‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Cheers’ All Crack the Top 10 of the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time
In Rolling Stone’s newest definitive all-time television ranking, “The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time,” sitcoms only commanded three of the top 10 spots — probably because they didn’t have a union. “Dental plan…”
On paper, it seems like a ludicrous undertaking to try and compare individual episodes from completely different TV shows across nearly a century of entertainment and come up with a semi-objective quality ranking for the top hundred out of hundreds of thousands of possible entries, so it’s a good thing that Rolling Stone is mostly digital nowadays. From Mad Men to M*A*S*H to The Twilight Zone, every genre, every era and every series competed for superlatives such as “most underrated” and “least deserving” to be awarded by outraged Rolling Stone readers, and the ranking will surely raise eyebrows across fandoms, especially considering the publication’s decision to give each influential series just a single entry for the list.
After all, how could they possibly think that “Mac Bangs Dennis’ Mom” was the best episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia?
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The top of the list will inevitably draw the most scrutiny as Breaking Bad’s “Ozymandias” took the #1 spot, but Simpsons and Seinfeld fans have to be happy with their favorite show’s finish as the former’s “Last Exit to Springfield” secured second place and the latter’s “The Contest” came in fifth. James Burrows stans, on the other hand, might not be so cheery about the seventh place selection. I mean, how could they think that “Showdown, Part 2” was the best episode of Cheers?
On the entry for The Simpsons, Rolling Stone correctly concluded that the Season Four masterpiece about the Springfield Power Plant workers’ inspiring strike is “the funniest episode of the greatest sitcom in television history, animated or otherwise,” and the typically argumentative Simpsons fandom was generally in agreement with the selection — even if they felt that a silver medal was insufficient for their favorite show.
“For people who don’t really think it’s deserved, go rewatch it,” one fan in the Simpsons subreddit wrote of “Last Exit to Springfield,” instructing the naysayers, “There is a joke that would be the best joke of any other episode every 5 to 10 seconds. It’s incredible.”
Similarly, “The Contest,” with all of its cleverly veiled masturbation jokes, was a safe pick for the show’s sole entry on the list in order to appease Seinfeld fans, even if the rabid online community could probably name four other episodes that they truly believe are better than any other entry on the Rolling Stone list. “This is proof that Rolling Stone is one ply spare a square used toilet paper. The contest is number one baby,” one such die-hard master of their domain opined.
While Cheers doesn’t command quite the online following of the former shows, I imagine that fans of Boston’s all-time best TV show probably aren’t thrilled about their placement on the list, or even the choice of episode. “Showdown, Part 2,” dealing with the most famous “will they/won't they” in sitcom history, isn’t even in the top 10 highest rated Cheers episodes on IMDb. However, considering the recency bias that dominated the list — half the shows with episodes in the top 10 ended within the last 15 years — the remaining Cheers-heads should count their lucky stars that their massively influential sitcom even got a nod.