Welcome back to The Sitcomologist’s rankings of the 50 best sitcom episodes of the 2010s. This article ranks episodes 40-31. Continue through to read the breakdowns that follow.
40. Yobogoya! — The League
S3E6, 2011, FX
For some reason, The League feels like the most dated show on this countdown to me. Maybe it’s because the football player cameos feel like they’re from three generations ago. Maybe it’s because fantasy football as a whole has morphed so much in the last decade. Or maybe it’s because tightly-written character dramedies have become the predominant form of comedy this decade, leaving improv-heavy farces like The League to die in the recesses of basic cable.
But I loved The League. It was one of the first non-network sitcoms I ever made appointment viewing. It’s third season was spectacular, with highlights like The Bobbum Man, Carmenjello and the finale, St. Pete. But the highest high was probably Yobogoya!
Sure, the episode ends on a poop joke. (A really well done poop joke!) But the structure of this episode is actually really impressive for a show that relied so much on improvisation. It’s evident that The League’s writers come from the Larry David school of sitcom writing, because the show had a way of weaving all three of its episode plots into one come-uppance moment at the end.
Yobogoya! was a perfect example of this, with Kevin getting sick in traffic because of a grudge Pete had against a traffic cop. Like all great episodes of The League, Yobogoya! ends on a crescendo of failure for our main characters. If you get off on shame and bad people getting what they deserve, check out the third season of The League. It holds up, even if the show feels ancient.
39. Bertie’s Birthday — Love
S3E5, 2018, Netflix
One thing I can’t remember happening much in sitcoms before this decade is the side character episode. I know Scrubs did it a few times with its His/Her/Their Story episodes. But it’s not like Friends ever did a Janice episode. Seinfeld never did a Newman episode. And sadly, Arrested Development never gave an entire episode to Gene Parmesan.
This decade, some of the best and most memorable episodes have been focused on sidekicks. Think about You’re the Worst’s “22,” Master of None’s “Thanksgiving,” The Last Man on Earth’s “Pitch Black,” and, of course, Atlanta’s “Teddy Perkins.”
One of the cutest and most endearing examples of this trope came in the third season of Netflix’s Love with Bertie’s Birthday. Love’s biggest problem (and strength, weirdly) was that main characters Gus and Mickey are incredibly unlikable. Side character Bertie, on the other hand, is one of the more likeable characters of the decade. So giving her an entire episode to shine with empathy and compassion makes more a memorable half-hour.
It still has all the hallmarks of an Apatow production. Big set pieces and ambling adventures and young romantics tumbling into love one wrestling match at a time. But it’s also tinged with heart, loneliness and understanding. We learn so much about the lack of functionality in our main relationship by watching a functional, supportive one blossom between Bertie and Chris.
In a show that often shied away from sweetness, Bertie’s birthday is a confection. Forget relationship drama. This episode was about struggling people finding solace in one another. I may be a sap, but I’m a sap who loves this episode.
38. Shoot-Up-Able — The Carmichael Show
S3E6, 2017, NBC
I only had room for one Norman Lear show on this countdown. And as much as I wanted to include One Day At A Time, his actual project, I think it’s better to highlight The Carmichael Show, a program made in the spirit of Lear’s best shows from the 1970s.
Shoot-Up-Able is as good as The Carmichael Show ever got. The episode unfolds like a stage play told in three acts. In the first, Jerrod comes home to his girlfriend and reveals he was in a mall where a mass shooting broke out. In the second act, Jerrod denies his feelings and withdraws when asked about the event. In the third act, Jerrod gives his statement to a police officer and reveals how close he came to being a victim of the massacre.
This is one of the two “message” episodes on the list, and I think there’s value in it. Because Shoot-Up-Able doesn’t just criticize the prevalence of mass shootings in America. It gives commentary on our relationship with social media, racial profiling, police brutality and victim blaming.
Every joke lands (“Do you think you’re wiser than the moon, Maxine?”), but the jokes feel more like barbs. They’re jokes with purpose. And this is true of almost every episode of The Carmichael Show. It’s a contemporary response to All In The Family or The Jeffersons. But it’s also a response to contemporary issues rarely discussed on television.
In a perfect world, the Carmichael Show would’ve lasted for two decades and been the live-action counterpart to South Park. It would’ve been the show that lampooned our own prejudices and shortcomings and generated conversations about those topics.
But last the Carmichael Show couldn’t. So we’re left with this perfect time capsule of how imperfect the back half of this decade was.
37. It Gets Better — Arrested Development
S4E13, 2013, Netflix
Now for the story of a show that lost everything, and the one season that had no choice but to try to put everything back together. This is a defense of Season 4 of Arrested Development.
Arrested Development’s fourth season never had a chance to live up to the hype. Maybe if it had come around three or four years later when high-profile actors became more willing to sign onto short-term TV projects. Maybe if it had a chance to learn from the mistakes of the TV reboots that came after it. Maybe if it was a little less ambitious and a little more formulaic. Maybe. Just maybe.
The unfortunate reality is that the fourth season of Arrested Development was great. It just wasn’t the right kind of great. It’s probably the best example of long-form disjointed narrative storytelling ever filmed and an incredible testament to the power of binge watching. But it’s also really confusing, too dense and tries to pack a few too many storylines into one season.
I’ve watched this season at least four times. The first time I watched it, I watched the entire season in one night. Over the next two years, I revisited the season at a slower pace. I even watched the Fateful Consequences recut to try to see if changing the chronology would make it easier.
It’s still too hard to understand. I love it. But it’s one of the most unnecessarily sitcom seasons I’ve consumed.
Still, when the show hit its peaks, it really peaked. Like in It Gets Better, the first George Michael focused episode of the season. Here we get classic Arrested Development pacing, the brilliant reveal of what FakeBlock really is, the clever, unmentioned but extremely obvious in-joke about Michael Cera’s resemblance to Jesse Eisenberg, some textbook Maeby and George Michael interplay and one of the funniest screwball love triangles ever put on television.
It’s unfortunate that Arrested Development S4 never recaptures the soaring highs of the first three seasons. To be honest, maybe only four or five sitcoms ever have. But in episodes like It Gets Better, we learned that Arrested Development firing at 75% quality can still be pretty darn good.
36. Jimmy’s Fake Girlfriend — Raising Hope
S2E14, 2012, FOX
I’ve said this for years: Raising Hope is the show I’m maddest I never got the chance to write for. It’s not my favorite show of the decade. But it’s the show that I think most directly attacks my sense of humor. It’s borrows Malcolm In The Middle’s sensibility, The Simpsons’ small-town world building and 30 Rock’s frenetic pacing to make one of the better family shows of the era.
One of my favorite parts of Raising Hope is the way the characters never seem to be aware that they’re ripping off schemes from cheesy sitcoms. That’s exactly what happens in Jimmy’s Fake Girlfriend, the fulcrum episode of the show. Virginia hatches a scheme to make Sabrina jealous by making it seem like Jimmy has a girlfriend. The scheme works at Sabrina breaks up with Wyatt, much to Jimmy’s panic, before Jimmy hatches a scheme of his own to win Sabrina with a grand, romantic gesture.
In between, we get cartoon-esque cuts to about a dozen hobbies that Burt and Virginia hate, great physical comedy, a call-back about Bro-gurt, a fascinating cameo performance by Ashley Tisdale and what has to be the most Debbie Gibson references ever in a half-hour of comedy. And none of that mentions Cloris Leachman doing absolute work.
Raising Hope was a show jam-packed with jokes. It also found time to develop what felt like a realistic portrayal of family life. If you can get past the premise (it’s OK if you can’t), it’s a show that you absolutely need to watch the first three seasons of. Then you can stop.
35. Too Good — Crashing (US)
S2E5, 2018, HBO
Did someone say something about the big, ambling adventures of an Apatow production? Well, here we are again. This time, we’re with Pete Holmes and his probably properly-rated sitcom Crashing, produced by Judd Apatow. In the middle of its second season, Crashing aired an episode titled “Too Good,” the best episode of the show and most perfect distillation of the vibe the show was trying to give off.
At its heart, Crashing is a love letter to comedy. If that’s the case, Too Good is a half-hour love poem written in the margins of a lovesick tween’s notebook during science class. This episode shows Pete falling in love with Ali while he’s also falling in love with the different comedy scenes throughout New York.
We get cameos from John Mulaney and the Lucas Brothers, but mostly this episode is about Pete and Ali, about a common bond being forged through a shared passion. More than any episode before it (or any episodes from other shows about industry professionals), this episode highlights just how much love and passion go into pursuing a career in the arts.
I’ll be honest: If I never see another show or movie about a stand-up comedian playing a heightened version of his or herself, I’d be completely fine with it. The genre is over-saturated. But if the genre goes out with this episode of Crashing, I’ll take what I get.
Related Reading: How A Decade of Iconic Sitcoms Ended In One Spectacular Spring
34. How Your Mother Met Me — How I Met Your Mother
S9E16, 2014, CBS
Let’s be realistic: The last season of How I Met Your Mother was a disaster. I’m not talking about the finale, which I’ve written waaaaaay more about here. I’m talking about the whole season. It was a discomforting mix of filler episodes, fan service, diversions, obvious indications that Jason Segel had no interest in being on the show and an entire episode told in nursery rhyme. (I hope I’m misremembering that. That can’t be real, can it?)
But all of that horribleness was worth it for How Your Mother Met Me. When HIMYM was at its best, it was a layered and intertextual narrative about characters who not only lived complicated lives, but had to consistently live with the repercussions and consequences of those complications. Actions that occurred in one episode could ripple throughout seasons, creating fascinating call-backs and in jokes and letting the show function as a bit of a secret language for fans.
How Your Mother Met Me is a nine-year result of that approach. The episode re-tells the emotional arc of the previous nine years from the perspective of the show’s most important but yet-undeveloped character. We see The Mother (Tracy) live through heartbreak and reinvention. We connect her to characters we’ve met in passing (Hi, Naked Guy. Fan service!) and to characters we otherwise wouldn’t have met. We see glimpses of the quirks we’ve spent nearly a decade hearing about. And we fall in love with the pathos of this flawed character who we know without question is perfect for Ted.
I’ve written before that How I Met Your Mother isn’t a show about payoffs, it’s a show about journeys. I stand by that. But I’ll be damned if I don’t cry thinking about the payoff at the end of this episode. It’s beautiful storytelling sandwiched in between the piles of excrement that came before it and the satisfying few episodes that came after.
Related Reading: Please Don’t Yell At Me For Defending The HIMYM Finale
33. B-I-BIKINI U-N-UNIVERSITY — Speechless
S2E8, 2017, ABC
ABC cemented itself as the family sitcom network this decade. Between Modern Family, The Middle, Blackish, Fresh Off The Boat, The Goldbergs, Roseanne and The Conners, The Real O’Neals and probably about six others I’m missing, ABC broke its sitcom slate down into a formula.
For my money, the best of the bunch was Speechless. Focused on the DiMeo family, Speechless told the story of J.J., a high school student with cerebral palsy, and his overprotective family. Minnie Driver gives my favorite mom performance of the decade as Maya, and John Ross Bowie gives one of my favorite dad performances of the decade as Jimmy. That’s not even mentioning Mason Cook as Ray, who plays cringe to its highest potential.
In season two’s B-I-BIKINI U-N-UNIVERSITY, we see J.J. as more than his disability for one of the first times. He proves to be an adept and smart filmmaker. He also proves to be a liar and a manipulator. You know, like every other teenager. (We also get a subplot where Ray gets to feel cool in front of a bunch of children. A snake is involved. I laughed a lot.)
Speechless is often silly and often mines comedy out of characters yelling or being rude in public. Those aren’t negatives. But it was rare to see the show lean into its bite and make its most sympathetic character a bad guy. Of course, since it was a family show on ABC, we also got a positive payoff of said sympathetic character finding his dream.
I understand why Speechless wasn’t massively popular. It lacked the edge to make it a critical darling and the accessibility (excuse my unintentional pun) to be a mainstream hit. That said, I watched Speechless every week it was on the air because funny is funny. And this show, without a doubt, was F-U-FUNNY.
32. Episode Six — Episodes
S2E6, 2012, Showtime
I think it’s important for y’all to know that in the summer of 2012, there were three things that were important to me: Miguel Cabrera’s triple crown chase, getting ready to start college and obsessively re-binging Friends as a defensive mechanism. Which is why the second season of Episodes hit me at the perfect time.
There are too many TV shows and movies about the TV and film industry. Most of them are kind of meh. By the end of its run, Episodes fit into that category. But in its second season, this show was firing on all cylinders. Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan played cynical and disillusioned writers perfectly, balancing their lost integrity and relationship drama against the fame and prestige all around them.
When most people think of Episodes, though, they’ll think of Matt LeBlanc’s heel-turn performance as the darkest timeline version of himself. S2E6 is the shiniest example of this, wherein he’s being forced by the network to try to stage a Friends reunion for sweeps week. He tries and fails to court the other five Friends by phone, as we learn along the way that he’s offended or alienated everyone in the cast with his reprehensible behavior.
The Gunther reveal at the end of the episode made me giddy, just as the long, dramatic scene between Sean and Beverly that preceded it drew me in and made me feel regret. The way this episode toed the line between emotions was superb, and the way it balanced those two main plots with four other narratives (Matt’s stalker, Morning’s botched surgery, Merc’s award, Morning’s brother) to keep the season arc alive was impressive as hell.
The episode felt like it was the wrong kind of nostalgic the way it rewrote history and shaved LeBlanc out of the Friends canon. That’s what made it so strong, though. And what makes it the most memorable episode of the show.
31. Housewarming — Schitt’s Creek
S5E5, 2019, PopTV
I didn’t like the first three seasons of Schitt’s Creek. If this were a show I watched in real-time instead of in the binge-watching age, I would’ve given up on it five or six episodes in. But sticking with it allowed me to see the show mature into what it’s become: a funny, sweet and affecting conversation about growth and maturity in families and relationships.
The strongest showcase of these discussions of growth and maturity comes in Housewarming, a midpoint in the fifth season that I believe is the high mark of the show. David and Patrick have frank conversations about jealousy. Alexis and Ted invert their usual roles, allowing Alexis to grow as a more patient and nurturing partner. Johnny and Moira learn the parenting skills they missed out on when their children were young.
In so many ways, this could’ve been a lessons episode. But Schitt’s Creek avoids feeling preachy by saturing its sweetness with over-the-top silliness. Whether it’s Johnny trying to learn how to change a baby or Ted’s drunken misadventures, the comedy always comes first, and that makes the lessons feel earned.
So much of Schitt’s Creek to me is earned. It’s a slow burn of a show that slowly gets better year after year because the relationships feel real. Nothing about the later seasons of the show feels haphazard or unplanned. More than maybe any other character sitcom of the decade, the character arcs on Schitt’s Creek feel real.
The Sitcomologist 
2 thoughts on “The 50 Best Sitcom Episodes of the 2010s: 40-31”