PTR Reveals the Best Episode of the Season!

We have made it through the summer-long countdown!  This can mean only one thing:  it's time to reveal the #1 Best Episode of the Season!! For the final time, here's a look at the rules for this year's winners. We ended up with 28 incredible episodes that demonstrate the diversity and quality of the current television state. The shows and their episodes are from both NETWORK and CABLE television. All episodes aired between June 2009 and June 2010. Each episode that made the final list moved us in some way; either by making us laugh out loud, cry our eyes out or just left us with that "wow" feeling that stays with you for a few days. So basically, it's completely subjective! Since this is a summer-long countdown to the number 1 episode, PTR will reveal a few each week all summer. Since this was a summer-long countdown to the number 1 episode, we revealed a few each week all summer. Before we get to numbers 3-1, here's a quick review of numbers 28-4 after the jump.

28. “The Sexless Innkeeper” – How I Met Your Mother

27. “Hairography” – Glee

26. “Busted Parts & Breakdowns” – Ice Road Truckers

25. “Thrill Seekers & Hell Raisers” – Psych

24. “The Beginning in the End” – Bones

23. “Laryngitis” – Glee

22. “August” – Fringe

21. “Perverted” – L&O: SVU

20. “The Proof in the Pudding” – Bones

19. “Arctic Ice” – Ice Road Truckers

18. “Solace” – Parenthood

17. “Years of Service” – Nurse Jackie

16. “Time Keeps Slipping” – Medium

15. “The Rough Patch” – How I Met Your Mother

14. “High Noon-ish” – Psych

13. “Waivers of Extradition” – The Closer

12. “Let’s Get it Ahn” – In Plain Sight

11. “The Bishop Revival” – Fringe

10. “The Last Drive-in/Bullet” – Cold Case

9. “Wassup” – Parenthood

8. “Maternal Instincts” – The Closer

7. “Ab Aeterno” – Lost

6. “Journey” – Glee

5. “Chuck Vs. The Other Guy” – Chuck

4. “The Parts in the Sum of the Whole” – Bones

And now, the Top 3 episodes of the season...

3: "The Son" - Friday Night Lights

This episode of Friday Night Lights was raw, emotional and tough to watch.  It was one of the show's finest hours.  Watching Matt pick up the pieces after his father's sudden death was HEART WRENCHING! I wasn't expecting the elder Saracen's tragic death.  And quite frankly, Matt wasn't either.  When he got the news, he didn't seem to process it or how it would change everything right away (who does?).  Watching him work through that process was painful and difficult.  And it was all done with the show's usual realism.  He spent most of the episode going through the motions: sitting in the same spot at the wake while everyone went up to him to give their condolences, getting angry at the soldier charged with escorting his father's body, picking out a funeral package and trying to come up with a eulogy for a man he had spent most of his life hating.  But his decision to lift the lid on his father's casket forced him to stop going through the motions and to start feeling all of the emotions that were swirling around inside him.  This was both good and bad.  It came to a head when he stopped by the Taylors' immediately after the casket incident.  It boiled over during dinner when the carrots touched his chicken.  Suddenly, he was going on about how easy it had been to hate his father and to blame him for everything wrong in his life and then he broke down and walked out.  The too-wonderful-for-words Coach Taylor went after him, but only to walk him home.  Seriously, was there a better moment of television this season?  This year?  This decade?  Incredible, powerful TV and there were only 5 words spoken: "I'm gonna walk you home."  Wow.  Just wow.  Written by Rolin Jones.

2: "Over There" - Fringe

This was one of those hanging-on-every-word,  glued to the edge of my seat, mouth and eyes wide open awesome thrill rides of an episode that demonstrated how a series should end its season.  Twists, turns, fight scenes, romance, explosions, tense moments and a quest to find Peter and get back to our universe were just some of the things that made this episode so freakin' fantastic.  The final scene made jaws drop and left us wondering how the writers are going to fix this huge issue next season.  When the explosion went off and William Bell regained consciousness and saw Olivia standing over him, I was concerned that it was the wrong Olivia.  But then, the gang made it back across, so I thought I was wrong.  When Olivia got back to "her" apartment and started looking around, I began to suspect once again that this was the wrong Liv.  And then, we saw her: the real Liv trapped in the other universe with Walternate!!  How is Walter ever going to get back over there to rescue her?  Bell is dead, Liv is stuck over there, her classmates are dead and he can't exactly open another door.  Yikes!  MAJOR kudos to the film and editing crews who nailed that kick butt Liv vs. Liv fight scene and made it look like the two were really fighting each other.  Props to Anna Torv for playing both versions of Liv and giving them their own nuances.   And to top off an absolutely perfect episode, the show threw in a little development between Liv and Peter that I didn't see coming -- THEY KISSED!  With the real Liv in the other universe and Peter back in ours, this episode had us craving the new season.  Written by Jeff Pinker, Akiva Goldsman and J. H. Wyman and directed by Akiva Goldsman.

And now, after an entire summer of counting down episodes, we're finally up to the number one episode of the past season. Drum roll please....

1: "The End" - Lost

Series finales always tend to divide fans into two camps: those who hated it and those who loved it. Obviously, PTR LOVED this one! Were all of our questions answered? No, but the most important ones were and we got come closure for the characters we loved for 6 seasons. There was so much tragedy on the island over the course of the series.  The show even ended with Jack’s death on the island, and yet, it still managed to leave us on an uplifting note. That “alternate universe” we’d been watching all season (you know the one where Oceanic flight 815 lands safely in Los Angeles) was not an alternate universe at all. It was a sort of limbo, a place the survivors of Oceanic 815 created to find each other. The characters in it were all dead and they were all waiting for Jack before they could cross over. As Jack’s father explained, some of them died before Jack and some long after, but they all came together in that place to be with the people they loved before they crossed over. The reveal was emotional and it was beautiful. It gave us hope and amazing, tear-inducing reunions between the characters who survived and those we lost on the island. Back on the island, we watched Jack battle the Man in Black and Kate finally kill him. We saw Jack sacrifice his life to safe those he loved and the island he was charged with protecting. And we learned that Hurley became the new Jacob with Ben by his side. In the end, good prevailed and evil wound up battered on the rugged rocks at the bottom of a steep cliff. And the characters we cheered for, cried for, laughed with and loved got the proper send-off they deserved and we yearned for after six amazing seasons. Written by showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and directed by Jack Bender.

Well, there you have it -- the complete list of PTR's Best Episodes of the Season! Do you agree? Disagree? Are there episodes that PTR left off the list? Leave us a comment with your thoughts on the final list. If you would like to take a closer look at numbers 28-4, click the "Best Episodes" link at the bottom of this post.