Museums often get a bum rap for being boring, but some of the most interesting episodes of TV shows actually take place in these hallowed halls of history. Even in plain old museums where the exhibits don't come to life at night, these memorable episodes of TV favorites are always entertaining.
"Psych"
In the episode "Shawn (and Gus) of the Dead," fake psychic detective Shawn postulates that a missing 3,000-year-old mummy simply walked out of its museum home. The episode actually includes a sly reference to an earlier episode "65 Million Years Off," where Shawn argued a T-Rex killed a murder victim.
Actually, "Psych" has had other episodes set in museums. For example, the sixth season episode "Indiana Shawn and the Temple of Kinda Crappy, Rusty Old Dagger" revolves around a series of priceless art thefts from the Santa Barbara art museum, and features the return of beloved thief Pierre Despereaux. "Indiana Jones" star John Rhys-Davies makes an appearance as Christopher Holme, the museum curator.
"Top Chef"
In the All Stars season of this cooking competition show, one of the earliest challenges involved cooking snacks and breakfast for hordes of hungry museum patrons. The episode involved Jen Carroll's infamous judge's table snark-fest, after she produced a "wet bacon" sort of breakfast dish that no one seemed to care for.
As one companion once pointed out, the Doctor likes museums, because seeing all the artifacts housed there is "how he keeps score." Most recently, the Doctor visited a museum called the Delirium Archive, the final resting place of the Headless Monks. There he found a home box from the starliner Byzantium, which put him in touch with River Song, setting the events of "The Time of Angels."
Way back in 1969, the serial "Seeds of Death" also featured a museum. The museum in question featured an exhibit about the history of transportation, including displays of Yuri Gargarin, Leonardo da Vinci, and a teleporter.
After being mentioned in a previous episode, fans finally got to see the infamous Snowglobe Museum in "Operation Ann." What makes the museum so funny (besides the contents, of course) is how disinterested the museum attendant is.
It's easy to forget that the entire reimagined "Battlestar Galactica" series actually takes place on a museum. The battlestar was being converted into a museum when the Cylons attacked, and the only reason Galactica wasn't knocked out was because it had old computers that weren't networked, making the station less vulnerable to Cylons.
