22 ‘It Was All a Dream’ TV Episodes That Were Actually Okay

In an age when surprise often ranks above substance, fictional media seems all but held hostage by cliched plot twists. It’s nearly impossible to count how many times we’ve put up with unreliable narrators, secret identical twins, supposedly dead characters who were alive the whole time, and even supposedly alive characters who were dead the whole time, A.K.A. the Bruce Willis Clause.

But one device annoys above all. “I see plenty of complaints here about how TV shows overuse the twist of ‘it was all just a dream’ and they tend to be predictable and underwhelming,” u/trashcan_paradise told r/television. “But are there examples of dream sequences that were actually used well in a TV show?”

They asked, “What are examples of the TV trope of ‘it was all a dream’ twist that actually worked well?”

22 Newhart

21 The X-Files

20 Buffy the Vampire Slayer

19 Angel

18 House

17 Breaking Bad

16 Absolutely Fabulous

15 Batman: The Animated Series

14 The Devil’s Advocate

13 Mad Men

12 Red Dwarf

11 Atlanta

10 Young Justice

9 The Twilight Zone

8 Wilfred

7 The Big Bang Theory

6 Futurama

5 Adventure Time

4 BoJack Horseman

3 Archer

2 Lost

1 Scrubs

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