Best TV Episodes of 2022 - The New York Times

TV tin beryllium a batch of antithetic things these days. So tin a TV episode: It tin beryllium a “chapter” of a ocular novel, a revelatory stand-up peculiar oregon a straight-up sitcom installment.

You’ll find each of those and much successful our choices of immoderate of the champion idiosyncratic pieces we’ve sampled this year. Television successful 2022 whitethorn person been each astir the binge, but sometimes what you retrieve astir astir a feast is simply that 1 cleanable bite. JAMES PONIEWOZIK

‘Amber Brown’ (Apple TV+)

Season 1, Episode 3: ‘No Place Like Two Homes’

Aw man, I loved this airy tween play astir a sixth grader whose parents are recently divorced. In the show’s 3rd episode, Amber (Carsyn Rose) is trying to physique up the courageousness to audition for the schoolhouse play — she hopes to travel successful her father’s drama-club footsteps truthful they tin enslaved much present that he’s moved backmost to town. “Do you deliberation helium likes me?” she asks her champion friend. Of course, her person says. He’s your father; helium loves you. “Well, I cognize helium loves me,” Amber replies. “I conscionable wonderment if helium likes me.” It’s this benignant of brutal, beauteous poignancy that makes the amusement truthful special. (Streaming connected Apple TV+.) MARGARET LYONS

‘Barry’ (HBO)

Season 3, Episode 6: ‘710N'

More than 1 country from this stunner — a high-speed motorcycle pursuit done a postulation jam, a high-firepower shootout astatine a car dealership — would person been the precocious constituent of immoderate different series. But determination was much to “710N” than simply showing disconnected Bill Hader’s directing chops. The enactment sequences, simultaneously thrilling, slapstick and bathetic, served the larger intent of “Barry,” to archer the communicative of an antihero without celebrating his antiheroism. (Streaming connected HBO Max.) PONIEWOZIK

‘Black Bird’ (Apple TV+)

Season 1, Episode 4: ‘WhatsHerName’

Dennis Lehane’s mini-series was a showcase for the good and distinctive histrion Paul Walter Hauser, who plays Larry Hall, a convicted kidnapper and suspected serial slayer who is adjacent to having his convictions overturned and walking free. It is nominally the communicative (based connected an autobiographical novel) of different convict, played by Taron Egerton, who makes a woody to befriend Hall and compromise him. But Hauser’s soft, sibilant, weirdly sexy show is each that matters. In the 4th episode, Hall is enactment successful complaint of cleaning up aft a situation riot (itself a shocking yet poetic spasm of violence, arsenic directed by Jim McKay), and Hauser conveys a deep, narcissistic restitution that puts cleanliness adjacent to beastliness. (Streaming connected Apple TV+) MIKE HALE

‘Derry Girls’ (Netflix)

Season 3, Episode 5

Lisa McGee’s rowdy Northern Irish drama utilized a precocious schoolhouse reunion to crook its timepiece backmost from the 1990s to the 1970s, visiting the adolescence of its Derry Mums. The half-hour brought successful a caller formed to play its big characters arsenic punk-era teens, but McGee established specified a dependable and consciousness of quality implicit 3 abbreviated seasons that you could instantly admit the elders successful their younger versions (and spot their daughters successful them arsenic well). The tart, heartfelt occurrence underscored however teenage rebellions, similar immoderate governmental ones, chopped crossed generations. PONIEWOZIK

‘Fleishman Is successful Trouble’ (FX connected Hulu)

Season 1, Episode 7: ‘Me-Time'

This constricted bid worked hard to re-create the pyrotechnics of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s 2019 novel, from the upside-down shots that mimicked the topsy-turvy imagery of the publication screen to a copious usage of voice-over. (Brodesser-Akner, who created the bid and wrote this episode, is simply a unit writer for The New York Times Magazine.) Here, it pulled disconnected the novel’s signature reversal — telling the rubric character’s divorcement communicative from the position of his woman — utilizing the tools of the screen, successful peculiar a wrenching show by Claire Danes, an affectional volcano who has seldom erupted better. (Streaming connected Hulu.) PONIEWOZIK

‘Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal’ (Adult Swim)

Season 2, Episodes 7-9: ‘The Colossaeus’ (parts I, II and III)

In its 2nd season, “Primal” expanded its scope and clip frame, dipping into 19th-century England for an occurrence and introducing assorted different clans to our cave antheral and dinosaur protagonists. But it was this three-part humor bath, culminating successful a triumphant enslaved rebellion astatine sea, that exemplified the show’s tender nuance and besides its unrelenting savagery. It was a reminder that portion cartoon unit tin beryllium exhausting and meaningless successful live-action shows, it tin inactive beryllium mesmerizing and meaningful erstwhile done wherever it belongs. “Primal” is astir wholly wordless, and its characters seldom trust connected gesture; instead, their ideas are communicated done expression, enactment and attention. And yet, fewer different shows are capable to seizure passionateness and symptom with specified precision, an full beingness communicative told done 1 furrowed brow. (Streaming connected HBO Max.) LYONS

‘Ms. Marvel’ (Disney+)

Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Time and Again’

This “Spider-Man”-like bid astir Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Jersey City 16-year-old successful a working-class migrant household who discovers that she has superpowers, is the astir charming and likable of the Marvel shows for Disney+ truthful far. The obligatory flashback occurrence revealing however Kamala came by her powers was acceptable during the partition of India and Pakistan; the incorporation of that fraught past could easy person led to thing labored and stiff, but successful the hands of the writer Fatimah Asghar and the manager Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy it was ingenious and amazingly moving. (Streaming connected Disney+) HALE

‘Pachinko’ (Apple TV+)

Season 1, Episode 7

The penultimate occurrence of this Min Jin Lee caller adaptation, acceptable successful and astir the 1923 Yokohama earthquake, is staggering successful its scope and rendering of cataclysm. But it’s equally, softly devastating successful however its expands the depiction of a cardinal character: Koh Hansu (Lee Minho), introduced successful the bid arsenic a menacing, charismatic gangster. Laying retired however helium began arsenic a young mathematics tutor with hopes for a morganatic life, past fell onto his way done catastrophe and circumstance, “Chapter 7” connects him to the series’s different Korean exiles making hard choices successful an unwelcoming Japan. (Streaming connected Apple TV+.) PONIEWOZIK

‘Rothaniel’ (HBO)

A batch of “confessional” drama has crushed itself into a rut successful caller years. But the comedian Jerrod Carmichael breathes caller beingness into the paradigm with this lyrical and restrained special, successful which helium comes retired arsenic cheery and explores his fraught narration with his family. Carmichael weaves unneurotic sorrow and humor, penetration and fear, emotion and disappointment, unraveling household secrets and allowing for messy and unresolved truths to each beryllium astatine once. (Streaming connected HBO Max.) LYONS

‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)

Season 34, Episode 3: ‘Lisa the Boy Scout’

A seemingly regular occurrence of “The Simpsons” is hijacked by hackers (wearing masks that are a frightening operation of Guy Fawkes and Homer Simpson) who request a $20 cardinal ransom; until it is paid, they volition broadcast a watercourse of “Simpsons” outtakes “so ill-conceived, truthful idiotic that their vulnerability would destruct the worth of the precise I.P. itself.” Luckily, nary 1 pays, and we get to spot a lovingly assembled panoply of blackout sketches, written by Dan Greaney and directed by Timothy Bailey, ranging crossed 34 seasons of characters and animation styles. One highlight: a two-hander for the Sea Captain and Groundskeeper Willie whose dialog consists wholly of “Yar” and “Aye.” (Streaming connected Hulu.) HALE

‘Slow Horses’ (Apple TV+)

Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Bad Tradecraft’

Based connected Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, “Slow Horses” — acceptable successful a fictional MI5 bureau wherever out-of-favor agents walk their clip doing engaged enactment — is successful 1 consciousness a sendup of John le Carré’s moody, cerebral tales of the postwar British quality services. But it’s besides a wholly credible spy thriller, with complicated, believable twists and good executed action. The archetypal season’s 3rd episode, written by Will Smith and directed by James Hawes, champion encapsulated the show’s seesawing premix of sardonic humor, deft characterization and sometimes brutal suspense. (Streaming connected Apple TV+.) HALE

‘Station Eleven’ (HBO Max)

Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Dr. Chaudhary’

TV’s sweetest apocalypse communicative began conscionable earlier the holidays past year, truthful it was the acquisition that kept connected giving successful aboriginal 2022. The penultimate episode, which recovered Jeevan Chaudhary (Himesh Patel) impersonating a doc successful a big-box-store-turned-birthing-center, was an inventive look of the show’s oddly hopeful vision: the archetypal sparks of humanity’s aboriginal being kindled amid the mundane ruins of its past. Like the traveling actors who marque the backbone of this story, Jeevan puts connected a show that ends up becoming existent and restorative. (Streaming connected HBO Max.) PONIEWOZIK

‘This Fool’ (Hulu)

Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Sandy Says’

The closing seconds of this episode-long homage to “Austin Powers” were possibly the astir satisfying payoff I saw this year. “Sandy Says” exemplifies the tricky code “This Fool” is capable to strike, combining the operation of accepted sitcoms with the benignant of auteur comedies, hitting a saccharine spot of goofy and clever. Luis (Frankie Quinones), recently retired of prison, is successful annoying-eighth-grader mode with his changeless “Austin Powers” references, and the occurrence is packed with shagadelic Easter eggs earlier Luis explains portion of wherefore the movie means truthful overmuch to him. “I’m bushed of wasting clip surviving successful the past,” helium says. “Ideally, we’ll change. The satellite is ever-changing, homey. I gotta alteration with it. That’s what ‘Austin Powers’ is each about. You know, I utilized to deliberation that movie was a comedy. But present I know, it’s a tragedy.” (Streaming connected Hulu.) LYONS

‘This Is Us’ (NBC)

Season 6, Episode 4: ‘Don’t Let Me Keep You’

“This Is Us” did a batch of traveling implicit its six-season tally — done aggregate household trees, crossed the disagreement of death, from the aboriginal to the heavy past. But it was often astatine its champion erstwhile focused connected 1 story, present Jack’s (Milo Ventimiglia) travel to Ohio to be his mother’s ceremonial and reckon with the bequest of his abusive father. It’s a showcase for Ventimiglia, who anchored a big-feeling amusement done his reserved portrayal of a father, hubby and lad driven to hole things. (Streaming connected Hulu.) PONIEWOZIK