The Best Episodes of American Playhouse Season 2

Episode Rankings

1. #1 Fan Favorite
   

   8.7/10(15 votes)

   #1 - The File on Jill Hatch (1)

   S2:E52/15/1983

   A decade-spanning look at marriage of a Black American soldier and a white British woman.

   Director:Alastair Reid

   Writer:Kenneth Cavander

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   Director:Alastair Reid

   Writer:Kenneth Cavander
2. 

   8.5/10(17 votes)

   #2 - Family Business

   S2:E32/1/1983

   Isaiah Stern is a wealthy, but dying, toy manufacturer. Once more, Stern has gathered his grown sons to revise his will. Three of the four are used to these idiosyncratic changes, and have come to accept them: however, the fourth, a married psychologist, is heavily in debt and doesn't like his thin share, which sparks a confrontation. The remaining sons are a bachelor who runs the family store, an indecisive sort who still lives at home, and Daddy's favorite, a closet homosexual.

   Director:John Stix

   Writer:Dick Goldberg

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   Director:John Stix

   Writer:Dick Goldberg
3. 

   7.9/10(73 votes)

   #3 - The Skin of Our Teeth

   S2:E11/18/1983

   The Antrobus family and their housekeeper Lilly Sabina face various global disasters, including a new ice age, a great flood, and a devastating war.

   Director:Jack O'Brien

   Writer:Thornton Wilder

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   Director:Jack O'Brien

   Writer:Thornton Wilder
4. 

   7.8/10(14 votes)

   #4 - Wings

   S2:E114/26/1983

   Former aviatrix Emily Stilson suffers a stroke and is plunged into a world of disorientation and grief. Memories flood in between painful attempts to re-learn the basic functions of everyday life.

   Director:John Madden

   Writer:Arthur Kopit

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   Director:John Madden

   Writer:Arthur Kopit
5. 

   7.4/10(187 votes)

   #5 - For Us, the Living: The Medgar Evers Story

   S2:E83/22/1983

   During the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, Medgar Evers rose from insurance agent to one of the most integral activists of the era. From boycotting white merchants in the mid-'50s to being a key figure in desegregating the University of Mississippi in 1962, Evers met success, and with it, many enemies. When racists swarm his house, his life and the lives of his wife and children are threatened.

   Director:Michael Schultz

   Writers:J. Rotcop, Ossie Davis

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   Director:Michael Schultz

   Writers:J. Rotcop, Ossie Davis
6. 

   7.4/10(13 votes)

   #6 - The Rothko Conspiracy

   S2:E125/3/1983

   A dramatization of the fight over the estate of artist Mark Rothko, who killed himself in 1970.

   Director:Paul Watson

   Writer:Michael Baker

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   Director:Paul Watson

   Writer:Michael Baker
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7. 

   6.9/10(69 votes)

   #7 - Miss Lonelyhearts

   S2:E21/25/1983

   A young Depression-era reporter is assigned to write his newspaper's advice column on the insistence of his mocking editor. Unhappy in the demeaning assignment, he begins to take an interest in one of the readers sending letters.

   Director:Michael Dinner

   Writers:Michael Dinner, Robert E. Bailey

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   Director:Michael Dinner

   Writers:Michael Dinner, Robert E. Bailey
8. 

   5.5/10(33 votes)

   #8 - Keeping On

   S2:E42/8/1983

   A low-key drama exploring the struggles of an impoverished sharecropping family in the rural South with themes of Southern identity, morality, and family.

   Director:Barbara Kopple

   Writer:Horton Foote

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   Director:Barbara Kopple

   Writer:Horton Foote
9. 

   0.0/10(0 votes)

   #9 - The File on Jill Hatch (2)

   S2:E62/22/1983

   A decade-spanning look at marriage of a Black American soldier and a white British woman.

   Director:Alastair Reid

   Writer:Kenneth Cavander

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   Director:Alastair Reid

   Writer:Kenneth Cavander
10. 

    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #10 - The File on Jill Hatch (3)

    S2:E73/1/1983

    A decade-spanning look at marriage of a Black American soldier and a white British woman.

    Director:Alastair Reid

    Writer:Alex Mount

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    Director:Alastair Reid

    Writer:Alex Mount
11. 

    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #11 - Verse Person Singular

    S2:E93/29/1983

    Actor Richard Kiley takes on the personae of thirteen different characters as he reads his favorite poems written in the first-person.

    Director:Robert Deubel

    Writers:Richard Kiley, Stephen Vincent Benet, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, T. S. Eliot, Richard Eberhardt, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Edgar Lee Masters, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry Reed

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    Director:Robert Deubel

    Writers:Richard Kiley, Stephen Vincent Benet, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, T. S. Eliot, Richard Eberhardt, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Edgar Lee Masters, Edgar Allan Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry Reed
12. 

    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #12 - Until She Talks

    S2:E104/5/1983

    The story of a young woman imprisoned for declining to testify before a grand jury; comprised from real courtroom transcripts and based on the experiences of individuals jailed for their refusal to testify.

    Director:Mary Lampson

    Writer:Doris Baizley

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    Director:Mary Lampson

    Writer:Doris Baizley