The sentence "Guess who's coming to dinner?" seems to be fraught with an undercurrent of suspense. Time after time, TV shows use dinner parties as a way for our heroes to face off against their mortal enemies. As these characters share a meal, fans can't help but wonder when they'll stop breaking bread and start breaking skulls. In honor of these tense meetings, here are some of the most suspenseful dinners in TV show history.
In the third season episode "Abiquiu," Gus invites Walt to his home for dinner. As Gus prepares the meal, he advises Walt to never make the same mistake twice.
Later, in the fourth season, there's another tense dinner in "Bug," but this time it's Jesse that Gus invites to share a meal (and offers to send him to Mexico). It's made all the more tense knowing that Walt has put a tracer on Jesse's car. The way the show is structured really draws fascinating parallels between Jesse and Walt.
Is there anything more scary than breaking bread with Death himself? Probably not, and yet Dean was man enough to do just that during the fifth season of "Supernatural," where he met up with the Grim Reaper over a slice of delicious pizza pie.
"Lost"
As the third season of "Lost" began, Ben prepared a lovely beachside breakfast for Kate. His rationale? "The next few weeks are going to be very unpleasant."
In the second season episode "The Dinner Party," Damon and the Mystic Falls gang try to catch Elijah off-guard by hosting a dinner with Andie, Alaric, and Jenna in attendance. Things get out of hand in a hurry, and the episode ends with Elena stabbing herself in order to trick Elijah into getting staked.
In the Season 1 episode "Boom Town," the Doctor takes Margaret out to dinner, hoping to give her a chance to enjoy one last meal and maybe even see the error of her ways. She pleads for mercy, but it's a ruse. Of course, the dinner takes a turn for the violent when Margaret tries to kill him. Repeatedly. But what can you expect from a monstrous Slitheen?
What could be creepier than sharing a meal with robots? In the unnerving episode "Unnatural Selection," the villainous nanobot-based lifeforms known as the Replicators capture the SG-1 team and subject them to a shared meal while their minds are invaded and attacked. Only by using Fifth's humanity against him can Sam Carter and the rest of the team escape.
