, turning Ross and Rachel into a triangle with Joey), but because the writers stayed true to their characters (quirks, issues, faults and everything in between) they not only made it work, but made it work wonderfully.

“The One With the Embryos” is available on iTunes, on DVD, on Amazon Instant Video and is probably showing on some channel on your television right now.

Twin Peaks - "Pilot"

Season One, Episode One

Original Airdate: April 8, 1990

Writer: David Lynch, Mark Frost

Director: David Lynch

Executive Producers: David Lynch, Mark Frost

Star: Kyle MacLachlan, Piper Laurie, Michael Ontkean, Lara Flynn Boyle

The pilot of “Twin Peaks” is one of those rare episodes that refuses to define itself. Do we latch onto the mystery elements? Should we invest ourselves in the out-there characters? Is this all a parody of a police procedural? The answer to all the above is “yes, of course,” and as a result co-writers David Lynch (who also directed) and Mark Frost created a surprisingly multi-layered show that engaged viewers on several levels, not just the most shallow and viewer-friendly.

The series opens with the iconic discovery of the body of teenager Laura Palmer, her body wrapped in plastic lying on the banks of river. From there, we watch the ripple effects of the murder as they echo through the town of Twin Peaks. Like most of his work, Lynch seems eager to exploit the beauty of nature and the town while undermining it in the same beat by exposing the just-out-of-view rot. In a way, the pilot becomes a series of fascinating, entertaining vignettes connected by those investigating the case more than a real narrative. I write this not as a criticism, but with a lot of respect that Lynch and Frost were able to so easily keep the viewers’ interest through it.

The investigators are Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Sheriff Harry Truman (Michael Ontkean), both straight men in a town of kooks but both eccentric enough to fit right in. Cooper in particular is memorable, with his very straightforward style of speech and his insistence on taping everything he finds on a recorder. The rest of the town seems legitimately insane to one level or another. And by “insane” I mean “Lynch-ian.”

The teenagers in “Twin Peaks” seem created to be caricatures of awful teen movies, and I mean that in the best way possible. In particular, the character of Bobby (Dana Ashbrook) appears to be a human incarnation of Satan, plain and simple. If you think I’m overstating, his final scene in the pilot shows him in prison reduced to gutteral screaming like an animal. The scenes in the high school seem like they are from the 1940s and the music (by Angelo Badalamenti) suddenly segues into something that you can’t help but identify as the successor to the finger-snapping opening of “West Side Story.” While Lynch really embraces his quirky side in these passages (cutting to a random student dancing who is never seen again), it also yields the most emotionally resonant moment in the series. While roll is being taken in a classroom, Laura’s best friend Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) notes that her friend isn’t there. A deputy enters and asks for Bobby (wrong class), and Donna notes that something is wrong. The deputy takes the teacher aside, and then Donna notices a girl outside screaming and crying. Donna realizes what has happened and begins to break down. The scene is done with such beautiful subtlety, all without using any of the clichés we see so often in these types of scenes.

This beat, 25 minutes into the pilot, could not have come at a better time. Up until this point the murder really hasn’t hit home for us. The moment where Laura’s parents find out is handled oddly by Lynch (surprise, surprise), with Laura’s mother going so over-the-top with her screaming that it becomes comic.

Frost and Lynch present us with several fascinating clues as to what happened to Laura, ones that I daresay would make Agatha Christie envious. From “Fire walk with me” to the girl found walking on the train tracks to the $10,000 in the safety deposit box, the case seems to exponentially deepen with each revelation (good girl Laura was on cocaine!). Best of all is the fantastic sequence where Cooper finds a tiny letter imbedded under Laura’s middle fingernail, lit ominously with a flickering overhead lamp (something that has been imitated hundreds of times since).

The entire affair is filled with somewhat restrained variations on Lynch’s signature weirdness. When a fight breaks out at a biker bar, the completely-out-of-place singer keeps on going. There are 50 doughnuts stacked in twos. There’s a random deer head sitting on a table. The kitschy Native-American paintings all over the lodge. The show isn’t afraid to paint around the edges of every scene, encouraging the viewer to look closer and to watch again to see what he missed the first time.

The pilot finds a great balance between the crazy and relatable and the results are, in their own way, perfect. The world that Frost and Lynch created here is unlike anything else we’ve ever seen on television before or since, despite numerous others having tried to recreate its eccentricities (the most recent was “Happy Town,” which was cancelled before even airing all of its eight-episode first season). For a little while, that balance continued. And then it didn’t. Early on in the show’s run the scales were tipped toward the weird. Viewers stopped watching in droves and, as a result, Frost and Lynch decided to make the show even more weird and incomprehensible. Whether this was because the duo were being pressured to cater to what made the show stand out in the beginning or because they just didn’t care about coherent narrative is unclear. The disappearing viewers also made the network put intense pressure on the duo to solve Laura’s murder when the second season was barely underway, and the resulting revelation (“er…uh…it was evil Bob!”) wasn’t exactly fulfilling (and most of those tantalizing clues I mentioned earlier didn’t end up making sense). Many Lynch fans adore these later episodes and consider them superior to even the pilot, but there’s no question that the show lost its narrative drive after the uncovering of Laura’s murderer.

Lynch has said that Laura’s murder should never have been solved and, as if to prove his point, got a Best Director Oscar nomination for the great “Mulholland Drive,” a pilot that wasn’t picked up that he turned into a feature by adding a series of perplexing, beautiful sequences that added up to absolutely nothing and answered none of the mysteries posed by the first two acts. But I respectfully disagree with him about “Twin Peaks.” To me, the show didn’t die because he answered the question, it died because they stuck the landing and then didn’t immediately begin another great mystery arc to drive the show forward. Time and again, we’ve seen audiences get hostile about creators toying with their time and emotional investment—the most recent example being the huge hullabaloo over the lack of closure in the first season finale of “The Killing,” a PR disaster that scared viewers away en masse and resulted in an eventual cancellation at the end of the show’s second season. Shows like “Lost” and “The X-Files” have their detractors, but they held viewers’ interest for six and nine seasons, respectively, by handing out answers along with new questions.

But what happened next doesn’t really matter. The pilot of “Twin Peaks” marked a creative high for network television that it rarely achieves, engaging the viewers on an emotional and cerebral level. The sight of Laura’s lifeless face in the plastic, small stones stuck on her cheeks and in her hair, is one of the most memorable images ever broadcast. You find yourself humming the music at work and can’t imagine why. The show challenges you, gets in your head and then haunts it, seeming more dream than reality…and that’s pretty much the definition of a masterpiece, wouldn’t you say?

The “Twin Peaks” pilot is available on DVD, on iTunes and on Amazon Instant Video.

Seinfeld : "The Contest"

Season 4, Episode 11

Original Airdate: November 18, 1992

Writer: Larry David

Director: Tom Cherones

Executive Producers: Larry David, Andrew Scheinman, George Shapiro, Howard West

Cast: Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, Jason Alexander 

Masturbation.

“The Contest” is famously about it, and also famous because the word is never spoken during its 23-minute running time. The episode is smart enough to be subtle about the subject and its writer, Larry David, understands that the lack of overt references is often funnier than screaming obscenities at the top of your lungs. We live in an era where it’s in vogue to blatantly state everything about our lives in detail with no filter, but the very best comedy remains the type which is subtle and has a slow build. In an era where so much is being made of cable’s apparent overthrow of network television and the freedom creators now feel without Standards and Practices breathing down their necks, it’s important to note that the majority of quality comedy shows are still being produced for networks, not cable. Yes, “Girls” is getting a bunch of buzz and “Louie” is breaking all the conventional rules of television storytelling, but on the networks you can find shows like “Community,” “NewGirl,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23,” “Happy Endings,” and new classics like “Parks & Recreation,” “30 Rock” and “Modern Family.” Part of this is certainly that subtlety goes hand-in-hand with the very best comedy, and always will, and network comedies can more easily embrace that than cable, which comes with the pressure of being edgy and cutting edge.

But I digress, and digressing in your first paragraph is never a good thing. Back to “Seinfeld,” which by its fourth season was expert on turning the everyday machinations of human nature into fodder for humor, probably never more so than in this episode. It begins with a gut-bustingly funny story related by George (Jason Alexander) where he is walked in on by his mother while masturbating to Glamour Magazine (yes, you read that right) and inadvertently caused her to throw her back out and be hospitalized. The story is funny because it’s relatable and yet taken to an extreme, and this segues perfectly into a bet between the friends to see who can abstain from masturbation the longest. Everyone throws in a hundred bucks, except for Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who must bet $150 because it will be more difficult for the guys.

How will they ensure that the contest is honest? The honor system, of course, though considering how well these dirtbags knew one another it probably wasn’t the best version of checks-and-balances. In fact George, the eventual winner of the contest, reveals later in the series that he cheated, which renders some of the comedy in the episode less funny because George isn’t really suffering as much as we assume, but you just have to put that revelation out of your head for now.

The lowbrow version of this lowbrow storyline (and I mean that in the best way possible) would involve jokes about the penis and bodily fluids, but David is more interested in bypassing the potty humor and turning the bet into a psychological torture session for our characters, which was exactly the right decision. Kramer (Michael Richards) doesn’t last past seeing a hot naked woman wandering through her apartment across the street from Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld). Jerry is dealing with the fact that his current girlfriend, the Virgin (Jane Leeves), will stop proceedings before it gets too hot and heavy.

Both those are funny, but the trials for Elaine and George are brilliantly over-the-top. George goes to visit his mother (Estelle Harris) in the hospital and finds that the gorgeous female in the next bed is getting a sponge-bath from an even-hotter nurse. It’s one of the ultimate male fantasies come true only inches away from George, and he has to watch it while unable to release his frustrations and while sitting next to his mother, who is lying in what appears to be a butt sling.

THAT John F. Kennedy Jr.

And then there’s Elaine. She finds herself in an exercise class directly behind John F. Kennedy Jr. and his assets. Yes, THAT John F. Kennedy Jr. More than that, he actually is interested in her (!), hits on her (!!) and they share a cab ride home together (!!!). Because masturbation is essentially about fantasy, David gleefully takes the episode over the top and parodies some of our most fantastical daydreams.

Because of the subject matter and nature of the episode, the humor can’t help but be very frontloaded (no pun intended). And while the teaser and first act of the episode are damn near perfect because we are quickly amused by the storyline and the introductions to the various character trials, the sense of discovery ebbs away by the second act. A small misstep is a second scene where George returns to the hospital to watch the sponge-bath again that covers the same territory. Luckily, David gives the viewers a genuinely funny pay-off by having the virgin break up with Jerry and fall into the arms of JFK Jr., who just happens to be outside Jerry’s apartment to meet Elaine.

And as for the winner of the contest? David never blatantly states it in the episode, but doesn’t have to. Jerry walks over to the window, defeated after losing the Virgin, and spies the naked neighbor strutting her stuff. Enough said, and sometimes the best climaxes (only a little pun intended) come without being underlined and given a huge punchline.

“The Contest” is available in the fourth season DVD of “Seinfeld” and is probably being rerun right now on television.

Frasier : "The Innkeepers"

Season Two, Episode 23

Original Airdate: May 16, 1995

Writer: David Lloyd

Director: James Burrows

Executive Producers: David Angell, Peter Casey, Kelsey Grammer, David Lee, Christopher Lloyd

Cast: Kelsey Grammer, Jane Leeves, David Hyde Pierce, Peri Gilpin, John Mahoney

“The Innkeepers” is a classic example of a slow-burn sitcom episode, but transcends most others because its mechanics are so well-hidden. In many respects, the viewer doesn’t even know he is being set up for the explosive finale until the payoffs actually happen. This is because the clues are so well-hidden and because they are all draped in humor that actually works. In “The Wizard of Oz,” one of the classic lines is “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” Here, we don’t see the man or the curtain because we are having too much fun watching the show.

The premise couldn’t be simpler: Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles (David Hyde Pierce) decide to buy a restaurant. Their father (John Mahoney) tells them it’s going to wrong, and they don’t listen. Chaos ensues. If the idea of the brothers doing this sounds a little farfetched, the show’s writer David Lloyd must have known this, and spends an entire act making the purchase a realistic venture. After learning Orsini’s Restaurant is closing, the Niles waxes lyrical about how he had happy childhood memories there, and they decide to make one more family trip, complete with Daphne (Jane Leeves), to reminisce. They use logic to convince themselves to buy – after all, the eatery is in a prime location, and a head chef at a rival restaurant is unhappy there, etc. One could almost be convinced that this is a good venture (Frasier: “I’ve always wanted to own a four-star restaurant.” Niles: “What growing boy hasn’t?”), though Martin gets a few great zingers in before the deal is done.

We shift to opening night, and that’s where the show hits its stride. “Frasier” never talked down to its audience, though its characters often found themselves talking down to those they encountered, and here Lloyd ensured that every calamity felt natural and understandable, given the circumstances. After all, can you really blame Frasier and Niles for not knowing which swinging door is “in” and which one is “out”? And instead of allowing the situation to dovetail into some sort of rivalry between the brothers, which would have been so easy and done by most lesser sitcoms, there’s only one small beat where Frasier insists on a large soufflé dish and Niles wants small, individual ones.

Now for the build-up to the explosive payoffs. In every scripted film or television show worth its salt, writers plant small hints as to what’s coming early in the episode so that when the payoff happens, it makes sense logically. Look at twist in “The Sixth Sense” as a perfect example of a dozen clues hidden logically in plain sight that take on resonance when the finale happens. Here, the set-ups are disguised well because they are in the form of jokes, and they all land, making you think that’s the end of it. The character of Otto is set up as a probably-senile waiter in the restaurant, and when Frasier and Niles take it over, they turn him into a valet because they don’t want to let him go. Frasier carries around a walkie to call down to Otto and have him drive the valet cars to the entrance, and every time he calls back “Who is this!?” We think that’s the punchline, and the fact that it recurs makes it even funnier because Frasier gets more and more desperate every time he speaks to Otto. It is never, ever, ever, ever implied that Otto should not be behind the wheel of a car. If that were even hinted at in a line, the twist of climaxing the episode by having Otto drive a car through the wall would have been spoiled. It’s funniest sitcom car crash in history, rivaled only by this one from “Everybody Loves Raymond.” And yet, as the car goes through that wall, it makes complete logical sense and is all the funnier because it is genuinely surprising.

The pacing of the episode is brisk and the director, James Burrows, pulls off some intricate, complicated choreography with the characters and storylines. It all looks so easy, but at one point he is juggling Martin at the bar, Frasier seating people, Roz and her date and Niles and Daphne self-destructing in the kitchen all at once. Burrows has won 10 Emmys over the course of his career, and is it any wonder? With the possible exception of William Asher, this man has given us more indelible comic television images than any other, hands down. Looking down a list of his credits is like looking through a slice of television history: “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “Taxi,” “Cheers,” “NewsRadio,” Friends,” “Will & Grace” … and those shows are just scratching the surface.

The episode is also notable because it is a true ensemble act. No character is the main focus, but each one gets one of the major climactic pay-offs. The restaurant goes into a brown-out when Niles drops a toaster into the eel aquarium. Daphne grabs an eel by the tail and smashes it on the counter. Roz explodes the cherries jubilee. And Frasier facilitates (and watches in horror during) the aforementioned car crash. Any one of these moments is good enough to make the episode memorable, but together they make it great television.

“The Innkeepers” is available on the second season DVD of “Frasier,” Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus (ugh), iTunes and Youtube.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer : "Hush"

Season 4, Episode 10

Original Airdate: December 14, 1999

Writer/ Director/ Executive Producer: Joss Whedon

Cast: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Stewart Head

Television is supposed to be a visual medium, and yet it consistently seems like you would be hard-pressed to find a lot of support for that statement on the air. Plopped in our living rooms as a replacement for radio, during the ‘50s, many shows were originally broadcast live, meaning there was barely any camera movement or location change. Multi-camera sitcoms didn’t help matters in terms of visual invention, at least not until “Sports Night” came along. You could see the actors, sure, but the spoken word was still the key. Flash forward to today, and that still seems to be the rule. Because of budget constraints, most television shows are stuck in courtrooms, crime scenes and apartment buildings. Reality shows shake their cameras and make everyone look like a clone of Lauren Conrad by using the same filters. As a writer and lover of fantastic dialogue, this doesn’t bother me (love ‘ya, Aaron, Amy and David!), but you still have to stand up and applaud when a creator allows you to experience television storytelling in a new way.

Going into its fourth season, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” had become famous for the snappy dialogue and excellent characterization that was spearheaded by show creator Joss Whedon. Also for never being nominated for any major Emmys. Maybe Whedon was complimented one too many times on his snappy dialogue. Maybe he had just caught a Charlie Chaplin marathon on Turner Classic Movies. Or maybe he just sensed that the fourth season of his show wasn’t connecting like the others, and decided to throw out the rulebook.

“Hush” represents the peak in quality for a show that was regularly excellent. Despite doing something so off the beaten path, it still manages to completely embody the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” viewers tuned into every other week. Buffy was still Buffy and the tone and humor was in line with what we always expected. But by getting rid of dialogue, Whedon underlined that he didn’t need the banter to make the show special. It already was.

Whedon opens the episode with a dream sequence, complete with a little blonde girl who sings a song about the monster-of-the-week. When a show goes out of its way to craft a horrifying song about its creatures (called The Gentlemen) and then puts the lyrics into the mouth of the creepiest being on the planet (those with young blonde girls as children will certainly back me up here), you know that the show is going to go for the throat. I did not mean that last part to be a pun, but I’m going to go with it.

The teaser and first act are filled with all the usual witty witticisms, though purposefully a little more stale than usual. This is to underline that words can be used as a means to block communication as often as it is used to embrace it. Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Riley (Marc Blucas) talk, talk, talk instead of actually admitting their feelings. Anya (Emma Caulfield) is angry with Xander (Nicholas Brendon) because he won’t put a label on their “relationship.” My beloved Tara (Amber Benson) is completely unable to speak in her Wicca group because everyone else is talking about things that don’t matter. And then the Gentlemen arrive, open up a box and everyone loses their voice.

The initial realization of the mass mutism (I think I created a word there) is brilliantly written and staged. Buffy and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) have a panicked conversation in their dorm room where you can almost…almost tell what they are trying to say by lip reading. Xander panics and tries to call Buffy, only to realize the moment she picks up the phone that neither can do anything to communicate that way. Riley is almost killed because the elevator to the military compound needs voice recognition. And there’s a fantastic beat, so simple to describe yet ingenious in execution, where a random student drops a bottle and the viewer jumps out of his seat. All of this is set to the fantastic music of Christophe Beck, who makes the affair feel like a classic Universal horror movie. There have been a few other television episodes that used a lack of dialogue as a storytelling technique (“The Twilight Zone” episode “The Invaders” comes to mind), but never like this. In fact, dare I say that no other show in the history of television could have pulled this type of storyline off successfully in the way this episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” did? I think I do dare.

Yes, there is some dialogue sprinkled into the episode, most notably when the characters watch a news program and when Maggie Walsh (Lindsay Crouse) uses a machine that verbalizes what she types. But these beats feel like network notes more than something that creatively blossoms from the situation. But for the most part, Whedon creates a purpose for his lack of words. Buffy and Riley embrace their relationship in a way they could not do when they could speak. Xander beats up Spike (James Marsters) after misinterpreting a situation with Anya, proving that he cares about her. Tara proves stronger than expected when she connects with Willow. And all the while we get genuine belly laughs out of the situation. Buffy gets the eyebrows of her friends raised when she makes a questionable motion in her chair at the Scooby summit, and later gets angry with Giles’ drawing of her because the hips are too big. Gellar’s performance in the episode is really a revelation, able to perfectly switch gears from humor to pathos to fighter in an instant.

And did I mention the episode is genuinely frightening? Though there was a lot of suspense to be found in the best episodes of “Buffy,” it wasn’t exactly known to cause the same goosebumps and generate the same scares shows like “The X-Files” and “The Night Stalker” did. But here the Gentlemen and their straight-jacket-clad minions are scary as hell. They look like a skeleton that has grown skin, if that makes sense, and their make-up design is an obvious tip of the hat to Lon Chaney’s make-up in the original “Phantom of the Opera.” It feels like a lot of time (and the budget) went into crafting the monsters, their lair and their method of transportation (floating a few inches over the street), and the result is a villain for the ages.

After the triumph of “Hush,” which earned the only major Emmy nomination in the show’s history, for Best Writing, Whedon began experimenting much more often (usually to great success) in storytelling techniques. The fourth season finale related all the main characters’ dreams. The season five episode “The Body” remains the heart-wrenching examination of death in television (hell, for my money television and film) history. And then there’s the musical episode “Once More, With Feeling.” To be bluntly honest, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was the reason I wanted to become a television writer, and this episode changed the way I look at storytelling. Any single episode that can do that is some kind of special.

“Hush” is available on Buffy’s fourth season DVD, Amazon Prime, iTunes and Hulu Plus (ugh).