The Ultimate Ranking of Post-Super Bowl TV Episodes

Season: 1
Episode: 1
Episode Title: “Pilot”
Air Date: 1/29/95
Network: ABC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXIX, where the San Francisco 49ers bested the San Diego Chargers 49-26
Viewers: 22.594 million

Significance: Not all that much, actually. Extreme was an incredibly short-lived (only 7 episodes aired) ABC drama about a search-and-rescue team in the Rocky Mountains. Which certainly sounds inspired by the 1993 Sylvester Stallone film Cliffhanger. Though if you watch the opening credits, you can see the show was just as much trying to capitalize on the Melrose Place-style youth craze of the time. The show starred James Brolin, Julie Bowen, Brooke Langton (who would join actual Melrose Place in 1996), and Cameron Bancroft (who would show up for an arc on Beverly Hills, 90210 as Donna’s boyfriend later lat year). The abject failure of Extreme to catch on despite the cushy perch led the networks to abandon the practice of premiering new shows after the Super Bowl, which (mostly) lasted until 2010.

Season: 1
Episode: 1
Episode Title: “Waste Management”
Air Date: 2/7/10
Network: CBS
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLIV, where the New Orleans Saints bested the Indianapolis Colts 31-17
Viewers: 38.654 million

Significance: Did you know Undercover Boss is still on television? It premiered EIGHT years ago! Eight years of just a whole bunch of rich jerks dressing up in costumes and trying to make their employees feel bad for talking shit about them! On the bright side, it did lead to this SNL sketch:

Season: 16 (Simpsons) and 1 (American Dad)
Episode: 8 (Simpsons) and 1 (American Dad)
Air Date: 2/6/05
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXIX, where the New England Patriots bested the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21
Viewers: 23.074 million

Significance: The Simpsons have been called upon to anchor FOX’s Super Bowl lead-out twice, and both times they whiffed on the episode. “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass” is by far the worst of the two, though this one’s failings were less surprising as they came in the show’s later, generally-accepted-as-crappier era. But really, who was asking for a post-Super Bowl episode that doubled as a commentary on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and its resulting outrage?? YES, that’s what this episode is about! Tell the People! (Also, American Dad had their series premiere following this episode, and it was fine.)

Stream The Simpsons' "Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass" on Simpsons World

Stream American Dad's "Pilot" on Hulu

Air Date: 2/7/16
Network: CBS
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl 50, where the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24-10
Viewers: 20.55

Significance: Honestly, these episodes were fine. Colbert brought on Tina Fey and Margot Robbie (remember when they were in a movie about a hot reporter and a plain reporter and their struggles to be friends?) and Will Ferrell and Key & Peele and … Megyn Kelly?! Man, CBS was really angling to keep those red-state football viewers around for Commie Colbert’s Trump-Bashing Hour. Then James Corden brought out Zac Efron and Anna Kendrick and Adam DeVine from that awful movie about gross young people at weddings. He also did a Carpool Karaoke with Elton John. Not a bit of it was essential.

Season: 1
Episode: 1
Air Date: 2/5/17
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl LI, where the New England Patriots came back to defeat the Atlanta Falcons 34-28, in overtime, ruining everybody’s night
Viewers: 17.58

Significance: No disrespect to the talented Corey Hawkins, who anchored this reboot, but NOBODY cared about this one. More importantly, though, how crazy is it that FOX never used their Super Bowl launchpad to premiere a season of proper Kiefer Sutherland 24??

Stream 24 Legacy on FOX

Season: 1 (The Good Life) / 1 (Larroquette)
Episode: 5 (The Good Life) / 17 (Larroquette)
Air Date: 1/30/94
Network: NBC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXVIII, where the virtuous Buffalo Bills were thwarted for the fourth and final time from winning the Super Bowl, falling to the wicked Dallas Cowboys 30-13
Viewers: 23.012 million

Significance: Nobody remembers The Good Life even a little bit, despite co-starring a pre-Drew Carey Show Drew Carey (playing a character named Drew, proving once again that stand-up comedians were incapable of answering to any names that were not their own in the 1990s). But The John Larroquette Show was an underrated little sitcom, with a strong (and diverse, particularly for its time) supporting cast. Larroquette played a recovering alcoholic looking to put his life back together by taking a job managing the night shift a bus depot (proving once again that John Larroquette only works at night).

Season: 2
Episode: 14
Episode Title: “The Big Game”
Air Date: 2/4/07
Network: CBS
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLI, where the Indianapolis Colts best the Chicago Bears 29-17
Viewers: 26.314

Significance: Everybody remembers the halftime show of this Super Bowl, where Prince laid it down amid a rainstorm, but nobody remembers this perfectly fine episode of the procedural drama Criminal Minds. Maybe they should, though, because it guest-starred James Van Der Beek as a killer with multiple personalities.

Season: 2
Episode: 9
Episode Title: “Luther Braxton, Part 1”
Air Date: 2/1/15
Network: NBC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLIX, where the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks 28-24 because the Seahawks wouldn’t just run the damn ball.
Viewers: 25.724

Significance: NBC aired the first hour of a two-part Blacklist cliffhanger, with the second hour concluding on the following Thursday. The Super Bowl episode got a big ratings bump, of course, but numbers were back down where they used to be soon after (and steadily fell throughout the rest of season 2).

Stream The Blacklist's "Luther Braxton, Part 1" on Netflix

Season: 1
Episode: 14
Episode Title: “The Deductionist”
Air Date: 2/3/13
Network: CBS
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLVII, where the Batltimore Ravens bested the San Francisco 49ers 34-31 in a game where the coaches were brothers and the power went out for a half-hour
Viewers: 20.80

Significance: Probably due to the power-outage delay, which pushed the starting time late, this episode was the lowest-rated Super Bowl lead-out episode in a decade, since the (also delayed) Alias episode of 2003, and second-lowest since 1975, when the lead-out was THE NEWS. So.

Season: 1 (Family Guy) / 10 (Simpsons)
Episode: 1 (Family Guy) / 12 (Simpsons)
Episode Titles: “Pilot” / “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday”
Air Date: 1/31/99
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXIII, where the Denver Broncos beat the Atlanta Falcons 34-19
Viewers: 22.005

Significance: Another Simpsons episode that doesn’t work, though not nearly as bad as that weird Passion of the Christ one. In this one, Homer and some Springfieldians end up following tour huckster Fred Willard on a bogus trip to the Super Bowl, where blah blah blah antics. By far the better subplot is Marge and Lisa staying home to decorate eggs with their Vincent Price-branded egg-decorating kit. Also Family Guy debuted and it was fine.

Stream The Simpsons' "Sunday Cruddy Sunday" on Simpsons World

Stream Family Guy's "Death Has a Shadow" on Netflix

Season: 2
Episode: 1
Air Date: 2/5/12
Network: NBC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLVI, the second of two Super Bowls where the New York Giants hilariously bested the New England Patriots, this time by a 21-17 score
Viewers: 37.611

Significance: The second-season premiere of The Voice, the last successful network reality competition. This was before the judges chairs’ became a revolving door of pop stars in between albums. You will of course remember season 2 as the season that produced such enduringly successful new pop stars as … wait, hold on … give me a minute …

Season: 4
Episode: 11
Episode Title: “Frozen”
Air Date: 2/3/08
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLII, the first of of two Super Bowls where the New York Giants hilariously bested the New England Patriots, this time by a 17-14 score
Viewers: 29.045

Significance: Mira Sorvino guest-starred on this relatively unremarkable House episode. Just a normal House episode where Sorvino is a doctor in Antarctica who passes out, and House has to diagnose her remotely via web-cam, and it’s not cancer or lupus (it’s never lupus), and then she lapses into a coma and House has her co-worker/boyfriend taste her urine to see if it’s kidney disease (it’s not) and then drill into her skill to see if it’s brain swelling (it’s not) and it turns out that it was all caused by and she nearly died because of a broken big toe and House is a VERY BAD TV SHOW.

Stream House's "Frozen" on Amazon Video

Season: 3
Episode: 11/12
Episode Title: “Company Picnic”
Air Date: 2/3/02
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXVI, where the New England Patriots ushered in the darkest era in pro football history, beating the St. Louis Rams 20-17
Viewers: 21.445 million

Significance: This two-part episode centers on Malcolm and his family going to his dad’s company picnic and all the drama contained therein. It’s a Super Bowl episode, so the guest stars are plentiful: Susan Sarandon, Tom Green, Christina Ricci, Heidi Klum, the FOX football announcers Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long, Magic Johnson, and Jane Kaczmarek’s then-husband Bradley Whitford.

Stream Malcolm in the Middle's "Company Picnic" on Hulu

Season: 2
Episode: 11
Episode Title: “The Sue Sylvester Shuffle”
Air Date: 2/6/11
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLV, where the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25
Viewers: 26.796

Significance: The Glee craze hit at just the right time for FOX to capitalize on it, and this particular episode didn’t even need to load up on glitzy guest stars (though we did get Katie Couric), because Glee kind of just did that anyway. Glee have the most cursory nods towards a football-themed episode, and the biggest musical setpiece was a mashup of “Thriller” and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll.” That setpiece, however, helped contribute to what was reported to be the most expensive post-Super Bowl episode ever.

Stream Glee's "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle" on Netflix

Season: 3 (New Girl) / 1 (Brooklyn)
Episode: 14 (New Girl) / 15 (Brooklyn)
Episode Titles: “Prince” / “Operation Broken Feather”
Air Date: 2/2/14
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: TKTK
Ratings: Super Bowl XLVIII, where the Seattle Seahawks ruined the Denver Broncos 43-8 in the frigid environs of outdoor New Jersey

Significance: As indicated by the episode title, New Girl‘s episode featured a buzzy cameo by Prince, who played himself. You almost had to feel bad for fellow guest stars Damon Wayans J. (returning as Coach) and L.A. Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw. You know all that guest-star budget got spent on Prince. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Nine-Nine pulled out all the stops with an Adam Sandler cameo and famed broken leg Joe Theismann.

Stream New Girl's "Prince" on Netflix

Stream Brooklyn Nine-Nine's "Operation Broken Feather" on Hulu

Season: 5
Episode: 14/15
Episode Title: “Stress Relief”
Air Date: 2/1/09
Network: NBC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XLIII, where the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Arizona Cardinals 27-23 in lowkey the most exciting Super Bowl of the last 25 years
Viewers: 22.905

Significance: This was the episode that started with the fire in the office, which was a big, grabby cold open to get viewers’ attention. The rest of the episode utilized cameos appearances by Jessica Alba, Jack Black, and Cloris Leachman, a trio of ratings grabbers that just make sense together.

Stream The Office's "Stress Relief"

Season: 3
Episode: 14/15
Episode Title: “36! 24! 36! Dick”
Air Date: 1/25/98
Network: NBC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXII, where the Denver Broncos won their first Super Bowl, upsetting the Green Bay Packers 31-24
Viewers: 33.662

Significance: After NBC saw great success with Friends after the Super Bowl, the network tried again a few years later with 3rd Rock From the Sun, an oft-forgotten but really funny sitcom that managed to pack in the talents of John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Jane Curtin into the same show. In this particular two-part episode, a band of invading Venusians show up, having taken the form of beautiful women, played by the likes of supermodels Cindy Crawford, Angie Everhart, and Beverly Johnson.

Stream 3rd Rock From the Sun's "36! 24! 36! Dick" on Amazon Prime

Season: 4
Episode: 12
Episode Title: “New Evidence”
Air Date: 1/30/00
Network: ABC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXIV, where the St. Louis Rams beat the Tennessee Titans 23-16 after a last-second pass ended up inches short of the goal line
Viewers: 23.847 million

Significance: Nobody remembers it now, but there was a time when ABC’s bombastic lawyer show was one of the most addictive shows on television. A legal drama about a tempestuous Boston firm full of scrappy hotheads, all of whom seemed to be close personal friends with any number of killers. By season 4, the seams had begun to fray, but the two-part episode that this hour kicked off was a strong episode, as the firm traveled to Los Angeles to defend a client amid an especially hostile legal community.

Season: 2
Episode: 1
Episode Title: “Stranded”
Air Date: 1/28/01
Network: CBS
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXV, when the Baltimore Ravens defeated the New York Giants 34-7
Viewers: 45.369 million

Significance: After the blockbuster success of the first season of Survivor in the summer of 2000, anticipating for the next season was enormous. How fortuitous, then, that CBS had the Super Bowl in their pocket the following January. CBS has used Survivor as a Super Bowl lead-out twice, both to great effect. The Survivor: Australia premiere has a bit less going on as an episode, which ranks it a bit lower. But it’s fascinating to watch the new cast members scramble to fill the niches of season 1. Who was going to be the new girl-next-door? Who’s the lovable oldster? Who’s the self-conscious schemer? This season’s cast stands as one of the strongest in series history.

Stream Survivor: Australia's "Stranded" on CBS All Access

Season: 1
Episode: 1
Episode Title: “Gone For Goode”
Air Date: 1/31/93
Network: NBC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXVII, where the virtuous Buffalo Bills were unfairly defeated by the nasty Dallas Cowboys by a narrow 52-17 margin.
Viewers: 28.121 million

Significance: Twenty-five years ago, NBC premiered a tough, gritty, somewhat unconventional cop drama to a huge national audience. Tom Fontana’s Homicide was a splash of cold water for TV at the time and was a fine complement to ABC’s equally groundbreaking NYPD Blue. With actors like Andre Braugher, Melissa Leo, and Ned Beatty, these weren’t the usual focus-group-tested cast members, and this first episode was all the better for it. This pilot episode ended up nominated for a bunch of awards, for writer Paul Attanasio and director Barry Levinson.

Season: 4
Episode: 12
Episode Title: “Leonard Betts”
Air Date: 1/26/97
Network: FOX
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXI, where the Green Bay Packers bested the New England Patriots 35-21
Viewers: 29.098 million

Significance: How fortunate that FOX was able to have this platform just in time for peak-era X-Files. “Leonard Betts” wasn’t an episode that dealt very much with the big alien mythology, but it told an incredibly effective and creepy monster story, with future E.R. star Paul McCrane playing an EMT who eats cancer and regenerates his whole body. The twist at episode’s end — that Scully has cancer — was a jaw-dropper, but the episode itself already had us curled up in the corner.

Stream The X-Files's "Leonard Betts" on Hulu

Season: 8
Episode: 1
Episode Title: “They’re Back”
Air Date: 2/1/04
Network: CBS
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXVIII, where the New England Patriots bested the Carolina Panthers 32-29
Viewers: 33.535 million

Significance: Survivor‘s second appearance on this list comes for an episode three years after their first post-Super Bowl episode. For this one, the show brought back all-star contestants for the first time, and anticipation for the returnees was sky-high. This one ranks higher than the Survivor: Australia premiere if only because the long-simmering storylines and established characters made for a more instantly compelling episode, culminating in the elimination of one of the game’s most skilled champions.

Stream Survivor: All-Stars' "They're Back" on CBS All Access

Season: 2
Episode: 12/13
Episode Title: “The One After the Super Bowl”
Air Date: 1/28/96
Network: NBC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXX, where the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-17
Viewers: 52.925 million

Significance: This is the one that changed the game. Not only does “The One After the Super Bowl” hold the record for the highest-rated post-Super Bowl episode ever, but by naming the episode the way they did, it pretty much popularized the concept of the Super Bowl lead-out as a thing. Not content to just slot their highest-rated comedy into the post-game slot, NBC also packed it with huge guest stars, including Chris Isaak, Brooke Shields, Jean Claude Van Damme, and oh, only Julia Roberts. Not to mention the return of a little monkey named Marcel.

Stream Friends' "The One After the Super Bowl" on Netflix

Season: 2
Episode: 16
Episode Title: “It’s the End of the World”
Air Date: 2/5/06
Network: ABC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XL, wherein the Pittsburgh Steelers bested the Seattle Seahawks 21-10
Viewers: 38.7 million

Significance: Friends may have elevated the post-Super Bowl episode to cultural dominance, but a decade later, Grey’s Anatomy capitalized on that elevated platform with one of their typical bombshell episodes. In this case, they opted for literal bombshells. Guest stars Christina Ricci and Kyle Chandler showed up for a particularly fraught crisis, with Ricci as an EMT who needs to keep her hand on an explosive device inside a patient, while Chandler plays the bomb squad expert. Swirling around this life-or-ugly-death crisis were the medical and personal dramas of the Seattle Grace staff. The two-part episode, which kept viewers on the hook until the following Sunday, was a big contributor to Grey’s becoming a phenomenon in its second season.

Stream Grey's Anatomy's "It's the End of the World" on Netflix

Season: 2
Episode: 13
Episode Title: “Phase One”
Air Date: 1/26/03
Network: ABC
The Preceding Game: Super Bowl XXXVII, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers bested the Oakland Raiders 48-21
Viewers: 17.362

Significance: A controversial choice, perhaps, since the low ratings and poor-taste ad campaign often get this episode listed as a failure. But nothing about what went wrong with the Alias Super Bowl episode is the fault of the show. The ratings cratered because ABC made the idiot decision to put a Bon Jovi concert performance at the end of an already long Super Bowl, meaning that Alias didn’t start to air until 11pm. As for the ad campaign, which attempted to entice male viewers to the show by flaunting Jennifer Garner in a series of sexy underwear scenes, within the context of the show, it plays less exploitatively. And regardless, the episode itself, for those who stuck around to watch it, is an absolute corker, with showrunner J.J. Abrams making the ballsy decision to turn his double-agent series on its head, with Sydney Bristow and the CIA taking down rogue cell SD-6 and revealing Sydney’s double-agency to the enemy. Alias managed to keep the story going (especially with a shocker reveal at the end about Francie) and keep their loyal audience on their toes. For the sheer ballsiness of the story arc — and as a possible corrective to the circumstances that did the show dirty — it ranks as our best.

Stream Alias's "Phase One" on Amazon Video