Why do we watch movies and tv? Three reasons. Entertainment, escapism, and emotional catharsis. Most of the time we know what we’re getting into beforehand. If it’s 90’s Jim Carey, you’re going to see some funny faces and laugh a lot. If it’s 2000’s Jim Carey you’re probably going to laugh some and leave the theater saying “wow who knew he could actually act?” If it’s 2010’s and after Jim Carey you’re probably just going to be confused by his choices and pretend the whole thing never happened. Whether its showing my favorite movie “Interstellar” to my students every period after our end of the year exams are over, or falling asleep to “Bob’s Burgers,” movies and TV shows play an understandably big role in my life. It’s gotten to a point where the beats, jokes, and even twists have become predictable to me.

Every now and then a special moment in a movie or episode of a TV show comes along and it creates a complete tonal shift that hits you in each and every one of your feels. I’ve written about this before when I wrote about the greatest episode of television ever, “The Constant,” in a previous blog post. Now this was a bottle episode of LOST was a complete gamechanger for a few reasons, the most important of which was the fact that everyone was helpful and it was romantically driven. In a show where everyone is in a constant state of peril, we saw a small group of survivors drop everything to help their friend reunite with his lost love, and keep his brain from ripping itself in half…the show was complicated. It gives me chills every time I think of the episode, and it even inspired me to make my first ever TikTok. It’s this type of difference from the rest of the whole experience that I want to focus on, and not just the different perspective types of episodes like when we got to see how much Xander does for the Scooby Gang, or when there’s a car commercial in the middle of Armageddon, but when you’re watching something and it feels like its part of a completely different universe than what that TV show or movie normally is. Trust me this will will make sense.

3. “I actually hugged him this time” Blanche tells the girls…

The Golden Girls is a timeless classic that many comedians and people owe a lot to today. Like Hogwarts Houses or elemental bending, people try to identify as one of the girls. Personally I’m a Blanche, Gryffindor, water-bender, House Martell member, and I’m a Dauntless, rebel, son of Aphrodite. Isn’t fandom great? A typical episode of GG follows a pattern like most of these older sitcoms. We get repeated jokes that come from years of knowing what fans want, A joke about Dorothy looking mannish, “shut up Rose!” a barb about Blanche being a slut, and maybe a Sicily or St. Olaf story. In “Mrs. George Devereaux,” my favorite episode of The Golden Girls, we get all of this turned up to 11. During the course of this episode we see two famous men fighting over Dorothy, Rose gives us THE GREATEST ST. OLAF STORY EVER, but the biggest plot point comes from finding out that Blanche’s dearly departed husband George actually faked his death. Blanche is the apotheosis of confidence throughout the series, we see her exude this iconic energy as she moves on from man to man whenever she chooses. In this episode, Blanche’s confident façade crumbles, as we see her range through the various stages of grief upon seeing George after nine years. Eventually she hugs him, and wakes up in bed. Now the “it was all a dream” trope has most certainly been done before, but this was different. Blanche tells the girls that she “had the dream again” implying it’s happened multiple times, Dorothy asks who she chose and rejoices, and then the hammer is dropped on us. Blanche says “I actually got to hug him this time, normally I wake up right before, but this time I felt it.” Nothing could make our man-eating dynamo of a cougar happier than the phantom feeling of a hug from her husband. It’s unbelievably sweet, and the way it counters the blatant silliness of the rest of the dream episode is just perfect writing and acting.

2. “Rise Rey…” the Fallen Jedi call out

I’ve always loved Star Wars. As a kid I was into the whole good vs evil thing, and loved the idea of the force. I unironically enjoyed all of the prequel trilogy in theater. I love both Clone Wars and Rebels. When Donald Trump was elected in 2016 I got the Rebellion symbol tattooed on my chest. So in this sense I’d say I care about Star Wars more than the average fan, but I’m not one of those Alt-Right Incel Rey haters. The sequel trilogy is such an odd meal to digest. There was Force Awakens, which was fun. Sure it was pretty much a remake of A New Hope, but it was great to just be back in the galaxy far far away. My most divisive opinion is that Last Jedi is a masterpiece. People think I’m trolling, or that I’m nuts, but outside of Rogue One, it is by far my favorite of the series. I wrote this about Rise of Skywalker during my wrap of 2019 post, if you want to read my opinion just scroll down to the WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR section. I mean, she just looked through a hole in a knife and was like “I guess the McGuffin is in there,” it was just so lazy, I mean do tides not exist? Anyway, despite the fact that this movie is the most I’ve ever been disappointed, it contains my favorite moment in the history of this entire film franchise. Towards the end of this movie Rey, despite being strong enough with the Force to shoot force lightning, needs help to fight against Emperor Palpatine who according to the scroll “somehow returned,” and gets this help in the best way. Rey calls upon help and hears some iconic Jedi from the past to lift her up. I’m so thankful they got all of the voice actors to participate, yet beyond bummed that they bailed on including the Jedi appearing as Force Ghosts. Somehow, in the midst of a movie that made me jealous of Alderaan, I got to hear Kanaan, Ahsoka, Mace and many more, encourage Rey to bring balance back to the Force. I got chills up and down my whole body just typing up that last sentence. It fills me with this crazy mix of hope, euphoria, and a hint of melancholy, and it’s just pure magic.

1. “Rent Crocodile Dundee III…it totally holds up” and more of Marshall’s dad’s last words

Now I’m of the belief that CBS Sitcoms are the lowest common denominator. These “2 and a Half Men” type shows are cookie-cutter entertainment for the quotidian masses. Even shows like “Big Bang Theory” are just mind-numbing drudgery to make the hoi polloi (my English teacher would be so proud of this sentence) feel as if they have a grasp of the inner machinations of engineering, astrophysics, and quantum mechanics by creating a Pavlovian Response through a laugh track. I know I’m in the minority here based on ratings, but I have a hypothesis that most of CBS viewers just fall asleep with their TVs on, and that’s how they accrue such high ratings. All this being said, “How I Met Your Mother,” is the outlier here. I loved this show. It is a fairly simple “Friends” type of show, but I enjoyed Barney’s quips, I will always love Lilly due to growing up a Buffy fan, Robin and the Canadian jokes were great, Ted was forgettable, and Marshall was perfect. The group fit together, and for the most part you were in for low-stakes laughs.

That is until “Bad News” and “Last Words” we watch one brutal 2 episode arc in which we all are collectively shocked by the death of Marshall’s dad, and grieve with him and his family during the funeral in the next episode. In a heartbreakingly relatable way, we see Marshall agonizing over the fact that the last words he exchanged with his father were meaningless in his eyes. He keeps replaying his final moments, until finally a voicemail comes through from his dad. His phone had been dead, and as they were in Minnesota he had limited signal, this felt like he finally got one more chance to hear from his dad from beyond the grave. The rollercoaster of this moment was Jason Segel’s finest and most nuanced acting, and it is such a polar opposite from his silly Big Fudge persona. This is such a deep and heartfelt moment that it never fails to bring tears to my eyes. I got the chills just typing up this paragraph.