Hollywood Reporter TV Critics Pick the Best Episodes of 2022

It would be possible to do a list of the best TV episodes of 2022 without placing any restrictions on it. That list would probably include five or six Atlanta episodes (including “The Goof Who Sat By the Door,” “Work Ethic!” and “Snip Hunt” from the final season), another three or four episodes from Reservation Dogs (including “Stay Gold Cheesy Boy,” “Mabel” and “Offerings”), and at least as many from Better Call Saul (out of 13 episodes, choose almost any one), Barry (starting with “710N”) and Better Things (take the series finale and work backwards). And that would be the list! 

So instead, as usual, we set one simple if arbitrary restriction: no episodes from shows on either of our Top 10 lists. So between our lists — Dan’s Top 10 and Angie’s Top 10 — that eliminated 17 shows. But these are 10 great episodes (in alphabetical order by episode title) from 10 other shows we love, since this end-of-year listing exercise really should be about spreading the wealth and there was ample wealth to spread this year! 

“Bibi’s,” Los Espookys (HBO) 
In a TV year replete with vampires, werewolves, orcs and the like, leave it to Los Espookys to cook up an entirely different kind of monster. Played by Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco), Bibi’s — yes, with the apostrophe-S, “like McDonald’s or Wendy’s” — is a giant pink bunny creature who hatches one day from a giant egg in a classroom, quickly winning the affection of the schoolchildren. Then, later that same day, he dies horribly in what’s intended as a lesson about the “divine punishment” visited upon kids who dare disrespect the teacher. It’s hilarious, it’s fucked-up, it’s oddly adorable (thanks in large part to Velasco’s giddy smile while in costume). It is, in other words, an ideal encapsulation of the sublimely unique weirdness we’ll miss, now that the series has been killed off for good. — ANGIE HAN 

“Couple 31,” The Crown (Netflix) 
Coming off of the most decorated season of The Crown to date — and with interest in all things royal at a recent peak — Peter Morgan delivered a somewhat uneven fifth season. That doesn’t mean there weren’t highlights, and “Couple 31,” which points back to Morgan’s theatrical roots, finds the slow-moving disaster that was the marriage of Charles and Diana reaching its acrimonious climax. Intercut with vignettes focused on various civilian divorces — like an inversion of Annie Hall or When Harry Met Sally — the episode is built around an extended two-hander in which Charles (Dominic West) and Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) break down the highs and lows of their marriage, first with a surprising level of bittersweet introspection and then with the cutting cynicism of a couple that knows each other exactly well enough to make every word hurt. It’s insightful, beautifully acted and even if it never actually happened — Dame Judi Dench still insists we acknowledge The Crown isn’t a documentary — it feels like it should have. — DANIEL FIENBERG

“Development Day,” Abbott Elementary (ABC) 
Feel free to prefer “Desking” or “Gifted Program” or “Candy Zombies” or several other highlights from the first two seasons of this breakout ABC gem, but sometimes I base my standards for excellence on a simple criterion: Does it include a cameo from Gritty? Only the second season premiere can say “Yes,” as the wild-eyed Philadelphia Flyers mascot made a glorious guest appearance that included speaking sign language with Chris Perfetti’s Jacob and dancing with Tyler James Williams’ Gregory, the latter a simple action that allowed Gregory to finally “get” Gritty. There might have been “bigger” cameos this year — Chelsea Clinton in the “Derry Girls” finale or Liam Neeson in multiple shows — but…nah, there wasn’t a bigger cameo this year. And the rest of the episode, featuring lots of hilarious catch-up from our characters’ summer vacations, wasn’t bad either. — DF

“F*ck the Rich,” This Fool (Hulu) 
Other episodes of Chris Estrada’s Hulu comedy might have taken bigger formal leaps (I loved the quest for a gang ahead of a threatened rumble in “Putazos”), explored deeper topics (like religion in “The Devil Made Me Do It”) or featured a relationship strengthened by wilderness diarrhea (“Sh*t or Get Off the Pot”), but if you want to see This Fool at its most screamingly funny, look no further. Fred Armisen and Eliza Coupe guest star as a pair of wealthy benefactors who have the power to save the gang rehabilitation center Hugs Not Thugs but, in exchange for their altruism, also have… a very specific and disturbing request. It’s easily Michael Imperioli’s best episode as the perfectly named Minister Payne. — DF

“Matryoshka,” Russian Doll (Netflix)  
Natasha Lyonne likes to live dangerously. If she didn’t, she probably wouldn’t have even attempted to follow up the dazzling high-wire act that was the perfectly contained first season of Russian Doll. The second season was maybe a little less cute and clever, what with the lack of the nihilistic Groundhog Day hook, but it might have been even more ambitious, as Lyonne and her small team branched out into time travel, going back to 1982 Manhattan, 1962 East Berlin and Budapest late in World War II — a daring storyline with its roots in Lyonne’s own family origins. “Matryoshka,” the season finale, isn’t as neat as the first season wrap-up, but it’s a daring summation of the season’s themes — “Grief doesn’t move you in a straight line,” Rebecca Henderson’s Lizzy observes — and of the myriad influences and fascinations in Lyonne’s head. It’s It’s a Wonderful Life with a dash of Jewish mysticism, a healthy dose of Rashomon and, yes, just a bit of Groundhog Day. A third season seems like a really dangerous idea. So bring it on, Natasha. — DF

“Review,” The Bear (Hulu) 
Famously built around an 18-minute-long take, “Review” is both a thundering achievement on a technical level and an emotional high point for an already intense drama. In the season’s penultimate episode, creative differences and personality clashes that have been simmering for weeks boil over at the most inopportune time — the day a rave review of Original Beef runs and a screwup with the restaurant’s online ordering system floods the staff with more requests than they can possibly fill. Characters scream and drop things and throw things; at one point Sydney (Ayo Edibiri) straight-up stabs Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). (Accidentally, but still.) All the while, there’s the incessant whirring of a printer spitting out one order after another and a camera that weaves between harried workers while refusing them — or us — the respite of even a brief cut away. There are shows this year that had more people getting murdered, hunted, haunted, maimed. I don’t know that any turned my knuckles whiter than “Review.” — AH

“Stealing Home,” A League of Their Own (Prime Video) 
A League of Their Own may be based on a hit movie, but in its efforts to spotlight the stories of LGBTQ people and people of color, it’s doing things its predecessor never tried. Nowhere is this clearer than in “Stealing Home,” which sees Carson (Abbi Jacobson) and Max (Chanté Adams) finding themselves amid larger queer communities for the first time. Trepidation melts into curiosity then joy as they embrace a sense of belonging that perhaps they hadn’t even fully realized they were missing. The good times, sadly, do not last: Carson and Greta (D’Arcy Carden) are forced to seek cover in a screening of The Wizard of Oz after the bar run by Vi (Rosie O’Donnell) is raided by police. But the heartbreaking end does not make their earlier bliss any less real, just as the violent attempts to erase marginalized communities from mainstream American culture haven’t changed the fact of their existence. A League of Their Own stands as a reminder of that. — AH

“That’s Amore,” The White Lotus (HBO) 
The fifth episode of the second season of Mike White’s evisceration of privileged vacationers and their appetites — sexual or arancini-driven — was, for me, the one that really ties everything together. The growing tensions within the ill-matched Daphne/Cameron/Ethan/Harper quartet and the looming threat of the man demanding money from Lucia underline the season’s themes about transactional intimacy, while Quentin taking Tanya to see Puccini’s Madama Butterfly just minutes before the episode’s shocking, raunchy conclusion underlines the intersection between classical art and unrestrained horniness featured in the opening credits and beyond. Like all the best White Lotus episodes, it features big laughs and moments capable of turning you inside-out with embarrassment at sharing a species with these characters. — DF

“Time and Again,” Ms. Marvel (Disney+) 
“Every Pakistani family has a Partition story,” we’re told early in Ms. Marvel. In “Time and Again,” the season’s second-to-last episode, we finally get the full extent of the Khans’. The chapter opens with a detour into the past, charting the tender courtship of Kamala’s great-grandparents (played movingly by Fawad Khan and Mehwish Hayat within their ruthlessly condensed screen time) and following them up to that fateful day in 1947, when the couple were split up forever. In the same way that Watchmen taught huge swathes of its audience about the Tulsa massacre for the first time, Ms. Marvel makes indelible the Partition of India by tapping into the deeply personal wounds inflicted by that historical event, and by underlining the ways its consequences have echoed through generations of South Asian families. That it’s Kamala (Iman Vellani) herself who proves to be the hero of the tale she grew up hearing is the perfect tearjerking twist — one that grounds her powers in her specific cultural identity, and in doing so expands our ideas of who a Marvel superhero can be. — AH

“Yasper,” The Afterparty (Apple TV+) 
Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s The Afterparty may have been one of the most purely fun shows of the year, and “Yasper” was its single most entertaining episode. In keeping with the series’ perspective-shifting, genre-hopping conceit, the installment built around Ben Schwartz’s irrepressible motormouth is a full-blown musical, complete with three original tracks written by Jon Lajoie. (The most addictive? “Two Shots,” a Hamilton-inspired sendup about second chances.) Nothing about his version of the story makes much sense — as Yasper acknowledges to an increasingly irritated Detective Danner (Tiffany Haddish), “I was lost in 4/4 time.” But watching him tell it is a toe-tapping blast. — AH