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Friday, March 2nd, 2012
Best Sitcom Episode Tournament
20

The Final Matchup in the Best Sitcom Episode Ever Tournament Has Been Decided

by | March 2nd, 2012

We're nearly at the end of the Best Sitcom Episode Ever Tournament; you voted on the final four this week, and those contests have been decided, giving us the final matchup: The Simpsons vs. Community. This round had an extremely close call — The Simpsons beat Arrested Development by less than 1% of the vote — but whether or not the final round will be as close will remain to be seen next week.

So, what do you think? Did the best episodes make it this far, or are your fellow voters hopeless idiots with terrible taste who overlooked that one episode of Boy Meets World that we didn't even include in the original 32 episodes because this website is just such bullshit and populated by idiot fanboys? In any case, here are the detailed results from the final four:

Results

Community — "Remedial Chaos Theory" (68.9%)
vs.
Fawlty Towers — "The Germans" (31.1%)

The Simpsons — "Marge vs. the Monorail" (50.8%)
vs.
Arrested Development — "Pier Pressure" (49.2%)

* * *

So it's come to this: one of the best episodes of one of the best sitcoms of all time up against one of the most out-there episodes of the current cult favorite sitcom on TV. Who ya got?

Tags:

best sitcom episode ever tournament, competition, tournament, tv

  • George Peterson@facebook

    I love them both. Very difficult. However, I've been adoring Community lately, and though the monorail episode is fantastic, I'm going Community: Remedial Chaos Theory

  • Victor

    I love Community, but should it be there ahead of, say, Arrested Development or Seinfeld? NO WAY! What were you voters thinking?

    • Piss Cop

      @Victor If you look at the shows and episodes it has been up against this whole tourney, it makes perfect sense why it is there. If it had come into conflict with any modern comedy (it really should have lost to Party Down, one of the best comedy shows of all time) after the first round it likely would have lost. Silly for you all to think this has anything to do with the show being on hiatus considering it was up against I Love Lucy and Dick Van Dyke, which are historical icons but by no means part of the modern comic taste. They are also some of the few shows on this bracket that are in classic sitcom format, so it was difficult for those shows to win regardless. Community had it easy. If it had come into contest with Seinfeld or Arrested Development earlier, I doubt it would have gone as far as it did. Especially since Modern Warfare is arguably the most popular episode of the show since it aired and that lost out in like round 2 iirc.

      WTF is my point? It ain't a fanboy rigged game, it was stacked in Community's favor by simply putting the show up against really old TV that is hard to fully appreciate on the 100th viewing more than 50 years from its air date. It's just a matter of freshness. Like it or not, Remedial Chaos Theory is just more entertaining on the whole than any episode of Dick Van Dyke or Lucy.

  • My Number is my Address

    I have loved The Simpsons since the Tracey Ullman days and I love them so much I get enraged by the "it's not as good as it was in [insert some bullshit date here]" rigamarole. But Community is on a whole new level. Community: Remedial Chaos Theory.

  • http://twitter.com/joshung Joshua Ungerleider

    I love Community, and I know the general readership of this site loves it as well, but The Simpsons just knocked off Arrested Development (the next strongest seed in my option), I don't think Community will stand much of a chance here.

  • http://videoshare.tumblr.com Firas Alexander

    I'm guessing Simpsons takes it, but I'm still going to vote for Community. They need the win more.

  • Stormy24

    It's a shame that Community is even in this competition, let alone a finalist. This series isn't even in my top 10 list. I simply don't get the love-affair even after re-watching many episodes, including this particular one, to try to figure it out.

    • http://sorryyourheinous.tumblr.com/ sorry your heinous

      @Stormy24 It's not for everyone, honestly. I mean, the millions that would rather watch Big Bang Theory prove that. If it hits what you like in humor, though, it really hits it. (Still, it's not the best episode ever…Very clever? Yes. Best? No. Interested to see how it would do a few years from now, with more hindsight.)

    • Piss Cop

      @sorry your heinous I'd like to see the writers of Community do a season of the Simpsons. I think they're a better fit than the meta, self referential writers they have now.

  • Par Mahn@facebook

    Are voters voting for the better sitcom or the better episode at this point?

  • Jason McElweenie@facebook

    Community shouldn't have beat Seinfeld in the first place. 'Is that a Titlist?' 'War, what is it good for?' If this beats the Simpsons than this site is about to hit a chestnut tree.

  • JBusiness

    Can Remedial Chaos Theory really be described as a sitcom episode? It breaks the format that the rest of these episodes have kept.

  • akivaddict

    Could we maybe have conducted this tournament when Community fans weren’t in hiatus/cancellation-threat melt-down (must-save-the-series-by-writing-obscure-blogs-and-over-posting-on-infrequented-websites-that-NBC-execs-would-never-visit) mode?

  • Megh Wright

    You had me at "idiot fanboys."

  • theBULL

    I would love to vote in this, but I never know when the poll is open or where to go to vote.

  • Phillip Malphrus Jr@facebook

    Sorry to say so, but this is BS, full of fanboy votes. There's no way any "Community" episode would stack up against the great episodes of Cheers, Seinfeld, Cosby, or even Friends for that matter. I never have once gone out of my way to watch Community and if you are talking best of all time, I can't imagine this episode being one of those "hey, whatever you do in life, you've got to see this episode" moments. Sorry :)

  • velveteen71@twitter

    Jesus Christ. This whole comptetion is like one of those "Top 100 Songs of All-Time" lists on a pop station: kids vote for what they know, the scope of which is limited to their favorite thing of the last year. It's like Ke$sha beating out "Stairway to Heaven".

    "Community" beats "Fawlty Towers"??

    Goodnight!

  • Carlos Cabrera@facebook

    Although I can take issue with some of the choices that lead here, if these are the choices for best episode, all I have to say is…

    MONORAIL, MONORAIL, MONORAIL!

  • Buster Abbott@facebook

    Mono = One. Rail = Rail. That concludes this grueling, multi-week tournament.

    As much as I like Community, this one is a no-brainer. Marge vs. the Monorail all the way.

  • Buster Abbott@facebook

    I love Community, but the no-doubter call here is Marge vs. the Monorail.

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