10. “The Face of Depression” – BoJack Horseman
This season of BoJack Horseman (or at least the first half of this season that qualifies for 2019 lists) didn’t have a showstopper episode. There was no “Free Churro,” no “Time’s Arrow.” But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fantastic season with some great episodes. And the greatest by a lot of metrics was “The Face of Depression.” There’s no gimmick in this episode, no conventions of storytelling to be turned on their heads. Instead, there’s something sparer, more subdued, the hallmark of a show about healing and transformation entering its eleventh hour. Throughout the course of the episode BoJack visits the many people who’ve touched his life: Todd, Princess Carolyn, Diane, Mr. Peanutbutter, and of course Sharona, the hairdresser he betrayed decades ago. It’s a quiet episode of making amends, of apologizing and embracing the change that comes with forgiveness. And BoJack embraces that change in more ways than one as he works his way across the country, changing his look, deliberately, bit by bit, shedding his old image and becoming someone new, someone who may finally be able to forgive himself. We’ll have to see in the back half of the season next month whether that forgiveness will last, but for this episode at least, it’s a quiet, peaceful period of growth, and it’s lovely.
9. “Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat” – Rick and Morty
Rick and Morty crashed back onto the scene this year after a 25-month-long hiatus, and it did it in style. With what is arguably the strongest episode of the season, the show addresses its worst fans and their most bizarre tendencies, with poor Rick literally kidnapped by an alternate reality’s Fascist Morty and forced, at gunpoint, to go back to old-style, fun, classic adventures. When Rick finds himself in the umpteenth fascist alternate reality, he asks himself, in disbelief, when this shit became the norm. It’s a good question, and it’s nice to see Rick so disgustedly asking it. But while poor Rick is bouncing from one unexpected dictatorship to the next, Morty leads a fantastic A-plot in which, obsessed with visions of dying old with Jessica, he stumbles and screeches his way from success to success and winds up in a real Akira-type situation. It’s perfect Rick and Morty, and a triumphant return for what is, sadly, a truncated season.
8. “Ariadne” – Russian Doll
Russian Doll is a fantastic surprise from the hit-or-miss world of Netflix originals. Led by the absolutely captivating Natahsa Lyonne, the show unfolds its many mysteries and its looming sense of sick dread in a scant but wholly engrossing four hours. And then it does what so few shows manage to do: it wraps up everything in a marvelously satisfying ending with “Ariadne.” The episode is a perfect ending in which everything is, if not completely explained, at least finally sorted in a conclusion that can really only be described as triumphant. It’s impossible not to smile during it, or to find yourself singing “Alone Again Or” by Love for days afterward.
7. “I’m in Love” – Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
“Romantic love is not an ending.”
This spring Crazy Ex-Girlfriend ended, and it did it in the loveliest way possible. Always intended by the creators to be four seasons long, the show came to its planned conclusion in the only way it conceivably could. In the very first episode, Rebecca Bunch left her life in New York City to move to West Covina, California. She was chasing the memory of the last time she was happy — a musical theater camp she attended as a teenager where she dated Josh Chan. She attributed that happiness to love, and for the better part of the show’s four seasons, she kept chasing that love. But in the finale, finally, she makes the decision to chase the other factor: the music. And at last, at an open mic night with all her friends (and a few strangers) present, she can truly proclaim the title of the episode (and the title of the song she sang at theater camp, technically her very first line of the show). Rebecca is in love… with herself. And while she may have problems down the road, we can let her and the show go feeling assured that she is in very good hands. Her own.
6. “Pancakes” – You’re the Worst
There’s a very real and growing genre of television out there that is, to my thinking, the best around. It’s made up of shows that starts out flippant and fun and grow, almost imperceptibly, into something vital and all too real. You’re the Worst is one of the best of that genre, and its series finale this spring more than lived up that position with an ending montage (set exquisitely to the song “No Children” by The Mountain Goats) that is satisfying and hopeful, but at the same time crushingly real and not necessarily happy. But as far as uncertain endings go, it’s the happiest kind you could want, accepting that love isn’t a destination, or the final word in a story. It is, as Jimmy says, a choice. It pairs beautifully with the end of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — there’s a reason these two are next to each other on this list. Though two sides of the same coin (or maybe different coins altogether, who knows?) both finales fit into one very particular box: the end of a love story that asserts, in no uncertain terms, that love is not and should not be an ending. And both do it beautifully, in their own very different ways.
Related Topics: 2019 Rewind
