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Discuss Amongst Yourselves - August 14, 2006

Name one of your favourite moments in television. It could be an entire episode or single scene. In fact, it doesn't even have to be episodic television in particular. It could be that time Rob Lowe sang a duet with Snow White at the Academy Awards. We won’t judge (much). If it’s a TVO/PBS documentary, hurrah for you. If it’s Passions, well… thanks for sharing.

(FYI - I'll be writing a post around this topic, and while I don’t intend to poach ideas off you, I can’t promise that I won’t.)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Here are some of my one favourite moments...

- The Episode of MASH where Colonel Potter's Friend fakes a heart attack.

- The episode of Friends where Joey first meets Monica (Lemonade)

- Any episode of Night Court with Yakov Smirnov or John Astin ("I'm feeling much better now...).

- The Episode of Mork and Mindy where Mork has a duel with the guy from Neptune.

- There was a tv movie with patrick Dempsey where he had epilepsy. That scared the shit out of me.

- The episode of Sanford and Son where Lamont pretends he knows karate.

- The first episode of The Transformers.

- The Legend of Zelda commercial for the NES. WHICH...WAY...TO...GO...?

- The episode of The Cosby Show where Theo and Cliff have a discussion about him moving out on his own.
Anonymous said…
Like Jorge, I have a few (in loose chronological order). They are all sort of "OH MY GOD!!" moments.

"Law and Order" episode 4.22 "Old Friends". Before I really knew he she was, the sublime Allison Janney gave me nightmares with her reluctant, teaful testimony. Fabulous.

Several "West Wing" episodes in season 1, but mainly 2.1 and 2.2 "In the Shadow of Two Gunman" and 2.8 "Shibboleth". Goosebumps.

FOUR "Friends" episodes
- season 1's "The One with Mrs. Bing" (first ep I saw and loved)
- season four's "The One with Ross's Wedding" (the reveal with Monica and Chandler in bed was awesome)
- season 7's "ToW Monica and Chandler's Wedding" (Rachel's pregnancy cliff-hanger was the BEST one!!)
- season 8's "ToW Joey Dates Rachel" (watching Joey fall in love was heartbreaking. I loved this storyline)

I have more, but I will throw them out later.
Rebecca said…
Here are the ones I can remember:

- The final episode of Dallas, where JR is being shown what life would have been like without them. Turns out Bobby would have been a total pussy.

- Peter Jennings on the morning of 9/11. So calm, but so passionate. Ditto Peter Mansbridge.

- Firefly, the entire series. It's a sci-fi show! It's a western! There are space ships and horses! There are shaky cameras and intentionally out-of-focus shots! (The same effects people must also do Battlestar Galactica, because they use a lot of the same shooting techniques.)

- G-Force, which was an anime cartoon I watched as a kid. I always wanted to be Princess and have two guys fighting over me.

- I think it's the second episode of season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when she comes home from California, and her friends have thrown a welcome home party, which she didn't want and it's gotten out of hand. Her speech at the end was heartbreaking, and her stupid friends still didn't understand why she was upset about it.

- All of season 2 of Queer as Folk. It's what I watch when I'm having a bad week/month because it's just such an emotional rollercoaster.

- Also from Buffy, I think it's the second-last episode of season 2, where she's presented with the little umbrella at the prom. I actually burst into tears when I saw it.
Anonymous said…
Ren & Stimpy: Rubber Nipple Salesmen (the walrus -- "Call the police."); Monkey See, Monkey Don't ("Let's see what I got! A rock?!"); Stimpy's Invention (the lab; Ren's helmet removal frenzy).

A possibly apocryphal memory: an episode of Doctor Who in which a man in a smoking jacket (the doctor?) standing in front of a large hearth in a dim library removes the skin from his head.

Similarly: V, particularly a scene in which the apparently human baby of a pair of hybrid twins is revealed to have a long forked tongue.

"I am Astar, a robot. I can put my arm back on. You can't. So play safe."

Bleu Nuit: softcore pornography programming on a French-language channel available in northern Ontario, Saturday nights. Erotic saxophony; a large bearded man with a bear hide over his shoulders rutting his way through a dank stone abbey; a suggestive shot of a wooden chair with a perfectly vertical and uncomfortably rigid shaft rising out of its seat, the latter probably having been polished with bacon, since a medium-sized dog can't seem to resist licking it.

In grade four, our classroom had a large black-and-white television in a heavy, dark-veneered cabinet whose use was confined to The Flintstones during lunch.

Dr. Tongue and Woody Tobias, Jr. Count Floyd. Johnny LaRue. Earl Camembert. Edith Prickley. Guy Caballero. "Whatever Happened to Baby Ed." "Das Boobs." "3-D House of Stewardesses."

The Kids in the Hall: Shirling (the sport with the snake that spits venom into participants' eyes), I get drunk and watch Eraserhead, Cabbagehead, "Fag".

The Nature of Things.

NOVA.

The weird, surreal quality of Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street Week; as a child, it was almost as disturbing as Doctor Who.

Lying next to my grandmother, a large woman encased in pastel cotton pique shorts, on the bed, and watching Nick Faldo, Jack Nicklaus, Chi-Chi Rodriguez, fishflies on the window, the quiet green slumber of golf broadcasts in the afternoon.

Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale; Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Bill Laimbeer; Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy.

Enough. I always say I didn't watch much television as a child, and I haven't had one in many years; but apparently I've been tuning in to the ether in my sleep. Maybe I should try learning Pennsylvania Dutch.
Anonymous said…
- the Seinfeld episode where they stop making Elaine's contraceptive sponges. HILARIOUS!

- the Friends episode where Joey and Rachel go on a date while she's pregnant.

- any LOST episode. I'm addicted.
Jay said…
I don't think I love any TV. Plus, I have a bad memory.
Anonymous said…
the time Lucy and Ethel are working in the chocolate factory. you know the scene. iconic.

the proto-class warfare between the Fraggles, Doozers and Gorgs.

the episode of the beachcombers where someone calls the RCMP cop "bum chin".

and the cow that sings "can you imagine? How much I love you?" in the commercial for steak sauce.

mmmmand... and many other countless hours of fun.
Lushy said…
- The SNL skit with Will Farrell and Behing the music. I have a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.

- The Muppett Show, Mark Hammil episode

- Friends, ToW Ross and Rachel fly to Vegas and have the who can embarrass each other more competition on the plane. "No Lady! I won't have sex with you in the bathroom!"

- SATC. Too many to count. Just count the whole damn series.
Anonymous said…
TV and I go way back. There are too many shows and espisodes to be able to narrow this down but here are a couple I thought would be interesting.

The Jon Stewart Show - (the old talk show) - First appearance of 'Talk Show Jon' which were stories re-inacted by dolls. Best use of a 'Skreetch' doll ev-ah.

Read All About It - this show was really weird and creepy. Talking printers and monitors and teleporting. But the episode that stands out is one that features Dunedin's floating head. Scared me as a kid, still haunts my dreams today.
Isha said…
Wow, I haven't thought about Read All About It in years! Great show.

My favourite moments are quite recent since I have a memory like a sieve, but here goes:

* Any episode of Arrested Development of any season (but Season 2 is the best)

* There is a scene in a first-season episode of The Wire where the dialogue consists entirely of the word "fuck" and variants thereof. It's bloody brilliant.

* The series finale of Six Feet Under, the final montage of each character's "flash forwards" and ultimate deaths. It has me in tears every time.

* Grey's Anatomy, Season 2, where Mere sleeps with George. The cliffhanger ending to that episode left me screaming at the television, but the subsequent episode where you find out exactly what happened during their fateful tryst was heartbreaking. Oh yes, and the episode where Dylan the bomb guy blows up.

* (Ok, this one is really lame but it freaked me out) The episode of Melrose Place when Kimberly mysteriously reappears and gets back with Michael. She's in the bathroom and pulls off her beautiful long red-hair (wig) to reveal her shaved and scarred head. She looks maniacal.

* Anytime Ian McShane says "fucknuts" in Deadwood, I can't help but snicker.
Beth said…
Back when Stephen Colbert was on the Daily Show, he did a report on the alleged homosexual practices of Prince Charles and how the British media couldn't report on them ("This is the kind of story a reporter waits his whole life not to be able to report on")... his use of sexual innuendo, with a grand finale of him deep throating a banana, is probably the single funniest thing I've ever seen in my life.

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Discuss Amongst Yourselves - January 30th, 2006

In case you don’t read my comments (and if not, you’re nuts cause that’s where all the good stuff is), Courtney has just declared herself movie illiterate. So, if you had to recommend five essential movies that everyone should see, what would they be? Let me stress: only five. For those of you with break-the-rules tendencies (like--I dunno--just picking a name out of the air... Jorge ?), your comment gets chucked out. Give’r.