Angel: Spin the Bottle (4.6)

Joss Whedon, as much as he's known for misery and apocalyptic doom, is also pretty darn silly. And it's said silliness that he runs with in Spin the Bottle, a lightweight diversion in which our Angel protagonists are struck down by a misfiring magic spell that renders them all teenagers again. Joss wears his Band Candy/Tabula Rasa source material on his sleeve, and manages to improve on the weaker elements of those episodes. Like the finest comedy, Spin the Bottle works because the funny is derived from our own knowledge of the characters. There's a definite sense of the show almost pining for the days when its protagonists were a little less complicated, but it never exactly harms the hour itself.

Buffy: Him (7.6)

I have a real fondness for this episode. It's really the final Buffy episode to be entirely standalone in nature, every additional hour this season at least semi-revolving around major story arcs. It's also the last episode to really utilize the re-opened Sunnydale High, a weird decision considering the major push it's had since season seven began. There's also a gorgeous musicality to Him, strengthening the whole 'high school genre' angle -- great pop songs as Dawn dithers over her new crush, a cute ballad as Dawn hunts for Buffy's old cheerleading outfit (aww, Witch), as well as that moving Coldplay song as she sees Buffy and RJ getting intimate. Now, you kind of need to think Coldplay are lame, but that entire scene and the music playing over it just clicked together in this teenage, melodramatic burst of feeling. Aww.

Angel: Supersymmetry (4.5)

Supersymmetry continues this season's trend of feeling remarkably un-Angel, in the best possible sense. Characters have been granted stronger definition this year, while Cordelia's amnesia has been a daring decision that has produced better use of her character than it easily could have done. There's also this pulpy sensibility to most of the year's episodes so far, with the comic book references, grandiose plot mechanics and the decision to cast Angel as a Batman figure of superhero intensity. In some ways, it feels a lot like the first season, only with three years-worth of intrigue and story arcs making up for some of the weaker elements that harmed Angel's opening year.

Buffy: Selfless (7.5)

What is identity? That's the principal question at the heart of Selfless, another under-appreciated Buffy masterpiece and one of the most dynamic character studies I've ever seen on television. By the end of the episode, it's clear that no matter how long Anya has lived, no matter how much she has seen, and no matter how many varying emotions she has experienced, Anya isn't at all a person. She's drifted from one incarnation to the other over the centuries, mainly dictated by the men around her. The impressive title of this episode feeds directly into that, not only alluding to the human being she long ago was, but also the complete lack of self that she has today. In the end, however, there's a glimmer of hope -- Anya acknowledging all of the pain she has inflicted on others, and how much she strives to be someone better.

The X-Files: This Is Not Happening (8.14)

It's always admirable when a genre show focuses on the raw naturalism of an extreme event. Fox Mulder vanished several months ago, without a trace. Nobody would rationally believe that he'd been taken by extraterrestrial forces. His entire being is somewhere unexplainable. Every part of him has gone, and the people left behind are constantly hitting brick walls in their pursuit of him. The entire concept of a person just disappearing is unimaginably awful, and this episode successfully put the honest truth of the situation ahead of myth-arc hoodoo... and that was nice.

The X-Files: Per Manum (8.13)

Scully's pregnancy has been a cold affair since it was introduced at the end of last season, kept on the back-burner presumably to give Doggett's introduction some breathing room. Per Manum is really the first episode to push her story center stage, and it winds up being one of the more successful mythology hours. It goes without saying that these types of X-File turn out stronger when they directly involve characters we love, and Scully gets pulled through the ringer here. Gillian Anderson is always great, but I especially enjoyed seeing Scully working the case through the vacuum of her inner denial, verbally reacting to things as an FBI agent while internally breaking down over her own personal involvement in the case.

Dawson's Creek: High Risk Behavior (2.10)

Sex had always been Dawson's Creek's cachet. It's now-dated sexual openness created widespread controversy at the time, while the show continued the long-standing YA tradition of making sex the be-all and end-all of high school existence. The thing that everybody's thinking about, that everybody's terrified of, and that everybody's eager to start having. High Risk Behavior is probably one of the more overt episodes centered on sex, so much that the WB plugged the hell out of it: "Which one of the DC-ers loses their virginity? Tune in to find out!", etc. It's an hour that isn't entirely perfect, but manages to find some interesting new angles to a sort of tired premise.

Dawson's Creek: The Election (2.9)

Andie is very much becoming a character of two halves. She has this annoying penchant to speak a mile a minute, sputtering dialogue like a crazy-woman and alienating everyone who isn't Pacey in the process. At the same time, though, she's vulnerable and tragic, making her this ticking time bomb that we can't help but sympathize with. Andie is somebody who is rapidly facing the same fate as her mother, but hasn't yet come to terms with it. When somebody pokes fun at her, she doesn't fight back or take it in her stride, instead undergoing an emotional meltdown. It's this version of the character that works better, Meredith Monroe having the saddest eyes whenever Andie gets hurt. And no matter how often Pacey tries to help, it's a personal issue that she can only get over by herself.