Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: December 14, 1999

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Hush” (Season 4, Episode 10). [Watch on Netflix]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: It’s easy to say now, but I honestly believe this: if Buffy the Vampire Slayer were airing today, it would a much bigger contender for prestige and awards. A world where Tatiana Maslany is pulling in Emmy nominations for Orphan Black is a world that would have been ready to give Buffy its due. At least at the Golden Globes, right? Alas, Buffy was never nominated in major series or acting categories, and it was only nominated once for writing. That nomination came for the fourth-season episode “Hush.”

It’s kind of funny that Buffy‘s one brush with awards attention was for an episode in a season that a lot of people saw as the show’s weakest to date. Buffy’s transition from high-school to college left the show’s metaphorical structure a bit adrift. (“High school is hell” works great, but the college years are a lot less didactic and universally experienced.) But “Hush” was the one moment where everybody could agree. It was a phenomenal — and phenomenally ambitious — hour of television.

The premise was deceptively simple: demons called The Gentlemen came to Sunnydale one night and, like a page out of Grimm, stole the voices of everyone in town. The next day, with the citizenry rendered mute, confused, and scared, The Gentlemen started stealing hearts. Uh, literally, not in the teen-idol way. With their voices gone, Buffy and her crew have a hell of a time figuring out how to fight back against their new enemy. Joss Whedon, unsurprisingly, has a ball with the comedic aspects of his new silent-movie playground. The classroom tutorial where Giles lays out the exposition about the Gentlemen might be the greatest single scene in series history.

That one episode could blend cleverness, humor, and also the bone-chilling creature design of The Gentlemen, which will assuredly keep you from getting a good night’s sleep for some time, makes “Hush” well worthy of the praise it receives.

The conversation about Buffy‘s best episode of all time usually goes like this: “Hush,” except “The Body,” except “Once More with Feeling.” Each one represents Buffy breaking format in some way in order to deliver some crucial moment with maximum impact. In “The Body,” that’s Joyce’s death, obviously. In “Once More with Feeling,” it’s Buffy confessing she was in heaven to her friends/kissing Spike. In “Hush,” it’s Buffy and Riley discovering each other’s secret identities. Big moment. Bigger moment when you can’t talk about it.

[You can watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s “Hush” on Netflix.]