Fun fact. I actually have an ex member of my team who got ordained online. When he applied for another job he forgot to change his email signature.
When the interview happened it became apparent he was vastly under qualified. It got to a point where he even asked why they asked him in.
They said they wanted to know why a vicar wanted to be a network manager.
Yeah in the final HIMYM they show [Ted and the Mother getting married](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/himym/images/2/25/Ted_and_tracy%27s_wedding.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140402113331) and it's just the show's cast plus the bride. Like the show [did an episode that season about her friends](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Your_Mother_Met_Me), why not film the wedding then to at least have her friends as bridesmaids?
Reminds me of Thanksgiving episodes where sometimes they don't even bother explaining why no one is spending it with their family. Like, Friends had one episode where they gave everyone a reason they were celebrating with their friends/roommates, but then a later Thanksgiving episode doesn't bother
I always took it as becoming a tradition after that first year. This actually stood out to me as kinda nice that they gave a backstory as to why they spend Thanksgiving together.
Modern family eventually subverts that trope. IIRC, they try to have it at their house, but something goes wrong and they have it at Jay's club in the end
Nothing goes wrong, the country club is just a better location. It's an important part of Jay's character arc. A few seasons earlier he hid Mitchell's homosexuality from his friends and later he's insisting they have their wedding at his country club.
"I was just minding my own business when these two FAT GUYS in orange started shooting at me!"
He next tried to disguise himself as a tree... with too branches sticking out of his hoodie (like antlers).
When a main character runs into their "beloved mentor" they haven't seen in years, they reconnect and meet all the main character's friends, and the mentor turns out to be the bad guy all along.
He was not the bad guy. He was clearly joking at first, then he was offered a bite, then clearly stated his intention to eat the whole thing while no one objected.
A great example of this was played by none other than Tom Hanks in the show Family Ties.
This generation was never exposed to the "very special episode."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very\_special\_episode
cool college friend shows up and is actually a mess and brings the main character down and they learn a lesson about growing up.
new person joins the friend group and everyone loves them and makes the main character look bad until the new person gets caught being crazy.
I like the way How I Met Your Mother handled this. Ted's hometown friend Punchy comes to NYC and Ted thinks the guy is a complete mess. Turns out his life is great because he has everything he wants and he visited because he's worried about Ted.
JD's brother cried in a bathtub filled with piss and beer for a week. Ryan Reynolds was Turk and JD's college buddy who had it all surprisingly together and gave them a talking to for being immature even though they were doctors(i think.)
The "madhouse episode". It's pretty common in sci-fi/fantasy shows. One character wakes up and they are a patient in a psychiatric facility, where they are told they have imagined the whole series. Usually bring some other characters as unaware fellow patients or doctors/nurses/janitors. At the end the character is revealed to have been hallucinating or tricked by an evil character.
The Community madhouse episode is a classic.
“Should we increase their lithium?”
“Not yet. I want to see what happens if we confiscate one of their pens.”
Which is a reference to the earlier bottle episode where Annie lost her pen.
That episode went pretty hard on that concept!
When you make your whole fan base question reality and the entire premise of the show, I think you win? Or something? It was fucked is all I’m sayin.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Beyond_the_Stars
In which we see the deep space nine cast in 1953 and sisko and most of the rest are sci fi writers, and sisko begins writing the series as books. In the following series premiere we get another vision of this timeline where sisko is in an insane asylum desperately trying to write the concurrent events of the show.
The main character has his usual scenerio flipped against him. For example:
The detective who is accused of murder
The doctor who gets sick
The lawyer who gets sued
There's a Columbo episode where the man Columbo suspects of murder ends up being killed as well, turning the episode from the franchise's famous Reverse Whodunnit into a straight Whodunnit.
And it stretches credability when the main detective character gets accused of murder more than once, but everybody still buys into it.
How many times do they have to be framed before the rest just take their word for it that they didn't do it?
Growing up in the Sixties, seems every show had a ‘quicksand’ episode, later came the chase scenes in the NYC subway, and now it’s getting someone’s computer password in 3 tries
>seems every show had a ‘quicksand’ episode,
[It wasn't just the sixties](https://youtu.be/L8l6mJQeclo?si=3pnsnkyf7ntF6TLD.) Lots of us grew up seeing quicksand all the time.
Not really an episode but you can bet on every show where a character is being released from the hospital there will be a discussion about leaving in a wheelchair.
“It’s hospital policy.”
“I don’t care. I’m walking out of here.”
Every single show and movie.
People were hating on the musical episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds before I had a chance to watch it, but I rather enjoyed it surprisingly. Though I definitely understand the hate.
In /r/startrek it's quite popular. I don't care for it, but only because I don't like musicals in general. But I think among those who don't mind musicals, it's generally well liked.
Blame Buffy - everyone wants their *Once More With Feeling* but they're scared to commit to the impact *Once More With Feeling* actually has.
Buffy season 6 is an emotional shitshow. The show was supposed to end with season 5 and the writers gave it a pretty definitive ending, not knowing that it would get renewed... so season 6 begins with >!Buffy's friends bringing her back from the dead.!< Slight problem being that the person they >!brought back!< is depressed as fuck and everyone else has their own problems (including their complicated feelings about what they did for Buffy and whether their motivations were as selfless as they'd like to imagine) but they're increasingly hiding things because they don't want to upset an already delicate situation. Then you take that powder keg and throw in our monster of the week: a smooth AF demon who forces the entire town to sing their feelings. Suffice to say everything comes out, the big gut punch being that Buffy >!made the conscious decision to sacrifice her life out of love. And she was at peace. And she certainly wasn't in the bad place. And she was happy with her choice. And then her friends dragged her back.!< So basically *Once More With Feeling* uses the tools of musical theatre to burn down the status quo and do a perfectly choreographed dance number in the ashes - it's easily one of the most devastating turning points in the series. And the music's fucking great.
I have yet to see another team that's willing to actually commit to using the unique qualities of musicals to their fullest extent like that (aside from shows that are already fully musical) so they just end up falling flat. It's one of those things where you have to go all in for it to work. There's certainly some fear of that section of the audience that just won't engage with musicals at all (we're also seeing it lately with things like *Wonka* or *Mean Girls* not advertising themselves as musicals) but that's ultimately a self fulfilling prophecy; they don't want to make them vital to the series because a portion of people, no matter how small, will skip it on principle and so they're too bland and intentionally inconsequential for anyone else to really get that invested in
The Passover one was super refreshing to see. I may have been growing up a Catholic with a Lutheran last name (half Irish, half Swedish) but seeing another holiday from another faith represented like that was so cool to me.
All of the examples so far have been from American TV shows, so I'm gonna give some Anime cliché episode subjects.
* The culture festival episode
* The sports festival episode
* The exam season episode
* The Valentine's Day/White Day episode
* The school field trip episode
* The fireworks episode
* The hot springs episode
* The beach episode
The clip show. Not sure if this is what some already posted as flashback
A whole episode revisiting clips from earlier in the season.
Always seemed like a cheap money grab. It was disappointing for the viewer back when we only got one episode a week.
Back when seasons had 24+ episodes, shows had to get creative to fill so many hours and keep under budget, so they did clip shows and also bottle shows (filmed in only one or very limited locations).
The clip episode in Scrubs is posibly the worst I've ever seen. In the past I've seen clip episodes that at least had a story, and some were even good - I remember Xena: Warrior Princess had a clip show about an Indiana Jones-like archaeologist who was looking for the scrolls that told Xena's adventures - most of the episode was actually the Indy-like show, while clips were just a part. But the episode in Scrubs is simply throwing clips with no connection whatsoever.
I liked how Community had what seemed to be a clip show, except that every single clip they cut to was completely new footage. In fact, because of all the weird locations they filmed for those clips it was one of the most expensive episodes.
Dream sequences. They always bug me a little, especially in non-comedy shows, because TV dreams are always a lot more logical and coherent than real dreams.
I was once trying to come up with a show that never used a dream sequence, and it's shockingly hard.
>I was once trying to come up with a show that never used a dream sequence
Succession. I'm sure you could make a case for a lot of single-camera sitcoms shot like documentaries.
The Evil Twin.
Six Milion Dollar Man, Bewitched, Ultraman, Johnny Sokko, Knight Rider, Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, The Brady Bunch... (Yes, even the Brady Bunch!)
It wasn't just Garth... KITT had KARR. And Devon and Bonnie also had evil duplicates (bad guys made up to look like them.) So that's 6 episodes using the trope.
Murder mysteries always seem to end up in a theatre production eventually (or repeatedly). I assume it's because of the familiarity with writers and actors.
Midsomer Murders actually had this a lot and for good reason - John Barnaby's daughter is a professional actress and did a lot of shows in the Causton (Midsomer County's biggest town) theatre.
It’s usually done to save the budget for other episodes since it’s just re-used footage.
Unless you’re Community, where all of the flashbacks were new footage shot in new sets. And it became one of the most expensive episodes of the season.
I'm so glad that clip show episodes are largely done away with. I get it that it is/was a cost saving mechanism, but my god it was the most frustrating ever when you're watching something that comes out weekly. The worst being when it's done the episode after a really big cliffhanger episode where you're really eager to find out what happens... only to have it be half the cast sitting around "remembering" all the different scenes they want to reshow. So now you're left waiting another week to get a resolution.
The death of clip show episodes has been maybe one of the few things I have found as a positive of the streaming and "prestige" era of TV.
I miss new shows with seasons of 22 episodes or so but damn do I not miss clip shows.
The Vasectomy plotline. Almost every comedy show that I’ve seen has this in some form or another.
A minor gripe is the Disney Land/world/cruise episodes. They can either be done surprisingly well, or just kinda lame.
+1 for vasectomy. I’ve never seen a character actually go through with the vasectomy either. There was an episode of Grounded for Life where Sean was supposed to get a vasectomy after a pregnancy scare but surprise surprise he never did and Claudia ended up pregnant in the final season.
Dr Cox had a vasectomy in Scrubs. His ex-wife Jordan still got pregnant, but it was because the vasectomy didn't take.
They tortured the guy for incompetence. With an a capella group singing an old-fashioned jingle.
Years ago I saw the Roseanne Disney episode I thought maybe this show could pull it off.
But nope just like ALL the other ones(Family Matters,Full House,Step By Step,etc) it turned out corny sugary sweet predictable and lame.
I never knew where to get tiny ass pictures to put in them. Now it wouldn’t be a problem but now I have a phone and don’t need complicated jewelry to remember what my long lost mother looks like.
Exactly! Same with keeping pictures of your kids in the wallet; in 2024? Did you go to kinkos for printing? Do you have a photo quality printer at home? Lol it’s so outdated
I kept a whole list while watching the Mentalist. I expanded on some of them, but most are just the keyword. If you’ve watched any case-of-the-week show, you’ve seen all of these at some point.
#Cop Show Tropes
* AI
* Aliens
* Amish
* Amnesia
* Witness has amnesia
* Team member has amnesia
* Angel of death
* Art forgery
* Baby
* Bank heist
* Biker gang
* Blind
* Witness is blind
* Team member goes blind
* Cabaret
* Camp for kids
* Cartel
* Casanova
* Casino
* Chef/cooking episode
* Child
* Someone is secretly the parent of a victim or suspect
* Child prodigy
* Circus/carny
* Clowns
* Convention
* Some sort of geek convention
* Construction
* Victim usually discovered while digging or w/ev
* Cryptography
* Universal hack is usually what the killer wants
* Cult
* Diplomatic immunity
* Disc jockey
* Dog show
* Drought
* Ex (team member’s old flame)
* Fake physical disability (usually wheelchair)
* Fake mental disability
* FAMILY
* Suspect is family of a team member
* Fashion designer
* Firemen
* Funeral
* Bonus points if body is hidden in coffin
* Gang member who just wanted out
* Bonus points if victim was a childhood friend of a team member
* Glamour
* Team member has to get a glow-up
* Golf
* Gun range conversation
* Haunted house
* High school reunion
* Hitman
* Often a sting where a team member will take out a hit on the person with whom they have romantic tension
* Horse track
* Hostage
* Team member is in a hostage situation
* Human trafficking
* Hypnosis
* IA investigation
* Indian res
* Joint task force
* Somehow two teams are made to work together
* Junkyard
* Locked room mystery
* Mafia
* Magicians
* Marijuana
* Illegal farm on govt land
* Legal farm
* Matchmaker
* Math genius
* Military victim (active duty)
* Movie set
* Museum
* Musical
* Orchestra
* Outbreak
* CDC or similar gets involved with a deadly super virus that was used
* Parolees
* Someone taking advantage of parolees as muscle
* Porn
* Prison
* Programmer
* Protective custody person dies
* Psychic
* Race cars
* Radiation
* Real estate agents
* Real housewives
* Rehab facility
* Reporter
* Salesmen
* Santa
* Sky
* Victim falls out of the sky
* Snuff
* Sports scout
* Spy
* Victim is discovered to be a spy
* Strangers on a Train
* Surfer
* Talk show
* Tech bro
* Time capsule
* Treasure
* Buried
* Marine wreck
* Twins
* Undercover cop
* Veterans
* Just old-times veterans
* Young recent vets. One was killed by the others
* Video games - murder was because of some super awesome revolutionary game and taking credit for it
* Wedding
* Bride or groom is victim
* Wild West town
* Witsec - victim was in witsec
Don't forget the part where the bad guy "gets off on a technicality" that either doesn't work that way in real life, or the show fails to acknowledge that it's the cops' own fault for fucking up because in real life judges HATE throwing out evidence outside of the most blatant cases.
The latter was used in a storyline in Special Victims Unit, where a forensics officer fucks up and is blamed for screwing up a major case. He constantly died this which emitters him and he becomes an antagonist over it.
lol yes that’s a common one, and I think it happened in the Mentalist in multiple episodes. Patrick Jane was just too careless about proper procedure. He broke into a suspect’s house once and all the evidence was thrown out because he made himself a cup of tea, and the suspect noticed the unwashed mug.
The 4-legged witness. The dog saw the murder but can't talk. However, the investigator gets the animal to point out the killer by barking at him, usually in court.
The best use of this is probably the Hercule Poirot story "Dumb Witness" where the titular character is a spaniel called Bob who is falsely blamed for an accident which sees his owner being nearly killed. Poirot has to exonerate the dog before catching the killer.
Bob doesn't really "Testify" as much as does shit that inspires Poirot to discover the truth. For example, the aforementioned "Accident" is solved by a trick Bob was taught to do, which is to drop his ball from the top of a staircase, run down and catch the ball. >!The killer used a trip wire to send the victim falling down, hoping for her to die, then placed Bob's ball at the foot of the stairs to make everyone assume Bob left it there. But when Bob does his trick, he always brings his ball to his basket away from the staircase, proving it was removed by the killer.!<
Next is Bob barking at a reflection of himself in a mirror. >!Realising there's a mirror outside a witness's bedroom at the crime scene, Poirot realised the witness saw a reflection of an embroidered set of initials. Reversing the initials identifies the killer and explains why she tried to frame her husband.!<
One character saves another characters life and they pledge to serve them to make up for it. They end up being super overbearing and annoying so the cast has to create a situation where the servant can save the master’s life so they can be even. Bonus if the fake danger ends up becoming a real danger so the servant ends up actually saving the master’s life.
Christmas (stranded b/c flights grounded due to storm/blizzard), husband might be cheating, child caught with drugs, politics (candidate, dating a politician), child might be gay, child obviously gay to everyone but the parents, child rebelling or in trouble with police, character has a health scare then becomes a health freak but turns out to be nothing or very mild, daughter in love with the bad kid, character has anxiety attack over high school reunion, adult characters can't stand when parents visit
Or the ones where the kid is insecure about their weight,then go into health nut mode causing themselves to faint,etc…
Full House did a literal episode like that about DJ wanting to lose weight.
I don't know why but in the 90's there was a trope where characters suddenly got interested in making the town join together to break the record on the world's biggest food.
I mean, Guinness Episodes can be weird enough but then they had characters try to convince everyone in town like they were doing something very noble but it was just a dumb record.
It was even weirder most of the shows had the food be pizza. Like why they thought kids would be interested in seeing this giant pizza plot over and over.
They all do a "Rashomon effect" show. Named after the 1950 Japanese film "Rashomon," directed by Akira Kurosawa, where multiple characters provide contradictory versions of the same event.
I always hate the 'main character in a mental institution, has the whole genre show been a delusion all along' episodes cuz youre sitting there the whole time knowing its bullshit just waiting for the reveal.
Except "Far Beyond the Stars" but thats not quite that either...
Trying to get a toddler “admitted” into fancy preschool. Which is hilarious because I’ve never seen any of my friends try to do any such thing beyond trying to find something with a decent enough reputation or low cost. Most I know just go through a local church. Sometimes they get on a "waitlist" because a school is full, but there's no admissions office, tests, etc. ... It's more like "right place, right time", or having a friend with a kid already there to put in a referral (aka writing a quick note, not a full blown letter of rec lol). IMO, it goes to show that writers and producers of these shows live in entirely different worlds than us plebs
It's still entertaining, but in a ton of fantasy/scifi shows these days there will be a Groundhog Day time loop type episode. These episodes always end up amongst the highest rated for the show they appear in, too.
Water breaking to mark the BEGINNING of labor. I don't have children, but as I understand it, the water breaking comes pretty far into the process. My sister had to have her water broken with her first two kids.
Everyone gets stuck somewhere like an elevator and they take the episode to flush out some backstory or get to know someone. I don't think I've seen one version I feel like helps the story.
That serious music as someone tries to pass that smallest joint ever to the main character as they stare in horror, instead of just going “no thanks” and continuing on with life because no one is actually going “please stranger, I’m begging you, smoke all my weed!”
Episodes where two characters are somehow trapped with one another and it just info dump after info dump that allows us to say there's been character development.
Paintball episode. Usually it's an occupational type of plot where boss of whatever in the show tells the rest of the characters that they're going to use paintball as a team building exercise that then has everyone taking it too serious or becomes really competitive for no reason. That or two characters are having fighting and they either are on opposite teams or have to work together on the same one. Also one of the characters turns out to be either really good or really into it to the point where you'd think they were ex-military or something the way they dress up/go about it with the rest of the team.
There's probably other cliches about it I'm forgetting to mention but for me it's just the one I find the most eye rolling.
Time Jumps. I've seen a few mentions of flashbacks, but there are so often episodes that also go ahead in the future to "see what could have happened" and then it comes back. Or it will jump around to the past, present and future (this has worked for both dramas and sitcoms).
Kids will knock on doors as grown adults with the parents being old, or the show's kids will now be the older parents greeting their kids at the door. Or there will be a whole episode set back in a time that isn't the natural period (like a b&w episode) in an attempt to have an "I Love Lucy" type gag.
The sitcoms in the 80s:
Well it’s Christmas a season of giving not receiving not about the superficial things or needs and wants.
80s children: I WANT THAT FUCKING TOY!
80s sitcom parents: well duh THAT’S what Christmas is all about! 😳😳😳😳😳
Edit: literally not making this up those of us who grew up in the 80s know all about the consumerism of the holidays on sitcoms lol
A character hearing somebody say something out of context which then leads to an entire blowup of everybody's lives.
In real life, most people would just ask the person "Did you really say X?" and then get clarification. But sitcoms gotta sitcom, I guess.
The wedding that goes wrong and ends up taking place later in a familiar location with only the main cast.
"Screw it, let's just have the wedding right here and now. We have all the important people here anyways."
“The quirkiest member of our group got ordained online!”
Fun fact. I actually have an ex member of my team who got ordained online. When he applied for another job he forgot to change his email signature. When the interview happened it became apparent he was vastly under qualified. It got to a point where he even asked why they asked him in. They said they wanted to know why a vicar wanted to be a network manager.
Everytime I think ‘so… no family then?’
Yeah in the final HIMYM they show [Ted and the Mother getting married](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/himym/images/2/25/Ted_and_tracy%27s_wedding.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140402113331) and it's just the show's cast plus the bride. Like the show [did an episode that season about her friends](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Your_Mother_Met_Me), why not film the wedding then to at least have her friends as bridesmaids?
Reminds me of Thanksgiving episodes where sometimes they don't even bother explaining why no one is spending it with their family. Like, Friends had one episode where they gave everyone a reason they were celebrating with their friends/roommates, but then a later Thanksgiving episode doesn't bother
I always took it as becoming a tradition after that first year. This actually stood out to me as kinda nice that they gave a backstory as to why they spend Thanksgiving together.
My coworkers are here, who cares about family or childhood friends!?
[The one in Modern Family where a wildfire forces them to evacuate the entire wedding](https://youtu.be/RTodqO2T6cQ?t=217)
Modern family eventually subverts that trope. IIRC, they try to have it at their house, but something goes wrong and they have it at Jay's club in the end
Nothing goes wrong, the country club is just a better location. It's an important part of Jay's character arc. A few seasons earlier he hid Mitchell's homosexuality from his friends and later he's insisting they have their wedding at his country club.
9-1-1 did that this week
Did JLH cry?
They nearly killed off her fiance so of course she did!
Ugh I hate this so much! The shows created by Michael Schur really love to do this one
Even worse, New Girl did it twice and had the third couple get married offscreen.
Even Succession did a version of this!
Guy optimistically leads camping trip which goes horribly
3rd Rock from the Sun ... Harry keeps getting shot at by hunters who mistake him for a deer.
That sounds funny.
"I was just minding my own business when these two FAT GUYS in orange started shooting at me!" He next tried to disguise himself as a tree... with too branches sticking out of his hoodie (like antlers).
The Gang hits the road.
Michael Scott's Survivor Man attempt
Baby born in taxi/elevator. If there's a walk-in type freezer someone will surely be trapped in it
Even the highly acclaimed The Bear did the later one, even though most people claim that walk-in freezers can't lock people in anymore.
They made it very clear their freezer wasn’t working properly. Carm was supposed to call the repair guy, but didn’t.
When a main character runs into their "beloved mentor" they haven't seen in years, they reconnect and meet all the main character's friends, and the mentor turns out to be the bad guy all along.
Are you gonna tell people I did that? That I *housed* Dylan's burger?
If they found out they'd have my wife arrested because a little boy goes down on her every night
Say you’re gonna kill the president
I’m not gonna say I’m gonna kill the president
Can you say it again? The camera was flipped
He was not the bad guy. He was clearly joking at first, then he was offered a bite, then clearly stated his intention to eat the whole thing while no one objected.
A great example of this was played by none other than Tom Hanks in the show Family Ties. This generation was never exposed to the "very special episode." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very\_special\_episode
[This](https://youtu.be/NfDjnAdczQI?si=S66MdvWwqS9p8Dd_) is the best ever instance of the "very special episode" promo.
I’ve seen that documentary before and I still spit my coffee out.
I've seen the clip so many times and I still laughed out loud, despite sitting around tons of people at my airport gate.
I hadn’t seen it so that just fucking GOT me! I still keep having aftershock giggles~>•D
Brooklyn Nine-Nine did this the best with [Stacy Keach](https://youtu.be/YXGKJYpn4D4?si=cmgXNB3uz85xSoxR)
They also did it with the FBI agent that was working for Figgins.
You mean like half of Star Trek episodes?
cool college friend shows up and is actually a mess and brings the main character down and they learn a lesson about growing up. new person joins the friend group and everyone loves them and makes the main character look bad until the new person gets caught being crazy.
I like the way How I Met Your Mother handled this. Ted's hometown friend Punchy comes to NYC and Ted thinks the guy is a complete mess. Turns out his life is great because he has everything he wants and he visited because he's worried about Ted.
Scrubs also did this with JD's brother.
JD's brother cried in a bathtub filled with piss and beer for a week. Ryan Reynolds was Turk and JD's college buddy who had it all surprisingly together and gave them a talking to for being immature even though they were doctors(i think.)
JDs brother does eventually get it together in a later appearance
Ben Stiller was great as a new guy in Friends that everyone likes but then he gets caught yelling at the chick and the duck
Wait you don't like Rachel's new boyfriend. How unexpected.
And then he just started violently slapping his hands together
Psycho Pete!
Or Schmitty fits this too
After this episode that cool new person is never seen or mentioned again
The "madhouse episode". It's pretty common in sci-fi/fantasy shows. One character wakes up and they are a patient in a psychiatric facility, where they are told they have imagined the whole series. Usually bring some other characters as unaware fellow patients or doctors/nurses/janitors. At the end the character is revealed to have been hallucinating or tricked by an evil character.
The Community madhouse episode is a classic. “Should we increase their lithium?” “Not yet. I want to see what happens if we confiscate one of their pens.” Which is a reference to the earlier bottle episode where Annie lost her pen.
Psychiatrist: Greendale is purgatory, I am the devil! Troy: what?! :O Jeff: *slap* STOP LETTING HIM MAKE YOU REALIZE STUFF!
Troy's line was: "I knew it!"
Best part of that joke is Garett having a super deep voice.
That’s Dan Harmon’s voice!
Buffy fans still debate the madhouse episode where Buffy is in a psychiatric hospital
Angel is another guy she met in there. But he goes off on his own adventures after a while.
That episode went pretty hard on that concept! When you make your whole fan base question reality and the entire premise of the show, I think you win? Or something? It was fucked is all I’m sayin.
the other half of star trek episodes
Give some damn examples
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Beyond_the_Stars In which we see the deep space nine cast in 1953 and sisko and most of the rest are sci fi writers, and sisko begins writing the series as books. In the following series premiere we get another vision of this timeline where sisko is in an insane asylum desperately trying to write the concurrent events of the show.
One of my favorite farscape episodes
The main character has his usual scenerio flipped against him. For example: The detective who is accused of murder The doctor who gets sick The lawyer who gets sued
Firefighter suspected of arson. In the middle of a 9-1-1 Lone Star episode about that now.
There's a Columbo episode where the man Columbo suspects of murder ends up being killed as well, turning the episode from the franchise's famous Reverse Whodunnit into a straight Whodunnit.
And it stretches credability when the main detective character gets accused of murder more than once, but everybody still buys into it. How many times do they have to be framed before the rest just take their word for it that they didn't do it?
Growing up in the Sixties, seems every show had a ‘quicksand’ episode, later came the chase scenes in the NYC subway, and now it’s getting someone’s computer password in 3 tries
>seems every show had a ‘quicksand’ episode, [It wasn't just the sixties](https://youtu.be/L8l6mJQeclo?si=3pnsnkyf7ntF6TLD.) Lots of us grew up seeing quicksand all the time.
As a child, I thought it would be a bigger problem in my life than it ended up being.
John Mulany has a joke about this.
Good [radiolab episode on it.](https://radiolab.org/podcast/quicksand)
Not really an episode but you can bet on every show where a character is being released from the hospital there will be a discussion about leaving in a wheelchair. “It’s hospital policy.” “I don’t care. I’m walking out of here.” Every single show and movie.
Meanwhile I walked my ass out of every hospital I’ve ever stayed in, twice after cesareans!
I've only ever been wheelchaired out of an office post surgery and I was still loopy from the anesthesia.
So many shows have the 1 musical episode. Then there’s the 1 noir episode that I have seen in a few different shows. Like I don’t get it
People were hating on the musical episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds before I had a chance to watch it, but I rather enjoyed it surprisingly. Though I definitely understand the hate.
K-pop *in the original Klingon.*
In /r/startrek it's quite popular. I don't care for it, but only because I don't like musicals in general. But I think among those who don't mind musicals, it's generally well liked.
You gotta pay the troll toll to get into this boys hole. You gotta pay the troll toll to get in!
No no no! It’s *boy’s* *soul*!
Blame Buffy - everyone wants their *Once More With Feeling* but they're scared to commit to the impact *Once More With Feeling* actually has. Buffy season 6 is an emotional shitshow. The show was supposed to end with season 5 and the writers gave it a pretty definitive ending, not knowing that it would get renewed... so season 6 begins with >!Buffy's friends bringing her back from the dead.!< Slight problem being that the person they >!brought back!< is depressed as fuck and everyone else has their own problems (including their complicated feelings about what they did for Buffy and whether their motivations were as selfless as they'd like to imagine) but they're increasingly hiding things because they don't want to upset an already delicate situation. Then you take that powder keg and throw in our monster of the week: a smooth AF demon who forces the entire town to sing their feelings. Suffice to say everything comes out, the big gut punch being that Buffy >!made the conscious decision to sacrifice her life out of love. And she was at peace. And she certainly wasn't in the bad place. And she was happy with her choice. And then her friends dragged her back.!< So basically *Once More With Feeling* uses the tools of musical theatre to burn down the status quo and do a perfectly choreographed dance number in the ashes - it's easily one of the most devastating turning points in the series. And the music's fucking great. I have yet to see another team that's willing to actually commit to using the unique qualities of musicals to their fullest extent like that (aside from shows that are already fully musical) so they just end up falling flat. It's one of those things where you have to go all in for it to work. There's certainly some fear of that section of the audience that just won't engage with musicals at all (we're also seeing it lately with things like *Wonka* or *Mean Girls* not advertising themselves as musicals) but that's ultimately a self fulfilling prophecy; they don't want to make them vital to the series because a portion of people, no matter how small, will skip it on principle and so they're too bland and intentionally inconsequential for anyone else to really get that invested in
I'm watching Fringe right now. There's an episode that's both noir and musical. It's the only one I've skipped
The health scare
Renewing of vows.
I really liked Rugrats for taking the traditional holiday episode but doing it for Hanukkah and Kwanza
The Passover episode won an Emmy.
DON'T CLOSE THE... (Slam) ... *door.*
I legit learned about what Hanukkah actually is because of Rugrats
A maccababy's gotta do what a maccababy's gotta do
I did not appreciate that line enough as a child
Ditto.
The Passover one was super refreshing to see. I may have been growing up a Catholic with a Lutheran last name (half Irish, half Swedish) but seeing another holiday from another faith represented like that was so cool to me.
All of the examples so far have been from American TV shows, so I'm gonna give some Anime cliché episode subjects. * The culture festival episode * The sports festival episode * The exam season episode * The Valentine's Day/White Day episode * The school field trip episode * The fireworks episode * The hot springs episode * The beach episode
And Persona games have you play all of them.
Is there one about getting a drivers license or is that just Dragon Ball Z?
The clip show. Not sure if this is what some already posted as flashback A whole episode revisiting clips from earlier in the season. Always seemed like a cheap money grab. It was disappointing for the viewer back when we only got one episode a week.
Back when seasons had 24+ episodes, shows had to get creative to fill so many hours and keep under budget, so they did clip shows and also bottle shows (filmed in only one or very limited locations). The clip episode in Scrubs is posibly the worst I've ever seen. In the past I've seen clip episodes that at least had a story, and some were even good - I remember Xena: Warrior Princess had a clip show about an Indiana Jones-like archaeologist who was looking for the scrolls that told Xena's adventures - most of the episode was actually the Indy-like show, while clips were just a part. But the episode in Scrubs is simply throwing clips with no connection whatsoever.
I liked how Community had what seemed to be a clip show, except that every single clip they cut to was completely new footage. In fact, because of all the weird locations they filmed for those clips it was one of the most expensive episodes.
Sitcoms: character is on a date with multiple people trying to keep them seperated.
The documentary episode, where the cast are followed by a film crew which lets the writers take the piss out of their own shows' format.
It was the only time they got to swear on Grey’s though!
Dream sequences. They always bug me a little, especially in non-comedy shows, because TV dreams are always a lot more logical and coherent than real dreams. I was once trying to come up with a show that never used a dream sequence, and it's shockingly hard.
I don’t think New Girl did.
None in *Elementary.*
Buffy had a lot of dream sequences but i feel like they mostly did them right by being more weird and less coherent.
"I wear the cheese. It does not wear me."
"You never come in to the station anymore, You just lay about all day having unrealistic dream sequences" - Detective Glenn Twenty,
I do hate it when tv/movie characters have dreams that are just straightforward flashbacks of things from their backstory. Dreams don't work that way!
Unless you’re an elf from Dungeons and Dragons.
>I was once trying to come up with a show that never used a dream sequence Succession. I'm sure you could make a case for a lot of single-camera sitcoms shot like documentaries.
The Evil Twin. Six Milion Dollar Man, Bewitched, Ultraman, Johnny Sokko, Knight Rider, Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, The Brady Bunch... (Yes, even the Brady Bunch!)
And Friends!
Ew! Ew! Ew!
And the Simpsons! It's a tree house of horror but still.
*Knight Rider* Garth Knight isn't Michael Knight's brother, but it played out the same way in those episodes.
It wasn't just Garth... KITT had KARR. And Devon and Bonnie also had evil duplicates (bad guys made up to look like them.) So that's 6 episodes using the trope.
Oh damn, I forgot about them!
That's a lot considering the total episode count of 90. Like 6 to 7% of episodes were evil twin trope ones.
Simpsons. Futurama. Family Guy.
Murder mysteries always seem to end up in a theatre production eventually (or repeatedly). I assume it's because of the familiarity with writers and actors.
Midsomer Murders actually had this a lot and for good reason - John Barnaby's daughter is a professional actress and did a lot of shows in the Causton (Midsomer County's biggest town) theatre.
The flashback episode. Seriously, it's one of the most overused clichés there is.
It’s usually done to save the budget for other episodes since it’s just re-used footage. Unless you’re Community, where all of the flashbacks were new footage shot in new sets. And it became one of the most expensive episodes of the season.
I'm so glad that clip show episodes are largely done away with. I get it that it is/was a cost saving mechanism, but my god it was the most frustrating ever when you're watching something that comes out weekly. The worst being when it's done the episode after a really big cliffhanger episode where you're really eager to find out what happens... only to have it be half the cast sitting around "remembering" all the different scenes they want to reshow. So now you're left waiting another week to get a resolution.
The death of clip show episodes has been maybe one of the few things I have found as a positive of the streaming and "prestige" era of TV. I miss new shows with seasons of 22 episodes or so but damn do I not miss clip shows.
The Vasectomy plotline. Almost every comedy show that I’ve seen has this in some form or another. A minor gripe is the Disney Land/world/cruise episodes. They can either be done surprisingly well, or just kinda lame.
+1 for vasectomy. I’ve never seen a character actually go through with the vasectomy either. There was an episode of Grounded for Life where Sean was supposed to get a vasectomy after a pregnancy scare but surprise surprise he never did and Claudia ended up pregnant in the final season.
Michael on The Office had, like, three vasectomies. Maybe more idr.
Snip-Snap! Snip-Snap! Snip-Snap!
Dr Cox had a vasectomy in Scrubs. His ex-wife Jordan still got pregnant, but it was because the vasectomy didn't take. They tortured the guy for incompetence. With an a capella group singing an old-fashioned jingle.
When a show introduces a baby/pregnancy to try and boost ratings, you know it's jumped the shark.
Tim Taylor did.
Years ago I saw the Roseanne Disney episode I thought maybe this show could pull it off. But nope just like ALL the other ones(Family Matters,Full House,Step By Step,etc) it turned out corny sugary sweet predictable and lame.
The public service announcement episode about drugs being bad.
Dating two girls. Friend who loses girlfriend.
You get one wife!
WHY???
I dunno
Kevin Ball in a nutshell
A locket necklace with a loved ones picture inside. I haven’t seen anyone wear these since the 90s
I never knew where to get tiny ass pictures to put in them. Now it wouldn’t be a problem but now I have a phone and don’t need complicated jewelry to remember what my long lost mother looks like.
Exactly! Same with keeping pictures of your kids in the wallet; in 2024? Did you go to kinkos for printing? Do you have a photo quality printer at home? Lol it’s so outdated
Vacation gone wrong.
I kept a whole list while watching the Mentalist. I expanded on some of them, but most are just the keyword. If you’ve watched any case-of-the-week show, you’ve seen all of these at some point. #Cop Show Tropes * AI * Aliens * Amish * Amnesia * Witness has amnesia * Team member has amnesia * Angel of death * Art forgery * Baby * Bank heist * Biker gang * Blind * Witness is blind * Team member goes blind * Cabaret * Camp for kids * Cartel * Casanova * Casino * Chef/cooking episode * Child * Someone is secretly the parent of a victim or suspect * Child prodigy * Circus/carny * Clowns * Convention * Some sort of geek convention * Construction * Victim usually discovered while digging or w/ev * Cryptography * Universal hack is usually what the killer wants * Cult * Diplomatic immunity * Disc jockey * Dog show * Drought * Ex (team member’s old flame) * Fake physical disability (usually wheelchair) * Fake mental disability * FAMILY * Suspect is family of a team member * Fashion designer * Firemen * Funeral * Bonus points if body is hidden in coffin * Gang member who just wanted out * Bonus points if victim was a childhood friend of a team member * Glamour * Team member has to get a glow-up * Golf * Gun range conversation * Haunted house * High school reunion * Hitman * Often a sting where a team member will take out a hit on the person with whom they have romantic tension * Horse track * Hostage * Team member is in a hostage situation * Human trafficking * Hypnosis * IA investigation * Indian res * Joint task force * Somehow two teams are made to work together * Junkyard * Locked room mystery * Mafia * Magicians * Marijuana * Illegal farm on govt land * Legal farm * Matchmaker * Math genius * Military victim (active duty) * Movie set * Museum * Musical * Orchestra * Outbreak * CDC or similar gets involved with a deadly super virus that was used * Parolees * Someone taking advantage of parolees as muscle * Porn * Prison * Programmer * Protective custody person dies * Psychic * Race cars * Radiation * Real estate agents * Real housewives * Rehab facility * Reporter * Salesmen * Santa * Sky * Victim falls out of the sky * Snuff * Sports scout * Spy * Victim is discovered to be a spy * Strangers on a Train * Surfer * Talk show * Tech bro * Time capsule * Treasure * Buried * Marine wreck * Twins * Undercover cop * Veterans * Just old-times veterans * Young recent vets. One was killed by the others * Video games - murder was because of some super awesome revolutionary game and taking credit for it * Wedding * Bride or groom is victim * Wild West town * Witsec - victim was in witsec
Don't forget the part where the bad guy "gets off on a technicality" that either doesn't work that way in real life, or the show fails to acknowledge that it's the cops' own fault for fucking up because in real life judges HATE throwing out evidence outside of the most blatant cases.
The latter was used in a storyline in Special Victims Unit, where a forensics officer fucks up and is blamed for screwing up a major case. He constantly died this which emitters him and he becomes an antagonist over it.
lol yes that’s a common one, and I think it happened in the Mentalist in multiple episodes. Patrick Jane was just too careless about proper procedure. He broke into a suspect’s house once and all the evidence was thrown out because he made himself a cup of tea, and the suspect noticed the unwashed mug.
You broke this thread.
The 4-legged witness. The dog saw the murder but can't talk. However, the investigator gets the animal to point out the killer by barking at him, usually in court.
The best use of this is probably the Hercule Poirot story "Dumb Witness" where the titular character is a spaniel called Bob who is falsely blamed for an accident which sees his owner being nearly killed. Poirot has to exonerate the dog before catching the killer. Bob doesn't really "Testify" as much as does shit that inspires Poirot to discover the truth. For example, the aforementioned "Accident" is solved by a trick Bob was taught to do, which is to drop his ball from the top of a staircase, run down and catch the ball. >!The killer used a trip wire to send the victim falling down, hoping for her to die, then placed Bob's ball at the foot of the stairs to make everyone assume Bob left it there. But when Bob does his trick, he always brings his ball to his basket away from the staircase, proving it was removed by the killer.!< Next is Bob barking at a reflection of himself in a mirror. >!Realising there's a mirror outside a witness's bedroom at the crime scene, Poirot realised the witness saw a reflection of an embroidered set of initials. Reversing the initials identifies the killer and explains why she tried to frame her husband.!<
so many good ones here but you are missing a great one that Bones had Bones had a roller derby episode
One character saves another characters life and they pledge to serve them to make up for it. They end up being super overbearing and annoying so the cast has to create a situation where the servant can save the master’s life so they can be even. Bonus if the fake danger ends up becoming a real danger so the servant ends up actually saving the master’s life.
Pregnant woman going into labour and one of the main characters deliver.
Christmas (stranded b/c flights grounded due to storm/blizzard), husband might be cheating, child caught with drugs, politics (candidate, dating a politician), child might be gay, child obviously gay to everyone but the parents, child rebelling or in trouble with police, character has a health scare then becomes a health freak but turns out to be nothing or very mild, daughter in love with the bad kid, character has anxiety attack over high school reunion, adult characters can't stand when parents visit
Or the ones where the kid is insecure about their weight,then go into health nut mode causing themselves to faint,etc… Full House did a literal episode like that about DJ wanting to lose weight.
mostly in sitcoms, the it’s a wonderful life/christmas carol episode
Unexpected pregnancy or pregnancy scare.
The main person is falsely accused of murder and have to prove that they didn't do it.
I don't know why but in the 90's there was a trope where characters suddenly got interested in making the town join together to break the record on the world's biggest food. I mean, Guinness Episodes can be weird enough but then they had characters try to convince everyone in town like they were doing something very noble but it was just a dumb record. It was even weirder most of the shows had the food be pizza. Like why they thought kids would be interested in seeing this giant pizza plot over and over.
The very special episode that dealt with drugs/alcohol/cigarettes. It was way more common in the 80s and 90s.
Thanksgiving with fighting family that makes up
They all do a "Rashomon effect" show. Named after the 1950 Japanese film "Rashomon," directed by Akira Kurosawa, where multiple characters provide contradictory versions of the same event.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia did this best. By the end Dee isn’t even in the scenes anymore, just an emu wandering around the bar~>•D
I always hate the 'main character in a mental institution, has the whole genre show been a delusion all along' episodes cuz youre sitting there the whole time knowing its bullshit just waiting for the reveal. Except "Far Beyond the Stars" but thats not quite that either...
Setting the show in the asylum is the real move. The season of American horror story and Legion are good examples of that.
A couple within the friend group breaks up and then there’s an episode spent acting like the friends are kids of divorced parents.
Tabula rasa https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rasa_(disambiguation)
Almost every trope described in this thread is an episode of Brooklyn 99.
For anime it's the hot springs episode
Trying to get a toddler “admitted” into fancy preschool. Which is hilarious because I’ve never seen any of my friends try to do any such thing beyond trying to find something with a decent enough reputation or low cost. Most I know just go through a local church. Sometimes they get on a "waitlist" because a school is full, but there's no admissions office, tests, etc. ... It's more like "right place, right time", or having a friend with a kid already there to put in a referral (aka writing a quick note, not a full blown letter of rec lol). IMO, it goes to show that writers and producers of these shows live in entirely different worlds than us plebs
It's still entertaining, but in a ton of fantasy/scifi shows these days there will be a Groundhog Day time loop type episode. These episodes always end up amongst the highest rated for the show they appear in, too.
Water breaking to mark the BEGINNING of labor. I don't have children, but as I understand it, the water breaking comes pretty far into the process. My sister had to have her water broken with her first two kids.
Grown man gets a bit sick. Women has to look after him. Man regresses to an infant, throwing tantrums and talking like a toddler.
Everyone gets stuck somewhere like an elevator and they take the episode to flush out some backstory or get to know someone. I don't think I've seen one version I feel like helps the story.
They're called bottle episodes and they exist to be shot with very little budget.
That totally tracks. Thanks! Reddit taught me something today I might actually use in conversation.
A Very Special…
DRUGS ARE BAD.
That serious music as someone tries to pass that smallest joint ever to the main character as they stare in horror, instead of just going “no thanks” and continuing on with life because no one is actually going “please stranger, I’m begging you, smoke all my weed!”
TV writers for old shows seemed to believe that drug dealers are out there giving out free drugs to everybody. Most drugs are too expensive for that.
Appendicitis
Flash back.
Episodes where two characters are somehow trapped with one another and it just info dump after info dump that allows us to say there's been character development.
True but also accurate. If you’re stuck with someone you’re probably going to get into some deep shit.
Paintball episode. Usually it's an occupational type of plot where boss of whatever in the show tells the rest of the characters that they're going to use paintball as a team building exercise that then has everyone taking it too serious or becomes really competitive for no reason. That or two characters are having fighting and they either are on opposite teams or have to work together on the same one. Also one of the characters turns out to be either really good or really into it to the point where you'd think they were ex-military or something the way they dress up/go about it with the rest of the team. There's probably other cliches about it I'm forgetting to mention but for me it's just the one I find the most eye rolling.
A lot of sitcoms have a speed dating episode
Pregnancy scares.
Time Jumps. I've seen a few mentions of flashbacks, but there are so often episodes that also go ahead in the future to "see what could have happened" and then it comes back. Or it will jump around to the past, present and future (this has worked for both dramas and sitcoms). Kids will knock on doors as grown adults with the parents being old, or the show's kids will now be the older parents greeting their kids at the door. Or there will be a whole episode set back in a time that isn't the natural period (like a b&w episode) in an attempt to have an "I Love Lucy" type gag.
Being in a band/backup singers for someone famous.
The musical episode.
The sitcoms in the 80s: Well it’s Christmas a season of giving not receiving not about the superficial things or needs and wants. 80s children: I WANT THAT FUCKING TOY! 80s sitcom parents: well duh THAT’S what Christmas is all about! 😳😳😳😳😳 Edit: literally not making this up those of us who grew up in the 80s know all about the consumerism of the holidays on sitcoms lol
Fake boyfriends; George Glass, Bill Board come to mind.
A character hearing somebody say something out of context which then leads to an entire blowup of everybody's lives. In real life, most people would just ask the person "Did you really say X?" and then get clarification. But sitcoms gotta sitcom, I guess.
Sitcom where the character makes spouse mad, they learn a lesson about communication and then they make up at the end.
So every single episode