3. Glee "Pilot"
I love this series OK. I wish I would stop having to apologize for this fact. It really is a lot better than it gets credit for being. I bet a lot of Breaking Bad fans are pissed that this episode beats Breaking Bad's but hear me out... Breaking Bad is a drama, and though the show has a fantastic concept, it is fairly conventional. It is very common to start an episode with a slight flashfoward, and many pilot episodes like I mentioned earlier include murder or death of some kind. Including a death or a murder to hook your audience in can be very exciting, but it is also arguably lazy and obvious, and not all that difficult to think of. Glee however doesn't use a death as a starting point, so gets props for that. It also isn't a drama, so has a more difficult task in hooking an audience. It isn't broody or dark, and in this current generation, dark is almost automatically considered better than anything else. And finally it is a musical, so is completely unique to all TV shows (well, at that point anyway) on air. Not conventional in the slightest in this respect. Unarguably, it had a much more difficult task than Breaking Bad, and considering in was on Fox and not Cable, it really needed the viewers or it would have been canceled immediately. Critically, this episode was a phenomenal success, more than anyone could have ever imagined. This was the biggest hit TV show of that year, and certainly the most talked about new show on the air at that time. The pilot episode is considered one of Glee's best episodes ever and is even pretty much loved by people who hate Glee and went off the show after Season 1. In fact, I bet most of you have seen this episode, right? Anyway, the pilot episode was nominated that year for two Emmy awards, pretty much the only two awards one episode could be nominated for... writing and directing- and Ryan Murphy, the shows creator won the award for directing for this episode. The shows first season also won Best Comedy Series at the Golden Globes (also winning again the next year).