All 11 episodes of The Sandman, ranked worst to best

Episode 3: “Dream a Little Dream of Me”

I know the point of this list is to order the episodes of The Sandman from worst to best, and that so far they’ve just been in the order in which you’re supposed to watch them. It’s a coincidence, I swear; the show definitely gets better as it goes along.

And this was the first episode of The Sandman I thought worked more or less from start to finish. It kind of reminds me of the premiere in that it introduces a new character — in this case paranormal detective Joanna Constantine — around whom much of the episode revolves. But in this case the show is confident enough to let the story play out naturally without forcing Dream in before he’s needed.

Instead, we get an amusing opener where Joanna Constantine officiates a secret royal wedding where the groom is possessed by a demon who bursts out of his mouth during the service. Wicked. From there, the selfish Joanna meets Dream, who has heard that she can lead him to his missing pouch of sand. The two play well off each other, with Joanna trying to ditch the nigh-omniscient Dream every chance she gets.

The episode is pretty low-stakes compared to some of Dream’s other adventures, but it builds sympathy for Joanna in a brief amount of time and humanizes Dream at the end when he grants her ex-girlfriend — who kept the sand and has been corrupted by it — a painless death in her sleep. Plus, the episode introduces Matthew, Dream’s new raven voiced with pluck and heart by Patton Oswalt. He will be a consistently funny presence throughout the show.

Okay, we’re going to break format now and jump ahead: