These were some TV moments or episodes that I loved in 2025, with a special emphasis on series that were high quality, but may not appear in my overall “Best TV Shows of 2025” list that’ll be posted soon, making this something of a consolation prize…
10. Best Dance: Dance Mom (Julianne Nicholson) has a bonkers dance scene in “Hacks” episode 9 “A Slippery Slope”…Four seasons in, it’s understandably hard for “Hacks” to surprise us as much as it once did (you can see the main plot development at the end of the episode coming), but the entire inspired creation of “Dance Mom” (a Canadian TikTok “star” hired to spruce up a traditional media late night show) was the comedic highlight of the season–most notably when her hard partying ways finally catch up to her in a wonderfully deranged sequence where Nicholson demands her managers anally insert cocaine, and then a coked-to-the-gills Dance Mom dances like a maniac.
9. Best Twist: The end of “Paradise” pilot episode…I do not think Hulu’s “Paradise” winds up being a good show (it feels like it was made for ABC 20 years ago with its persistent flashbacks, convoluted plotting, and somewhat-basic characterizations), but the initial pilot ends with one of the year’s best twist endings, completely changing the entire trajectory of the series from a straightforward murder-mystery into speculative fiction that’s on the knife’s edge of sci-fi. Not since Colin Farrell’s big character reveal in the middle of “Sugar” has a series changed into a different genre than we thought we were watching, and I’d welcome it more in the future–just on a better show.
8. Most Innovative Recap: “Alien: Earth”…Noah Hawley’s “Alien”-based TV series started strong, but ultimately became slightly disappointing in the final two episodes that were more-than-a-little-messy and slapdash. But the main strength of the series remains its truly excellent style, possibly utilized the best during their innovative opening credits that are just quick cuts of past events over the evolving “Alien: Earth” logo, blowing the stale “previously on” recaps to smithereens. It’s stark, energized, frightening, and awesome–something hard to sustain over a series, but we’ll take it in whatever doses we can get.
7. Best Revival: Detective Bosch (Titus Welliver) mixes it up with Detective Renee Ballard (Maggie Q) on “Ballard”…Let’s be honest and admit that Amazon Prime did “Bosch” dirty, and shuffled around arguably their most popular show ever as if it was an orphaned dog: cancelled on Prime so they can immediately reboot it on Freevee, then cancelled again when Freevee became so popular that fewer people were paying for Prime, but still asking Bosch to pop up on “Ballard” so that show’s considerable fanbase will watch it. I hate to see the underrated Welliver (a favorite since the days of “Deadwood” and “Lost”) jerked around like this, but always grateful to see him pop up on “Ballard,” where he enjoys legitimately good chemistry with Q’s Ballard. Q has a quality that’s effortlessly watchable, but her glowing, elusive Ballard isn’t always given a chance to show that much personality; her scenes with Bosh crackle with something close to wit, and is about the only time she shows a borderline smirk.
6. Best encapsulation of modern insanity: the “Wolves” episode of “Long Story Short”…Many people will have different “best” episodes of “Short” than this mid-season episode (which some might consider throwaway and one of the least character-centric of the season), but I loved it for using the clever allegory of literal roaming wolves at a school to show both feckless managers not prioritizing obvious problems over anything else, and then anti-establishment kooks using it as a lure for their largely imaginary pet issues. Our main character Avi seems to be the sane “center” between desensitized school boards and furious parents barely listening to a word he says.
5. Most deserved ouster: Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) turning the tables on Claude Whelan (James Callis) towards the end of “Slow Horses” season 5…Everyone hates Claude Whelan on “Slow Horses,” not because he’s an unbelievable or poorly written character, but because he’s so very believable in this age of Trump. He’s the boss you hate. The incompetent, but well-connected jerk who’s almost always wrong, and is pathologically insecure of the more competent people he’s tasked with “managing” but who really just manage his screw ups. Employees succeed in spite of Whelan rather than because of Whelan, and it makes it all the more satisfying that his shove out the door comes from Lamb, the perpetually underrated master spy that Claude thought he was about to finally get rid of.
4. Best Brawl: Reacher (Alan Ritchson) finally fights the massive Paulie (Olivier Richters) in “Reacher”‘s third season finale “Unfinished Business”…Each season of “Reacher” seems to get better than the one before it, and that all climaxed with the best fight of the 2025 TV year that saw the legendarily large Jack Reacher take on a guy who was somehow even bigger than him–the 7’2 bodybuilder Paulie. This had been teased all season long with the frequent tension between Reacher and Paulie, and Paulie had even punched Reacher so hard a few episodes prior that it shook his normally unflappable confidence in a way that was exciting for a series that doesn’t always challenge its hyper-competent protagonist enough. So the final fight had better not to look too easy for Reacher, and–luckily–it didn’t. The entire thing felt like a throwback to the glory days of Cinemax’s epic fight scenes (“Warrior,” “Quarry,” and “Banshee”), and I mean that in the best way possible.
3. Best One-Off Episode: “The Righteous Gemstone” final season premiere episode “Prelude”…The premiere of the fourth and final season of “Gemstones” decided to throw us a creatively-ambitious curveball as we follow a distant relative of Eli Gemstone named Elijah Gemstone (Bradley Cooper, reminding you of how versatile he truly is) as he morphs from con artist and sociopathic killer into an honest man of God that would lay the seeds for his great-grandson’s megachurch empire. It’s a reminder of how empires can be built by even the most unlikely people, and of how most prestige TV shows used to be fine showing us excellent, self-contained episodes in the pre-binge era where they’re now too afraid to not cram in as much “forward movement” as possible. But by returning to the past, “Gemstones” managed to be more propulsive and involving for its final season, not less–take note breathless storytellers.
2. Best Satire (tie): “The Daily Show” pretends to be a Russian-style propaganda show for Trump in “Season 30, Episode 102–Thursday September 18th”…Jon Stewart hosts “TDS” for something that’s the exact opposite of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as this “Daily Show” takes place in a tacky gilded studio and Stewart acts like he’s so afraid to say anything honest that he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown as he “proudly” trumpets Trump’s accomplishments. It was a spoof of what Brendan Carr had said he’d been wanting more late night shows to do, and took place right after Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension–led by Trump’s FCC goon Carr’s threats that prodded along TV affiliates to try to force Disney to yank Kimmel off the air–and not long after Trump had celebrated Stephen Colbert’s cancellation.
1. Best Satire (tie): “South Park”‘s A.I. Trump wandering the desert in “Sermon on the ‘Mount””…”South Park”‘s return to pop cultural relevance couldn’t have been more overdue or even necessary at a time when Paramount/CBS seems to be purging their ranks of late night hosts (Colbert), legitimate news anchors (CBS), and seemingly all black employees (like the 2,000 person layoffs David Ellison announced upon takeover that seemed to disproportionately layoff black employees). When everyone was most afraid of pissing Trump off, “Park” decided to feature an A.I.-generated Trump looking as unflattering as possible, and all at a swipe at Trump’s brazen corruption and fondness for outright asking media companies to basically bribe him. By the way, the only good use of A.I.-assisted art (here listed as “synthetic media” in a disclaimer) in 2025 (or ’24…or ’23…or ever) was having a beached-whale version of Trump talking to his own penis.
“The Daily Show” and “South Park” were fighting the good fight on a media empire held hostage at a time when it couldn’t have been more vital to keep doing so. Let’s hope they can keep it up in 2026.