Episode Rankings -- Top 15

In a comment recently, Allison suggested that I add some posts ranking such things as my best/favorite episodes, etc. I’ve gone back and forth on whether to do this, but her comment kind of pushed me into doing it.

The big reason for my previous reluctance was that my attitudes about these things change over time. Any ranking I give today would probably differ substantially from one I gave 10 years ago. However, I’ve decided that enough time has passed that my evaluation of the episodes is reasonably stable. I might still switch an episode from 8^th to 15^th, but it’s very unlikely that I’d switch one from 103^rd to 15^th or even to 41^st. Still, don’t take the exact order too seriously. There’s a real risk of being more precise than accurate when making up these lists, and in any case I might change my mind again next week.

I’m going to rank the top episodes in two different posts, one today and one next Thursday. The distinction I’m making between these two lists is between “best” and “favorite”. To illustrate the distinction, consider The Body. As you can see below, I rank it no. 1 on my “best” list (no surprise there). However, I can’t consider it a “favorite” because it’s simply too painful to re-watch. The “favorites” list will be those I enjoy watching the most.

I created today’s list by putting on my critic’s hat and trying to evaluate the “best” episodes. Don’t be fooled into thinking this list will be “objective”; I’m certainly under no such illusion. All it means is that I’m trying to put some constraints on my own subjective views, not that I’ve succeeded in eliminating subjectivity (which is, in my view, impossible).

As you’ll see very quickly, the “best” list contains mostly dramatic episodes rather than comic ones. This is consistent with my comments about the relative longevity of drama and comedy in the Introduction. However, my “favorites” list will be much more heavily weighted towards funnier episodes – or at least those less dark and disturbing – for reasons which are probably obvious.

In two cases below I treated a two-part episode as one for purposes of the rankings. That may seem unfair, but I find it hard to separate the relevant episodes and I don’t know how I’d rank them if I had to split them.

SPOILER WARNING: There’s at least one major spoiler below and any comments will likely include more.

T1. The Body

       Once More With Feeling

3.    Passion

4.    Becoming 1 & 2

5.    Lies My Parents Told Me

6.    Storyteller

7.    Normal Again

8.    Dead Things

9.    Hush

10.  Fool For Love

11.  Surprise/Innocence

12.  The Gift

13.  Smashed

14.  Restless

15.  Chosen

I couldn’t do just 10. It was too hard for me to separate out 11-15 from the top 10. For that matter, it was pretty hard to separate 11-15 from the ones I’d put at 16-20, but I felt a little better about breaking it at 15. Purely arbitrary.

Many of these episodes appear on lots of “best” lists, and their appearance won’t be a surprise, though some will disagree with the ordering. I’ll just comment on three of them, in reverse order of their ranking. Chosen is on the list because I was on line obsessively before it aired and I’m confident that nobody, except those who were spoiled, saw the twist coming. Changing the whole nature of the show like that was daring, in my view, and I loved it.

I know plenty of viewers who hate Smashed. From what I read, a lot of that is associated with the story line: they just don’t like the decision to have Buffy have sex with Spike. That’s ok. I’m not critical of that decision, but even if I were, I’m trying to base my judgment more on the execution than on the plot. Overall, I have to judge the episode as well-executed, and the final 15 minutes or so (the whole fight plus the ending) as brilliant.

Storyteller is the third one which gets, well, less love in fandom. A lot of that comes from dislike of Andrew. Andrew doesn’t bother me, and I think my post on that episode explains why I rank it so high.

Feel free to tear my list apart in comments and/or to post your own.

Veronica Mars movie

I saw it yesterday and it's very fun. It captures the spirit of the first 2 seasons really well (that's a polite way of saying that I'm not wild about S3). Even if you didn't watch the show -- and you should have, because it drew on Buffy a lot -- you'll be able to follow the movie. If you did watch it, you'll appreciate the in jokes and the recurring characters. Sadly, no Buffy alums appear in the movie, though maybe Krysten Ritter should get an honorable mention for her father's role in Ted.

Going off on a yet bigger tangent, Aeryl pointed out to me that Game of Thrones has cast Dead Eddie from The Freshman for a key role in S4.

Book update

I just updated the eBook again. It'll take about 12 hours for it to process, so it's not available yet.


This time I made what I'd call significant revisions. I didn't change any theories or arguments, but I tried to tighten up the reasoning and the writing. That means that I deleted some stuff which I thought was repetitive or confusing (mostly in Amends); added some transitions; clarified some points which, on re-read I thought were unclear; and moved some passages around in order to improve the flow.


If anyone wants to discuss the book in comments under this post, they can do that without spoiler warnings. New viewers beware!

Book Update

I just updated the ebook at Amazon. I made changes which will, I hope, improve readability. There are just minor changes otherwise. It takes about 12 hours for the new version to be available; I understand that those who already own it should be able to get the updated version.

The book is available here.

ETA: There are spoilers in the comments below because the book covers all 7 seasons.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

No spoilers in this post. Just speculation, though I'm not even sure it rises to the level of that. Call it "gut reaction".

What I'm about to say originated, as so often, with a comment by shadowkat. After the premiere, she said that Skye (Chloe Bennett) reminded her of Faith (Eliza Dushku). Not only do they look vaguely alike, but shadowkat felt that their mannerisms were similar and the dialogue suggested character similarities.

After last night's episode, I decided she's right. Or at least close to right. Chloe Bennett does look a bit like Eliza, and other things reinforce that. But I'm going to modify her suggestion to say that last night's plot, especially the ending, convinced me that the model isn't Faith, it's Echo (Dollhouse, for those who haven't seen it).

I'm speculating that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is Joss's chance to do what he wanted to do with Dollhouse, but wasn't able to because the network kept interfering. The fact that his brother and sister in law, both of whom were involved in Dollhouse, are very actively involved here seems like another clue.

If I were to start with this assumption and draw inferences, I could make some guesses where the plot is going. I could also suggest some character matches between the two shows. I won't do that because I don't want to spoil things for anyone, but if you've seen Dollhouse, I suspect you'll begin to note some similarities.

I'll check back in as we go through the season to see how this post holds up.

Joss's Top 3

This week's issue of Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Joss. If you haven't seen it, among other things, he mentions what he considers his top 3 episodes from all of his shows: The Body; Once More With Feeling; and Objects in Space (Firefly).

I think that's right, and I expect that judgment will hold up over time.

Quick note about "updates"

I just now realized that the page breaks I used in most of the posts had the effect of messing up the formatting by deleting the line break before the next paragraph. As a result the paragraph right after the page break wasn't separated and it could be confusing to read. I went through and (I hope) fixed that. There are no "updates" other than this clean up.