9 bizarrely romantic genre TV episodes to binge on Valentine's Day

Being single (or even in a comfortable relationship!) may make Valentine's Day an excuse to indulge in a Netflix marathon and an entire heart-shaped box of chocolates, but we at SYFY WIRE like to get a little weirder than that (no shade to anyone who has a date with Netflix tonight).

While most TV episodes you flip through on February 14 involve the whole candlelit-dinners-and-long-walks-on-the-beach thing, some push the boundaries far past planet Hallmark. Futurama's definition of romance involves hanging out on a planet so close to the sun that things are going to get hot in every way possible. Star Trek: The Next Generation sends a love letter to medieval legends when the entire crew of the Enterprise end up reenacting Robin Hood, risk of public beheading and all. Want something darker than that? You can always go for that episode of Buffy where a love spell fail results in a legion of Xander stalkers.

For anyone who would rather get cozy with shapeshifters, aliens, demons, a sentient spaceship, and a furry blue monster that really wants to dance with you, we've got your Valentine's Day watchlist on lock.

Turn off the easy listening and get ready for the most bizarre songs about love ever, with Kermit's frog posse randomly bursting out of a piano. This Muppets special is crawling with strange proto-muppets. Some are vaguely recognizable, though that thing with the green proboscis never evolved any further.

You also find out about Kermit's sordid past before Miss Piggy (his ex is a mouse) and more than you'll ever need to know about the mating rituals of aliens called Koozbans. Don't forget the guy in love with his mop or the big blue thing that calls itself Thog and hits on guest star Mia Farrow.

When on-again-off-again girlfriend Vash confronts Picard about being unromantic, Q decides he needs a (literally) old-fashioned lesson in love and catapults the Enterprise crew into what is arguably the most brilliant adaptation of Robin Hood ever. The captain suddenly finds himself as a bona fide man in tights who needs to break into a castle to rescue his Maid Marian from a potentially disastrous marriage.

Picard doesn't exactly have the smoothest moves, which lands him with an execution sentence that his Merry Men have to find a way around if they ever intend to time-warp back to deep space.

When Xander enlists Amy's powers to cast a love spell and get revenge on Cordelia, things go very wrong. The spell goes sour and makes every female at Sunnydale High except Cordelia — even the lunch lady, who chases Xander around with a rolling pin — lust after Xander.

The vampires show up just in time...

Maybe you bought a questionable love potion from some shady New Age shop once, but real love spells are not for amateurs. Phoebe's dateless friends think it's all a fairy tale anyway until the pig, rabbit, and snake they half-jokingly try to turn into men actually become human at the incantation. You couldn't choose worse animals for boyfriends, so don't be surprised when your significant other attacks a hot dog stand or wants to go at it like, you know, a rabbit.

Having your crush's head on your shoulder? Romantic. Having your ex's head surgically attached to your shoulder because his body got banged up in an interplanetary accident? Not so romantic.

If this doesn't look like it could possibly get any worse, it does when Amy decides to go out with a sketchy guy who is hellbent on getting her back to his apartment — Fry attached. Awkward.

So the most romantic city on Earth is… Milwaukee? Birthplace of beer goggles?

That aside, Hallmark is nothing compared to the world of Romanticorp, which breeds Care Bear-type things that they turn into stuffed animals, creates robots guaranteed to be attracted to you with its romance accelerator, and make candy hearts out of bone meal and earwig honey.

Valentine's Day is usually an excuse for gorging on chocolate and wine, but when lovers start devouring each other's flesh, something is definitely off. It isn't even Cupid's fault. If you know the Winchester Brothers (and Castiel), they're going to check out Cupid for real, even if he is just a harmless naked guy wandering around a restaurant and shooting people in the heart.

Don't you wish there were such a thing as a Bitter Ball for anyone who ends up broken-hearted on Valentine's Day? At least there is at Whitmore College. While a dance to console the recently dumped may be something that should happen on February 14, a corpse in the back of someone's car probably isn't. Neither are the vampire experiments going on in secret. 


Not all of Professor Frink's inventions are genius. Even the female cyborg he programmed to say yes to everything spits out a blunt no when he asks her if he's attractive, and that's with color contacts and height-boosting disco shoes on. Frink's eureka moment results in a voice chip that merges the sexiest male voices in the world. Suddenly, he's being swarmed by overeager women to the point that he wishes his bed was just for sleeping.