A look at six of the all-time greatest episodes of the all-time greatest shows, ever.

The Golden Age of Television doesn’t appear to be reaching its end any time soon. With a new streaming platform emerging seemingly every day and more and more of them creating their own content, there are so many great shows to choose from, but what makes a great show truly great?

While so much goes into a series’ success, including timing, sometimes all it takes is a standout episode or two to hook people in and get them to start recognizing its greatness. So, what makes a great episode great then? The best way to determine that is to look back at some of the all-time best. Here are six of the all-time greatest episodes of the all-time greatest shows, ever:

Game of Thrones S1 E9: Baelor

Say what you want about the finale, but you simply cannot deny the impact of this phenom of a show, and it all started here. Sure, Jaime had already pushed Bran out the window, King Robert had already died, and the magic to the north and east had already been introduced, but it wasn’t until its first season’s penultimate episode that GoT truly captivated the world and planted its flag as one of the best ever.

We’ll get to the mind-blowing ending, but what many forget is that Baelor also planted some very important seeds. In order to get her son’s army safely across the Trident River, Catelyn Stark must promise him and his sister to two of Walder Frey’s children in marriage, and we all know how that ends. Meanwhile, Twyin Lannister places Tyrion on the front lines in battle, presumably because it’d make for a convenient way to ensure his son’s death. Tyrion deals with this news the best way he knows how: he gets himself a prostitute named Shae.

In the east, Daenerys Targaryen allows a witch doctor to perform an unnatural ritual on her husband in a desperate attempt to save his life, but the legend of this episode begins with its end: Ned Stark’s beheading before the titular Great Sept of Baelor. Aside from readers of the original book series, no one could believe what they’d seen afterwards and most held out hope for Ned until the season finale confirmed his death. His tragic end let us all know that the show was playing for keeps, that anyone could go at any moment, and it made us that much more emotionally invested in its characters because of it. Some may put more spectacular episodes like The Watchers on the Wall, The Battle of the Bastards, or even The Rains of Castamere ahead of it, but who knows what would have happened if Baelor didn’t capture the world’s attention the way it did?

True Detective S1 E4: Who Goes There

Woody Harrelson’s Detective Marty Hart gets some key information out of a criminal before his marriage finally falls apart in Who Goes There, but this mesmerizing series’ greatest episode is all about the glorious, six-minute, uncut tracking shot through the projects that caps it off. The single take follows Hart’s drugged-up undercover partner Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) as he aids his crazed biker contact in an ill-conceived robbery and all hell breaks loose.

Shot composition was such a key part of the first season’s success and director Cary Fukunaga manages to accomplish more than a few memorable frames in this one, but the electricity truly comes from the brilliantly staged action. Fukunaga follows it frenetically, mimicking Cohle’s experience, moving from room to room of a project house as everything unravels and the detective finally has to reveal himself, grab his biker contact, and escape through the war-like chaos outside.

The direction coupled with McConaughey’s performance makes for an unforgettable viewing experience, but the shot also exemplifies one of the show’s greatest qualities: its subversiveness. Since the undercover Cohle had gone rogue, neither he nor his partner can speak of his action-packed night in the projects when being questioned later by police. In the very next episode, however, both tell those same police, in detail, about a “shootout” that never actually took place, only this time it’s to protect Hart, who himself went rogue when he killed a suspect without provocation. The tracking shot is a perfect example of a show pulling out every trick in the book to create an unforgettable episode that also taps into the series’ larger themes.

Stranger Things S1 E3: Holly, Jolly

Up until its third episode, it was clear that Stranger Things was a loving tribute to another time, a nostalgic and fun ride fit for all, then Holly, Jolly happened and everything changed.

It begins with the last glimpse of the beloved Barb Holland alive as she’s dragged to the depths of what would come to be known as the Upside Down. The opening sets the tone for the episode perfectly, as things start to shift from pure genre fun to something heavier. Another flashback revealing the true and terrifying nature of Eleven’s powers adds a little more weight to the equation and then, they find Will’s body.

It’s one of those unforgettable series moments, with Peter Gabriel’s cover of Bowie’s Heroes providing the perfect accompaniment as the show reaches new levels of emotional impact. Watching Mike Wheeler run home to his mother and cry in her arms after the discovery of his friend’s body is one of the most heart-wrenching moments in entertainment history. Sure, we come to learn that it wasn’t, in fact, Will’s body that was pulled out of that quarry, but that moment, and episode, let us know that this wasn’t just a fun, throwback show. It was also a show about childhood and friendship, and the fragility of it all.

The Wire S5 E10: –30–

One thing that the first three episodes on this list have in common is that they’re all from their respective show’s first seasons. The Wire, however, just seemed to keep getting better, so it only makes sense that it would continue to reach new heights even at the very end. That The Wire is the greatest show in history is certainly debatable, but it’s hard to argue that few other shows can compete with its conclusion.

In the series finale, the primary theme of the show shines: the cycle continues, no matter what. That’s what separated The Wire from its HBO peer, The Sopranos. In the latter, Tony Soprano was the story’s clear Shakespearean protagonist and it, for the most part, followed his arc, which was dictated by his own individual choices. The Wire, on the other hand, was about the institutions being bigger than those who operated within them. It’s why creator David Simon compared the series to a Greek tragedy. No matter what choices the characters made, it was always going to end the same way for them and the finale embodied that theme completely.

Once-idealistic Mayor Carcetti architects a classic cover-up to protect his career just as the corrupt politicians before him would have while other, younger characters virtually replace their older counterparts. Dukie Weems, for example, starts on his path to becoming a full-blown junkie just like Bubbs was before he turned his life around and Weems’ friend, Michael, starts robbing drug dealers just as the legendary Omar Little did before he was killed. Even reckless cop Jim McNulty gets a replacement in Leander Sydnor, but the point is that no show wrapped up its story while also hammering home its larger themes like The Wire did with its final episode.

The Sopranos S6 E3: Mayham

Show creator David Chase has discussed the Twin Peaks’ influence on The Sopranos, but the former existed in a time when it had to smuggle its boldest bits to the audience, while the latter did not. It wore its audacity on its sleeve, laying the foundation for so many one-hour dramas that came after it, and Mayham is the seminal series at its best.

While the main man, Tony, is in a coma-induced dreamworld for most of the episode, his presence is still very much felt. His nephew, for instance, drifts right back into his own dream of making a movie in his uncle’s absence, while other members of the “family” immediately start grabbing for power as it quickly becomes clear that next-man-up Sylvio Dante can’t bear the weight of the crown. The episode also provides us with all the other Sopranos staples: Someone grapples with the morality of their existence with Dr. Melfi, only this time it’s Carmela; there’s a classic mob shootout and a reminder of Tony’s terrifying power to intimidate when those involved hold back the score only to run his cut to the hospital when he wakes; there’s even a classic Paulie Walnuts moment when he visits a still comatose Tony and accidentally sends him into cardiac arrest, but let’s get to the dream already, and what a dream it is.

Tony, living the dream as his alter-ego Kevin Finnerty, arrives at a country house for a family reunion, where he’s greeted by a cousin (Steve Buscemi) he’d previously murdered, beckoning Tony to enter.  As he expresses his reluctance to hand over his briefcase, Tony sees the figure of what appears to be his dead mother in the doorway, then hears a little girl calling out through the trees in the distance. It’s his daughter, Meadow, pleading with him in the hospital to stay alive, and it’s one of the most unforgettable moments in a series filled with them. Just as the trees in Twin Peaks acted as a barrier between worlds, they serve a similar function here, and the dream itself embodies the true power of the show. Sure, it was fun to watch a gangster movie play out in weekly installments over multiple years, but The Sopranos was so much more than that and Mayham is a perfect example. It wasn’t just a fun mob show; it was a show about the magnetism of a monster. Beyond the door to that house was surely some sort of purgatory or hell, an after life at least, yet we’re still yearning for Tony to listen to that little girl’s voice. Why?

Twin Peaks S1 E3: Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer

Through the first two episodes of this series, we’d been introduced to a strange little town in the Pacific Northwest and the oddball characters who inhabited it, all through the lens of the murder of a popular young girl named Laura Palmer. We’d also met the quirky FBI agent (Kyle MacLachlan) sent to investigate, various suspects and secrets had begun to emerge, and Laura’s mother had a couple of weird visions. So far, so fun, then came Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer.

If you thought you were watching a run-of-the-mill murder mystery set in a charming little town, this episode began to reveal the true and dark monster behind the show’s “network drama” mask, but not before we got everything else we could possibly want in an episode of Twin Peaks. That includes a classic scene at the Great Northern Hotel with the Horne brothers as well as Audrey Horne’s now legendary diner dance. More secrets are revealed, Agent Albert Rosenfield arrives, and MacLachlan’s Agent Cooper uses his weird, stone-throwing method to narrow down the suspects. Then, Laura’s father puts on a record and starts dancing maniacally while holding a picture of his dead daughter, and we begin to realize this show is not what it seems.

If that weren’t unsettling enough, we next enter Cooper’s dream, which provides our first introduction to the red room that would come to be known as the Black Lodge. There he finds Laura Palmer, along with a strange little man. Everyone starts talking backwards yet forwards, the little man does a weird dance, and Laura whispers the name of her killer into Cooper’s ear only for him to forget it by morning. The episode’s ending sets the tone for the rest of the show perfectly, letting us know this will be a far stranger ride than we could have thought, and that the murder of Laura Palmer is far from the biggest mystery in this strange little town.