7 Things: My Favorite Episodes

Okay, here we go. Over the next little while of my life, I am going to attempt to succinctly (yeah, right) list my favorite episodes of seven different TV shows. As for the show selections, I am choosing only shows of which I have seen all or almost all of the episodes and that had reasonable lifespans. I’m not going to take a show with ten or thirteen episodes, for instance, and pick seven. ‘Cause that’s just plain silly.

Also, I am going with only shows which have actual standout episodes for me. The first few seasons of Gilmore Girls were good and every season of Golden Girls was good. But no episodes of either of those shows, like, super jump out at me.

But before we get started on TV shows, I would like to share the dream I had in this morning’s pre-sunrise. Or possibly post-sunrise. Our schedule is so whack, it’s hard to tell where the sun is in the sky at any point throughout the day.

*Apologies to Twitterers for whom this will seem slightly repetitive.*

So, I was at some sort of fan convention – undoubtedly, pressed into my brain by all the mentions of this weekend’s WonderCon on my Twitter feed – and I was sitting with the cast of Criminal Minds. We were all watching some kind of sporting type event, I assume, because we were sitting on bleachers and paying very little attention to what we were supposed to be watching, which I find happens most frequently during sports. I was chatting with Matthew Gray Gubler. Then, Shawna and I had to leave to run an errand. When we returned, the cast of CM had left the convention, but some woman gave me a toilet seat that Matthew Gray Gubler had autographed for me.

I left the convention with my autographed toilet seat, and, in the car, I got on my phone to check my email and Twitter and such. That’s when I saw the email from Matthew asking if I had remembered to “sip tip” the woman with whom he had left the toilet seat. I had no idea what he meant by this (or how he got my email address) and I told him as such. So, then he explained that when someone holds something for you and gives it to you when you get back to a place, you must tip them and this is known as a “sip tip.”

Well, I didn’t return to sip tip the woman, but I felt super guilty for stiffing her.

Days later – I assume, because it was like dream “days later” where you just jump into the next world and time and find your dream-self standing in the middle of a vaguely familiar grocery store with a large steak in your basket – I found my dream-self standing in the middle of a vaguely familiar grocery store with a large steak in my basket, talking to the meat department clerk. So, I told said clerk that I felt bad because I didn’t know I was supposed to sip tip the woman who held the toilet seat for me. At which point, the meat department clerk decided to liberate $15 from my person, explaining to me that since I forgot to sip tip, she was going to confiscate the sip tip on behalf of the other woman and keep it for herself.

I told her to give me back my money. Meat department lady wasn’t down with that, though, and she had many large cleavers on her side of the meat case. So, I did what any person in my position would do –

I sought out the manager.

Who behaved in a surprisingly managerly way. She walked me to a nearby bench away from crazy-cleaver lady and sat me down for an in-depth discussion on my run-in with her employee. So, I explained that the meat department clerk stole $15 from my person. The manager wanted to know why, of course, and I told her the entire chain of events, from autographed toilet seat through confiscated sip tip, which really seemed more like outright robbery to me. When I got to the part where I said that I didn’t know I was supposed to sip tip the original woman, though, the manager looked at me with such revulsion that I woke up.

So, if anyone knows if sip tipping is a real thing somewhere – or what it might represent in the real world – and when it’s appropriate to give one a sip tip, please let me know before I make this mistake in reality. Because, man, did it make people pissy in Dreamland.