The One With The Title Patterns
Posted on | December 5, 2008 at 10:34 pm | 3 Comments
There’s an interesting article up at the TV Squad blog about the episode naming patterns of some current television shows. Fascinating stuff. For example, I had no idea that the titles of Desperate Housewives episodes were Sondheim songs. But what I know about Stephen Sondheim could fill a carbon nanotube.
Okay, well, this is fascinating to me, though I’m not sure most people care. I’ve always been into episode titles since I was a kid. There’s just something about them that makes the show seem more real, more substantial. It’s like the writers and producers have more invested in the series if they bother to title individual episodes. Of course, one thing I realize now that I didn’t know back then was that pretty much all shows had episode titles even if they weren’t shown. In these days of the DVR and the Internet (not to mention TV on DVD) it’s easy to see what the titles were on those old shows.
Very few shows these days display the episode titles, though I almost always know what they are anyway from the episode info description on the DVR. If they have titles, why don’t they show them? Probably because they have to reserve too much room for the rest of the episode credits, especially in these days when very few shows have separate opening title sequences (another thing I dearly miss) and instead list the regular credits over the opening action along with the guest stars.
I can only think of a couple of shows that I regularly watch that display the actual episode title in the show: Heroes, Dexter, Stargate Atlantis, True Blood. Probably one or two others. Sometimes the title will actually give away something that happens in the episode and will act as a sort of mini-spoiler, but that’s rare. (And maybe that’s another reason they don’t display them.) Science Fiction shows seem to have episode titles more often than other types of shows, probably because it’s a more of a writerly genre. One of the things I loved about Babylon 5 was the episode titles and how much thought was put into them. I can still remember when “The Coming of Shadows” flashed across the screen and brought chills to my spine. Not to mention “Z’Ha’Dum”.
But the best reason for giving a show episode titles is probably just so you can have something to refer to them by. Instead of saying “The episode of Bablyon 5 where the station declared independence from Earth”, you only have to mention “Severed Dreams” and everyone knows what you’re talking about.
Latre.
Spock’s Brain!
Pet Peeve of the Day: I’m not sure I like the new look of Google Reader. Why can’t people leave Good Enough alone? Also, I’ve just upgraded to Firefox 3 and there’s some thing I don’t like there as well.
Comments
3 Responses to “The One With The Title Patterns”
December 7th, 2008 @ 8:53 pm
The titles for Big Bang Theory episodes are always ultra-nerdy, as you would expect.
December 7th, 2008 @ 10:46 pm
Yeah, that was one of the ones covered in the TV Squad article. They are amazingly similar to the titles for The Middleman.
I watch BBT, even though it’s sort of turned into The Sheldon Show.
December 11th, 2008 @ 5:02 am
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