Top 5 TV Episodes about Loneliness

Given my age and memory, I suspect a lot of these top 5's will be based on really recent television shows. I'm going to try to mix it up as much as possible, but I have my limits. Also, given there's way fewer tv shows than movies, this might also be a short-lived series on the blog, even if I am using episodes rather than shows. So far though, I like having the structure. Here are my top 5 episodes about loneliness, inspired by the top 5 movies about loneliness at Filmspotting.

1. Veronica Mars pilot: her best friend is dead, her boyfriend won't talk to her, the rest of the school hates her, and her mom left town without explanation. All she's got is her dad, who she certainly can't tell about losing her virginity after being roofied. High school is all about alienation and loneliness, but the Veronica Mars captures it at its most noir-ish. Image and summary here.

2. The episode where Miranda's mom dies on Sex and the City: This is my favorite SATC episode. It perfectly encapsulates how lonely you can feel when a loved one passes away, even when you're surrounded by people who love and want to comfort you.

3. The season 1 finale of Deadwood. Though the Seth Bullock and Alma storyline is great, Al Swearengen's storyline is the one that fits the theme here. It's also the episode that won me over to Al Swearengen for the rest of the series. In it, the reverend is incredibly ill; he's had some sort of stroke and spends most of the episode out of his mind and writhing in pain. At the end, Al goes to the reverend and suffocates him to death in an act of self-sacrificing mercy. And then Al goes and kills another man in cold blood to protect his own skin. It's an insane juxtaposition; but it also shows that Al is all by himself, mostly of his own doing. Al Swearengen is the kind of character that this article is talking about. A character who's a bad person, but who's written in such a generous way that we have to forgive him.

4. The Shooting episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation. As I said above, high school is all about alienation and loneliness, and this is a perhaps less sophisticated, more heavy-handed version than Veronica Mars. The episode is in part a tribute to Carrie, but mostly Canada's attempt to wrestle with alienation's real-life manifestation in Columbine and other school shootings. One thing that's pretty amazing about this episode is that it really does reverberate across the rest of the series.

5. The autism episode of First Person. I like Errol Morris's TV show even better than many of his movies. This episode in particular really captured me. It was about a woman with autism who couldn't relate to the people around her, but had a deep connection to and sympathy with animals. Standard stuff so far, but basically what ends up happening is that she designs a more humane slaughterhouse using the same sort of situations she finds soothing--in particular constrained space and a kind of tunnel vision. Loneliness put to the most unexpected use imaginable. Life really is strange.