Even though every child in Israel knows that now is the beginning of the holiday period, for some reason the American custom of special episodes in honor of this period has not been able to penetrate Israeli television culture. Special episodes are episodes that are broadcast on a certain holiday and are written and directed according to the holiday. This is usually Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween. To get into the holiday spirit, we decided to collect for you the best special episodes that were broadcast on television, not including the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, because really – how do we choose the best?
The Joker Steals Christmas // “Batman: The Animated Series”
Only the second episode of the legendary Batman animated series is actually a Christmas special called “Christmas with the Joker”. The episode opens, of course, with the Joker escaping from the famous Arkham Asylum with a missile he hid inside a Christmas tree, while singing a slightly different version of Jingle Bells. Batman and Robin go on a search in Gotham and find that everything is pretty quiet, at least until they get home to watch a Christmas movie and discover that the Joker has taken over a TV studio. He took three hostages: Police Commissioner Gordon, Newscaster Summer Gleason and Detective Harvey Bullock. The Joker, it’s worth noting, is voiced by the one and only Mark Hamill, who also designed the Joker’s crazy laugh and set a high bar for what the Joker sounded like.
George Constanza’s Holiday Scam // “Seinfeld”
The ninth episode in the tenth season of “Seinfeld” is indeed after many special episodes, but it also received countless praises and placed third on TV Guide’s “Best Holiday Episodes” list. In my opinion, the best Seinfeld episodes are the ones where each character in the gang has a completely separate story, and that’s exactly the case in this episode: Jerry goes out with someone who sometimes looks attractive and sometimes looks ugly (a plot that would never cross the screen today), Kramer returns to his old job His at the bagel shop and Elaine gives the guy at the Hanukkah party a fake number, and discovers that she gave the number on a card to Kramer’s bagel shop. But the show is stolen by George (and his father, played by Jerry Stiller) when he tries to get away with buying gifts for his colleagues using fake donation cards for a non-existent association – and of course, reveals to the world the Festivas holiday, a great parody of the very existence of holidays.
Three turkeys // “Modern Family”
I usually find that the Thanksgiving episodes sometimes tend to be less exciting episodes, but in the case of the eighth episode in the sixth season of “Modern Family”, it is one of the funniest episodes of the series. Phil Dunphy, ably played by Ty Barrell, gets permission from his wife Claire (Julie Bowen) to take charge of the Thanksgiving dinner, when in fact she is unwilling to let go and secretly prepares another turkey while Phil and their son Luke work on another turkey. Meanwhile, Jay (Ed O’Neill) and Gloria (Sofia Vergara) try to avoid the holiday dinner after their vacation is canceled. Befitting the series, everyone is there for each other and that is exactly the atmosphere that should be in a special episode.
Slap Holiday // “How I Met Mother”
A lot can be said about “How I Met Mother” – especially the way it ended – but the series definitely knew how to build a recurring joke in a way that you can jump to at any given moment, just like the Bernie and Marshall slapping medley. In the second season, Bernie loses an intervention to Marshall and has to choose: ten slaps now or five slaps that Marshall can give to Bernie at any given time. Bernie chooses five slaps. By the ninth episode of the third season, Bernie already receives two slaps and in the days leading up to the holiday dinner, Marshall teases Bernie and makes him live in fear of the third slap. It even generates a countdown. Marshall may be enjoying himself a little too much, because Lily, his wife, notices that he is more busy with Bernie than the preparations and forbids him to slap Bernie. Of course Bernie teases him until the last ten seconds, when Lily also gets fed up and decides to let Marshall slap Bernie. I won’t lie, it looks painful.
The Holiday Armadillo // “Friends”
In the tenth episode of the seventh season of the hit sitcom, Ross decides it’s time to introduce his young son to some Jewish heritage at Christmas. Little Ben is used to Susan, Ross’s mother and ex-wife, dressing up as Santa every year, but Ross is unable to get a sufficiently Jewish costume at the last minute and invents a friend for Santa – the holiday armadillo, who comes to teach him about Hanukkah. Watch this episode and tell me we shouldn’t adopt the holiday armadillo as a national symbol. we will see you
Zombies in college // “Community”
Not only has this series done excellent holiday episodes, it has also done excellent parodies, most of them before the fourth season. The sixth episode of the second season takes place on Halloween and we get a parody of zombie movies when a mysterious disease begins to spread at a community college Halloween party. The episode features some great moments from all the characters, including a sex scene between Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) and Chang (Ken Jung) and the moment Abed sacrifices himself and pleads with Troy to be “the first black man to survive to the end.” Just gold.
The traditional heist // “Brooklyn 99”
This time it is not about a specific episode, but about a long-standing tradition of “Brooklyn 99”, which deals with a police unit in Brooklyn. Each season had an episode centered on an internal competition at the police station that began with an intervention between Detective Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and Captain Holt (Andre Brauer). Over the years the tradition went, perfected and became more and more crazy and we never get tired of watching and betting while watching who will win. These are excellent holiday episodes not only because of the tension, but because this side plot, which recurs once a season, amazingly demonstrates how a tradition develops and changes over the years.
The time everyone came to work dressed up // “The Office”
The Office, the series that invented the cringe, is known for its holiday episodes, but this is an unusual episode because it also gave us one of the most prominent characters in the Dender Mifflin paper company: Creed Bratton. Creed is the most disturbed character in the office. If the series is structured as if the office is actually a kindergarten, then Creed is the psychopathic kid who sits in the corner and cuts off the heads of dolls with scissors. At the beginning of the second season, Michael already received a message that he must fire one of the employees by the end of the month, but Michael, who just wants everyone to like him, waits until the fifth episode to make this decision. He must choose whether to fire Devon or Creed and of course Creed will do anything to stay. This is the first time we are exposed to Creed’s madness and how fun it is that Michael chose to fire Devon in the end instead.
Halloween special at Tagridi Farm // “South Park”
Everyone knows how far South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone can go. A lot of shit happened in this series: Cartman let a boy he hates eat his parents without his knowledge, Randy fucked a bat and at any given moment the pig-bear-man could come and go completely crazy. Most of the series on this list had an impressive number of holiday episodes, but not as much as South Park – which at this point had already reached over 20 seasons. The fifth episode of season 23 opens with Randy discovering that his daughter, Shelly, has a “marijuana problem”. She just really, really hates marijuana. He of course tries to get her to like what he does for a living but fails and in the end Shelley decides to poison the substance that Randy planned to sell as a “Halloween special”. The special resurrects the dead as well as Winnie the Pooh, whom Randy brutally murdered for the benefit of his relationship with China. But the highlight of the special is actually the side plot describing Butters’ toxic relationship with his mummy who decided to curse him, and every episode where Butters gets a central role is a good episode.
White Christmas // “Black Mirror”
After the second season of “Black Mirror” a special Christmas episode was released starring Jon Hamm, Rafe Spall and Una Chaplin. Black Mirror is an anthology series that features different stories that focus on man vs. technology, so it was surprising to see that the episode’s story focused on two men stuck in a cabin in the snow at Christmas, but from there the story just got more and more twisted. Unlike the other holiday episodes on the list, this is not an episode that makes you feel warm for the holidays, but it is one of the most creative and engaging episodes of Black Mirror in particular and TV series in general.