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The following contains spoilers for some of the episodes mentioned.

Recently, I tasked seven Atlantic writers and editors with selecting a perfect episode of TV. What emerged was a list that spans genres, generations, and cultural sensibilities. Their recommendations, which include the Veep episode “C**tgate” and a SpongeBob episode that examines “the empty promise of the good life,” are proof that identifying good TV is, at its core, a gut instinct. A perfect episode must find a way to burrow itself in the viewer’s mind, ready to be recalled in today’s crowded field of television.

When I posed the same challenge to The Daily’s readers earlier this week, I was met with enthusiasm and exasperation. “This is an impossible question,” Eden wrote back. “It’s like asking for the perfect song, the perfect movie, or the perfect book.” That being said, “I can think of five off the top of my head!”

Eden’s list includes “Forks” from The Bear, “Through the Looking Glass” from Lost, “The Suitcase” from Mad Men, and “Long, Long Time” from The Last of Us. And that doesn’t even cover “Friday Night Lights, or The Wire, or Insecure, or Derry Girls, or The Sopranos, or The Wonder Years, or My Brilliant Friend, or Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Eden added. I can sympathize—the breadth of options is dizzying.

Maybe some criteria would help. Our culture writer Sophie Gilbert wrote that “the thing I love most is when a television series tells a complete story in miniature—a stand-alone short that puts a particular dynamic or relationship or cast member front and center.” Radio Atlantic’s podcast host, Hanna Rosin, argued that, “unlike a perfect movie, a perfect episode of television does not need to surprise you or make you cry. It just needs to move your beloved or loathed characters through the formula in an especially excellent way.” And Suzanne, 59, offered her own formula: “The script must be: (1) tense or funny; (2) warm and loving to the viewers, performers, and crew; and (3) move the overall story forward.”

Of course, the benchmarks for what makes an episode perfect are as subjective and varied as viewers’ selections. But a thorough analysis of The Daily’s reader responses has uncovered some patterns. At least five people named a West Wing episode: Two readers nominated “Two Cathedrals,” which shows “the effects of death on time,” wrote David, from Chicago; L. Hawkins, 70, recommends “Noel,” adding that viewers should “listen for the sirens as the episode fades out.”

“Long, Long Time” from The Last of Us was mentioned by both Eden and Bob—it offers “a lesson that love may find you at any time, any place, and under the most unexpected circumstances,” Bob wrote. Two readers agreed with Atlantic film critic David Sims, who insisted in our recent roundup that “the richest cache [of perfect episodes] to search is the ‘case of the week’ entries of The X-Files.” Lisa, 47, wrote that she was thrilled to see “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” in our list (she also recommends the series finale of Derry Girls).

Other readers highlighted examples of good comedy. In only 22 minutes, “Remedial Chaos Theory” from Community “tells seven different stories, with each timeline building on the last,” E.F., 46, wrote. “The Ski Lodge” from Frasier stands out to Bruce, 52, who said that the episode is “riddled with quotable laugh-out-loud lines.” And L.M., 61, laughed until she cried watching a loopy Steve Martin in Only Murders in the Building’s “Open and Shut.”

For some, a perfect episode tells a story that reverberates throughout their life. Sharon, from California, wrote about an episode she remembers watching on Hallmark Hall of Fame, which follows a grief-stricken child who reads a story about magical silver shoes. To his astonishment, he finds skates that look identical, which he puts on to go skating in hopes of bringing back his dead parent. “As life went on and I became the mother of a child who lost his father in childhood, I’ve recalled the episode more than once,” Sharon wrote. “Now, at 80 years old, it still breaks my heart.”

Related:

Eight perfect episodes of TV The 13 best TV shows of 2024

Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

The oligarchs who came to regret supporting Hitler The last days of American orange juice America’s “marriage material” shortage

The Week Ahead

Captain America: Brave New World, a Marvel action movie starring Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford (in theaters Friday) Season 3 of Yellowjackets, a thriller series about a girls’ soccer team whose plane crash-lands in the wilderness (premieres on Paramount+ Friday) Beartooth, a novel by Callan Wink about two brothers near Yellowstone who agree to commit a heist to settle their debts (out Tuesday)

Essay

Illustration by The Atlantic

ADHD’s Sobering Life-Expectancy Numbers

By Yasmin Tayag

When I was unexpectedly diagnosed with ADHD last year, it turned my entire identity upside down. At 37, I’d tamed my restlessness and fiery temper, my obsessive reorganization of my mental to-do list, and my tendency to write and rewrite the same sentence for hours. Being this way was exhausting, but that was just who I was, or so I thought. My diagnosis reframed these quirks as symptoms of illness—importantly, ones that could be managed. Treatment corralled my racing thoughts in a way that I’d never before experienced.

Read the full article.

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Catch Up on The Atlantic

The government’s computing experts say they are terrified. Nobody wants Gaz-a-Lago. Trump’s assault on USAID makes Project 2025 look like child’s play, Russell Berman writes. How Trump lost his trade war

Photo Album

Naga sadhus, or Hindu holy men, arrive in Prayagraj, India. (ANI / Rahul Singh / Reuters)

Take a look at these photos of Maha Kumbh Mela, a religious festival in India that’s also the largest gathering in the world.

P.S.

I realize it’d be a bit unfair to make everybody else share their perfect episode without naming mine: the series finale of Fleabag. There are many good things I can point out about this episode—Claire’s mad dash to happiness, Fleabag’s final confession, the Alabama Shakes song that plays over the show’s last moments. But above all else, it moved me, reminding me that love can outlast the person who prompted it.

— Stephanie

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I      Maps
The corner of Ashmun & Grove & the sometimes
When the only evidence is a map; the disappearing

English of old: plat, a funky word that exists most
In memory, meant to make a plan or map of;
To draw to scale; to plot.

A man who cannot read coordinates can still plot
On his freedom. Imagine a rectangle on the oldest
Map in these nine squares of geography

Once called a wilderness.

         Quinnipiac           Pequot           Paugussett

To plot freedom is to leave the words that matter
Written across everything you own that matters,
As in leave the names that your loves call you
All the places that you traverse.

As in, to name is to announce worthy of remembrance.


II     Property
Some evidence of  this life is always measured
By the weight of  La Llorona’s weeping.

Jethro Jethro Jethro Jethro Jethro
Jethro Jethro Jethro owed his name. Left
This world owed his name. Who enters heaven
Owed their name? Who enters nameless?

        Historical Catalogue of  the Members of  the First Church of
        Christ in New Haven, Connecticut, A.D. 1639–1914
        Compiled by Franklin Bowditch Dexter

                         CATALOGUE OF MEMBERS, 1726–28

May 15.    875.  Patience Mix (John) Alling                      *May, 1786
                          Daughter of Caleb and Mary (494); born March, 1699;                                  wife of 1052.
                 876.  Mary Atwater (Isaac) Dickerman             *17—
                          Daughter of 421 and 338; born Dec., 1686; wife of 605.
                 877.  Experience Perkins (David) Gilbert          *May, 1748
                          Daughter of  David and Deliverance (354); born Dec., 1699;
                          wife of 1111.
                 878.  Jethro Luke (colored)                               *1760–61

Franklin knew his name enough to count
Him more than 3/5ths,

To list his surname & call him colored,
To be counted & named, the fourth member
Whose lineage included a slave ship.
The first non-European with a surname listed,

From an old English variant that sounds like luck,
Or happenstance, which in the land of cotton is a variant

For the word irony, for deliverance, think Luke
Of  the Gospel, Luke the liberator, Luke as
English variant of  Lucas, Lucius, bright, light

For a plot listed in the corner of a map.

Jethro Luke was colored, cast in shadows
Of manacles—or, in the parlance
Of  Marx & Pareto: Jethro was owed,

Left owning little, beyond whatever he held
When his eyes searched the freedom of a night sky:

Brown coat … old great Coat … brown Jacket … white Jacket,
1 check shirt … black stocking … old ax … small tongs …
old gun barrel … great Bible … 8 round bottles … candle stick …
old mare … pair of  oxen … plow share

III   Freedom
Is one way to name this story.
Sometimes only maps be evidence.
In 1748, a corner mark confesses:

Jethro a Black man farmer.
Corner of Ashmun & Grove, a small city park
Cradling the Grove Street cemetery,
& all the freedom not permitted to rest there—

                 Jethro Ruth Mindwell Sampson Betty Joe
                 Jinny Mingo Sanders Sabina Sibyl
                 Phyllis Dinah Pero Sume Pompey Gad
                 Rose Rhoda Phyllis Pompey Williams Newport
                 Amasa Silva Cesar Rose Cato Leah Socoro
                 Peter Alice Little George Jack York Pressey
                 Polly Cesar Peter Simeon Joseph Bristol
                 Nando Jeff Congo Pompey Benjamin Cuff Phillis
                 Sharper Rogers Jack David Gardiner Dinah
                 Bet Alling Jack Geff Ruben Ruth Cambridge
                 Cuff Edwards Amy Belfast Fowler Primus
                 Tim Lenard Eli Harry Sue Daggett Gain Amey
                 Joe Place Jane Cesar Jin Daniel Thomas.

This poem is from Reginald Dwayne Betts’s new book, Doggerel.