Meanwhile, Mr. Krabs revels in his rival’s self-destruction, and SpongeBob only barely tries to help. Many fans found the episode tasteless in how it handled sensitive topics. When Plankton makes no attempt to steal the Krabby Patty secret recipe, Mr. Krabs becomes increasingly suspicious of everyone around him and slowly descends into madness. He even goes so far as to ban paying customers from the restaurant and filling patties with dangerous objects.
Season 2, Episode 21
Artful Victorian horror is a difficult thing to get right, but you’d be hard pressed to find a more hearty stab at it than Showtime’s Penny Dreadful. John Logan’s series told a gloriously gruesome and macabre tale across three seasons, offering up genuinely effective frights, injecting new blood into classic characters (Frankenstein’s monster, Dorian Grey, and Count Dracula among them), and looking dang good doing it. The death of Robb and his family revealed that Game of Thrones was willing to kill off any main character and that fans should not expect the season finale to end up on the uplifting side. Still, it was a very painful moment, as Robb was one of the few characters in Game of Thrones who both had the qualifications to be a leader and genuinely wanted the best interest of his people to be preserved.
It’s a British import about a young musician who travels with a friend to a small town in the Welsh countryside to try to solve a mystery she thinks she might be connected to. The show starts out more like a basic mystery and gradually gets more intense and scary over the course of its six episodes. Prepare to lose another large swathe of faith in institutional authority with this one and dive in. And we get it, you’ve heard the hype over and over again — but this is one of those rare, once-in-a-decade shows that deserves every bit of watercooler praise. If you haven’t dropped an evening on Stranger Things yet, give it a netflix quiz shot. If you have seen it, then it only gets better with a second viewing, if for nothing else than a rousing game of spot-the-reference.
From the outset, it was clear that “Breaking Bad” was going to be a gloomy affair. The series tracked the descent of Walter White, a failed genius scientist who becomes a cutthroat New Mexico methamphetamine cooker and kingpin to fund his cancer treatments and provide for his family after his imminent death. Season 2’s penultimate episode, “Phoenix,” represents a particularly bleak turning point in Walt’s moral downfall. In Ted Lasso Season 2, Rebecca learns that her father has suddenly died, and her resentment about her father cheating on her mother makes eulogizing him difficult.
It’s a more polished and accomplished work than Making a Murderer, and will it make you feel just as angry. The fact is, while Gillian Anderson is great in The Fall, it’s Jamie Dornan who brings the show home as serial killer Paul Spector. If you’re itching for another lightning-paced, hard-hitting crime thriller to fill the hours waiting for another (good) season of True Detective, look no further than The Fall.
#8: “The Night”
Meant as a warning to viewers about the effects of climate change, it was an unexpected choice for the family-friendly and light-hearted show. Ending the series with the death of the characters that fans had grown to know and love over its run was a divisive choice, but the creators wanted to send one last message about taking care of the earth and environment. The series finale, aptly titled “Veep”, leaves Selina with her dreams come true. After winning the election, an isolated Selina stares back at the group of inexperienced subordinates that heed her every call. The episode details that manner in which she ostracizes her inner circle.
The sets are a little shaky, the effects are a little rubbery, and the stagey histrionics of the performances are probably an acquired taste now. But even decades after it first aired, The Twilight Zone has lost none of its resonance as a potent examination of the fear of the unknown, and the troubling ideas cooked up by Rod Serling and pals have only grown more disturbingly relevant as time has marched on. All these years later, The Twilight Zone is still in a class of its own in the world of weird. Based on the bestselling YA book by Jay Asher, 13 Reasons Why was something of a sensation when it dropped on Netflix in the early half of 2017, though not always for the right reasons. The series charts the story of Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) who inherits a box of cassette tapes from classmate Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) after she commits suicide.
That’s not exactly super original, or anything (Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, a million different lame horror movies about giant spiders), but it did put the viewers’ expectations in the right place. Geralt, our hero, is a monster hunter, a white haired, sexy monster hunter with a smolderingly deep voice who only sometimes has weird black veins all over his face. A beloved family show from the Jim Henson company, Dinosaurs, revolved around a family of dinosaurs going through lifelike sitcom characters. The Dinosaur’s finale was so controversial because it ends with not just the family dying, but the entire world ending much like it did for the real dinosaurs.
The bonkers (seriously, bonkers) seance scene from Season 1 alone should have cleared out the Emmys, if there was any justice in the world, and if the show doesn’t have its hooks in you by that point it probably never will. Poor ratings led to an unceremoniously rushed and undeniably weak conclusion for the series, but still. This is a show that flies its freak flag high and proud, and it’s well worth the rocky ride. David Fincher and serial killers go together like glitter and unicorns, and with Mindhunter he delves deeper than ever before into those murky depths and the tortured psyches that populate them. Executive produced by horror master Eli Roth and based on the hit novel of the same name by Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove is an original Netflix series that delves into one small town’s dark secrets. Turns out it’s almost harder to keep those secrets buried than it is to keep the bodies buried, as both the revelations and the corpses begin to pile up.
Six Feet Under’s Dark Premise Presents Constant Death
Vic Mackey is one of the darkest drama protagonists of all time, which makes the fact that he’s a cop even more terrifying. The Shield begins with Mackey shooting an undercover cop in the face, coercing his partners to cover for him, as he continues to sink deeper into self-destructive behavior over the course of seven stressful seasons. One could argue that Ellen’s ability to escape Patty’s orbit and find a new source of validation in life is a happy ending.
“Growing Pains” ( )This “very special episode” of “Growing Pains” is something of an ultra-tragic bait and switch. “Second Chance” dealt with the dangers of drunk driving when Carol’s college-age boyfriend Sandy, played by future “Friends” star Matthew Perry, is in a major car accident. Sandy speaks to Carol at the hospital, and we’re led to believe that he’ll eventually pull through, only to be informed later that the young man dies from his injuries off screen.
Violence, drugs, and gang warfare are the norm for Mackey’s Strike Team, but Mackey’s reckless behavior becomes harder to tolerate. The walls close in around the character, and it’s devastating as this black hole consumes the good people around him, even his best friends. Many modern dramas create tension out of the idea of a mild-mannered person who snaps and gives into a life of crime. Ozark stars Jason Bateman and Laura Linney as Marty and Wendy Byrde, who begin to launder money for a drug cartel and quickly start to suffer the fatal consequences.
The episode ends in good fun, with a party to celebrate the one year anniversary of when Plankton first attempted to steal the secret recipe. However, watching Mr. Krabs’ mental state erode to the point where his every thought is of Plankton is pretty concerning, and it reminds viewers of the mentally consuming nature of perpetual competition. Across its 14-season run, “King of the Hill” consistently told low-key, mildly amusing, realistic stories about proudly Texan propane salesman Hank Hill trying to relate to his goofy son or make sense of a rapidly changing world.