In 2017, a debate raged in certain corners of Twitter over whether a television series could simply be considered an elongated movie. There’s no time — or point — to get into that argument right now, but let us just affirm that we still believe in the power of the episode, that 30- or 60-minute segment of a TV series that shifts expectations, changes circumstances, and embodies a show’s larger themes. This year had plenty of great episodes — below, The Ringer staff argues for their favorites.

Game of Thrones, “The Spoils of War”

Alyssa Bereznak: “The Spoils of War” may not contain the most epic battles in the history of Westeros, but it was one of the most thrilling moments on television in 2017 for an entirely different reason. Game of Thrones has spent the past six seasons mercilessly dwindling its roster of heroes. In this episode’s final scene — confoundingly nicknamed the “Loot Train Battle” — we suddenly find the precious few antagonists we have left on opposite sides of a battlefield. The question of who to root for is impossible. Losing Bronn and Jaime’s intoxicating bromance would be just as tragic as the demise of Tyrion and Dany, the only souls in the realm who seem well-equipped enough to defeat the White Walkers and, you know, rule mankind benevolently. For that reason, every puff of dragon fire and sword jab in “The Spoils of War” was viscerally unnerving. So much so that the night it aired I screamed into a pillow for an entire 20 minutes. Revisiting the scene months later with full knowledge of who was spared, I still can’t help but hold my breath the moment that Jaime stands staring down Drogon’s throat, while Dany recognizes she’s the target of his spear. The stakes of this battle were years in the making. However excruciating it was to watch, hypercharged moments like it are exactly why we invest hours of our lives in television.

Twin Peaks: The Return, “Part 8”

Sean Fennessey: I’m not certain if it’s safe to say that I found Twin Peaks: The Return exhausting and often unuseful. Twin Peaks fans are legion and desperately sure of themselves. Maybe they’re right, too. But in the equally exhausting “Is it TV or a movie?” debate, I’ve found myself wondering where to put Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War, not David Lynch and Mark Frost’s follow-up to their iconic television series. There was, however, an hour in that 18-episode endurance test that stands with any film released in 2017. The eighth installment of the season attempted something never before seen on episodic television: a combination bottle episode and flashback that spans 70 years and several dimensions in an effort to find the looming, ectoplasmic evil that inhabits the titular town and Lynch’s entire cultural project. It’s horrifying, a psychic and moral panic pitched in darkness, waves of nebulae, and creature effects, set against Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima,” the sonic equivalent of belly-flopping onto a bed of rusty nails.

Unlike the rest of the season, which connected generations of damaged innocents, nefarious interlopers, and confused detectives questing for answers surrounding the death of Laura Palmer and all of its spiraling consequences, this episode abandoned structure and plot to create what, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, might look like a deeply pretentious student film. (“… And the origin of evil” is always the worst part of your term paper’s subtitle.) But Lynch has been manifesting horror from nothingness and confusion from simplicity for decades — he is at ease inside a mushroom cloud. “It was certainly a narrative departure from what we had done before,” Frost said of the episode after the season. “There was no question about that. But it needed to stand apart, and it needed to blow your mind. So mission accomplished.” That is a direct way to describe a devastating thing. Let me see if I can simplify it further — here is a still image from the episode, in which a moth-toad creature born of an egg laid by the designers of evil crawls into the mouth of a sleeping child. Sweet dreams!

BoJack Horseman, “Stupid Piece of Shit”/“Time’s Arrow”

Alison Herman: For all the hype that adult-targeted animated shows like BoJack or Rick and Morty get, we don’t talk enough about the actual animation. BoJack Horseman has long prioritized the episode as a form, and this season’s best were also its most visually inventive: midseason highlight “Stupid Piece of Shit” illustrated the title character’s self-lacerating inner monologue with crude, angry stick figures, while the climactic “Time’s Arrow” put the audience inside the mind of a dementia patient through tiny, uncanny details. Both episodes take full advantage of the show’s format, using animation to immerse us in the subjectivity of some truly unlikable people — not to excuse their behavior, but to understand it. Those who’ve ever experienced the self-fulfilling prophecy of mental sabotage can relate to “Stupid Piece of Shit.” “Time’s Arrow,” meanwhile, is a devastatingly poetic portrait of regret, one that ends on an unlikely note of hope for the Horseman family saga. BoJack is at its best when it breaks the mold, and this pair of episodes shows why.

Master of None, “Thanksgiving”

Shea Serrano: The best TV episode of 2017 is the “Thanksgiving” episode of Master of None. In it, we watch Denise, an offshoot character in the series played by Lena Waithe, live through 30 years of family Thanksgiving celebrations, from childhood to adulthood, each year more engaging and dramatic than the last. It’s always easy to fall into a trap with these kinds of storytelling devices where the actual story becomes secondary to the way it’s being presented, but “Thanksgiving” is just so brilliantly done that that never ever happens. There are moments in it that are insightful (like when we watch a young Denise refer to herself as “Lebanese” because she’s not yet comfortable enough to refer to herself as “lesbian”), moments that are thick with anxiety (like when we watch an older Denise come out to her mother in a diner), and moments that are legit hilarious (like when Aziz Ansari’s Dev keeps making tiny jokes about the Instagram username of a woman that Denise brings home). And were that not enough, all of those moments — literally every single one of them — are executed with a wit and warmness that TV shows rarely ever display.

Master of None worked toward being able to tell a story like what it did with “Thanksgiving” for the entirety of the show’s existence up to that point, and when it finally went for it the show got it exactly right. All TV should aspire to reach such lofty points.

The Good Place, “Michael’s Gambit”

Kate Knibbs: The first-season finale of NBC’s fizzy-smart The Good Place aired in January 2017, which emotionally feels like it was 25 years ago but still counts for the purpose of this exercise, because it’s one of the greatest episodes of television I’ve ever seen in my damn life. On the off chance you haven’t seen The Good Place — watch it! — I won’t spoil this episode’s twist ending, except to say it is a clever, genuinely surprising master stroke, and Ted Danson is a sexagenarian treasure. “Michael’s Gambit” is even more impressive when you consider how well it serves as a hinge between the show’s first and second seasons — rather than close off opportunities, it opened the door for new ones.

Patriot, “Milwaukee, America”

Claire McNear: On its surface, Amazon’s too-little-watched Patriot might look like a spy drama: Deep-cover operative whose last job went horribly wrong is sent on a new, and theoretically straightforward, mission, with the fate of the world in the balance. By the third scene, however, we’re watching said operative (Michael Dorman) sit on a park bench in Amsterdam and sing impromptu — and national-security-endangering but self-therapeutic, we learn — folk songs about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. That’s after a casual attempt on the life of a character whose only flaw is being excessively pleasant, and, well, it only gets darker from there. Patriot’s pilot is one of the most shockingly — and yes, OK, bleakly — funny episodes of television I can remember watching. I was scream-laughing by the end of the first scene. You will be, too.

American Vandal, “Premature Theories”

Andrew Gruttadaro: For four episodes, American Vandal coasts on its construction and premise. Up to that point, the immaculate parody of true crime shows like Making a Murderer and the comedic twist of centering an entire in-depth investigation on who spray-painted dicks on a handful of cars in the faculty parking lot are enough to make the show worthwhile. But those things aren’t why American Vandal is one of the most pleasantly surprising shows of 2017, a transcendent series that not only pokes fun at pop culture hits, but serves as commentary on youth culture and the internet. American Vandal takes the leap in “Premature Theories,” when the protagonist/lead investigator Peter Maldonado decides to upload the first part of his documentary — the first four episodes of the show — to YouTube. What happens next, from a viewer standpoint, is a total shift in expectations.

The doc goes viral, and people begin posting their own theories online and connecting dots on their own — but some also come forward with misleading or doctored evidence, while others launch what are basically cyberbullying campaigns against people who have implicated the accused, Dylan Maxwell. It’s a stunningly clear-minded, carefully thought out take on both the pros and cons of virality — how the internet has the power to exonerate someone, but also to drive still-innocent bystanders into hiding. I didn’t think “the show about who did the dicks” had this level of contemplation in it, until I saw “Premature Theories.”

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, “The Disappointment of the Dionne Quintuplets”

Juliet Litman: Every episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is excellent. The fourth episode is particularly good. Midge, played by the effervescent Rachel Brosnahan, moves out of the apartment she shared with her estranged husband and into her parents’ in the same building. But it’s not just a linear move. It’s at once an emancipation and a moment of loss for Midge, and while some shows would create an expository conversation to indicate such nuance, Amy Sherman-Palladino is operating on her own plane.

The episode begins with a four-minute sweeping montage, alternating between mirroring shots of Midge and Joel experiencing marital highs with Midge overseeing the load out. All the while, Barbra Streisand’s “Happy Days Are Here Again” plays in the background. It’s the perfect song: The melody is maudlin, but Babs’ searing vocals harp on supposedly sunny times to come. Its aural dissonance matches the oscillating visuals. And from this powerful opening, Midge’s new career in comedy gathers steam. The episode is powered by the dizzying conflicts, of which we’re given an overview in the first few moments. It’s a masterful sequence worth seeking out.

Big Little Lies, “You Get What You Need”

Kate Halliwell: The finale of Big Little Lies seems like it happened a decade ago. Long before Nicole Kidman was an Emmy winner and Iain Armitage had gone full Young Sheldon, we were happily escaping to Monterey once a week, jamming out to Michael Kiwanuka’s “Cold Little Heart,” and pretending the portrayal of violence and sexual assault as an inescapable part of women’s lives was a revolutionary idea.

In an electric sequence that culminated in the disturbing-yet-satisfying murder of a rapist and domestic abuser and the ensuing beach-bonding party, Big Little Lies stuck the landing harder than anyone expected. Not only was the finale emotionally and thematically fulfilling, but it’s insanely rewatchable. The instantly iconic costumes! The confusing karaoke! (Or lip syncing, if you’re Adam Scott.) The breezy beach frolicking! The final scene intercuts the idyllic ocean picnic with images of the murder itself, all set to Ituana’s cover of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” This garish, gorgeous series showed that no, we really can.

Project Runway, “Client on the Go” and “A ‘Little’ Avant Garde”

Michael Baumann: I’d never watched Project Runway until I was sitting in the room while my wife had the Season 16 premiere on. This season featured identical twin designers, Shawn and Claire, who in minutes had me hooked for the duration. I don’t know the first thing about fashion — they might be very good designers — but their greatest talent is the ability to inspire genuine, overpowering hatred. They complained constantly, including about the fact this season’s crop of models included women who were more than a Size 2. They annoyed their fellow contestants by working together on just about every challenge, and even their speech patterns — a cross between a spoiled teenager and a precocious toddler trying to talk its way into eating dessert for dinner, with the smug obliviousness of someone who thinks the reason you’re not into David Lynch is you just haven’t watched enough of his work yet — were deliciously grating. Not since Game of Thrones killed Joffrey has my TV intake been so dictated by a commitment to hating someone. And not just annoyance, but hate, the kind of pure, visceral hatred that reminds you that you’re alive.

Anyway, Shawn got axed about halfway through the season, and to my immense glee, Claire went to pieces emotionally, but eked out a win in the next challenge, inspiring one of her opponents to storm off the stage in protest to tell the irreproachable Tim Gunn that Claire had been using a measuring implement at the hotel, in violation of the rules of the contest. When Tim Gunn confronted her, she confessed in such a petulant eye-roll-y manner it made me wonder if the old people who complain about snotty millennials really are onto something. But Tim Gunn, Archangel of Fashion, sent her packing nonetheless.

I like to consume art that moves me, and I was profoundly moved by watching Shawn and Claire get their comeuppance. That we can feel such feelings is, I believe, proof of humanity’s divine spark. What magnificent creatures are we, who can revel in such schadenfreude as this.

Nathan for You, “Finding Frances”

Lindsay Zoladz: “I should have married her,” sighs Bill Heath, the earnest yet mischievous-eyed 78-year-old actor and part-time Bill Gates impersonator. Viewers of Nathan Fielder’s strange, singularly brilliant Comedy Central show Nathan for You know Heath from an episode two seasons ago, when Fielder attempted to help a struggling Hollywood gift shop by hiring celebrity impersonators. (The story line of a typical Nathan episode resembles a real-life, absurdly complicated Rube Goldberg machine; on another great episode this season, Fielder printed and distributed several issues of a newspaper called The Diarrhea Times as one step in the process of making it look like Michael Richards had left a generously large tip at a restaurant. Just … watch the show.)

“Finding Frances,” the remarkably affecting two-hour finale of Nathan for You’s fourth season, was the show’s most ambitious and rewarding social science experiment yet. Fielder and his crew accompany Bill Heath on his quest to track down Frances, his high school sweetheart, whom he hasn’t seen in about 50 years. Their journey is at once a little creepy and incredibly relatable — who among us doesn’t sometimes think about the One Who Got Away? And yet the closer Heath gets to finding Frances, the more tragic the gap between his fantasy and reality becomes. By the end, it’s turned into a wrenching meditation on love, loss, and living in the moment. “Finding Frances” is a landmark: It’s basically The Odyssey of reality TV. Or maybe it’s actually full-blown feature documentary, though genre and format feel confining when talking about a story this well told. Regardless, and further blurring that boundary, great documentarian Errol Morris recently gave “Finding Frances” his blessing, comparing it to his debut feature Gates of Heaven and calling it his “new favorite love story.” Did your favorite TV show do that in 2017?

Better Call Saul, “Chicanery”

Miles Surrey: I could probably just drop the final five minutes of “Chicanery” below and leave it at that — but fine, I’ll talk about “Chicanery.”

Better Call Saul has significantly smaller stakes than its predecessor, Breaking Bad. Instead of cross-border drug wars and retirement-home explosions, the prequel’s idea of a climactic showdown in Season 3 occurs in an unassuming State Bar of New Mexico debate over whether Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) — the man inching closer to the slimy Saul Goodman by the hour — should be disbarred.

Better Call Saul makes up for its lack of explosive set pieces by focusing on relationships, and one in particular: the one between two petty, insidious brothers caught in a Shakespearean feud, fighting for their souls. Is Chuck McGill (an incredible, Emmy-snubbed Michael McKean) actually looking out for his brother with a disbarment, or crushing him to satiate his own deflated ego? Is Chuck’s aversion to electricity an actual physical symptom, or a mental illness? What is Jimmy willing to do to keep his license?

I’ll let those last five minutes take over from here. Nothing further.

The Bold Type, “Carry the Weight”

Amanda Dobbins: The Bold Type, a Freeform show coproduced by Cosmopolitan and based on that magazine’s inner workings, is a show for young people. Personal brands and social media managers figure prominently; the clothes — all borrowed from the fashion closet, which serves as the show’s hangout spot, and for the record, is not a place that junior staffers are allowed within 30 feet of IRL — are inappropriate for anyone over the age of 25, and questionable even for the three main characters on the show. The conflicts are decidedly early 20s: who to make out with, how to get off the assistant’s desk, what to do when you leave your boss’s prized possession in the back of a cab. (Bribe a dry cleaner for his security camera footage, just FYI.)

I cannot tell you when I transitioned from ironic viewer to full-throated fan, but it was probably somewhere around the episode devoted to negotiating for a raise. The show is not exactly subtle; most of its resolutions fit under the umbrellas of “You got this!” or “Group hug.” But the season finale, which centered around an Emma Sulkowicz–like art installation about sexual assault, has stayed with me for obvious reasons. There are more nuanced conversations to be had, even within the context of the show. (I have some questions about the magazine’s HR department.) But that last shot of five women, standing together in empathy in the middle of Central Park, turned out to be a prescient antidote to the rest of 2017.

Samurai Jack, “Episode XCIII”

Micah Peters: There are no better living action cartoon animators than Genndy Tartakovsky — the fifth and final season of Samurai Jack was more proof of that. I’m talking specifically about the second episode. In 22 minutes, after 10 years of believing it impossible, knowing full well that there were still eight more episodes to go, Tartakovsky convinced me — as in, I truly believed — that Jack was about to die.

It was the use of light, I think. The light, whether a lightning strike, or a ray piercing through the knothole of a barrel, felt precursive. Ominous. Obviously the light goes along with the dark, which there was a lot more of, limiting what you, as the viewer, can know to precisely what Jack knows, and no more. Death is coming. But from where? And does Jack want to give in to it? Those are questions the show waits until the last possible moment to answer. It’s mesmerizing. Also, there’s an Aesop-y B-plot with a wolf and seven tigers that sort of explains the A-plot, which is Samurai Jack as hell.

Halt and Catch Fire, “Nowhere Man”

Mallory Rubin: There’s a moment in “Nowhere Man,” the fifth episode of Halt & Catch Fire’s stunning final season, when Joe and Gordon find themselves discussing the future. This isn’t rare; in fact, it’s so normal for the entrepreneurial spirits at the center of Halt to harp on what might be next instead of being content with what’s already there that Gordon meets Joe’s latest show of existential angst with a fatigued “So we’re talking about the future again?”

Joe’s response, however, is anything but commonplace. “Is that what you saw 10 years ago?” Gordon continues after a brief, Cameron-centric aside from Joe. “Because it’s not what I saw for myself when you showed up in my garage.” Joe looks at his friend, his partner, one of the only people in the world who’s ever found it in himself to forgive Joe for being Joe, and says: “That’s the point: It was never about where it ended up. It was about how it felt.”

“Nowhere Man” wasn’t as critically adored as “Tonya and Nancy,” which preceded it; or as elemental to the show’s overall plot as “Who Needs a Guy,” which concludes with Gordon’s death; or as final as, well, the finale, but that line from Joe taps into something so fundamental to the show’s purpose that it elevates the entire episode into the top tier of the series’ lasting achievements. That idea, spoken on a sunny afternoon full of frustration and the kind of inertia that seems destined to derail one’s entire life, illustrates more about what drives these seemingly perpetually unsatisfied people — and, just as crucially, about why we care — than any plot development could. Halt never really centered on whether Comet or Rover would win; it drew breath from quiet moments like this.

Joe’s words to Gordon aren’t just commentary on the peril du jour; they’re a reminder of what really fueled these characters: a desperate desire to connect with other people and build something meaningful. Halt’s ability to understand that craving such purpose and such satisfaction is universal helped it become so much more than a tech show or the latest installment in the “Difficult Men” genre, where our satisfaction hinged on the ending. For the Haltheads who spent four seasons watching these tortured souls march toward goal posts that never stopped moving, it was never about where it ended up. It was about how it felt.

Channel Zero: No-End House, “This Isn’t Real”

Chris Ryan: Great horror should feel like the video tape from The Ring, minus the face-freezing. It should feel like an urban legend, something that gets whispered about, passed from hand to hand with a nervous look. I don’t want to show you this … but you have to see this.

Of course, it’s increasingly difficult for any piece of pop culture to have an air of folkloric secrecy. Which is why “This Isn’t Real,” the first episode of SyFy’s Channel Zero: No-End House, was such a terrifying miracle. Adapted by Nick Antosca (who previously wrote for Hannibal) from a 5,000-word Creepypasta (basically a Wikipedia for scary, user-generated stories), “This Isn’t Real” works precisely because it feels like you have come across some disturbing artifact that exists somewhere between truth, fiction, and the paranormal.

Here’s the setup: A group of teenagers, home from college for the summer, are tooling around their anonymous suburban town. They hear about a pop-up escape room installation, set up inside a black-painted house, inexplicably located in the middle of a residential street. When they arrive, visitors are exiting the house in varying states of distress. They see this sign:

Of course they go in. Of course it’s a bad idea. I have not been this unnerved by a piece of television since the “White Bear” episode of Black Mirror. To say any more would be to ruin all the fun.

Legion, “Chapter 7”

Daniel Chin: For a show that was as confusing and, at times, frustrating as Legion, nothing was more satisfying than the penultimate episode. Noah Hawley’s foray into the X-Men universe featured a bunch of mesmerizing visual sequences throughout, including Bollywood numbers and Aubrey Plaza dance routines. Trying to understand exactly what was going on was not only difficult, but truly exhausting. That was part of the point, I suppose, as we were forced to piece together the fragmented thoughts of the protagonist David’s troubled and gifted mutant mind. It was also part of what made “Chapter 7” so rewarding.

The most satisfying and revelatory scene in the episode — and the first season of Legion — featured an animated chalk sequence, which offered some heavy hints at Professor Xavier being David’s father (like he is in the comics) and the storied rivalry between him and the Shadow King, Farouk. With the help of a projection of David’s rational (and British) mind, we were given a lesson that weaved together all the jumbled events that led David to his current predicament. It was not only a fun scene, but one that allowed viewers to exhale. Along with the blackboard scene, “Chapter 7” has a brilliant silent movie sequence, one of my favorites of the season. It’s a perfect example of the amorphous style of a series that bends genres and discards superhero tropes to create a fresh and unconventional comic book adaptation.

Narcos, “Todos Los Hombres del Presidente”

Ben Lindbergh: Narcos rarely goes for grand artistic statements. A Narcos episode’s greatness is measured in how much more Narcos it makes you want to watch. By that standard, Netflix’s leading (maybe) binge-bait fell flat for my household at the start of Season 3. My wife and I snorted the first two seasons without much of a break between episodes, but our viewing history for Season 3 (which was released on September 1) reveals two-plus months of slow going before a breakthrough, day-before-Thanksgiving spree in which we consumed the last six episodes in one sitting.

With both Boyd Holbrook (as lead DEA reenactor/narrator Steve Murphy) and the swaggering Wagner Moura (as Narco no. 1 Pablo Escobar) exiting the story after Season 2, Narcos needed new targets and new good guys to take them down. That soft reset led to a long buildup, but by the second half of the season, the new foundation was firm enough to support one of 2017’s tensest TV experiences. Season 3’s second-to-last episode, “Todos Los Hombres del Presidente,” crammed a movie’s worth of well-paced-and-plotted action into 47 expectation-subverting minutes, featuring a carefully choreographed raid gone wrong, an unmasked mole, a thwarted assassination attempt, and Javier Peña (played by Pedro Pascal) fighting the clock and conflicting loyalties, all of which culminated in a Chinatown-type twist about Colombia’s narco-democratic corruption extending all the way to the top. Season 4’s move to Mexico will entail another Narcos makeover, but next time, I won’t fall behind in my binge.

Nathan for You, “Chili Shop/Massage Parlor”

Jordan Coley: There are many episodes of Nathan for You where it’s clear that the small business owner who has agreed to appear on the show is at least mildly aware that Nathan Fielder — graduate of “one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades” — won’t actually help make their small venture more successful. There are other episodes where — through some mixture of optimistic trust, gullibility, and desperation — they don’t. In these, the show’s most special (and cruel) moments, the point of realization comes not all at once, but gradually, one perplexing response after the other, until the client awakens to the fact that Fielder is either wholly insane or pulling their leg or both. By this time, it’s too late. They are powerless, already swept up in the wave of absurdity that is Fielder’s ludicrous solution for their company. They sit expressionless, blinded by its stupidity.

In “Chili Shop/Massage Parlor,” Robert Bryan comes to Nathan with a problem. He is the owner of Lie-N-Den Bar & Grill in Bakersfield, California. For years, Bryan has tried without success to secure a vendor’s license at Bakersfield’s Rabobank Arena, so he can serve his trademark chili during minor league hockey games. As always, Fielder’s solution is (not) simple: They’ll just construct a custom body suit that can be filled with chili and worn under clothes. In the suit, Bryan can “discreetly” serve customers chili through his sleeve. The beauty of Nathan for You is not just that they conceive these incredibly tedious, stupid plans, but that they execute them with such care, effort, and attention to detail. If you’re going to construct a covert chili suit, it has to have a trucker hat cheese grater and a cargo pocket fall of chives. It’s next-level preposterousness. One might even say it’s artful. Trolling for trolling’s sake.

Planet Earth II, “Islands”

Danny Heifetz: Let’s get this out of the way: This episode indisputably gave us the best action scene of the year with the marine iguana–racer snakes chase, which I am going to embed below because I love you.

That scene (which is much longer in the episode) is just an excerpt from “Islands,” the first episode after a decade-long hiatus for the best nature documentary series in the world, which made its American debut in January.

Planet Earth II, shot in 40 countries across 117 film trips and 2,089 days of filming, begins with a pygmy sloth traversing air, land, and sea just to get laid. It’s not an accident. Planet Earth II challenges you to question your preconceived notions about the natural world, and “Islands” is its mission statement. In 51 minutes, it shows us that a forest can be a desert, dragons are real, and sloths aren’t lazy. The show doesn’t just make you appreciate nature or fret over humanity’s impact on it — it makes you relate with the struggles of an animal you had never heard of 30 seconds ago over, and over, and over again — until you feel a little bit closer to the world.

Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.