TV Shows with Unusual Episode Title Formats

ixoy

What shows are you aware of that use a slightly-odd, unusual, or a very regular format to their episode titles?

The obvious example is Friends, where every episode is "The One with ...".

Other examples:

"The Mentalist" - Every episode title has red in it (or some shade of it, such as russet)

"Smallville" - Every episode title is one word (even 8 seasons on).

"Chuck" - Each title is "Chuck vs....".

"Bones" - Slightly harder to describe but it's normally of the format noun preposition noun - e.g. "The Girl in the Basket" or "The Frog in the Tree".

"Eli Stone" - In its first season, every episode title was also the name of a George Michael song.

"24" - Each episode title is the hour it's set in.

"Damages" - The episode title is always a line of dialogue from the show (and often a bit of an obscure one).

Anyone notice any others?

AlmightyCushion

ixoy wrote: »

"Damages" - The episode title is always a line of dialogue from the show (and often a bit of an obscure one).

Lost do that quite a bit as well I believe.

phasers

Scrubs is always "My ___" or "His/Her ____"

Basq

Guess we can close probably close the thread now!

From here! (contains plenty of spoilers):

* Supernatural always names its episodes after classic songs - for example, an episode where a town's local children are being possessed is called 'The Kids Are Alright', and the episode where

John Winchester dies

is called 'In My Time Of Dying'. Many such songs are also played in various episodes.
* Most likely because the fans will probably refer to the episodes this way anyway, most episodes of Friends follow the pattern "The One With ____" or "The One Where ____". The only exception is the finale ("The Last One"), and to some extent, "The One That Could Have Been" (the what-if ep) and "The One Hundredth".
o There was actually an interview somewhere in which the writing staff explained that they "wanted to name them what people were going to be calling them anyway".
* The Friends Spin Off Joey uses a similar naming convention, in which each episode is titled "Joey and the ____".
o One reason why Coupling has been considered a British version of Friends, is that several episodes have titles staring with "The Girl With" - this was a Running Gag that started when the boys were suggesting names for a hypothetical porn film in which a woman's breasts had independent brains, with suggestions like "The Girl With Two Brains" (Steve: "Three brains, Patrick!") and "The Girl With Two Breasts" (Steve: "That's the worst one yet!"), the latter being the title of the episode.
* Seinfeld uses a subtler convention, in which each episode follows the pattern "The ____". What followed was a term or important aspect of the episodes story like "The Chinese Restaurant" and "The Serenity Now." The only exception in the entire show's run is the second episode "Male-Unbonding".
o Apparently the reason they did it was so they wouldn't spend a whole lot of time thinking of an episode name that people would never see anyway.
o Some episode guides list the title as "The Male Unbonding" to bring this one in line with the others.
o The OC did the same — even when this led to odd constructions like "The My Two Dads".
* Every episode of Greys Anatomy shares its title with a popular song, though the songs chosen run the gamut of genres and eras.
o Ditto for Alf.
o And Goodnight Sweetheart.
o And May To December.
o And Degrassi The Next Generation, though they producers get even more specific. Every episode title is an song from the 80's.
* Grey's spinoff, Private Practice, seems to be going the Friends route, as each of its episodes starts with "In Which..."
* In La Femme Nikita, first-season episodes titles were one word long, second-season episode titles were two words, and so forth (the show ran for five seasons.)
* The NBC spy comedy Chuck titles its episodes "Chuck Vs. the ___" (usually a geek reference).
o The second episode is "Chuck Vs. the Helicopter", which looks funny when you see it on an episode guide after "Pilot".
+ Isn't the pilot named "Chuck Vs. the Intersect" ?
* During the first season of Dawsons Creek, each episode was named after a classic or popular movie.
* Every episode of Scrubs follows the naming convention "My ____", as it is told from the perspective of J.D., the main character. The only exceptions are episodes told from the perspective of other characters in the show, which are called either "His Story" or "Her Story", with a number (or, in one example, "Their Story").
o At one point the writers persuade themselves that they're terribly clever and name an episode "My Ocardial Infarction" (a myocardial infarction is a heart attack).
* Each episode of Boston Public was named "Chapter _____", with the titular number corresponding to the episode number.
* Every episode of Wonderfalls mentions an animal in the title, and is also two words.
* Fitting with the premise of the show, episodes of 24 are titled with the time period represented during the episode. For example "2:00 a.m.-3:00 a.m.". To disambiguate episodes in different seasons, subsequent seasons named episodes in the following manner: "Day 2: 2:00 a.m.-3:00 a.m.".
* Every episode of the first season of War Of The Worlds took its title from a biblical reference.
* Remington Steele incorporated the word "Steele" into most of its titles, usually as a pun.
* Knight Rider did the same with the word "Knight". Most particularly, the season openers (except for the second season) used titles of the form "Knight of the _______": "Knight of the Phoenix", "Knight of the Drones", "Knight of the Juggernaut".
o The 2008 revival has returned to this convention, though there isn't too many variations you can take from that pattern.
* Power Rangers occasionally uses a set formula for a season's episodes.
o Power Rangers Zeo used mangled song, movie, or book titles, such as Brother, Can You Spare an Arrowhead, Bulk Fiction, The Ranger Who Came In From the Gold, and A Brief Mystery of Time.
o During Bruce Kalish's run on the series, episode titles had a set number of words: Power Rangers SPD episodes used single-word titles, Mystic Force's titles were always two words long (though they fudged it with "The Snow Prince", and Operation Overdrive's were always three words long. As expected, Jungle Fury went with four word titles, but in addition, they're all pre-90's music (mainly rock) references. With Kalish's departure, RPM returns to regular episode naming, seen in the first twelve seasons.
* Almost every episode of Dragnet used a title of the form "The Big ______".
* Every episode of Love American Style used a title of the form "Love and the ______" or "Love in the _____".
* Every episode of Monk begins with the words "Mr. Monk", e.g. "Mr. Monk Goes to the Circus", "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine", etc.
o Lampshaded in the episode "Mr. Monk and his Biggest Fan", where Marci tells Monk she has named all of his cases, with the names being the real-world episode titles. Monk is baffled why anyone would bother.
* The last few episodes of News Radio's second season were named after Led Zeppelin albums, such as Presence and Coda. Just in case you missed the joke, a third season episode was finally titled Led Zeppelin Boxed Set. Though this wasn't done for idiosyncratic reasons as much as laziness on the part of the writers. (And just in case you were curious, none of the episode titles have anything to do with the episode's contents.)
o Was that episode a Clip Show perhaps?
+ No, just a regular episode. News Radio never did a clip show.
* Every episode title of The L Word is a word or phrase that starts with the letter "L". Examples are "Longing", "L'Ennui", "Labia Majora", "Life, Loss, Leaving" and "Lobsters".
* Episode titles of The Wild Wild West always began with "The Night of the _____" or "The Night the _____".
* Each episode of Still Standing begins with the word "Still": "Still Bad", "Still Losin' It", etc.
* The Man From UNCLE used titles of the form "The ________ Affair".
o And each individual act of every episode was subtitled, usually with a quote from the dialogue in that act.
* The Amazing Race (starting with season 2) and Survivor (starting with Cook Islands) refer to their episodes with quotes from the episodes. (For TAR, it has become quite a sport guessing who says the quote.)
o While not a reality show, Two And A Half Men does this as well. Usually it's a weird or obscure line from the show (e.g. "Humiliation is a Visual Medium")
* Another Reality TV example is Americas Next Top Model, titling its episodes "The Girl Who/With ___". (Main drawback: The show has had 3 of its 10 cycles so far end with an episode titled "The Girl Who Becomes America's Next Top Model": cycles 1, 7, 8, and 9.)
* Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry is a Stephen Sondheim fan, and so uses Sondheim songs as the titles of his episodes.
* On Nip/Tuck, the episodes are named after the main patient undergoing surgery at McNamara/Troy that episode.
o This has interesting potential for drama; when you see an episode named after a major character, you know something is happening. Of course, it also gave us the episode "Quentin Costa," in which we learn the identity of the Carver, which we had been waiting for for about two seasons. Three guesses what's funny about that title.
* Starting with the fifth, each season of That 70's Show picked an appropriate band and used their song titles for every episode. (In order, the bands were Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, and Queen.)
* Smallville always uses one-word titles.
* Law And Order shows usually use one-word titles, often using words with a double-meaning. For example, the SVU episode "Taken" appears to be about a kidnapping, but it turns out to be a con job. A particularly egregious example would be the episode "Head," about a woman who rapes a boy in a bathroom because she has a brain tumor.
* Blackadder from season 2 onwards.
o Every episode title in Blackadder II is a concrete noun, which appears on the table in the opening credits.
o Every episode title in Blackadder the Third takes the form "<short noun> and <alliterative longer noun>", playing on the Austen titles Pride And Prejudice and Sense And Sensibility. (One of them is called "Sense and Senility".)
o Every episode title in Blackadder Goes Forth, except the finale ("Goodbyeee"), is a plot-significant pun on a military rank ("Captain Cook", "Corporal Punishment", "General Hospital", etc.) They are also lettered as Plans A-F.
* Special case: Emily's Reasons Why Not had every episode except the pilot have a title starting with "Why Not To", e.g., "Why Not to Date Your Gynecologist". However, only the pilot ever aired in the US.
* Episode titles of Bones are all formatted "The [victim] in the [place]" ("The Woman in the Sand," "The Superhero in the Alley"). Exceptions are "The Man on Death Row" and "The Graft in the Girl," which follow the linguistic pattern but do not refer directly to the victim, and "The Girl With The Curl," which is just out of left field as far as the pattern goes. ("The Truth in the Lye," while a horrible pun, still technically refers to the victim.)
o The 4th season premiere had "The Yanks in the UK" which was talking about Booth and Brennan.
+ Possibly, but the victim (and her family) in that episode were also Americans. Booth was asked to help specifically because the victim's father was a powerful American businessman.
* 3rd Rock from the Sun always worked "Dick" into the title. That's what happens when you downsize standards and practices. For those who don't know, that's the name of the male lead.
o On a DVD Commentary, one of the writers explained that they created these titles to amuse themselves, thinking they would never be seen by the public due to the series having no Episode Title Card. They were wrong.
* Similarly, every episode of Slings And Arrows after the first two was titled with a Shakespeare quote.
o More specifically, a quote from the play that was being rehearsed that season (Hamlet in S1, Macbeth in S2, and King Lear in S3)
* Though there was no idiosyncratic system for episode titles on Babylon Five, every season had one significant episode whose title also doubled as the overall name of the season, fitting in with the concept that the show was a series of novels for television. The titles were "Signs and Portents" (season 1); "The Coming of Shadows" (season 2); "Point of No Return" (season 3); "No Surrender, No Retreat" (season 4); and "The Wheel of Fire" (season 5).
* Freaks And Geeks had many episode titles that combined two rhyming thematic words: "Beers and Weirs," "Carded and Discarded," "Tests and Breasts".
o Some non-rhyming examples: "Tricks and Treats", "Girlfriends and Boyfriends", "Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers", "Discos and Dragons".
* The X Files sometimes used complimentary or opposing episode names for multi-part and mytharc episodes: "The End"/"The Beginning," "Two Fathers"/"One Son," "Biogenesis"/"The Sixth Extinction I & II," "Within"/"Without."
o Perhaps "Deadalive" was the result of a shortened two-parter?
o Most of the time, though, episodes titles for The X Files were extremely vague words or phrases brought up by a single line of dialogue or some other subtle or insignificant aspect of the episode, and the titles were simply there so the creators had something to refer to each individual episode as.
* The Sopranos, after a few episodes, started to have a somewhat idiosyncratic naming convention where each episode had a title that would be spoken aloud by a character somewhere in the episode (one of the best of the early episodes titled in this manner was "Nobody Knows Anything"). AS the series went on, the titles themselves became more idiosyncratic, and some viewers (*cough* Television Without Pity *cough*) started actively checking to see how long it took before the writers managed to work the title into the dialogue ("Fleshy Part Of The Thigh", anyone?).
o The British private eye series Public Eye did the "random dialogue as episode title" thing before, and Damages also uses it.
* Doctor Who has a venerable tradition of titles in the format, "The (noun) of (scary abstract noun)", i.e. "The Hand of Fear", "The Robots of Death", "City of Death", "The Seeds of Doom", and so forth. The audio drama ...ish hung a lampshade on this when the Doctor mentioned an encounter with the sentient word called The Adjective of Noun. Eventually parodied with The Curse of Fatal Death.
o And of course, there's always "(The) X of the Daleks". Way to spoil the surprise, BBC. Averted by the new series, until "Evolution of the Daleks" (And even then, "Dalek" and "Daleks in Manhattan" still gave away their appearances despite not following the convention.).
* Batman: the episodes of the 1966 series have names that rhyme (sometime approximatively) two by two. Episodes 21 and 22 of the first season, for instance, are called "The Penguin Goes Straight" and "Not Yet, He Ain't".
o Batman The Brave And The Bold did a shout-out to this with the first two-parter being named "Deep Cover for Batman" and "Game Over for Owlman".
* Just learned this one, iCarly episodes are of the form "i<Insert Phrase Here>"
* The Showtime drama Brotherhood had all its Season 1 episodes titled after Bible verses. For a bit of a shift, all the Season 2 episodes were named after Dylan songs.
* Everybody Hates Chris: Every episode title has the form "Everybody Hates _____".
* Every episode of Police Squad! had two titles. At the end of the intro, the name of the episode would be given on screen, and at the same time, a voiceover would read out a completely different title. Which one was actually relevant to the episode varied.
* Neighbours had episode titles that form utterly terrible puns, often based on a song or literary allusion that has something to do with the plot of the episode, such as (this troper's favorite) 'Assault and Pepper'. Thankfully, they have now stopped releasing the names of episodes
* The titles for season two of Carnivale referred to the town in which the Carnivale set up camp - i.e. "Ingram, TX", "Cheyenne, WY", and the finale, "New Caanan, CA" - or where Ben Hawkins was discovering more bits of the End Game - "Alamagordo, NM", "Old Cherry Blossom Road", etc. The first season did this somewhat - "Babylon", "The River" - but if it'd stuck to the trope, we wouldn't have such fun titles as "The Day That Was the Day".
* Super Sentai does this occasionally. Episodes are numbered, and a season's titles will have something in place of "episode" that's appropriate to the season, such as "Stage 1" or "Task 2" or "Quest 3." Naming trends also exist, such as Hurricanger's "X and Y" titles, Abaranger's working "Abare" (or something derived from the term) into every title, and Dekaranger's not-always-followed trend of two-word English titles.
* The World War Two TV show The Rat Patrol episodes were always The "____________" Raid.
* Every episode of The Middle Man is The "_____" "______" "______", such as "The Accidental Occidental Conception".
* The Blair Brown US TV series The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd had every episode title starting with "Here" or "Here's". Most of the first season episode titles began with "Here's Why", the rest mostly began "Here's a". Some episode titles: Here's why you should always have a cake burning in the refrigerator, Here's why you should never wear high heels to the bank, and Here's a side effect of serious moonlight.
* The Big Bang Theory phrases its episode titles like scientific terminology. ("The Fuzzy Boots Corollary", "The Hamburger Postulate", "The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization", etc.)
* Episodes of The King Of Queens that crossover with Everybody Loves Raymond include a pun on Ray in the title. ("Road Rayge", "Rayny Day", "Dire Strayts")
* Every episode of the first season of Eli Stone shared its title with a George Michael song.
* The Mentalist uses the word "Red" in it's titles, sometimes fitting the episode (i.e. "Red Hair and Silver Tape" which refers to the trait of the victims and the item used to bind them.)
* Leverage episode titles use the form "The _______ Job".
* Gossip Girl always based the episode titles on movies. Examples: "The Blair Bitch Project" from The Blair Witch Project, "Desperately Seeking Serena" based on Desperately Seeking Susan, "Never Been Marcused" based on Never Been Kissed etc.
* The first season of The Drew Carey Show had many episodes with titles related to chemistry. Also parodied itself with episode 10, titled "Science Names Suck".
* ''Skins titles are the first name of the main character that they focus on.
* All of the episode titles in Are You Afraid Of The Dark begin with "The Tale of", eg "The Tale of the Lonely Ghost" or "The Tale of Laughing in the Dark".
* The episode titles of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place were modeled after the title of the show, following the pattern "Two Guys, a Girl and ________". When the show was renamed simply Two Guys and a Girl, the pattern was dropped.
* In HannahMontana, every single episode is named after a song, including the pilot: "Lilly, Do You Want To Know A Secret?" Other examples include "Oops! I Meddled Again," "Welcome To The Bungle," and "I Want You To Want Me... To Go To Florida."
* Episode titles of Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia describe what happens in the episode, usually referring to the main characters as "The Gang." The title card serves as a punchline by bluntly affirming or contradicting the last line of the cold opening. For example, just after Frank insists that no one is going to get hurt by his scheme, the title appears: "Frank Sets Sweet Dee on Fire."
* The pilot episode for Caroline In The City used the same title as the series itself, but every subsequent episode title used some variant of "Caroline and the _____".
* Every episode of the short-lived sitcom Alright Already had a title of "Again with the _____".
* A considerable number of M*A*S*H episodes took their titles from classic movies or songs. These could be either taken straight ("It Happened One Night", "Hey, Look Me Over"), slightly adjusted ("Hawkeye Get Your Gun", "A War for All Seasons"), or turned into horrible puns ("U.N. the Night and the Music", "The Novocaine Mutiny"). The title of the series' final episode ("Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen") was paraphrased from a line in Cole Porter's song "Just One of Those Things".

JP Liz

Friends

Nip Tuck

muffinman

Not mentioned there, One Tree Hill episode are all named after songs (and the show itself is too..)

ProperDeadly

All Desperate Housewives episodes are named after songs from Sondheim musicals.

chalkitdown1

Brotherhood had different themed titles for each season.

Season 1 used the names of Bible passages.
Season 2 had Bob Dylan lyrics.
Season 3 used Shakespeare quotes.

tony1kenobi

basquille wrote: »

Guess we can close probably close the thread now!

If people had a sixth sense, and that sense was fun, you would still only have your five senses.

I had a run of at least six there I could have listed...............

Minto

All Two and a Half Men episodes are named after a line of dialogue used in the episode.