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The Best Episodes of Frontline Season 31

Every episode of Frontline Season 31 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Frontline Season 31!

Binge this in 4h 54m•Peaking at 8.4/10

Since it began in 1983, Frontline has been airing public-affairs documentaries that explore a wide scope of the complex human experience. Frontline's goal is to extend the impact of the documentary beyond its initial broadcast

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Episode Rankings

  1. #1 Fan Favorite
    Frontline Season 31 Episode 1 - The Education of Michelle Rhee
    6.9/10(19 votes)

    #1 - The Education of Michelle Rhee

    S31:E1

    Examine the legacy of controversial former chancellor of Washington, DC, public schools, Michelle Rhee.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  2. Frontline Season 31 Episode 2 - Inside Obama's Presidency
    7.2/10(39 votes)

    #2 - Inside Obama's Presidency

    S31:E2

    As Barack Obama is sworn in for his second term, FRONTLINE takes a probing look at the first four years of his presidency. With inside accounts from his battles with his Republican opponents over health care and the economy to his dramatic expansion of targeted killings of enemies, FRONTLINE examines the president’s key decisions and the experiences that will inform his second term.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  3. Frontline Season 31 Episode 3 - The Untouchables
    7.5/10(55 votes)

    #3 - The Untouchables

    S31:E3

    FRONTLINE investigates why Wall Street’s leaders have escaped prosecution for any fraud related to the sale of bad mortgages.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  4. Frontline Season 31 Episode 4 - Cliffhanger
    8.2/10(22 votes)

    #4 - Cliffhanger

    S31:E4

    FRONTLINE investigates the inside history of how Washington has failed to solve the country’s problems of debt and deficit. Drawing on interviews with key players in Congress and the White House, the film shows how a clash of politics and personalities has taken the nation’s economy to the edge of the “fiscal cliff,” and now to a second round of standoffs over the debt ceiling and sequestration.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  5. Frontline Season 31 Episode 5 - Newtown Divided / Raising Adam Lanza
    7.1/10(51 votes)

    #5 - Newtown Divided / Raising Adam Lanza

    S31:E5

    In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, President Obama called for a national conversation about guns in America. Nowhere is that conversation more intense than in Newtown, where FRONTLINE and The Hartford Courant find a town divided and explore how those closest to the tragedy are now wrestling with our nation’s gun culture and laws. In the wake of the mass killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, FRONTLINE investigates a young man and the town he changed forever. Adam Lanza left behind a trail of death and destruction, but little else. He left no known friends, no diary. He destroyed his computer and any evidence it might have provided. His motives, and his life, remain largely a mystery. In collaboration with The Hartford Courant, FRONTLINE looks for answers to the central–and so far elusive–question: who was Adam Lanza?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  6. Frontline Season 31 Episode 6 - Kind Hearted Woman
    8.1/10(12 votes)

    #6 - Kind Hearted Woman

    S31:E6

    In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer’s Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Kind Hearted Woman is a special co-presentation of FRONTLINE and Independent Lens.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  7. Frontline Season 31 Episode 7 - Syria Behind the Lines
    7.7/10(35 votes)

    #7 - Syria Behind the Lines

    S31:E7

    In Syria’s rural heartland, the bloody uprising against President Bashar Al Assad has taken a terrifying turn. The once-peaceful Orontes River valley is now a perilous sectarian front line where neighbor is fighting neighbor. Olly Lambert spent five weeks living on both sides, and his unprecedented film documents the everyday lives of rebels, government soldiers and the civilians who support them.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  8. Frontline Season 31 Episode 8 - The Retirement Gamble
    8.4/10(15 votes)

    #8 - The Retirement Gamble

    S31:E8

    The Retirement Gamble raises troubling questions about how America’s financial institutions protect our retirement savings.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  9. Frontline Season 31 Episode 9 - Never Forget to Lie
    7.6/10(26 votes)

    #9 - Never Forget to Lie

    S31:E9

    In the most recent of his critically-lauded autobiographical films, Marian Marzynski explores, for the first time, his own wartime childhood and the experiences of other child survivors, teasing out their feelings about Poland, the Catholic Church, and the ramifications of identities forged under circumstances where survival began with the directive “never forget to lie.”

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  10. Frontline Season 31 Episode 10 - Outlawed in Pakistan
    7.7/10(53 votes)

    #10 - Outlawed in Pakistan

    S31:E10

    In Pakistan, women and girls who allege rape are often more strongly condemned than their alleged rapists. Some are even killed by their own families. For this unforgettable documentary, filmmakers Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann spent years tracing one alleged rape victim’s odyssey through Pakistan’s flawed justice system—as well as her alleged rapists’ quest to clear their names.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  11. Frontline Season 31 Episode 11 - Rape in the Fields
    8.2/10(25 votes)

    #11 - Rape in the Fields

    S31:E11

    FRONTLINE and Univision partner to tell the story of the hidden price many migrant women working in America’s fields and packing plants pay to stay employed and provide for their families. This investigation is the result of a yearlong reporting effort by veteran FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman, the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  12. Frontline Season 31 Episode 12 - Two American Families
    7.4/10(19 votes)

    #12 - Two American Families

    S31:E12

    Since 1992, Bill Moyers has been following the story of two ordinary, hard-working families in Milwaukee — one black, one white — as they battle to keep from sliding into poverty. A remarkable portrait of perseverance, Two American Families raises unsettling questions about the changing nature of the U.S. economy and the fate of a declining middle class.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  13. Frontline Season 31 Episode 13 - Life and Death in Assisted Living
    7.8/10(22 votes)

    #13 - Life and Death in Assisted Living

    S31:E13

    More and more elderly Americans are choosing to spend their later years in assisted living facilities, which have sprung up as an alternative to nursing homes. But is this loosely regulated, multi-billion dollar industry putting seniors at risk? In a major investigation with ProPublica, FRONTLINE examines the operations of the nation’s largest assisted living company, raising questions about the drive for profits and fatal lapses in care.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  14. Frontline Season 31 Episode 14 - Egypt in Crisis
    8.2/10(74 votes)

    #14 - Egypt in Crisis

    S31:E14

    FRONTLINE and GlobalPost’s Charles M. Sennott go inside the Egyptian revolution, tracing how what began as a youth movement to topple a dictator evolved into an opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood to seemingly find the political foothold it had sought for decades — and then why it all fell apart. Were the Brothers ever really in charge? Or was the Egyptian “deep state” in control all along?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  15. Frontline Season 31 Episode 15 - League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis
    7.5/10(27 votes)

    #15 - League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis

    S31:E15

    An investigation of the health crisis threatening NFL players and the long-term fortunes of football.

    Director:Michael Kirk
    Writer:Unknown

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  16. Frontline Season 31 Episode 16 - Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria
    7.0/10(16 votes)

    #16 - Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria

    S31:E16

    Has the age of antibiotics come to an end? From a young girl thrust onto life support in Arizona to an uncontrollable outbreak at one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, FRONTLINE investigates the alarming rise of a deadly type of bacteria that our modern antibiotics can’t stop.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  17. Frontline Season 31 Episode 17 - Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
    8.2/10(338 votes)

    #17 - Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?

    S31:E17

    FRONTLINE marks the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination with an encore broadcast of Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? — an investigative biography of the man at the center of the political crime of the century. The three-hour documentary special traces Oswald’s life from his boyhood to that fateful day in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, posing a number of questions: Was Oswald the emotionally disturbed “lone gunman”? Was he one of two gunmen that day in Dallas? Or was he an unwitting scapegoat for the real assassins?

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  18. Frontline Season 31 Episode 18 - A Death in St. Augustine
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #18 - A Death in St. Augustine

    S31:E18

    A report on domestic violence allegations within police departments focuses on the death of a young Florida woman whose boyfriend was a deputy sheriff.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  19. Frontline Season 31 Episode 19 - Kind Hearted Woman (2)
    7.7/10(77 votes)

    #19 - Kind Hearted Woman (2)

    S31:E19

    In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer’s Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Kind Hearted Woman is a special co-presentation of FRONTLINE and Independent Lens.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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Season 31 Ratings Summary

"The Education of Michelle Rhee" is the best rated episode of "Frontline" season 31. It scored 6.9/10 based on 19 votes. Directed by Unknown and written by Unknown, it aired on 1/8/2013. This episode is rated 0.3 points higher than the second-best, "Inside Obama's Presidency".