Sometimes I get really committed to doing some silly things. This time I decided to watch the talent show episode of every show I could find. For this purpose, battle of the bands and beauty pageants also count for talent shows. Some shows have both a talent show and beauty pageant episode, so I just went with the pure talent show for those. These are my notes:

-Adventure Time: Lumpy Space Princess experiences the time honored talent show tradition of having her song stolen by whomever goes on right before her. She almost accidentally wins anyway, but then Finn and Jake high five and claim victory. THESE LUMPS./I KNOW YOU WANT TO SLUMP UP ON/THESE LUMPS.

-Adventures of Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius, The: Despite their complete lack of any musical talent, Jimmy, Sheen, and Carl start a band to win the school talent show and stick it to Cindy. Jimmy invents instruments to play whatever their thinking and after a 30 second jam session, the fame goes to their heads and the band starts fighting amongst themselves until they throw their instruments out the window. They take the stage anyway so Carl and blow snot bubbles.

-All in the Family: Edith is excited to sing with her niece in the school talent show but she gets laryngitis. Even without the use of her voice, Jean Stapleton is a fantastic actress. Miraculously, she got her voice back in time to deliver the exposition necessary to wrap up the story. Archie has a very sweet human moment at the end that kind of makes you forget about him being a bigot, then you remember and kind of feel bad that you saw the humanity in a racist, then your head kind of hurts because you remember that people are more than one thing.

-Amazing World of Gumball, The: Mr. Robinson didn’t run over Gumball with his car so now Gumball wants to save Mr. Robinson’s life to repay him. Darwin and Anais decide to help out by attempting to assassinate Mr. Robinson at the senior citizen talent show. Their failed attempts on Mr. Robinson’s life just make his act even more spectacular until Gumball fails to on purpose save his life but then accidentally saves his life so the debt is paid, although Mr. Robinson will never forgive Gumball for interrupting his solo.

-Amen: The entire episode was just a talent show. There was no plot. No characters got into any sort of hijinks. The church was just raising money for charity. Most of the acts were good.

-Andy Griffith Show, The: Much to his dismay, Andy gets chosen as a judge for Mayberry’s Founder’s Day beauty pageant because the mayor’s wife is a terrible singer. In the end, he chose an old woman to make his life easier. All the real contestants cried.

-Arrested Development: Maebe goes undercover at an inner beauty pageant to prove that there’s no such thing as an inner beauty pageant. Despite her best efforts to be unappealing, no one wants to say anything bad about a disabled girl. Other jokes happen.

-Bewitched: You’d think a magician would know better than anyone that he’s not really performing magic tricks so it’s a little weird when this one doesn’t even question why he’s suddenly able to pull a dozen rabbits from a single hat.

-Brady Bunch, The: Jan fucks up. Marsha’s a bitch. Jan drags them all into a TV talent show to pay for a silver platter. They come in third forcing the parents to buy their own anniversary gift. Despite not being the earliest on this list, probably the most classic/most thought of when discussing talent show episodes.

-Boy Meets World: Cory meets a talented woman and is forced to confront the fact that he’s incredibly mediocre and like every other white man he whines and claims his privilege is a burden. Then he gets yelled at by his dad which was actually pretty cool. Oh, and his sister Morgan doesn’t want to do the talent show but Cory has to fucking ruin that shit as well.

-Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy, Xander, and Willow get forced into doing the school talent show by the mean principle who’s a meanie. Coincidentally, there’s a ventriloquist dummy who is harvesting the contestants’ organs in order to become a real boy without any real explanation other than a dusty old book saying sometimes they do that. Surprise twist! The dummy is a cursed demon hunter who murdered a high school girl because he was mistaken. They kill the demon and perform a scene from Oedipus Rex.

-Black-ish: This episode starts with Jack in the middle of a school talent show where he decided to sing an unedited version of Gold Digger. Needless to say, this episode wasn’t much about the talent show and more an in depth, entertaining, and hilarious examination of the minefield that is the use of the n-word in our culture.

-Castle: There’s a police talent show. There’s a contrived reason why a crime writer gets to also partake in the police only talent show. This reason is more or less exactly as contrived as to why a crime writer gets complete access to crime scenes and all police resources. There’s an NFL player named Lightning who refers to himself in the third person and makes lightning based puns in conversation as much as possible. Lightning doesn’t get enough screen time. And after 40 minutes of build up, THEY DIDN’T EVEN SHOW THE TALENT SHOW.

-Catdog: Dog wants to enter a battle of the bands and Cat doesn’t want to until two seconds later when it turns out there’s 1000 bucks on the line. The Greasers join too. They take the battle part a bit too literally and the ensuing onstage fight wins over the crowd. CatDog actually does win the money by getting their [lack of] asses kicked, so hopefully they’ll have some left over after the medical bills.

-Charlie’s Angels: Someone put a tarantula on the pillow of a pageant contestant which means that highly trained private detectives need to get involved. The rapscallions also kidnapped a judge, which seems like burying the lead. Turns out they’ve been hired by some rich guy to rig the contest for his daughter. The Angels save the day and Charlie continues to be a massive fucking creep.

-Cheers: Sam enters Diane into the Miss Boston Barmaid beauty pageant, which she hates but agrees to do for the chance of having a public forum to express her opinions on the inherent sexism of beauty pageants. She wins but forgets about her ideals when presented with the prize of free dry cleaning, a food processor, and a trip to Bermuda.

-Community: Okay, it’s an app where people rate other people which devolves into a stratified society based on each individual’s personal number which NO OTHER TV SHOW COULD EVER THINK OF. The Fives decide to hold a talent show to distract the destitute masses. Jeff, a Four, uses this opportunity to infiltrate the Fives. Britta leads a totally-not-communist revolution of the lower numbers, conducting a kangaroo court which is interrupted by Jeff convincing everyone to delete the app and everyone agrees to never talk about it again.

-Drake and Josh: Drake attempts to win the school talent show for the third year in a row but he has to confront major competition from an all Asian acapella group led by a teenage Ken Jeong who has no qualms about stealing Drake’s band’s song. Meanwhile, Josh is bad at telling the weather on television or something. They solve each others’ problems by doing a tribute to the Blues Brothers on stage, so maybe Drake and Josh is a good show. I don’t know.

-Dukes of Hazard, The: Boss Hog really does disappear during Rosco’s magic act and it’s up to the Duke boys to save him from the large, frightening black men who kidnapped him. They tried catching the bad guys by throwing a blanket over them and when that surprisingly didn’t work they solved this problem like the solve all their other problems: by making a sweet jump in a racist car.

-Diff’rent Strokes: Arnold’s enemy Lisa promises Lionel Richie for the school talent show but Arnold promises Mr. T because this is the 80s, so his class elects him as head of the entertainment committee. Arnold has to then turn to his other nemesis Carmella (apparently he doesn’t get along with many women) for help. She can’t get him Bob Hope like they tried, but she sang and it was okay. At no point did Arnold say “Whatchyou talkin bout, Willis?”

-Drew Carey Show, The: Drew signs up for his boss’s church’s talent show that for some reason has multiple performances. His friends are too cowardly to tell him that he’s terrible and hears it from a scathing review in the church newsletter written by the boss’s son. Drew laments that the review (written and distributed by the church) will ruin the church’s fund raising efforts to build a new church roof then the show just kind of ran out of minutes and nothing was resolved while there was a weird meta, fourth wall breaking scene while the credits rolled.

-Ed, Edd n Eddy: Ed does a little dance in a junkyard and Eddy sees an opportunity. The boys set up a telethon to raise money for Ed’s ever expanding eyebrow. It all falls apart after a few acts and Edd traps them in a dumpster with a massive electromagnet.

-Family Matters: Someone drove a snowmobile through the Winslow’s outside wall into their kitchen and then through the kitchen wall into their living room and for once, Steven Urkel did not do that. Eddie’s grounded until he can come up with the $850 required to fix the massive structural damage done to the house. Urkel’s aunt Oona from Altoona (Donna Summers!) visits just in time to watch the boys lose the karaoke contest. Luckily, aunt Oona’s secret singing talent wins enough money to make sure this all gets wrapped up in twenty minutes.

-Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The: Will decides to get rich quick by managing Ashley’s music career. But first, he needs to get her to have a music career. Will makes a demo tape, impersonates a famous DJ to get it on the radio, and sets up a talent show at the coffee shop he works at just to get her discovered. This being TV, it actually works.

-Full House: Stephanie starts a band with her friends and Uncle Jesse gets way too emotionally involved in the lives of fourteen year old girls. They blow off practicing to perfect their look because girls giggle giggle and lose the show embarrassingly while learning a heavy handed lesson about working hard.

-Gilligan’s Island: The skipper proclaims that Ginger is the most beautiful castaway in the world, Mr. Howell claims his wife is the most beautiful, and the professor believes Mary Ann and they decide to have the women perform in a beauty pageant to decide. It was only later that they all simultaneously realized that the only uncommitted judge is Gilligan. It didn’t take long for the backstabbing and cheating to begin. In the end, Gilligan decided to vote for his monkey friend.

-Golden Girls, The: One time when Rose was a child she had a dream that Bob Hope was her father so of course he’d want to host the tiny charity talent show the girls are putting on because that’s just how Rose lives her life, I guess. Surprising everyone Rose, childhood dreams aren’t a paternity test and she spends the next ten minutes worrying about what she’ll tell everyone. Anyway, Bob Hope showed up because a minor character that only existed for this episode just happened to have some connection to him. Oh, and Bob Hope fucking nailed it.

-Good Times: The Evans family decides to put on a talent show to save a daycare center so Gary Coleman has someplace to go during the day and his mother doesn’t have to go back onto welfare. The whole night is put in jeopardy when the crowd gets unruly because they were promised a plethora of celebrities. Luckily, the normally hapless Nathan wins over the audience with his amazing ability to imitate famous singers. Good thing too, because he’s the one that promised them the impossible. Also, the day care center was saved! Yay!

-Happy Days: Howard puts on a burlesque show so he could be the Grand Poobah of the Leopard Lodge. It wasn’t until five minutes into the show that Howard found out that the burlesque troupe is stuck in Buffalo NY. The obvious solution is to have the guys put on a talent show instead, because when an audience is expecting half naked women dancing around, hastily rehearsed sketches and rape jokes are an acceptable substitute. Also, Fonzie got a bunch of beautiful women to be scantily clad on stage, so it’s all the same anyway.

-Home Improvement: Randy decides to try out ventriloquism for the school talent show. As it turns out, he’s bad at it. Tim builds a dummy version of himself to help his son who gets excited and runs off with it. No idea how the talent show turned out though, it just kind of ends there.

-I Dream of Jeannie: Every year the Air Force has a televised talent show. General Peterson hears about Tony’s amazing voice. Too bad the voice is Enrico Caruso’s. After making Jeannie promise to never give him back the voice, Tony’s tries to get out of the show. While struggling in front of the camera, Jeannie realizes the obvious that there is more than one person that is able to sing and he makes a man sing like a woman on national television! Hilarious!

-It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Dee throws a talent show and stacks it with losers just so she can win. A rival Korean bar throws a competing karaoke contest. Dee gets kicked out of the show to be a judge. Charlie falls for a girl who doesn’t care that he eats hot pockets out of the trash. Unfortunately, she’s twelve. The gang abandons the talent show idea for a wet tee shirt contest in which Frank was the only contestant, but accidentally.

-Jackie Chan Adventures: Jade needs a talent to take first prize in the talent show so Jackie buys her a puppet of the Monkey King. Jackie is surprised to find out that the physical embodiment of a trickster god that he bought from one of the many cursed trinket stores in Chinatown is cursed and turns him into a puppet, releasing the Monkey King who, despite spending the last several hundred years as wood, makes a lot of pop culture references. Uncle figures out how to reverse the curse, but only after the Monkey King upstages puppet Jackie at the school talent show where the audience had absolutely no questions about the Monkey King showing up and doing for real magic.

-Jackie Gleason Show, The/Honeymooners, The: I guess this was a period of television where sketches could be literally forty minutes long. Anyway, the husbands and wives rehearse separate acts for the talent show. Ralph can’t handle that Alice, who sings opera while standing on her head, is more talented than him so he threatens her with violence, as is tradition. In the end, Ralph and Ed get dragged off the stage by that giant hook thing which was satisfying.

-Jane the Virgin: Okay my friends, Jane, the virgin who was accidentally inseminated by Luisa with the sperm of Luisa’s brother Rafael, the man who is currently a corner of the Jane/Michael/Rafael love triangle, had forgotten to plan the birthday party of her best friend Lina, who has been feeling ignored because Jane and the writers have been ignoring her. They argue and then drink on the floor of a club’s bathroom and reminisce about their grade school talent show where they danced to Nelly’s Hot in Herre. Wait, that came out in grade school for them? Man, I’m getting old.

-Jeeves and Wooster: Wooster is told to break up his friend Tuppy’s love interest with an opera singer. Jeeves comes to the rescue by tricking Wooster, Tuppy, and two other men to sing Sunny Boy before she comes on the stage, then also getting her to sing the same song and adding it was by special request of Tuppy. The crowd, not wanting to hear the same song a fifth time, throw produce at the otherwise lovely lady, she punches Tuppy in the face, and Jeeves’s machinations save the day once again. Fuck, I love Stephen Fry.

-Jeffersons, The: The government didn’t come through with the money for the disabled youth services program. This was the first line in the show. EXPOSITION. Some white folk came in to do some impressions of a Russian Porky Pig and the idea for a talent show was born. Then Bert Reynolds (not that Burt Reynolds (this Bert Reynolds hosts a TV talent show where the winner gets five minutes to talk about their favorite cause)) catches wind of Isabel’s talent show and decides to host it on his show. George wins by cheating and he eventually gets guilted by a deaf mime into talking about the youth center instead of his cleaning company.

-Make Room for Daddy/The Danny Thomas Show: Danny includes his kids but not his wife in the Friar’s Club family talent show just because she has no musical talent whatsoever. She goes on her own to audition but then, I don’t know, everything is wholesome forever, it’s the 50s.

-Malcolm in the Middle: Malcolm tries to skip out on his act at the academic circus that his special smart people class put on. His family causes a general ruckus culminating in Malcolm causing a chemical explosion that was serious enough to call guys in hazmat suits but not serious enough to shut down the circus. Malcolm’s happy until he realizes his teacher is a human being and his actions have consequences. Malcolm does his act which consists of memorizing numbers on credit cards and adding them together, which is interesting enough to calm the almost rioting crowd. Turns out that he didn’t want to do his act for fear of alienating his family who accept him anyway, which is a sweet enough moment that proves that along with King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle is one of the most underrated shows what aired on Fox during the early 2000s.

-M*A*S*H*: They had a bunch of stuff filmed that wasn’t enough for a whole episode so Hawkeye wrote a letter to his dad and we got to see little vignettes of life at the camp. Hotlips sang a song at the “no talent show” and then it was on to something else.

-Munsters, The: Eddie volunteers Herman to do magic at the school talent show that for some reason is only for family that was volunteered without consent. Herman gets a little too big for his already sizable britches and Lily decides to teach him a lesson by making him think that she really did disappear. He didn’t really learn anything though as evidenced by the fact that he continued to devalue her as a person with his snide jokes that only he laughs at.

-Nanny, The: Fran and Gracie sign up for the country club’s mother-daughter beauty pageant. Mr. Sheffield’s fears were realized when a rival tried to get them kicked out due to the whole they’re not actually mother and daughter, forcing a child to break down crying because her mother is dead. They’re allowed to compete and come in first runner up, losing out to Patti LaBelle (!) whose presence is never really explained.

-Orange is the New Black: There’s some wacky and wild times to be had at the Litchfield Prison riot. The one gun gets shuffled around and ends up with the meth heads who decide that the best use of their time is to force the hostage guards to do a talent show. The hot one who told terrible jokes in Italian won because when one of the judges has a gun, the others are mostly just for show.

-Parks and Rec: April decides to join the Miss Pawnee beauty pageant because she “could be stupid for 600 dollars.” Unfortunately, the money is for a gift card to a fence company, so she quit halfway through. Tom tries to hit on a hot girl. Leslie makes a case for the beauty pageant to be less superficial. The hot one wins.

-Power Rangers Ninja Storm: All but one of the Power Rangers decide to enter a popular televised talent show. The one Asian ranger (green, not yellow thankfully), who is named Cam, is sent by a low quality CGI gerbil (who is referred to as sensei by all the Rangers except Cam who refers to the gerbil as dad) to the Museum of Asian History to pick up a powerful artifact. Meanwhile, the main antagonist, Lorthol, is informed by two valley girls in his employ who were at the museum because they were on a field trip with their secret evil ninja school of the artifact’s existence and sends his own mechanical lackey to pick it up. Cam makes off with the artifact but not before the evildoer animates an old kabuki statue who controls three demon dogs. In the second episode of this two parter, it follows the familiar Power Ranger formula of them losing, getting more powerful, then winning. In this case, the artifact of incredible power is an electric guitar used to summon the lightning mammoth mega zord. Later they perform on the show and lose to those space ninja valley girls who got caught cheating so nobody won.

-Quantum Leap: Sam leaps into Elvis Presley right before his big break in, you guessed it, a talent contest. However, he’s not there to help Elvis; he’s there to help a waitress with stage fright named Sue Ann. He just, you know, happens to accidentally be Elvis. After almost ruining Elvis’s life, the third act happened and he got Elvis back on track. The lady did all right too.

-Regular Show: Mordechai and Rigby (of Mordechai and the Rigbys) learn to rock (but not actually play music) from their future selves in order to impress Margret at the coffee shop’s open mic. Unfortunately for future Mordechai, current Mordechai has too much integrity to lip sync and stops the show before they’re set upon the path to fame and glory, killing his future self and wrecking havoc upon the timeline. This moment of integrity actually does impress Margret who is happy to introduce her new musician boyfriend, Angel.

-Reno 911: The sheriff’s department is called down to the Miss Nude Reno Pageant. Luckily, the contestants are able to defend themselves from the cops who try to sexually harass and assault them proving that Reno 911 is the only show in the history of television that has accurately depicted law enforcement. ACAB.

-Rugrats: The Wombat Lounge is putting on a young and young at heart talent competition and the competition gets fierce. What did they expect with the grand prize being a trip to Cynthia World? Angelica, true to form, does what she can to undermine Susie, but in stealing her tap shoes Angelica merely sows the seeds of her own destruction. Now shoeless, Susie’s routine devolves into slipping and sliding about the stage which is met with a cacophony of laughter and applause so raucous that it breaks the applausometer.

-Sabrina: the Teenage Witch: Despite their complete lack of any musical talent, Sabrina, Harvey, and Valerie start a band to win the school talent show and stick it to Libby. Sabrina brews some bottled talent and after a 30 second jam session, the fame goes to their heads and the band starts fighting amongst themselves until they drink untalent potion. They take the stage anyway and Libby saves them for some reason? Also the Backstreet Boys sang a song and had no other role in the show which is probably the best way to handle their cameo.

-Sanford and Son: Esther’s rounding up talent for her annual church show. Grady’s practicing his magic and chains her and Fred together only to find out that the instructions are written in Chinese. Some good physical comedy came out of this. Also, Frank Nelson wore a tux and said “YEEESSSSSS.”

-Saved by the Bell: Zack bets Slater that he can pretty up anyone to make them Miss Bayside and they settle on Screech, which is a pretty good subversion of the trope but hardly makes up for letting every other character be sexist as fuck including having a high school principle judge high school girls in a swimsuit contest.

-Scrubs: A Cheers writer has lung cancer. JD gets more in his head than usual. Clay Akin is uglier than I remember him being. Lesson: life isn’t like that other particular sitcom. It’s like this other particular sitcom. Also, Cheers never had a true talent show episode, just a beauty pageant episode.

-Sesame Street: Snuffy refuses to be the first act so that nosy little bastard Elmo can’t help but make everything about him so he goes on first. Anyone can count to ten, Elmo, and stop stealing The Count’s thing. Snuffy keeps on stalling. Singing seals and alphabet show tunes fill time before the end of the show where Snuffy finally reveals his talent: telling the audience what letters and numbers this episode of Sesame Street was brought to you by.

-Simpsons, The: Homer disappoints Lisa by drinking at Moe’s instead of buying her a new reed in time for the talent show. She bombs and hates her father so Homer buys her love with a pony that they can’t afford. After some good usury jokes with Mr. Burns, Homer starts moonlighting at the Kwik-E-Mart. Lisa decides that Homer has suffered enough and gives up Princess, breaking the heart of the otherwise stoic, posh old lady stable keeper.

-Simpsons, The (again): Shows that have been on for decades tend to retread old ground, so it’s not surprising that The Simpsons has two separate episodes featuring talent shows. This time it’s the school faculty that’s performing, not the kids. Principle Skinner ruins “Who’s on first” and Mrs. Krabappel shows the audience her butt. Anyway, the episode is actually about Marge getting an S.U.V. and also road rage.

-Smallville: Kara joins the Miss Sweet Corn beauty pageant at the same time that three meteor infected hot women join who are there to gain access to a treasure map locked inside of the town’s time capsule. Kara wins the (albeit brief) beauty contest only to have the sheriff arrest her on stage for stealing the treasure map herself because the buried treasure isn’t actually gold, it’s something Kryptonian although we don’t know how she knows that. Clark confronts the remaining women who dig it up, there’s kryptonite involved, Kara shows up because now she’s not in prison anymore for some reason, and they share some kind of mutual understanding.

-Star Trek: Voyager: We get to hear about Harry Kim’s clarineting and Tuvac’s reading of Vulcan poetry. Then we get to hear about it again. And again. It’s a time warp! Psyche, it’s a fever dream. Anyway, what I took away from this is that people talking about a talent show that you never actually get to see is a common enough reversal that it’s become a distinct sub-trope.

-Steven Universe: Steven’s unbridled enthusiasm drags Sadie and her secret singing talent into Beachapalooza. At first she’s kinda into it but then we find out that the only person more involved in Sadie’s life than Steven is her well-intentioned, yet overbearing mother. After a dressing up/getting prepared montage we find Sadie backstage having a panic attack and finally confronting her mother. Steven, with the quickest costume change in talent show history, saves the day by singing the generic pop song in her stead.

-South Park: Jimmy is the first of his classmates to get an erection which is a pain since the big talent show is coming up. After some dubious advice, he ends up chasing a pimp through the streets to have sex with a hooker, he then has sex with the hooker, performs at the big talent show, and gets an erection anyway. So yeah, it’s an episode of South Park.

-Spongebob Squarepants: In order to draw in customers because a free salad bar wasn’t cutting it, Mr. Krabs enlists Squidward to throw a talent show. Pearl was a doll. Squidward was full of himself. The crowd went wild for Spongebob’s mopping because there’s no real way to end that episode.

-Talking Tom & Friends: Ginger seeks Angela’s tutelage so he can sing good enough to win the school’s talent competition, the first prize of which is The Amazing Wizbe Flying Disc. Angela gets a little intense causing Ginger to have stress hallucinations/waking nightmares. Meanwhile, Ben agreed to proofread Miss Vanthrax’s math tests in exchange for allowing him to be the comic host of the show. However, Ben struggles to find laughs with his own high concept anti-humor material and refuses to use Hank’s idea of just calling himself “Mr. Buggers.” Tom comforts Ginger after she dramatically quits singing lessons by reminder her that, “Ben’s not going to get a single laugh but he’s still going up there!” Ben sells out and calls himself Mr. Buggers which the kids love. Ginger has to follow Ronny, a boy scout opera singer who brings the judges to tears with Verde’s “La donna è mobile.” He realizes that there was value in Angela’s teaching methods and performs an original ballad about his love for The Amazing Wizbe Flying Disc which brings the house down and gets ten points from the famously harsh Miss Vanthrax, who was judging the competition. Ben finds out that you can’t just repeat the same joke ad infinitum and still have people like it. This show is ten minutes long.

-Twin Peaks: Agent Cooper rushes to the Black Lodge to save the winner of the Miss Twin Peaks beauty contest. The winner, by the way, is the woman that Cooper made love with only hours beforehand which is really the only reason she won. Nadine was robbed.

-Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: The talent show in this episode was a throw away bit so so is this entry.

-Waltons, The: White person: let’s play some music at this thing. Black person: I don’t want racism to happen. White person: nah, you’ll be fine. Racism happens. White person: okay, but let’s play at this other thing. Black person: I don’t want racism to happen. White person: nah, you’ll be fine.

-WandaVision: The Rotary Club talent show fundraiser is the most important event of the season! Vision gets some gum in his gears which proves to be a very sticky siw̶̼̎͝h̴̩̙̩̒̎̊̋a̸̪̤͊̿̇̾t̶̢̮̾ͅ’̷̰̗̀̾̓̂s̵̨̘̈́̋ ̷̲̖̯̖̉̌͆̉h̶̘͆á̶̯̜̏͠p̴̣̝̦̆p̷̤͔̑͠ë̶̢̤̜̳̈̋͗n̸̙̞̻̈́͌̔̋͜i̶̢̪̪̾n̷̝̊̐g̶̨̞͗̄́͠ ̴̬̲̠͓̈́̌̅Ẁ̵̥͓͈̓ͅḨ̸̻̺̊͋E̷̼̣͎͑̅͛͜R̸̟̬̓̉E̴͙̐̽͘ ̴̙́̉͆Ả̸͈͙̠͘͜M̷̯͋̚ ̵̧̟̣͓̀͋͗͠I̸̮͙͐ ̴͕̜͛̌S̸͍͇͛̑̕ͅH̴̭͂E̴͔̘͇̎̍͐’̶̝͒͠͝S̸̡̫͈͐ ̵̡͊̊͜T̷͎͈̟́̾R̴̫̘̳̃A̵͕̬͒̎P̵̛̳̪͍̻̓͝P̴̼̗͋͆̎̇E̵͍͚̙̞͒͒̇D̵̞͖̑͠͝ ̵̨͈̰̟͂Ư̸̫̈̎͊S̸̟̩̳̀͝ ̴̪̙̃H̷͚̤̠͖̀̕̚̕Ę̷̡͈̎́L̶͉͉̒́P̴̙̹̒̈͜ ̷̢̘̓͊̀̈Ỳ̸͔̗͐Ò̷̹̲͖͇U̴̳͕͐̓ ̶͈͖̘̎H̸͍̬̅̃̍̈́A̷͎͕̦͝V̶̛͈̤̳̣̈́͊̍E̸͍̼͚͎̒͠ ̸̯̞̦͛̃͝T̶̟̲̂̉͜͠O̵̺̔͐ ̴͖̪̣͌͛Ḩ̴͖̄É̷̗̰̓L̷̬̩͔̯͛̿̈́P̵̳̫͍͉͂̊̀ ̵̣͂͜Ù̶̺͗͒S̴̨͎̽̄͝ ̴̯͒̾͋̚Ẉ̶̫̹̝̆̿͐́E̸͕̠͊̅́ͅ’̸̨̭̀ͅR̸̫̘̼̫̈́̑̐̈E̴̛̤̜̖͌̂̚ ̴̻̫̠̪̚Ḁ̷̡̒̈́̈L̶͉̭̹̻̋̌̂͝L̴̘̼̳̪͌̂ ̵̝͆̎̉͘T̵̻̣͚̯́́̽̈R̵̡̻̟͆͌̕Ä̸̡̰̟̓̾̄P̸͙̯̄̌̒P̵͓͑͋̀E̵̙͛̋̂̕D̷̛̦̟̼̈̾͠ ̵͓̩̈́̃Ĭ̶̖̫̄̊͂N̷̺̙͔͊̓́̈́ ̸̥̎H̸͙̤̮̒E̷̹̮̬͛͆R̷̛̪̩͈̒̽̎Ȇ̵̱̬̑̌̀ winning an award and raising money for the children!

-Welcome Back, Kotter: The talent contest marches forward despite the English teacher’s nay-saying and the like half dozen white boy Afros. And boy did that audience bring a lot of produce to throw. The dude with the giant forehead won which undermined the whole point of Horshack and Beau trying to cheat. Also, Kotter was nowhere in this episode.

-What We Do in the Shadows: Lazlo flees from the vengeance of a former acquittance, starting a new life as Jackie Daytona, a toothpick chewing bar owner in Christon, Pennsylvania (it sounds like Transylvania). Jackie immediately becomes a hit with the locals and takes a special interest in the girls volleyball team, even hosting a talent show to raise enough money to send them to state. The money and the bar burn down when Mark Hamill shows up to kill Lazlo.

The only episodes I saw passing the Bechdal test were Bewitched and The Jeffersons, although it’s possible some did and I didn’t notice.

The most talented talent show was the one from Good Times. To be honest, the black talent shows were usually more talented than their white counterparts which mainly were just played for laughs.

The earliest talent show episode on television I found was from Make Room for Daddy (1959) [edit] The Jackie Gleason Show/The Honymooners (1955) but the stories that Jeeves and Wooster are based on were written in the 1920s, so you could make the argument that either is the earliest.