Here We Go Again / Live-Action TV

Here We Go Again! in Live-Action TV. This is an Ending Trope, so beware of spoilers.

---

• The Addams Family: At the end of "Amnesia in the Addams Family", Gomez no longer has amnesia, but Fester (apparently) now has it.
• Arrested Development almost repeats itself as well. Just like in the pilot, the family is having a party on a boat to celebrate Michael becoming the new CEO, and the SEC arrives. (Buster even acknowledges that "They still have boats?") However, this time, they arrive to arrest Lucile. Inverting this trope at the last minute, Michael leaves with his son (and apparently his father) instead of staying to keep his family and the business intact.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003), possibly. The series was all about a Robot War (actually multiple Robot Wars in the distant past), so its Arc Words ("All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.") sounds a bit... chilling upon the series' Distant Finale ending with the camera showing a news report of our present day covering advances in robotics technology. Head!Six and Head!Baltar even lampshade this, though the former is somewhat hopeful that the cycle may be broken.
  Six: Commercialism, decadence, technology run amok... remind you of anything?
  Baltar: Take your pick: Kobol... Earth... the real Earth before this one... Caprica before the Fall...
• In episode 6, Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory the episode begins and ends with Sheldon having a fangirl graduate student asking him if he wants dinner. He should have learnt after the first time.
• Cheers began the series with Sam Malone coming out of the back room, turning on the lights and opening the bar. The series ended with Sam locking the bar, turning off the lights, and strolling back into the back room.
• On an episode of Clarissa Explains It All, Clarissa develops a crush on the local TV weatherman. At the end, she gets rid of her crush after realizing that the weatherman was just a big airhead, and develops a new crush on the sports guy.
• Dead Man's Gun: "The Bounty Hunter" ends with the events being All Just a Dream, However, as the protagonist goes about his business the next morning, the old crone reappears and begins the conversation that will end with him being offered the gun.
• Doctor Who: "Planet of the Spiders" ends with the Doctor regenerating. His friend the Brigadier reacts by saying, "Well, here we go again."
• Frasier:
  • The episode "Adventures in Paradise, part 2" has Frasier staying at an expensive hotel, only to destroy his bed in a paranoid attempt to get at his ex-wife Lilith, who is staying in the next room, which turns out to be for nothing since Lilith wasn't even in the room at the time, and Frasier gets billed for damages. The episode ends with him back in the resort with Niles, who informs him there's a large insect in the room he wants dealt with. In the credits, Frasier's animated attempts to swat the bug lead him right back to the bed, which he begins assaulting the same way he did earlier.
  • One episode has Niles get into a fight with his wife's fencing instructor, partly brought on by Frasier's poor grasp of German (the man's Bavarian) and Marta the maid's poor grasp of English pronouns. Once everything's settled down, Marta's pronoun trouble causes the instructor to think Frasier, who's trying to tell the man to reconnect with his wife, is flirting with him, and he attacks again.
  • The episode "Good Grief" has the characters dealing with Frasier going through the Five Stages of Grief as a fallout of him losing his job in the previous season's cliffhanger ending. After finally getting to Acceptance, the end of the episode has Frasier, finally back to normal, talking with Niles, who comments on his divorce from Maris, and the signs for the 5 Stages pop up again in the next, showing now the Frasier is about to deal with Niles going through all 5 Stages.
• In the Series Finale of Gossip Girl, former outsider Dan Humphrey, alias Gossip Girl, has passed on the mantle to another guy on the outside looking in on the rich kids.
• The B-plot of Hang Time episode "Fuller's Rival" starts out with Julie and Kristy vying for the attention of a guy who works at the hotel where the team stays. Towards the end of the episode, after the guy in question, when asked to pick between Julie and Kristy, decides to Dump Them All since he's already married, both Julie and Kristy take the news well because each of them has found a new crush by then... except they have a crush on the same guy again.
  Mary Beth: Uh-uh. I'm staying out of this one.
• Hotel del Luna ends with the appearance of new hotel owner.
• The Distant Finale of How I Met Your Mother ends with Ted showing up on Robin's doorstep, holding the bue French horn.
• iCarly:
  • At the end of "iPromise Not to Tell", Sam is given multiple detentions after confessing she changed Carly's grades in the school computer. Once everyone has gone, Sam breaks into the computer again to lower her detentions; however, Carly drags her out before it is finalized.
  • "iStage an Intervention" ends with Carly getting Spencer's addiction to the Pac-Rat game and ends up playing all night, prompting Spencer to take her to bed the following morning.
  • "iWas a Pageant Girl" ends with Spencer and Freddie starting their "What Am I?" game all over again after Carly and Sam revealed what they were.
  • "iGot a Hot Room" has Carly's room burnt down from Spencer's gummy bear lamp and later redecorated with an exceedingly large reimbursement check; one of the new additions includes another gummy bear lamp. Fortunately for Spencer, he made those fire-retardant.
• Kenan & Kel often ended their episodes this way with the two addressing the audience after their latest misadventure. Kenan would come up with another zany scheme and tell Kel to meet him somewhere and bring something before dashing off. Kel would complain for a bit before yelling out "Awwwww, here it goes!"
• The Magic Mountain episode "Missing Friends" starts with Panda and Dragon arguing about who is the better friend whch causes their friendship to fall out. After Dragon rescues her from falling down a cliff, she states that he truly is the better friend but only for him to disagree and it ends with them arguing about it again.
• The Masters of Horror episode "Jenifer" ends with Jenifer attaching herself to yet another ignorant man whom she plans to use to cover up for her continuing murders after he kills the hero to save the "helpless" woman.
• Mimpi Metropolitan: A storyline starts in the ending of episode 1 when Bambang, Alan and Prima accidentally burn Mami Bibir's bag and they must earn enough money to pay the very-high compensation. It ends in episode 6 when they finally could pay the compensation. But in the ending of that episode, Bambang, Alan and Prima accidentally burn a stranger's jacket while celebrating and the stranger demands that they must pay a very-high compensation.
• An episode of The Monkees that dealt with gambling addiction ended with Mike telling the viewer that they were going with the Here We Go Again! ending by cutting to Micky winning big at a slot machine.
• Mystery Science Theater 3000:
  • "The Giant Spider Invasion" ends with Pearl, upset that she missed her test subjects' reactions to the movie due to being caught up in an extended parody of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, re-send the movie to the Satellite of Love.
    Mike & the Bots: Movie sign! Again!
  • While "Diabolik" does have Mike and the Bots escaping the Satellite of Love and returning to Earth, the episode ends with Mike, Crow, and Tom Servo sharing an apartment, riffing on a TV broadcast of The Crawling Eye (the same movie that was featured in the very first episode, albeit with an entirely different cast of actors).
    Crow: This movie looks kinda familiar, doesn't it?
  • Some episodes will have a movie start its ending similarly to its start, prompting the hecklers to groan that the movie's starting over again.
• Very frequent on Odd Squad:
  • The ending of "The Trouble With Centigurps" has Octavia opening the same canister that Otto opened at the beginning of the episode...which, in turn, causes the lone Centigurp inside to quickly multiply and start bouncing all around the room. The episode ends on a Smash to Black as Octavia cries out for help.
  • "The Odd Antidote": Oprah is cured, returns to her normal human form, and leaves. It doesn't even take a minute before Otto accidentally leans too close to Mr. Greenjeans and gets sprayed by it.
  Otto: So. Back to the ogre?
  • Throughout "No Ifs, Ands or Robots", Otto is forced to endure Odenbacker and his misunderstanding of the agent's request to get a new badge. At the end of the episode, he finds that his badge, along with Olive and Oscar's badges, were destroyed when trying to stop Oscarbot 10, and as such, they are all forced to wait for new badges as Odenbacker tries to figure out whether they needed badges or "fladges".
  • In "Night Shift", Olympia and Otis attempt to catch a Skunkbat that is moving about town. The Director that runs the night shift, Mr. O, catches it...but then immediately sets it free afterwards, true to the night shift's saying of "if you love something, set it free". Otis remarks that it's going to be a long night.
  • "Dr. O No": Oprah remarks to Oona how she must miss Olly now that she's gone. Oona, who was tormented by the former Odd Squad Doctor's repeated requests for help and general kookiness throughout the episode, responds that she'll be fine, under the belief that Olly is gone for good. Unfortunately, Oprah informs her that Olly wasn't fired — she was transferred, all the way down to the Food and Beverage department (which was the same department whose employees she had suspicions about). Olly then walks by and asks "Ooda" if she wants a flatbread sandwich, and the Scientist wears a look of terror as a Scare Chord plays and the episode ends.
  • "Other Olympia": After the name-off between Olympia and Other Olympia concludes and the former is named the winner, Oprah introduces a new hire to Precinct 13579, an Investigation agent named Otis. The Otis who is Olympia's partner then immediately rips off his tie and throws it to the ground, declaring another name-off.
  • "Portalandia": Orla successfully rescues her teammates from the 17th Dimension and begins thanking them, telling them that from now on she'll think things through instead of acting impulsively, but gets interrupted by Opal pointing out that the plant they were originally supposed to bring to the dimension has come back to Tokyo with them. Cue Orla completely disregarding the lesson, excitedly asking permission to react without thinking, and then throwing herself at the plant.
  • At the end of "Substitute Agents", Oxley decides to take a picture to celebrate his and Olanda's victory against Sue Venir. Unfortunately, he uses the villainess's camera, which causes the Mobile Unit agents and Olanda to turn into a snowglobe souvenir, being trapped inside of a snowglobe and slowly beginning to turn into plastic figurines.
• Once Upon a Time ends its sixth season with a moment of this: with Emma's story finally concluded and all the main characters having finally reached their happy endings, the camera slowly pans back from a final Crowded-Cast Shot...to reveal that the same image is contained in a new version of the "Once Upon A Time" book, owned by a young girl traveling alone on a light rail in Seattle. It's then revealed, in a scene strikingly similar to the first episode, that this girl is the daughter of a post-Time Skip Henry Mills, and that a member of the Charming family who has lost their memory of magic must now help their long-lost child break a curse affecting their family in a remote town.
• The Outer Limits (1995):
  • At the end of "The Sandkings, Part Two", a colony of Sandkings has established itself in an isolated wooded area. In "The Voice of Reason", Randall Strong warns of the threat that they pose, while "Final Appeal" reveals that it took the better part of a decade to eradicate them.
  • In the final scene of "Under the Bed", one of the child-snatching creatures is hiding under the bed of a little girl in Paris.
  • In the final scene of "The New Breed", the cut on Judy Ledbetter's finger is healed within seconds, indicating that her fiancée Dr. Andy Groenig passed the nanobots onto her while they were having sex and that she will experience the same transformation that he went through.
  • In "First Anniversary", a hideous (but nice) alien turns herself into a beautiful woman to marry an average-looking dude. After he finds out what she really looks like when the effect wears off after a year and is driven to madness, the alien is last seen changing her form again to seduce one of her husband's colleagues. (Considering that the revelation left the last husband insane and the one before dead, maybe she wasn't so nice after all.)
  • At the end of "Donor", it is revealed that the supposedly dead Dr. Renee Stuyvescent is still alive, having received a full body transplant. She is secretly observing Dr. Peter Halstead and Deirdre Laird at a soccer match. The implication is that she will once again try to kill Deirdre so that Peter can be hers.
  • In the final scene of "The Gun", the alien calling himself Donald Finley is at another gun show trying to recruit mercenaries to fight for his people in their ongoing war.
  • In the final scene of "The Surrogate", Dr. Deanston introduces a young surrogate mother named Debbie, who has recently been implanted with an alien parasite, to the surrogacy support group in his clinic.
• The Partridge Family: At the beginning of "My Son, the Feminist," the family discovers that Keith accidentally signed them up to perform at a feminist rally. At the end of the episode, they find out that Danny accidentally signed them up to perform for a group of Moral Guardians. The ensuing argument is almost identical to the one at the beginning of the episode.
• The Prisoner (1967) ended with... the opening credits.
• Seinfeld did this for the entire series, ending its last episode with the main characters in jail, having exactly the same conversation that opened the first episode.
• Space Precinct: One episode opens with Brogan and Haldane under Internal Affairs investigation after a pursuit ends in a shootout and a dead suspect. After they deal with a plot to destroy evidence and interfere with witnesses to set Brogan up and are returned to active duty, the last scene has the two officers in their police cruiser starting their shift... and then Dispatch sends out an all-call about a vehicle fleeing the scene of an armed robbery, which is eerily similar to the call that got them benched in the first place. Brogan and Haldane hang an exasperated lampshade on this trope, and then hit the lights and siren. Roll credits.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "Realm of Fear", just after Barclay has overcome his fear of transporters (we hope), O'Brien introduces him to his pet tarantula. O'Brien goes to get a couple drinks... and Barclay's eyes widen at the sight of the spider crawling on his arm.
  Barclay: Uh... chief?
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: "The Wire" has Bashir and Garak reference this while talking about The Never-Ending Sacrifice, an example of a form of Cardassian literature known as the Repetitive Epic. In this case, the characters of the novel in question are seven generations of the same family going through the same experiences working to serve the Cardassian state. Garak considers it a classic; Bashir considers it boring.
• In the Still Game episode "Dial-a-Bus", Davie the bus driver, who is suffering stress, snaps and drives the characters to the middle of nowhere. Jack and Victor manage to talk him down and he takes them back to Craiglang. As they get off, Winston (who missed all this because he had his own subplot) gets on and casually insults Davie with a phrase that just happens to trigger the exact issue he explained to Jack and Victor. Cue Davie driving off while singing "Magical Mystery Tour".
• In Johnny Carson's 17th anniversary telecast of The Tonight Show, a clip of Dom DeLuise's trick with raw eggs was shown. The trick, while successful, led to Johnny going a little wacky and tossing eggs at everyone and cracking eggs on Dom's head, in Dom's pants, and finally his own pants. It had presumably settled down as Johnny introduced the next guest, Burt Reynolds. Johnny, in voiceover, said "Here we go again," as Burt had brought out a can of whipped cream, starting up another slapstick episode, this time with him and Burt.
• The Twilight Zone (1959):
  • In "Mr. Dingle the Strong", comical Martians give the milquetoast title character Super-Strength. Hilarity ensues until the Martians take Dingle's strength back — but they then recommend him to comical Venusians who need a human test subject to give super-intelligence...
  • "Shadow Play" ends with a character waking up from his dream... but as it turns out, it's a recurring one.
• The Twilight Zone (1985):
  • In the final scene of "A Day in Beaumont", a young couple approach the local sheriff and tell him that they witnessed the crash of a Flying Saucer, exactly as Dr. Kevin Carlson and Faith did. This time, however, the sheriff has Kevin's face.
  • In "The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon", the psychiatrist Jeremy Sinclair is visited by a young woman who asks him to try and help the title character, a kindly but eccentric man who spends all of his time maintaining a massive Rube Goldberg Device in his apartment. When Dr. Sinclair visits, Witherspoon explains that a mysterious voice that only he can hear tells him when and where to add various strange objects, such as a doll's head, to the machine—apparently, it's a localized Cosmic Keystone that keeps the entire planet in order. After a mishap with the machine makes Sinclair realize that Edgar was telling the truth, he rushes back to the apartment (just in time to keep the landlady from dismantling it). Edgar arrives and explains that the voice has told him to take a long vacation, and Jeremy protests that he can't do that, because the machine already needs maintenance—which he begins to do. The episode ends with Dr. Sinclair listening to a voice only he can hear, and rushing around desperately trying to find a tambourine...
  • In the final scene of "The Hellgramite Method", Miley Judson, who is finally sober, offers a light to an alcoholic in his old bar. He tells him to keep the matchbox advertising the Hellgramite Method, just as Dr. Eugene Murrich did in the opening scene.
  • At the end of "Our Selena is Dying", Martha Brockman is in a hospital wrapped in bandages after being severely burned in the fire that killed her sister Selena and daughter Diane (whose youth and identity she stole). It is noted that her left arm seems to be healing at an accelerated rate. One nurse then tells another that she does not know how she got the burn on her left arm, indicating that Martha has already begun to drain the first nurse's Life Energy and will soon be restored to health.
• The Wire:
  • Sydnor reports to Judge Phelan about certain crimes not being reported, just like Jimmy did at the start of the series.
  • The Greek is back in business as usual but now he's dealing with the New Cay Co-Op, represented by Slim Charles.
• The initial premise Yes, Dear is that Greg Warner has to put up with his Obnoxious In-Laws the Hugheses (his wife's sister, her husband, and their two sons) living in his guest house. The Hugheses eventually move out into their own place, but in the series finale, an earthquake causes a tree to fall on top of the house. The last scene is the Hugheses showing up at the Warners' door, asking if the guest house is still available.
• Subverted in the season 1 finale of You (2018). Joe gets away with his murder of Beck. As the series ends, Joe spots another woman and ends up repeating his ominous narration from the first episode, implying that the cycle will repeat again. But then, surprise! The woman turns around and is revealed to be his assumed to be dead ex-girlfriend Candace, who has some unfinished business with him. It should be noted that this did not happen in the novel, where it was played completely straight.

---