TV EPISODES

AV CLUB: For all our love for Hank Kingsley, there is no darker and more embarrassing moment for the “Hey now!” guy than season four’s “Hank’s Sex Tape.” After stoned writers Jon (Jon Favreau) and Phil (Wallace Langham) find a video called “Hank’s Birthday” in his office, they discover it’s actually a tape of Hank in the most awkward three-way ever put on videotape, which quickly goes viral. The one-liners from the tape alone sell the episode (“Mary Ann’s being mean to me, Professor,” “The snake doesn’t like Artie,” “You need to wash your mouth out… with Hank!”) But in typical Larry Sanders fashion, a surprising ribbon of sentimentality shows up. Hank may get kicked around (frequently) as the Sanders co-host, but Artie is still going to hunt down every last copy of that tape for him, and Larry is going to let Hank’s potential sponsor watch the show in his office, ultimately clinching the gig. Yes, they’re also saving the show, but when it comes right down to it, the Sanders players constitute a family. A *beep* frequently mean, dysfunctional family that understands that sex is not wrong when it’s performed by two or more consenting adults.

AV CLUB: It wasn’t just Larry and Hank who were staring into the void of an existential crisis during The Larry Sanders Show’s final episodes, as the show within the show coming to an end forced them to reckon with the prospect of life after late night. The rest of the staff was facing an uncertain future as well, and it’s that impending deadline that helps trigger the title lawsuit of “Putting The ‘Gay’ Back In Litigation.” Brian (Scott Thompson), having endured the homophonic taunts of writers’-room *beep* Phil for years, threatens to sue the show for sexual harassment. The two eventually end up hunkered down together during one of the final shows, and as Phil drinks Jagermeister and opens his narcissistic heart to Brian, the true source of Phil’s anti-gay attitude becomes clear—the two begin passionately making out. It’s a great reversal of a long-simmering antagonism. But Hank’s and Larry’s spiraling continues unabated, as Hank’s efforts to make Larry a farewell tape of celebrity well-wishers is threatened by his own stupidity, and Larry almost torpedoes his burgeoning relationship with Illeana Douglas by acknowledging he could only be with someone he considers a good guest. It’s that push and pull between the seemingly critical legal situation, yet everyone remaining wrapped up in their own petty crap, that highlights the series’ perpetual tightrope walk of comedy and discomfort.

KEVIN CHURCH: The second pilot for the series (“The Cage” was, of course, retooled for the rather excellent “The Menagerie”) is a bit of an odd duck compared to how polished subsequent episodes would be, but there’s a lot to recommend it, too. I particularly love how efficiently Sam Peeples’ script gave a tragic arc to Kirk’s friendship with Gary Mitchell.

KEVIN CHURCH: It’s not a particularly showy episode, but this story about what happens when psychiatric therapy goes awry was one of the series’ earliest “message” stories. It’s also the first appearance of the mind meld and features the not-so-subtle implication that Jim Kirk has sex with female crew members.

KEVIN CHURCH: Jim Kirk plays space chicken with an alien vessel that could, by all appearances, wipe the Enterprise off the map. It’s got a genuinely delightful resolution that makes me smile every time.

KEVIN CHURCH: It’s "Run Silent, Run Deep" in space. It’s the first appearance of the Romulans. It’s got a crazy racist crew member who suspects Spock is a traitor because he’s also got green blood and pointy ears. It’s just a taut little piece of work, constantly upping the stakes.

AV CLUB: While the second season of the show is more consistent, season one had the most firsts. “Balance Of Terror” has two of them: The episode marks the introduction of the Romulans to the Trek-verse, as well as the first appearance of actor Mark Lenard as the commander of the Romulan ship. Lenard is better known these days for his turn as Sarek, Spock’s distant father, but he’s terrific here as an individual of principles, forced into a conflict he doesn’t really believe in. Drawing inspiration from classic submarine movies, the episode follows the Enterprise in a battle against an unfamiliar enemy, as Kirk tries to outwit an opponent who can disappear at will. It’s tense, well-paced, and a fine example of how the show could use its limitations to its advantage; Kirk and the Romulan commander never share a set, but their battle couldn’t be more intimate.

AV CLUB: Trek wouldn’t be Trek without the God-Like Being, a genre of antagonist who exists primarily to torment Kirk, Spock, and the rest with powers that seem very close to magic. The possibilities of space travel leave the door open for fantasy creatures to pop into a science-fiction universe, and Trelane (William Campbell) is the ideal iteration, a foppish brat whose sense of style appears to be stuck about 10 minutes before the French Revolution. As is often the case with God-Like Beings, he’s a terrible bully who’s convinced he’s the life of the party. “The Squire Of Gothos” is funny and thrilling, and it set the template for a type of story the franchise would return to again and again: a creature with seemingly limitless abilities likes to play games with the normals and screw with their heads. (Star Trek: The Next Generation took this trope to its logical end-point with Q, an apparently omnipotent prankster with a fondness for bald Frenchmen.) Combine this with a twist ending that resolves the story with an entirely satisfying cheat, and it’s a must-watch.

KEVIN CHURCH: “Arena” was the first episode I ever saw. It is still in my top three or four because it is so emblematic of what makes classic Star Trek (and, in particular, Jim Kirk) so important to me. Compare this to “Darmok,” a Next Generation episode with a similar riff and it’s pretty obvious which one is better. (Hint: Picard doesn’t build a bazooka out of what’s lying around on the planet.)

AV CLUB: The original Enterprise crew appeared in six Star Trek movies (seven for Shatner, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan), and the second, The Wrath Of Khan, is the best. The story of Khan starts in “Space Seed,” when the Enterprise discovers a dead ship drifting through space. The ship, the SS Botany Bay, is full of cryogenically frozen super men and women, castoffs from Earth’s Eugenics Wars. Their leader, the charismatic and monomaniacal Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban, giving it his all), engages in a battle of will against Kirk for control of the Enterprise, and with a small army of genetically engineered soldiers at Khan’s command, things don’t look too great for James T. The episode features a terrific performance from guest star Montalban, gives the franchise one of its greatest villains, and sets the stage for one of best science-fiction adventure movies ever made.

KEVIN CHURCH: Just a good episode that shows why Star Trek matters. Kirk and Spock investigate the deaths of workers at a mining colony and discover that everything is not as black and white as it appears.

AV CLUB: At the heart of Star Trek is an essential optimism, a faith in the hope that, with enough time and effort, intelligent life of every variety can find a way to live together in peace. Few episodes test this premise as thoroughly and terrifyingly as “The Devil In The Dark,” the story of a giant pizza-blob and the eggs it would kill to protect. When the men of a mining colony on Janus VI start dying at the hands of an unknown, acid-spewing assailant, the bosses call in the Enterprise to investigate the disturbance. (Throughout the series, Kirk and his team served a number of functions, from peacekeepers to explorers to ambassadors to chauffeurs.) Upon arrival, Kirk and Spock work to identify the threat, and when they find the creature, Spock’s Vulcan mind meld reveals the truth: The “monster,” a creature that calls itself the Horta, is trying to protect its silicon eggs, which the miners have been destroying without realizing their origin. The creature’s design is appropriately alien, and it makes at once an unsettling threat and a pitiable victim.

KEVIN CHURCH: The first Klingon episode actually features some very nice derring-do on the part of Kirk and Spock as they attempt to liberate Organia from their new bemustached overlords.

AV CLUB: In some ways, “The City On The Edge Of Forever” is an atypical episode of the show. While time travel is a standard Trek conceit, the episode spends most of its time watching Kirk and Spock kick around Depression-era New York City, building radios and working at a soup kitchen. There’s a crisis they need to solve—a drugged-up McCoy inadvertently erased everyone’s existence—but the real crux of their problem comes when Kirk meets Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), a pacifist whose beauty and charm quickly win over the routinely smitten captain. Unfortunately, a quick glimpse into the future (via a machine Spock puts together with radio tubes and baling wire) shows that Edith might not be around much longer. Often cited as the best episode of the original series, “City” has its faults: The script, a reworking of Harlan Ellison’s only contribution to the show, takes a lot of logic jumps to get where it wants to go, and Collins is miscast as the humble, peace-loving pawn of fate. But on the whole, the hour is smart, funny, and heartfelt, building to one of the most devastating climaxes in all of Trek. Sometimes doing the right thing means having to look the other way.

KEVIN CHURCH: The first trip to Vulcan, Kirk and Spock’s bromance tested well beyond the usual limits, and an ending that makes me smile because McCoy gets the last word.

AV CLUB: Leonard Nimoy’s Spock was always Star Trek’s not-so-secret weapon; as the character’s half-Vulcan ancestry drove him to approach problems with a cool, detached logic, he sometimes seemed like the only adult in a house full of teenagers. But even adults have their bad days, and “Amok Time” showed Spock at his worst, driven to near-madness by the biological dictates of his blood. While “Spock loses it” was a trope the series reused a number of times, it was always shocking to see the normally calm Nimoy crack up, and the episode wastes little time in showing him transformed into a angry, lustful psychopath. It’s only by returning to his home world that Spock can hope to recover, and once there, the episode gave the first glimpses into Vulcan culture and ritual. It’s a key step in a show that had engaged with alien races before, but had never spent much time building them up as anything beyond momentary antagonists.

AV CLUB: The parallel-universe concept is old hat for genre shows these days, but when “Mirror, Mirror” sent Kirk and company through the wormhole, the idea was still a new one. The result is one of the most gleefully thrilling entries in the show’s run. When a transporter glitch opens up a hole between realities, Kirk, McCoy, Scotty (Doohan), and Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) are sent to a very different Enterprise from the one they usually inhabit, a ship where fear and violence are the law, and loyalty has been replaced by handheld torture devices and the infamous “agony booth.” The episode hits the perfect mix of over-the-top camp (uniforms on the evil Enterprise appear to have been designed by a dominatrix with a sash fetish), unsettling brutality, and wit. The best twist of the hour is that “evil” Spock (who has a goatee, single-handedly giving us decades of “the evil twin has the facial hair” jokes) isn’t all that different from the “good” one—he’s just a bit more pragmatic when it comes to torturing his subordinates.

KEVIN CHURCH: Just pure big-screen science fiction adventure, and the remastered episodes do this one proudly. After discovering the Constellation adrift with Matt Decker (father of Will Decker from Star Trek: The Motion Picture) as the sole survivor, the Enterprise takes on an alien device that wipes out entire planets.

KEVIN CHURCH: I like this one a lot more than the original Harry Mudd episode (“Mudd’s Women”) because this one features a lot less of Gene Roddenberry’s (shall we say) interesting attitude towards women. It shows the crew of the Enterprise working as a team to handle a very bad situation in the funniest way possible.

KEVIN CHURCH: Oh, man. Sarek and Amanda. That’s all I need to say. (OK, so there’s a lot of political intrigue and espionage and fake Andorians and Kirk getting stabbed and…)

KEVIN CHURCH: Robert Bloch wrote a few Trek episodes, and this is easily the best of them. Scotty is accused of a series of murders and while the reveal of the true villain is a bit of an eye-roller, there’s enough momentum going by that point that you don’t really care.

AV CLUB: Overtly comedic episodes on Star Trek were often a mixed bag. Given that the show operated on a level of heightened intensity in even its most somber moments, words like “zany” and “madcap” don’t offer a lot of hope. But “The Trouble With Tribbles” is an endearingly goofy entry that never overstays its welcome. Kirk faces off against pissy bureaucrats, conmen, Klingons, and the purring balls of fur called “tribbles,” and defeats them all with the aplomb fans have come to expect. The jokes mostly land, the plotting seems almost effortless, and the end is satisfying, featuring the deaths of hundreds of inoffensive, adorable aliens. This is an example of a form Trek rarely did well, done beautifully.

AV CLUB: The third season of Star Trek is the weakest of the three, and out of its 24 episodes, “Spock’s Brain” is the worst. It’s likely the worst episode of the entire series, give or take an “Alternative Factor,” but it’s a key part of any attempt to understand the show for a couple of reasons. One, “Spock’s Brain” is the season première, which means that not only was it the episode to kick off the show’s final year, it was also the episode many fans felt directly responsible for: After all, this is what their letter campaign to NBC made possible. As such, the hour fits into the series’ legacy and lore, a symbol of the perpetual frustration of fandom: No matter how much you love something, it will always find some way to disappoint you. And if that sounds too metaphysical, the other reason that “Spock’s Brain” is essential is that terribleness is a part of this show. You can’t have the heights of Trekdom without the lows, and it rarely gets lower than the sight of McCoy using a remote control to direct a brainless Spock toward a cave. Make it through this, and you can understand just how meaningful the great episodes really are. (Plus, it’s pretty hilarious.)

KEVIN CHURCH: Kirk orders his ship to cross the neutral zone and engages in a bit of old-fashioned wetwork to get Starfleet’s hands on the Romulan cloaking device that bedeviled them so in “Balance Of Terror.” Also: Spock gets some.

AV CLUB: Not every episode in the third season was terrible, and to end this survey on a high note, there’s “Spectre Of The Gun,” an eerie Western-inspired hour that finds inspiration in the show’s meager set budget. One of Star Trek’s favorite games was to throw its cast into a world inspired by a part of Earth’s history. There was the mafia planet, and the Nazi planet, and the ancient Greeks planet. These episodes had their moments, but suffered from a central implausibility and familiarity. “Spectre Of The Gun” gets around this problem by creating a place that is at once familiar and unique. The half-finished sets and sparse landscape are clearly on a studio set, but because of their stark unreality, they transcend their origins and become something distinctive and new. The plot wasn’t new—Kirk and the others are forced by some God-Like Beings to re-enact the showdown at the O.K. Corral—but it worked, and combined with the look of the thing, it makes a reasonable summation of the ongoing appeal of the show. There are a lot of awkward parts and disparate elements, but put them all together, and they become something new.

AV CLUB: The Joker was one of the two most frequent villains to appear on Batman (he and the Penguin appear in 10 episodes), and Cesar Romero’s performance as the Clown Prince of Crime is the most famous from the show. His springy escape from prison is a perfect example of the theatrical humor that was the series’ signature. As with many incarnations of the character, this first appearance sees the Joker hatching a plot to unmask Batman and Robin. Also of note: The mask Romero wears while playing Pagliacci during the television-studio ruse is nearly identical to the one Heath Ledger wears in the opening bank robbery of The Dark Knight.

AV CLUB: By the over-the-top standards of Batman, Zelda the Great might be the series’ most subdued villain. As played by Anne Baxter, Zelda is an escape artist who steals $100,000 each year to pay for a new illusion made by “strange Albanian genius” Eivol Ekdal. She hates robbing banks, and after kidnapping Aunt Harriet (Madge Blake), is eventually swayed by a strange television conference with Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon. This is one of the least outlandish episodes of the series, aided by Baxter’s sweet and light performance. She didn’t just get to play a buttoned-up Batman villain during the show’s run; she returned in season three as Olga, Queen of the Cossacks, to team up with Vincent Price’s Egghead.

AV CLUB: Aside from the Joker, Catwoman is the villain who traditionally has the strongest bond with Batman. But the homoerotic tension between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson interferes with Batman’s typical reparteé when dealing with Catwoman. (Aunt Harriet was incorporated into the comics just a few years before this show to combat that very notion.) Fortunately, Julie Newmar is superb as the Feline Fatale, sending Commissioner Gordon an adorable kitten, dressing her henchmen in ridiculous striped costumes and cat ears, and keeping a handful of tigers around in her hideout. When Batman finally corners her, she chooses money over salvation in one of the only poignant moments to happen in such a trippy series. Also Batman “fights” a tiger. Yeah, that’s pretty much all that needs to be said.

AV CLUB: Of all the frequently recurring villains, Burgess Meredith hams it up the most as the Penguin, with a long cigarette holder in his mouth, waddling movements, and exaggerated vocal tics. This two-part storyline has the Penguin seemingly reformed and winning the affection of the public (which is strikingly similar to aspects of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns). It’s all part of a longer con, but the way that Burgess Meredith’s Penguin turns the tables on Batman and Robin, making them the villains, is deftly clever.

AV CLUB: The Bookworm doesn’t work as a villain on paper; nerdy villains rarely do (Mandark from Dexter’s Laboratory?). But Roddy McDowall really sells the character as a bitter failed novelist who has no original plots of his own, but can quote from literature better than anyone (except Bruce Wayne). Batman makes the cheeky observation that Bookworm is just as much of an amateur at crime as he is at writing because of overplotting: Bookworm erects a giant false book in the middle of a downtown street and steals a cookbook from Wayne Manor at the same time. After all the insane recurring members of the rogues’ gallery, a literary villain is a welcome original character for the show.