Summary
From Bill and Frank’s heartbreaking final dinner inThe Last of Usto the captivating Christmas flashback inThe Bear, 2023 has brought a ton of unforgettable TV moments. With the first seasons of great new shows likeGen VandAhsokaand the final seasons of already beloved shows likeBarryandSuccession, 2023 has been a great year for television. There have been plenty of great TV moments this year, like a certain death that took place surprisingly early inSuccession’s swansong season.
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Cast
Jaz Sinclair, Chance Perdomo, Lizze Broadway, Maddie Phillips
Homelander’s appearance in theGen Vseason 1 finale was much more than just a cheap cameo. The sociopathic supe’s arrival on the campus of Godolkin University provided the finale episode with a shocking climax that left the season on a jaw-dropping cliffhanger. There was another fan-pleasing appearance by a character fromThe BoysinGen V’s mid-credits scene. Upon discovering the wreckage of “The Woods,” Billy Butcher drops one of his signature C-bombs and brands Vought to be “a bunch of c***s.” As great as Butcher’s appearance was, it wasn’t quite as mind-blowing as Homelander’s scene. He attacks our hero, Marie Moreau, with an eye-blast. She’s captured but, miraculously, she survives Homelander’s attack. This sets up a thrilling supe rivalry forGen Vseason 2 (orpossiblyThe Boysseason 4if it’s going to cross over with the spin-off).
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Bill Hader, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Anthony Carrigan
The series finale ofBill Hader’s brilliant dark comedyBarrywas full of unexpected moments, like Fuches having a change of heart and throwing himself on Barry’s son John to protect him from gunfire, or Gene Cousineau succumbing to his dark side and shooting Barry dead. But the greatest moment in the episode is its final scene, in which a now-teenage John watchesThe Mask Collector, a biopic about the dad he never really got to know. The movie is absurdly falsified, presenting Barry as a clear-cut hero and Gene as a criminal mastermind. This was a wholly unexpected but fitting way to end the series. It tied back to the show’s original premise of satirizing the film industry and reframing stories to warp the truth, and it acted as a meta commentary on what some audiences hopedBarryitself would be (and points out everything wrong with those conventional, cliché-ridden action thrillers).
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Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Lionel Boyce
The Bear’s holiday-themed season 2 episode “Fishes” is a surprisingly star-studded episode that builds tension masterfully to the shocking climactic moment of Donna crashing her car into the house. The Christmas flashback featured appearances by such A-list guest stars as Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Jon Bernthal, Gillian Jacobs, and John Mulaney. But Jamie Lee Curtis stole the show from all of them with her anxiety-inducing turn as Donna, the erratic Berzatto matriarch. Curtis’ scene-stealing turn as Donna, culminating in that climactic car crash, went a long way towards explaining why Carmy and his family struggle to express themselves in a mature and non-volatile way – it’s how they were raised.
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Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett
In just its third episode,HBO’s adaptation ofThe Last of Uspivoted away from its central dynamic of Joel and Ellie to tell the standalone love story of Bill and Frank. Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett played the romance perfectly, and captured audiences’ hearts around the world. This episode was full of memorable moments, from the performance of “Long, Long Time” that leads to the couple’s first kiss to Bill’s gleeful giggling in the strawberry scene, but those moments all built up to the tragic finale. Bill and Frank’s final dinner, in which Bill reluctantly assists with Frank’s suicide before taking his own life, marked an appropriately heartbreaking conclusion to the show’s most touching episode.
Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook
Just three episodes into its final season,Successiondelivered the moment the series had been building towards from the very beginning: the death of Logan Roy. This series was all about which of Logan’s kids would take over his media empire after his death, but this episode focused more on the immediate tragedy than who would assume his position as CEO of Waystar RoyCo. Sneaking Logan’s death into an episode called “Connor’s Wedding” was a genius move, and it took audiences by surprise so early in the season. The fallout of Logan’s demise is one of the most realistic depictions of death and sudden loss ever put on-screen. Mark Mylod’s long-take direction gave the whole agonizing sequence a documentary-like sense of realism. Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, and Alan Ruck all nailed the raw emotions of their characters’ very different, very in-character reactions to the news of Logan’s death.
