The episode received critical praise and is often included on lists of the best episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". In "Entertainment Weekly" list of the 25 best Whedonverse episodes—including episodes from "Buffy", as well as "Angel", "Firefly" and "Dollhouse"—"Restless" placed at #20, where they called it "Visually lush and trippy," and said, "...it reestablished that this genre show was really and truly a deeply affecting character drama with a delightfully bent sense of humor." At Syfy.co.uk, the episode was listed as the seventh best episode in their list of the top 10 "Buffy" episodes, saying "This surreal episode marks the show's turning point, as it moved from a very well-executed urban fantasy drama series to something more creative, more thoughtful, and more surprising than pretty much anything else on television." In The Futon Critic's list of the 20 best episodes of 2000, the episode was placed at #1, with the author calling it an even more daring episode than "Hush", another acclaimed episode from the fourth season.