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CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Ten episodes to remember: the best of '06
For a TV series to be great, it has to leave an impression of quality over time, from week to week, season to season. This year, "Friday Night Lights," "Dexter," "The Office," "The Closer," "Hustle," "The Colbert Report," and "The Wire" were among the shows that deserve an "A" for consistency.
Still, The People Who Make TV can also excel at creating specific episodes that stand out from the rest. "Seinfeld" was the best at bookmarking its blur of half-hours with little classics, and "The Sopranos" hasn't been too shabby at it, either. Here's a list of the top episodes of 2006, from both series that were ("Heroes") and were not ("The Oprah Winfrey Show") particularly dependable.
10. There's no one on TV like Hugh Laurie, and he makes every episode of "House" into a brilliant hateful-irony fest instead of just another disease-of-the-week drama. But I was doubly impressed by Laurie in the December hour called "Merry Little Christmas." The tables were turned on Dr. Contempt, as his friends betrayed him, or saved him, depending on your point of view. After pathetic-junkie efforts to score pills, including pocketing a dead man's Oxy, he left a Christmas message on his parents' voice mail, slugged back pills and booze, and passed out on the floor in his own vomit. Laurie showed us an ugly glimpse of a controlling man out of control, facing the bottom of his addiction.
9. The FX sitcom "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is an acquired taste, for sure. Few shows work so tirelessly to be so completely impolite and in-your-face. "It's Always Sunny" gives even "Curb Your Enthusiasm" a run for the money in the offensiveness sweepstakes. In 2006, Danny DeVito joined the cast and helped ramp up the mania, as the members of the 20-something Our Gang faked disability, became crack addicts, and, in the wild second episode, staged a fake terrorist threat. "The Gang Goes Jihad" was one of the show's peaks, as the guys film a terrorist video to scare away the Israeli neighbor who wants to take custody of their bar.
8. The premiere of the second season of Showtime's "Sleeper Cell" was the flip side of wacky jihad humor. Anyone who saw this episode, called "Al-Baqara," is not likely to forget its stunning final scenes, in which undercover agent Darwyn (the laconic Michael Ealy) logs into his computer and sees a video of his FBI handler getting her throat cut by Muslim radicals. So many terrorist acts come to our attention on video, which we watch on our computers; so it was a brilliantly realistic stroke for "Sleeper Cell" to re-create that experience.
7. OK, so "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" has become the show that smart people love to hate because it's too smart, or something like that. But really, the first episode of Aaron Sorkin's sketch-comedy opus was dynamite from start to finish. Modeled after the movie "Network," it was a massive statement about censorship and denial, while it proved Matthew Perry could be a great dramatic TV actor. The hour was pretentious, overblown, and filled with Sorkin walk-and-talk tics. And I loved every minute of it.
6. It was the year of Rosie O'Donnell, when it wasn't the year of Britney Spears, Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, Suri Cruise -- wait, where was I? Most notably, Rosie brightened the horizons of "The View" by big-footing Barbara and getting the gals to stop being so flighty, and she helped Donald Trump promote his new season of "The Apprentice." But she also did a gaudy turn on "Nip/Tuck" as a white-trash lady who won the lottery. It was another crazy season on "Nip/Tuck," including an arc on organ theft, and Rosie was a memorable addition as patient Dawn Budge -- so much so that she's in talks with FX to build a series around the character.
One highlight of the episode: Dawn complaining about the sex she purchased from Christian.
5. Rosie could upstage just about anyone . . . EXCEPT The Oprah, of course. Daytime divas, you gotta love them. On Jan. 26, Oprah had fabulist-memoirist James Frey on her show for a dressing-down about his book "A Million Little Pieces" that was awesome, fierce, self-important, rude, and yet another giant step toward Oprah world domination. Yeah, it was great TV, complete with audience groans, verbal lashings from journalists on the show, and big talk about fact versus fiction. The Frey fry was one of the best-ever episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," and Frey got stoned in a way he's probably not quite familiar with.
4. Usually when sitcoms expand to 40 minutes or an hour, they become flaccid and awkward. But the hourlong "A
3. Even at its lightest, "Rescue Me" is still pretty heavy. But Denis Leary's New York firefighter drama outdid itself in the dark episode "Sparks," which culminated in Tommy Galvin forcing himself on his estranged wife, Janet. Many fans were outraged, although most regular viewers were not surprised to see the embattled relationship go to such a cruel place. But the scene was riveting, like Dr. Melfi's rape on "The Sopranos," and the acting was seamless and mesmerizing. You could almost feel Leary and actor Andrea Roth pushing themselves beyond their personal comfort zones.
2. Like all sitcoms, "How I Met Your Mother" has ongoing story lines. But, like "Seinfeld," it does a fine job of defining specific episodes with distinctive bits. The "Slap Bet" episode was one of the show's top efforts, as the secret of Robin's past as a teen pop star in Canada emerged. The video of her singing "Let's Go to the Mall," with its re-creation of early MTV styling, was unforgettable, and typical of this show's knowing take on pop culture. And the slap bet between Barney and Marshall about Robin's past was priceless -- and destined to come back in a future episode. The half-hour was totally ex . . . wait for it . . . cellent.
1. The "Hiros" episode of "Heroes" stands out as the hour in which the series went from "This is cool" to "Oooh, this IS cool." First of all, Future Hiro froze time on a subway in order to visit Peter Petrelli and utter those now-famous words: "Save the cheerleader, save the world." The scene gave the series just the focus it needed, as the various strands of action began to turn toward Odessa, Texas. The hour also showed us how Nathan flies, and it was handled with spandex-free glee. This was no Superman-like leap; it was a perfectly human-scaled flight, just like the rest of this engaging series.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/. 
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