5. Drunk conspiracy-theory lawyer talks down the lynch mob | Fargo FX
For most of Fargo's brilliant second season, Nick Offerman's Karl Weathers, a conspiracy-theory-spouting lawyer, is played for laughs. When he walks into a jail, drunk, to represent a client, he's a comedic character. But when the Gerhardts, the local mob family, lay siege to the jail, threatening to kill his client, he's tasked with talking them down. His character goes from fool to hero — drunk, terrified, but with a desperate eloquence that would cause Saul Goodman himself to weep.
4. A truly terrifying haunted house | You're the Worst FX
You're the Worst received a lot of praise this year for its frank (and deadly serious) take on depression, which manifests often, not so much as sadness, but as nothingness. Subjected to an extreme haunted house — a hilarious mash-up of grisly horror movie tropes ("They've got a real-life Babadook!") — for a moment, the light breaks on Gretchen's endless gloom. But just for a moment.
3. Rev. Matt Jamison finds redemption | The Leftovers HBO
The Leftovers is by its very nature an unsubtle show. So it's no surprise that the perennially tortured Rev. Matt Jamison's (Christopher Eccleston) favorite book of the Bible is Job. In last season's Jamison narrative, he throws away his soul; this season he reclaims it, sacrificing a literal ticket to paradise to the son of the man who beat him. Like Job, his faith is repaid.
2. Forrest can't reach the extinguisher | Review COMEDY CENTRAL
Most TV sees stubbornness (see below) as heroic. Reviewing what it's like to be a "little person," life reviewer Forrest MacNeil (Andy Daly) walks around on his knees. When a fire starts in his father's kitchen, Forrest is too "short" to reach the extinguisher. Instead of dropping the act, however, Forrest lets his father's house burn to the ground. I give this scene... five stars.
1. The doctor spends billions of years punching a wall | Doctor Who BBC
Trapped in a torture chamber, even death provides no escape for The Doctor. Death simply resets him. But he doesn't give up: He is killed and reborn, killed and reborn — trillions of times over billions and billions of years — each time launching a few futile punches at the diamond wall that blocks him from his way out. The lyrical editing and Peter Capaldi's triumphant, emotionally raw acting turns the scene into myth.
