6 Classic Shows (That Went Insane For One Episode)

Buffy, who's illegally drinking as well, suffers the same effects, and ends up painting stick figures in her room.

20th Television

It turns out that the beer was spiked with a magic potion, because the owner of the bar was gently bullied by college kids over the years. He flat-out admits all this to Xander after seconds of interrogation. And how did he pull off this incredible transformational poisoning?

20th Television

Hilariously, this episode only exists because Buffy was trying to take advantage of a government subsidy to incorporate anti-drug storylines into popular shows. Despite crafting this whole stupid plot with that goal in mind, the episode was rejected by the program for its "otherworldly nonsense." It didn't show the real dangers of substance abuse, the government argued; it showed the dangers of vindictive tavern managers with warlock relatives. A situation the government is apparently neutral on.

Not surprisingly, Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate, taking with them the world's greatest gamer to help defeat her. Unfortunately, he's horribly maimed and killed.

20th Television

So Mulder enters the game, embarrasses himself almost immediately with an attempt at trash talk ...

20th Television

... and that's when things start to get dumb.

It turns out the villain was created by one of the company's female employees, because she was sick of working with gross men. Honestly, that's kind of a good premise, because it's still a huge issue today. What is less great is the decision to explore that issue via a sword-wielding Mulder fighting sexy cowgirls.

20th Television

Eventually, Scully has to come into the video game to save him. This is played up like the most incredible hero turn in the Universe, because the idea of a woman playing a video game was completely mind-blowing at the time.

20th Television

As long as you didn't start with the erotic Scottish ghost episode, that is.

The episode "Sub Rosa" finds the Enterprise visiting a planet terraformed to look and feel like Scotland, presumably because at some point in the future, Scottish people were all thrown off of Earth for rowdiness.

CBS Television Distribution

The reason for the Enterprise's visit? Dr. Crusher's 100-year-old grandmother has died. Dr. Crusher soon discovers her Nana's diary, which recounts a recent love affair with a younger man. Then, possibly because Dr. Crusher was super close to her grandma, she begins having vivid dreams about the diary's contents.

CBS Television Distribution

Soon, the boyfriend shows up as a disembodied voice, and seconds later admits to being a ghost. Then, while families around the world sit in front of their televisions watching in stunned silence, the ghost proceeds to psychically give Dr. Crusher an orgasm.

CBS Television Distribution

He eventually appears in a more physical form, though still chooses to have sex as kind of a mint-green mist.

CBS Television Distribution

CBS Television Distribution

This happens more than once.

CBS Television Distribution

Eventually, Geordi and Data dig up their colleague's grandmother's body (that familiar old trope), and are shocked to see her come to life.

CBS Television Distribution

Of course, it's not actually a sex-ghost, but some bullshit science monster that is easily killed. So yeah, not a classic. There's probably a reason the Borg never molested anyone with cartoon stink lines.

Ghostwriter was PBS's attempt to trick children into learning phonics by following the adventures of a lovable phantom with a ridiculously depressing backstory. Most episodes consisted of adorable children from every possible ethnic background teaming up with Ghostwriter to solve mysteries using only the power of literacy, home computers, and necromancy.

Sesame Workshop

The "Attack Of The Slime Monster" story arc finds the team taking a break from battling crime to write a short story about a creepy toy named Gooey Gus, who is essentially a Cabbage Patch Doll caught in a chemical explosion which destroys its meth lab.

Sesame Workshop

Soon, they start to think that Gooey Gus might be coming to life. At one point, he grows to human size and is played by who is almost certainly a Julliard graduate beginning to grasp the true meaning of rock bottom.

Sesame Workshop

In the end, to celebrate their successful creation, the gang has a barbecue. But then goddamn Gooey Gus appears in the flames, and proceeds to vomit slime all over the kids. The end. Go literacy.

Sesame Workshop

Few sitcoms take place in the middle of a terrible war, but M*A*S*H was different. Able to find comedy in the trauma of the Korean War, the show even somehow managed to last longer than the war itself.

20th Television

Considering how long the series ran, it's probably not so unbelievable that one of the episodes focused more on the actual horrors of war. The episode "Dreams," which joined the lovable gang of misfits after 30 hours of sleep-deprived emergency surgery, took fans on a journey into the characters' supremely fucked-up psyches. It aired without the usual laugh track, because, well, you'll see.

The first dream we see is Sgt. Houlihan, who fantasizes about getting married.

20th Television

Well that's nice. Good for Hot Lips. Oh wait, there's more...

20th Television

Similarly, Father Mulcahy dreams that he's the Pope -- only to watch Jesus on the cross turn into a bloodied soldier.

20th Television

20th Television

20th Television

But the weirdest dream of all is reserved for the wisecracking Hawkeye, who dreams that he suddenly has mannequin arms.

20th Television

Then he's on boat in a sea of mannequin arms.

20th Television

Then he finds a wounded child, but can't operate because he has no arms, so he screams to the heavens.

20th Television

The episode makes a lot of sense within the context of its premise -- lack of sleep, brutal working conditions, and the possible ingestion of chemical warfare agents would absolutely cause wartime field surgeons to dream up some crazy shit. But it's the fact that every other episode was presented like The Big Bang Theory that makes this one stand out.

While the show had a lot of great ideas (David gets addicted to meth, Dylan's dad explodes, Donna meets Candyman), it also had some not-very-good ones, like the time the entire cast flashbacked to the 1960s for no real reason, because nothing was more relevant to teenagers in the 1990s than the struggles of teenagers in the 1960s.

CBS Television Distribution

In the episode "The Time Has Come Today," Brenda discovers a diary from the 1960s, and like the thieving snoop she is, she reads it without a second thought. And, as is standard protocol in all movies and TV shows that involve reading, she visualizes herself and all of her friends as the characters in it. This means we get to see Kelly as a stoner, Brandon as an army officer, and Dylan as an antiwar activist.

CBS Television Distribution

It's a real mishmash of stuff, basically, every character getting a turn to be the '60s version of themselves. Here's Brandon kicking in his family's TV during a fight over the war in Vietnam:

CBS Television Distribution

CBS Television Distribution

Also, for some reason Brenda, can visualize things that clearly would not be in the diary, like '60s David trying to bone '60s Donna.

CBS Television Distribution

At the end of the episode, Brenda tracks down the woman who wrote the diary, only to find out that she's been dead for two decades.

CBS Television Distribution

So yeah. The diary was written by a person who was dead before any of the characters in the show were even born, which you may recognize as the most relevant possible storyline to introduce into a prime-time teen soap opera.

J.M. McNab co-hosts the pop culture nostalgia podcast Rewatchability, which can also be found on iTunes. Follow him on Twitter @Rewatchability.

Also check out 7 Insane Things TV Shows Did When They Ran Out Of Money and 5 Ridiculous Reasons Awesome TV Shows Were Canceled.

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