When is an episode actually really good as a stand-alone episode?

"Ozymandias" sure is a great episode and all, very close to my beloved's Breaking Bad's finale, a memorable part of its final season - season 5. Buuut... is it any good as a stand-alone episode for someone who has never watched the show? ........It is the first time in 5 seasons that we actually see real physical violence happening in the household of the main character, but if we do not know how it feels to see it happen for the very first time, all we think and feel is "Well, some people are fighting"..... At the beginning, an important character dies after 5 seasons of interesting development, but if you do not know the character, why would you care...? I personally watched "The Rains of Castamere" , the ninth and penultimate episode of the third season of Game of Thrones out of context. The Red Wedding episode is popular and well executed, but I barely knew who Catelyn and Robb were. I did not care much about the end of the episode - in fact, I thought it was kind of comedic how some random dude offed Catelyn when she was just standing around. Sure, I get it, she is a mom who is sad that her son died, but I had not much more context than that. .... My best examples for a great stand-alone episode would be: - "The Body", Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You don't have to know or care about the rest of the series, you might not even have any idea if it's realistic, a fantasy, a drama, horror show.... All you need is in the episode. A bunch of people who clearly care about each other find out, that a mom of one of them just unexpectedly passed away because of post-brain-surgery complication. The entire episode is just a group of people trying to deal with grief. No need to know the characters beyond that, it works perfectly as a short film. - "Five-O", Better Call Saul. Whether you know Mike, or not at all, this is a short story revealing what a character is going through and why. You don't necessarily need to know any backstory of anyone in the episode. The whole point is that by the end you will find the backstory of Mike who functions as a protagonist of this specific episode and the ending works well as if an ending of a short film. - "Fish out of Water", the silent episode of BoJack Horseman, takes a place underwater in a world that the fans of the show never met before. It works better, of course, if you know something about BoJack himself, however, going into the episode with no information still does not ruin most of the zero-dialogue story with a funny and heartbreaking ending. (there is short dialogue in the cold open but zero in the rest of the episode) - "Free Churro", the monologue-only episode of BoJack Horseman. The entire episode is only Will Arnett giving a eulogy. It works well without the rest of the show, but man, it's mostly depressing. submitted by /u/No_Jicama3636 [link] [comments]