Clarification note:  These aren’t my ten favorite TV shows (although that’s what these episodes generally drawn from), but my ten favorite specific episodes.  You already know my ten favorite movies to watch on TV, so I thought this would be a nice compliment.  It follows the same guideline – the ten TV episodes that I’d cancel or delay plans to leave the house in order to watch.  Plus, Hulu-permitting, you’re looking at 200-something minutes of quality, quality entertainment.  Enjoy!

10. Fresh Prince Episode 608: Viva Lost Wages

Most any Fresh Prince episode would pass here.  The episode theme is always the same:  Will’s a trouble-maker, one of his straight-shooter and less-streetwise cousins goes a step too far, and Will ends up having to bail them out of trouble.  Uncle Phil easily has to be the most forgiving person on the planet.

This episode actually doesn’t feature the Carlton Dance, which you’d think would be a shoe-in to be featured on the list, but I’m not really bothered by that.  The Carlton Dance is funny and all, but it’s never really an element that advances the plot.  And I feel like the boys’ dance to Apache (“jump on it!”) is just as frequently reenacted at parties and such, anyway.

9. Malcolm in the Middle Episode 220: Bowling

Really more like two episodes for one.  “Bowling” juxtaposes the opposite parenting styles of Hal and Lois, with fantastic attention to detail on the two characters.  Perhaps the show highlights how I see myself as much more of a Hal parent than a Lois, but more likely, it clarifies for certain that I was a Malcolm kid.  One of my most disdainful memories as a kid was my dad giving me bowling tips after every frame when we’d hit the lanes, and how adversely it would affect my performance and my mood.  Though his efforts it never directly resulted in any desperate blonde girls showing up.

I can’t believe more people don’t watch this show.  I guess it’s unpopular because of how unrealistic it is.

8. South Park Episode 501: Scott Tenorman Must Die

South Park gets away with so much crap.  I don’t know if it’s because it’s a cartoon, because creators Trey and Matt have managed to build up such an expectation of the unbelievably horrid, or what.  I’ll never understand how they got away with saying “shit” 162 times in one episode that aired during prime-time television.  But this episode, “Scott Tenorman Must Die,” is the absolute worst.  Cartman does something so vile, inhuman, incomprehensible, and evil, that……it’s funny.  I’d stay away from chili for a few weeks after watching this.

7. South Park Episode 802: Awesom-O

Did you ever want to dress up as a robot to play a prank on your friend?  It’s probably not that uncommon among elementary-schoolers.  Eric did.  Then, so as to not get caught in a pile of lies, he got stuck wearing his Awesom-O costume around for the entire episode.  He and Butters are incredible together.

6.  Arrested Devel– oh, who am I kidding?  Nobody ever watched this show on TV.  (The movie is coming soon, though.)

5. Futurama Episode 401: Roswell That Ends Well

It’s like the plot of Back to the Future, except Marty (or Fry, in this case) does everything wrong that he possibly can do wrong.  The gang travels back from the year 3000 to visit Roswell, New Mexico, where Fry’s grandpa is stationed.  Fry, like Marty, has one job: do not interfere with history.  So, of course, he sends his grandpa off into an abandoned mine field, which the government then usues to test a nuclear weapon.  Then, he has sex with his grandma.  Which leads to perhaps my favorite line in TV history (from the incomparably grumpy Professor Farnsworth):

“Ooh, a lesson in not changing history, from mister ‘I’m my own grandpa.’ Screw history, let’s get the hell out of here!”

My sentiments exactly on high school social studies.  Although I’m less than positive on my teachers’ lineages, so don’t hold me to that.

4. Kenan and Kel Episode 102: The Tainting of the Screw

Having re-watched a number of Kenan and Kel episodes recently, I have to say – this was pretty bad television.  Which I guess you could say about most Nickelodeon sitcom shows of the 90’s.  The important thing is, I watched Kenan and Kel all the time as a kid.  And you’d be hard-pressed to convince me to change the channel if an episode ever somehow resurfaced.

I suppose while we’re here, I should voice a critically important question – What happened to Kel?? Kenan’s been in a few movies, has a feature role in SNL, and even came and performed some standup at Wash U my freshman year.  Kel…has a YouTube account.  I wish he’d come back more into the limelight.  Maybe I can help him out with some magazine exposure.

3. Futurama Episode 502: Jurassic Bark

The only sad episode on the list.  Seymour  is the kind of dog I’d kill for – minus, maybe, the dumpster feeding and such.  Utterly devoted to Fry, always happy to see him, and always waiting at the door for him to get out of work.  Say Fry didn’t slip in the cryogenic lab and freeze himself for 1000 years – we wouldn’t have the show, of course, but knowing Seymour would have his buddy back would be absolutely worth it.  But then Seymour wouldn’t exist, and wouldn’t have a buddy to have back.  Paradoxes are confusing.  But fun.  And Futurama‘s full of ’em.

2. South Park Episode 801: Good Times With Weapons

This episode contains my favorite moment on television.  It’s something so ludicrous and unbelievable that I was relegated to a state of uproarious laughter for several minutes.  And then the absurdity just builds, and builds, and builds.  Though I guess that’s pretty much the canned description of most every South Park episode.  And this all doesn’t even have to do with love for the Power Rangers, or my general amusement from late-night cartoons on Adult Swim.  I don’t want to say what happens and spoil the surprise in this one, but poor Butters…

1. Malcolm in the Middle Episode 113: Rollerskates

It’s got everything: hockey, rollerskating, Hal being a goofball, and the best example I’ve seen of creatively and constructively teaching a lesson to your son (with condolences to J Walter Weatherman).  Forever changed my feelings on Lipps Inc’s “Funkytown,” in a good, gooooood way.  And it forever cemented Malcolm as my favorite show on television (even though, you know, that’s not what this list was about).