Courtesy of HBO; Courtesy of FX

These were great television episodes of 2016. They may not, however, be THE greatest TV episodes of 2016.

Sometimes it's easier to point to great episodes of a good show than great episodes of a great show. Sometimes you feel that in the process of going through Best Shows and Best Performances and Best Episodes, that you're writing about the same things over and over, because the best shows probably have the best performances and the best episodes. But you crave the chance to shine a light on some special things from shows that haven't been discussed quite as much, or even to isolate that rarity of a bad show that somehow managed to muster one great episode.

Make no mistake: Even if we don't list an individual episode of Veep or Rectify here, we're not saying all of these episodes below are better than every episode of those shows, or of Happy Valley or a bunch of other shows.

But we're definitely saying these are great episodes of television.