The Greatest TV Moments of 2017

Nowadays, TV is everywhere. It's in living rooms, on laptops, streaming on phones. Very rarely are there events anymore that cause everyone to gather 'round the television set. But that doesn't mean folks don't bond over great TV anymore. From Master of None to Handmaid's Tale to Game of Thrones, a lot of shows had people talking in 2017. These TV moments were amongst the best.

The Good Place Goes Deep

Michael Schur's afterlife comedy is the best thing on broadcast TV for a lot of reasons—incredible performances, smart writing, a Simpsons-level love for puns—but in its first season and a half, nothing has distilled its genius better than the episode "The Trolley Problem." Fed up with Chidi's (William Jackson Harper) theory-heavy philosophical teachings, Michael (Ted Danson) puts his ethics to the test by turning the famous thought experiment into a real-life re-enactment. Things, as you might expect, go off the rails. There are still background gags (the movie marque announces both STRANGERS UNDER A TRAIN and BEND IT LIKE BENTHAM), but above all the sequence underscores what fans already knew: The Good Place thinks harder about thinking hard than anything else on TV. —Peter Rubin

Saturday Night Live's 'Come Back, Barack'

Since being sworn into office in January, Donald Trump has attempted to bankrupt the middle class by raising taxes, reshape environmental policy, overhaul the justice system into a more conservative enterprise, rewrite civil liberties for transgender servicemen and women, strip Americans of affordable healthcare, impose a travel ban on Muslim countries, and has continually insulted private and public citizens on Twitter. All of which made SNL’s “Come Back, Barack” segment—starring Chance the Rapper, Kenan Thompson, and Chris Redd in a 1990s Boyz II Men-inspired music video—one of the most enjoyable slices of TV all year. We miss you, 44! —Jason Parham

Dave Chappelle's 10-Minute Freestyle on Def Comedy Jam 25

Fifty-six minutes into the Netflix special honoring the legacy of HBO's groundbreaking standup comedy showcase, host D.L. Hughley and Dave Chappelle walk onstage, and you know something is going to happen. Dave's just too loose, standing there in his amber-tinted aviators; he's not here to perform, he's just here to be with his comedy family. The payoff comes after barely a minute. Just as he finishes saying something semi-deep—"What Def Comedy Jam was always willing to do was take the heat, the criticism, and the hate…’cause that's just basically being black in America"—a mistimed musical cue from house DJ Kid Capri crashes through the speakers. Dave laughs, and what follows is a master class in extemporaneous comedy. Over the next few minutes, as he and Hughley run through their "scripted" intro again and again, they interrupt themselves to savage tiki-torch-bearing white supremacists, talk about reading in public, and lead the crowd in a rendition of Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill." You can keep your UCB Theater and Harold podcasts; this is what improv really looks like. —Peter Rubin

Insecure's Show-Within-a-Show, Due North

The one thing Issa, Molly, Lawrence, Kelly, and the Insecure crew could all agree on this season was the irresistible appeal of its must-see TV-show-within-the-show, the pre-Civil War soap-opera Due North. Set in the Antebellum South but molded in the likeness of Lee Daniels’s drama-fueled Empire, it starred Regina Hall as a slave named Ninny, Scott Foley as her slave master and secret lover, and Michael Jai White as Ninny’s one-legged husband. What began as a joke in the writers room soon became one of the more engrossing aspects of Issa Rae’s HBO hit. When the finale aired, Due North was finally, and rightfully, given screentime in the ultimate five minutes of the show, proving to be every bit the delicious and surprising piece of TV the Insecure crew promised it would be. —Jason Parham

The 'Thanksgiving' Episode of Master of None

There wasn't a single, more perfectly written episode of comedic television last year than Master of None's "Thanksgiving" chapter. I say that subjectively, but also objectively—None star Aziz Ansari and his co-star/co-writer Lena Waithe won an Emmy for it. But "Thanksgiving" is so much more than a good episode of television. It's also a testament to the curious and lasting bonds of family and friendship and the iterative process that coming out is for most LGBTQ people. Largely written by Waithe, and based on her own experiences coming out to her mother, the entire story—told over a series of Thanksgiving meals—is handled with such depth and levity that it's heartbreaking and heartwarming from beginning to end. It warrants second helpings. —Angela Watercutter

Olenna Tyrell Getting the Last Word on Game of Thrones

Look, a lot of friggin' people die on Game of Thrones. Killing off your problematic fave is kind of the show's thing. But man, when the writers off somebody, they do it right. This blaze-of-glory style was never more apparent than when Jaime Lannister showed up to sack Highgarden and kill Lady Olenna Tyrell. The Kingslayer thought he had the upper hand until he gave the Queen of Thorns her poison and she, in no uncertain terms, told him it was she who had poisoned Joffrey, his child with his twin sister Cersei. Lady Olenna then twisted the knife by adding, "Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me." There are no microphones in Westeros, but if there were, this is the moment when she would've dropped hers. It was so perfect and cutting it even inspired a meme. Well played, Lady Olenna. —Angela Watercutter

Easy Lives Up to Its Name All Over Again

Joe Swanberg has always told small stories about regular life, but as his career has progressed from mumblecore (Hannah Takes the Stairs) to star-stocked festival indies (Drinking Buddies) to this Netflix anthology show, his lens has widened in some heartening ways. Easy's first season introduced viewers to a sprawling, sometimes overlapping assortment of Chicagoans navigating relationships of all kinds; this follow-up adds a number of new characters, virtually all of whom help feel the show even broader (despite limited screen time, Odinaka Malachi Ezeokoli and Karley Sciortino are promising newcomers). This isn't appointment TV, it's anointment TV. You probably hate this kind of advice as much as I do, but feel free to skip the season's first episode—despite a great cast, it's anomalously pointless—and mainline the rest. Preferably on a Sunday morning. —Peter Rubin

Handmaid's Tale. All of It

There couldn't have been a more awfully apropos year for Hulu to release its adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. From the worldwide Women's Marches to the myriad sexual harassment and sexual assault stories that came out, 2017 was a year during which people spent a lot of time talking about the rights and roles of women. And in no other story are the rights and roles of women placed into more stark relief than Tale, which imagines a theocratic future where any woman who can have a baby is forced to do so for families in the ruling class. Dark and foreboding, and sometimes even funny, Handmaid's Tale cut to the bone at a time when a lot of folks could glom on to its message—even if it was hard not to feel like you were under his eye. —Angela Watercutter

Big Mouth Gets to the Heart of Filth

If you heard the phrase "Nick Kroll co-created an animated Netflix show about hormone-addled seventh-graders," you'd be forgiven for assuming that the result would be wall-to-wall NSFWness. And it was: between the masturbation, Veep-level profanity, talking vaginas, singing tampons, and planet-humping, there's just about nothing I can embed here without incurring at least 19 HR violations. But it also ended up being the sweetest, most honest show about adolescence since Freaks & Geeks, due in no small part to its equal-opportunity puberty woes—which is something I can embed. Add in an incredible voice cast (in addition to Kroll and John Mulaney, there are star turns from Jessi Klein, Jenny Slate, Jordan Peele, Maya Rudolph, Richard Kind, rightly ubiquitous weirdo Jason Mantzoukas, and a many more), and you've got one of the best comedy surprises of the year. Catch up now, before the show comes back in 2018. —Peter Rubin

'Finding Frances' on Nathan for You

Few television creators achieve in a single episode the embodiment of a show’s entire ethos. This year, Nathan Fielder, creator of the cult-hit Nathan For You, did exactly that. The show—a blend of reality TV and absurdist comedy—is full of scenes that obliterate the boundaries of social norms, creating cringe-worthy moments sustained by the awkward energy Fielder infuses into his role as human and situational puppeteer. But the show’s true genius has always been in the way it simultaneously finds comedy in the subtle (and not-so-subtle) forces that drive behavior, and the humanity at the heart of it. In “Finding Frances,” the show’s two-hour Season 4 finale, Fielder is given the space to explore that idea more thoroughly—to reach deeper into the dark well of humanity and pull out a story that’s as much a meditation on love, regret, and empathy as it is a must-press-pause-to-finish-laughing journey through the limits of the absurd. It will leave you both devastated and out of breath. —Nate Goldman

The Finale of Big Little Lies

In the span of just a few weeks, HBO's Big Little Lies went from "Are you watching…?" to "OMG, did you see?!" There's a reason for that. What started out as a high-gloss soap opera about self-involved privileged folks with great beach houses in Monterey, California, quickly turned into a hard-hitting look at toxic relationships and abusive marriages. And by the time it got to its heart-stopping finale, no one was able to turn away. We won't spoil it now, but OMG, did you see that?? —Angela Watercutter

Sasha Velour's Rose Petals on RuPaul's Drag Race

The key to any great drag performance—besides precise dancing, flawless makeup, a fabulous wig, a good tuck, and a perfect outfit—is an element of surprise. And in all nine seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race, no queen ever brought more of a surprise than Sasha Velour did during her lip sync battle with Shea Coulee to Whitney Houston's "So Emotional." During the song's, well, emotional chorus, Velour—looking more distraught by the second—shook off her crimson wig as a cascade of rose petals came raining down. It was a moment of inspired genius that was only made sweeter by watching her proud father and partner tear up in the audience as the number came to an end. Nothing but chills, honey. —Angela Watercutter

Saturday Night Live's 'Welcome to Hell'

Was a more biting or of-the-moment Saturday Night Live musical number this year than “Welcome to Hell”? We’ll go ahead and answer that for you: No. No, there was not. Released in the immediate aftermath of Matt Lauer’s firing from the Today show and Kevin Spacey’s release from House of Cards amidst sexual misconduct allegations, the music video was a reminder to everyone clueless about the harassment of women that “this been the damn world” they've lived in for centuries. Funny, scathing, and so on-point it was alarming, “Welcome to Hell” was a badly needed laugh after an incredibly crappy year for women. And just remember: Nothing good happens in a van. —Angela Watercutter

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