|
|
"This is a fucking bizarre episode!"
You're watching your favorite show one day. The episode seems to start as normal... but wait, what's this? Does everything seem completely against continuity? Are the characters acting as if dosed up on tranquilizers? Does everything happening not make sense within the pre-established context?
Welcome to a BLAM Episode. Unlike A Day at the Bizarro, a BLAM Episode does not truly come across as "surreal" or "strange". A BLAM Episode is what you get when a Big Lipped Alligator Moment spans the entire screen time. If the show DOES have a continuity, this episode will never be mentioned again, save perhaps as a Mythology Gag, and none of the likely wild events will ever be repeated.
A BLAM Episode can also be applied to movies. If nothing in the movie seems to follow any previous event or plot and the whole thing seems to be one spontaneous series of events, you've probably got a Big Lipped Alligator Movie on your hands.
When the finale of a series is this, it's a Gainax Ending.
Not to be confused with a Wham Episode, which completely changes the direction of a series. See also And Now For Something Completely Different. If every episode is like this, a summary may mention that it's That Kind Of Show. Rarely, though, a BLAM Episode may be redeemed if a skillful or cunning writer uses it to construct an Innocuously Important Episode.
NOTICE: Please do not use Musicals as examples, as the numbers are part of the show and are rarely anymore out of the ordinary than conversation within context. If it's a musical with absolutely no cohesive plot, then you have a BLAM Movie. However, a particular song may qualify as a BLAM, such as the Trope Namer; in that case, put it under Big Lipped Alligator Moment.
Very Important Corollary: If you have ever tried to convince other people to watch a show you like, and they say, "Okay I'll watch one episode with you if you promise to stop bothering me about it," we Tropers can guarantee that the one episode you watch together will be that series' BLAM Episode.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
Anime & Manga
Comics
- Countdown to Final Crisis is effectively a BLAM series for the entire DCU. With out of character moments, random deaths, nonsensical and time-wasting plotlines, it firmly cemented itself as a BLAM when Grant Morrison, the author of Final Crisis (the event Countdown was supposed to lead up to) ignored it completely and effectively put the entire thing into Canon Discontinuity.
- The Sonic the Hedgehog/Image Comics crossover special. Chronologically meant to take place between the Return of the King special and issue #57 in the Sonic timeline, it has Particle steal the Master Emerald and bringing it to Dr. Ian Droid, so Sonic, Knuckles, and the Freedom Fighters travel to the Image Comics Earth to reclaim it, and end up joining forces with the Image Heroes. In the end, Knuckles ends up wishing for everything to be restored to the way it was before, and afterwards, all but Particle and Shadowhawk forget the whole thing ever happened.
- Dr. Droid was supposed to make a return appearance in a later miniseries, as the threat Knuckles was prophesied to defeat. Thanks to Executive Meddling, though, that plot was dropped and the miniseries got turned into the infamous "Mobius: 25 Years Later" arc.
- Like the above example, almost every intercompany crossover is a BLAM Episode. They remain popular because of the potential for a Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, and if nothing else there's always the hope that fans of one character will read the crossover and decide they like the other character as well and start reading that - basically, companies trying to cross-pollinate their fandom. However, for legal reasons these crossovers very rarely have any impact on ongoing continuity (although it happens occasionally), and works set in different universes tend to have different assumptions and physical laws, in particular about Power Levels. Most intercompany superhero crossovers have involved characters casually running into each other even though if they existed in the same universe they really should have had plenty of encounters before now or something, and afterwards are never mentioned again in-story unless there's another crossover.
- A better example is Uncanny X-Men #153, the classic "Kitty's Fairy Tale", in which Kitty regaled young Illyana Rasputin with a made-up fairy tale casting herself and Colossus as heroic pirates, and other members of the X-Men as their allies to rescue the Phoenix Genie. Some see this issue as a coda to the Claremont/Byrne era, as it shows Kitty fully assimilating with the team to the point where she can gently rib her teammates for their peccadilloes (as the story progresses the rest of the X-Men listen in and enjoy a good laugh), and even give the Scott and Jean in her story the happy ending which they were denied.
Eastern Animation
- Space Thunder Kids is a bunch of cheap South Korean animation cobbled together with the biggest effort towards cohesion being the summary on the back of the box. It's impossible to tell who are supposed to be the eponymous Space Thunder Kids as the film constantly shifts between different looking who may or may not are supposed to be the same people who never really do anything important, interspersed with blatant plagiarism that never goes anywhere either, all padded as long as possible(like a spaceship exploding for twenty seconds) leaving the film an incoherent mess where things, even the ending, happen for no adequately explained reason if any reason is given at all.
Film
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail consists of a string of odd (and hilarious) happenings, most of which are never mentioned again.
- The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The opening sequence involves a pair of singing disembodied lips...and it just gets weirder from there.
- The "horror" movie Skinned Deep (horror used very loosely) is a pure example of this. Some notable examples include a kid getting cut in half, a headless muscleman with boxer briefs that read DYNO-MITE!!! on them (which hides real dynamite), streaking after a motorcycle ride, and: "I brought you some soup and money". The movie is broken up into 5 or 6 distinct parts (none of which have actual transitions), each of which having little to no connection to the others.
- Most of The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T is a dream sequence conjured by Bart Collins who believes his piano tutor Mr. Terwilliger to be his archenemy who plans on using five-hundred boys to play a giant piano and marrying Bart's hypnotized mother.
- The entire second half of Gremlins 2 is just a long series of gags which don't actually drive the storyline anywhere. In fact, most of the first half of that film is entirely useless, as well.
- On the commentary, Zach Galligan eventually notes that despite being the nominal main character of the film, he's only onscreen for about a third of it thanks to all the gags.
- Halloween III: Season of the Witch has nothing to do with Michael Myers and instead has a plot that involves a mind-control conspiracy. What, you want continuity? Forget it. Not only does the film make no sense on its own, it is a stand-alone film with no connection to any of the other Halloween movies at all.
- Originally the idea behind the Halloween movies was they'd have nothing in common except taking place on Halloween. The problem was the first one did too well and Michael Myers became too much of an icon to make the other movies without him. Halloween III was an attempt to revive their original plans and was so bad it killed all possibility of making any other movies not centering around Mr. Myers.
- We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story... where to begin?
- First up, the entire movie is a flashback being told to a random bird. Why? It's never mentioned except at the beginning and at the end.
- The time traveler says he wants to save the world by giving dinosaurs to all of Earth's children. Ignoring for the moment exactly how taking animals out of their native environment (never mind geological era) and bringing them to New York City is supposed to save the world, he drops them in the ocean, whereupon, after some time, they coincidentally discover a small boy. Okay then.
- Furthermore, if this guy is a time traveler, why does he show up at the end, rather than earlier to prevent the dark climax from ever occurring at all?
- The Aesop of the film is supposedly that "family is good"; however, none of the action corresponds with this, and the two main characters' lack of parents is somehow resolved at the end without explanation.
- The tedious scene in which we watch a hat fall onto a young girl's head would appear to drive the plot somewhere... but it's never mentioned again.
- Likewise, the children's romance doesn't go anywhere either.
- The inexplicable musical number.
- The Big Bad's unneeded and horrifying death scene... right after seemingly learning his lesson about scaring people. This scene would have actually made sense if a previous one had made it into the final product. It's kinda scary though.
- Said horrifying villain death is all the worse because it is immediately preceded by a scene where the dinosaurs go from angry and wild to cuddly and cartoony through the Power of Hugs. Basically, this movie has balls to do this with the picture book it is supposedly based upon.
- That The Movie of Tank Girl would end up as one of these was guaranteed the minute they decided to cast Ice-T as an anthropomorphic kangaroo.
- The film Xanadu, despite being a musical, is incoherent and ridiculously nonsensical. Regardless of whatever tenuous links to some form of plot the film possesses, the fact remains that most viewers fail to understand this given the sheer oddness of the story, pacing and premise.
- The Hangover could be considered a BLAM episode. By the end of the movie, you have sort of a vague idea as to what could have happened last night. But you're still left wondering as to how one situation led to another.
- The Room is one big old pile of BLAM. So many characters come in and out and give new information without any real sense of cohesion.
- The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother. Gene Wilder's directorial debut. Since he did not share the writing duties with Mel Brooks this time, it seems that while Wilder has many funny ideas, he doesn't quite have the skill for bringing it all together.
- Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter Ok, so there's a vampire fight scene followed by a pointless musical number, followed by a transformation... then it stops making sense.
- The 1967 spy parody Casino Royale (not to be confused with the Daniel Craig film). Many things in the film are never mentioned again once they happen. It is all completely over the top even for psychedelic sixties spy flicks. Many scenes could be removed from the film with little or no damage to the plot. There are even some scenes that when seen together have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But somehow it fits together as a whole, Your Mileage May Vary on how well though.
- You can blame this completely on the film's fascinating Troubled Production. Those five directors listed in the credits? None had any contact with each other, and none were working with a complete script. Plus, Peter Sellers was originally supposed to be the star, but either quit or was fired depending on who you believe, prior to filming several important scenes, so the film was awkwardly retooled to center around David Niven instead.
- Hausu is so unbelievably surreal that it's difficult to even describe. So many moments come out of nowhere that it makes the concept of a BLAM irrelevant.
- Crank: High Voltage is one gigantic series of BLAMs, starting right from the very opening sequence.
- Done on purpose by Neveldine and Taylor, who wanted to start work on Gamer so urgently but they couldn't due to studio pressure for another sequel. So they threw in lots of BLAMs, hoping the sheer awfulness of the script would get the film dropped so they could work on Gamer.
- In the context of Star Wars canon, the Star Wars Holiday Special is essentially a string of BLAMs. It involves a Wookiee family watching a cooking show, some sort of strange Wookiee porn, a sci-fi action scene in cartoon form, a Wookiee watching an instructional video on how to assemble a transmitter (every step of which is shown to the audience), and Bea Arthur as a singing bartender on Tatooine.
- The fourth Silent Night, Deadly Night involved things like a Straw Feminist Religion of Evil and Big Creepy Crawlies, among other bits of Mind Screw. The previous films were about serial killers prone to dessing up like Santa Claus.
- Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, where Leatherface is now an effeminate Creepy Crossdresser whose new family (which includes a guy with a bionic leg) are employed by a government group or cult that is possibly controlled by aliens.
- Slumber Party Massacre II, which is a musical full of Mind Screw where the psycho is a ghostly rockabilly who kills with a drill attached to an electric guitar. The previous film was comedic, but not random as fuck like this one, while the proceeding one was completely serious, and the villains of both of those were just crazy, non-supernatural guys.
- Salvador Dali once made a surrealist film. The first shot is a pierced eyeball.
Literature
- Shusaku Endo's short story anthology Stained Glass Elegies consists of deadly serious examinations of Catholic faith in everyday life...and an over-the-top, sidesplitting parody of Fantastic Voyage. It was apparently the only comedy story Endo ever wrote, which makes the transition from thoughtful treatises to enema jokes all the more jarring.
- The Goosebumps book I Live In Your Basement!, due to copious amounts of mindfuckery and gorn.
- The Sweet Valley Twins: The Magic Christmas, a book best described as "Elizabeth and Jessica go to Narnia." Even in a series that occasionally acknowledged the existence of the supernatural, this one was weird.
- Dexter in the Dark, the third Dexter novel, shifted the series from crime thriller to supernatural horror, revealing the reason Dexter kills is because the spawn of an Eldritch Abomination (which comes complete with its own cult) has taken him as its host. The later novels make only minor references to these events, if that.
- Animorphs had a few examples, but a special shout-out goes to the 39th book, The Hidden. The Helmacrons return, forcing the Animorphs to go on the run with the blue box. Along the way a buffalo and an ant acquire morphing powers, in violation of all previous continuity about how the blue box works. Thankfully, none of these events are ever mentioned again.
Live Action TV
- From Battlestar Galactica: The episode "Black Market". Oh, where to begin? We find that Apollo has been seeing a single-mom hooker and her child regularly on the black market ship Prometheus. This was never mentioned before or ever again. He is seeing and helping out her and her kid due to guilt over leaving his former pregnant girlfriend shortly before the Cylons attacked. This was never mentioned before or ever again. He winds up killing the black market's ringleader in a totally out-of-character manner. THEN he declares that the black market can continue because it's necessary or something. And we never hear anything more about it. It's saved from being a complete BLAM Episode by dint of two factors: 1) Commander Fisk's murder in this episode starts a chain reaction of events that eventually puts Lee in command of Pegasus, and 2) the head of the black market is played by Bill Duke. Ron Moore later discussed Black Market very frankly both on his blog and in the episode's commentary, admitting that it was completely nonsensical and explaining the logic that went into making it that everyone thought made sense at the time, only to realize with growing horror that it just didn't work.
- Black Market has a third point of relevance: it's the episode where Baltar decides to run for President when Roslin realizes he could be a thorn in her side and tries to convince him to resign. Obviously though, the scene where this happens has nothing to do with the plot of the episode.
- "The Woman King" came along one season later and stole "Black Market"'s crown. This episode involves a well-beloved but insanely racist doctor who sets about killing citizens of the "poorer" Colonies under the guise of a free clinic he's operating right on Galactica. Helo's tasked by a woman (named King) to put a stop to the Mad Doctor and avenge her son (who the doc allegedly killed). Helo spends much of the episode on a Cassandra Truth wild goose chase because no one believes him, what with the better half of the cast coming down with a sudden case of 24-hour Fantastic Racism Disease. Everyone acts out of character, the episode just goes in circles, and everyone forgets it even happened by the next episode.
- It doesn't help that the episode is one of the few remnants of a subplot about the Saggitarons on New Caprica that was soon abandoned (the only other really noticable one is Baltar's mysterious whisper that causes Gaeta to try to kill him, which was eventually repurposed towards another subplot in a webisode series), and scenes in earlier episodes that would have helped explain everyone's refusal to believe Helo were all cut.
- Babylon 5 - Grey 17 is Missing. What the frell were they smoking? Note that the Zarg is never mentioned again...
- J Michael Straczynski has offered to personally apologise to every fan who complains directly to him about the episode, citing it as the bastard offspring of an unholy trinity of Author Brianfart, Executive Meddling, and Ran Out Of Time & Money.
- However, despite half the episode being ridiculous and brain haemorrhage-inducing, the B-plot is incredibly important to the Myth Arc: Delenn becomes the Entil'zha, while Neroon realises that he'll never win the allegiance of the Rangers like Delenn has, leading to the start of his Heel Face Turn.
- Doctor Who. "The Feast of Steven", episode 7 of The Daleks' Master Plan. Our heroes have a chase through Twenties Hollywood, get arrested by police in the 1960s, and end up breaking the fourth wall.
- And then there's The Chase, arguably the silliest Dalek story ever, full of crack.
- Oh, and 30th anniversary charity special "Dimensions in Time".
- Also The Mind Robber, in which the TARDIS materialises outside reality and then explodes, and the characters find themselves randomly interacting with fictional characters.
- The Honey, I Shrunk The Kids episode "Honey, I'm Spooked". It involves the spirit of a pint-sized clown showing up and weird things happening to the Szalinskis, such as turning Nick into a ficus and Diane regressing into childhood.
- The Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps episode "When Janet Killed Jonny" is one of these. It is an episode set outside of the main continuity, and is a "horror special", featuring many parodies of the horror genre (although it does contain many moments of Nightmare Fuel, in a deviation from the show's usual formula). The episode features the cast breaking into the deserted Archer pub to drink the leftover beer, only to fall victim to the previously unmentioned "pub curse", which causes them to be "killed by the thing they love the most". As a result, the entire cast is killed off in an assortment of highly gruesome ways, only to later return as zombies.
- Some viewers consider the Angel episode "The Girl In Question" to be this - in the middle of a tense, tragic story arc leading up to the heavily depressing series finale, we get an episode revolving around Spike and Angel gallivanting off to Italy to have wacky, hoyay-tastic adventures while trying to rescue Buffy from the mistake of dating an unseen, vampiric sexual predator with whom they apparently have a never-before-mentioned complex history; this unapologetically farcical storyline is played against a bitter, tragic Los Angeles subplot in which Illyria assumes Fred's form in order to deceive her parents into believing that their daughter is alive and well, a state of affairs which nearly breaks Wesley and is difficult to watch even for the viewers. The episode feels fragmented and out of place at best, and at worst features an incredibly tactless and offensive juxtaposition of storylines.
- It also doesn't help that the B-plot indicates that Wesley didn't carry out Fred's final wish that he inform her parents of her death. And that from what we hear, Buffy has turned into The Ditz, having an affair with the evil Immortal, making it come off as a rather petty Take That after Sarah Michelle Gellar refused to appear in the show's 100th episode. Whedon later made an Author's Saving Throw in the Buffy comics, revealing that it was actually one of several Slayers around the world who are impersonating Buffy to confuse the bad guys.
- The Young Ones could be considered to consist of little else. There are indeed plotlines within episodes, but they don't connect to other episodes, and are often derailed partway through. Sometimes they are not even resolved.
- The two-part Heroes episode "The Eclipse", in which an eclipse randomly and inexplicably removes all the characters' powers. We never found out how or why this happened, and none of the events of those episodes were ever mentioned again.
- And this is just the most notorious example. Heroes has a lot of BLAM episodes. If you watch the previous seasons, keep track of how many new characters and storylines are introduced vs. how many are still acknowledged in newer episodes.
- Heroes had an entire BLAM SEASON. Remember season two? The writer's strike? Micah's cousin who could learn anything she saw on TV? Maya got a bit of a sendoff, but her brother was unceremoniously dropkicked out of the show. Clare's flying boyfriend who hated her father? And best of all, the girlfriend Peter forgot in the future?
- SeaQuest DSV "Knight of Shadows". It's a Halloween episode, and does at least try to give the OOC characters some excuses. But still, it was a low point for the otherwise shining season 1.
- Once or twice a season Supernatural will include a comedy episode, with a ridiculous plot which is just an excuse to use situations like 'Sam and Dean are suddenly trapped on the set of this weird TV show called Supernatural, and we are now going to spend 40 minutes making fun of our own premise, crew, actors, and viewing figures'. This does not necessarily make these episodes bad.
- For those who are less familiar with the show, I think this deserves a little clarification: these episodes are insanely popular, and are widely considered to be the best episodes of the series in terms of sheer entertainment value, once again proving that tropes are most definitely not bad.
- Significantly, The Prisoner did this twice, in the episodes "Living In Harmony" and "The Girl Who Was Death" — both of which massively change the entire format of the show just to fuck with the protagonist, not to mention the audience.
- There was also "Do Not Forsake Me, O My Darling," which Patrick McGoohan isn't even in, where the Powers That Be basically put Number 6's brain in some other guy and send him on an errand outside of The Village for them.
- Most people would have just mentioned the series finale and moved on.
- The fifth season episode of Xena entitled "Married With Fishschticks" which mostly forgets about the story arc going on at the time to do a pointless filler episode where the feuding Aphrodite and Discord accidentally send Gabrielle into this alternate world where she's a mermaid, and is entirely populated with mer people. The whole thing is weird even by this show's standards, and ends with it apparently being All Just a Dream as Gabrielle wakes up back with Xena.
- The people behind the show were well aware that this one wasn't their finest moment, and even did some micromanaging of the schedule to make sure it didn't get the distinction of being the show's 100th episode.
- The Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Plato's Stepchildren" is just so freakin' weird that were it not for the interracial kiss, most fans would probably consider it a Let Us Never Speak of This Again episode. Notable plot points involve alien mind rape, Spock in a toga singing, and Kirk being ridden by creepy little demented dwarves.
- Certainly a number of first-season episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation would count as this trope.
- On the episode Hide And Q, the character Q grants the characters wishes, and teenage Wesley Crusher wishes to be 10 or so years older. Then suddenly, BAAM he's transformed into a strapping, tall and exceptionally hunky man. We then cut to Geordi LaForge leering at the new Wesley and saying, "Hey, Wes. Not bad." It has been noted by several sources that Lavar Burton's character was originally supposed to be gay, but this is the only time it appears to be shown on screen, in this season one episode. Thereafter, it is NEVER EVER EVER EVER mentioned again, and the LaForge character eventually falls in love with a holodeck character then eventually an actual woman, and they live happily ever after. BLAM.
- Similarly to "Plato's Stepchildren" mentioned above, this is averted in the case of "The Naked Now". Although it fully appears as though this is a Let Us Never Speak of This Again episode, albeit an absolutely hilarious one, what with Data getting drunk and Dr. Crusher grabbing Picard's crotch just offscreen
 , the fact that Data and Tasha Yar had intercourse is mentioned in later episodes, notably in "Measure of a Man" where it is used to help establish Data's sentience.
- "Justice" arguably counts — for no clear reason, the crew of the Enterprise is schmoozing with what appears to be a pre-warp culture, when Wesley knocks over an outdoor decoration and is sentenced to death. And even though the Prime Directive didn't prevent them from making contact with this planet, all of a sudden it prevents Picard from saving Wesley.
- "Conspiracy" is another TNG example of this. Starfleet command has apparently been infiltrated by parasitic slugs that inhabit the brain of the host creature. This is obviously an event of considerable political magnitude, but it is never again referenced. However, it was Foreshadowed several episodes earlier, making it a kind of Aborted Arc.
- Executive Meddling is to blame for that. The story was originally intended to have a purely human conspiracy within Starfleet, but Gene Roddenberry himself vetoed that because of how it clashed with his vision of Star Trek as an utopia where all humans work towards a common goal in harmony. So they added mind-controlling alien infiltrators to the plot.
- Actually, it was intended to be the hook for the major villains of the series. The thing was, it created too much paranoia that they wanted to avoid, so they changed the concept over to the Borg. Kept the insect theme, what with the drones and hive mind, and they kept the "they take you over" thing with assimilation, but made it quite obvious that these were the bad guys, while the people in uniform are the good guys.
- TNG has a number of oddball episodes that qualify for this, most notably some of the truly god-awful episodes of the final season. After all, we got such lovely inexplicable plots as Beverly's inherited ghost lover and everyone on the Enterprise "devolving" into things that make absolutely no fucking sense.
- The Star Trek: Voyager episode "Threshold". So Tom Paris breaks the "transwarp barrier", right? And this results in being in every location in the universe at once. Somehow this makes him evolve into a higher order of being... which then transforms into a Mudkip-like lizard thing who can't breathe air. He kidnaps the captain and they run away in said transwarp barrier breaking ship. They are discovered within range and the crew find them on a beach together having just had a small litter of Mudkip babies. (Repeat: Paris had children with Captain Janeway. When they were both Mudkips.) Anyway, the babies are still out there presumably but everything else is reset with antimatter injections. Got all that? Okay, because this is the one episode out of all the Star Trek episodes ever made that is in Canon Discontinuity.
- Want proof? In a later Voyager episode, Tom Paris says that he has never travelled in transwarp. Never.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine went off the rails a few times late in the series, producing such BLAM episodes as the holodeck baseball game and the Ocean's Eleven knockoff where the main cast ignored their duty in favor of pulling off a heist to save the holodeck lounge singer from a gangster. (No, it doesn't make sense in context.)
- Star Trek: Enterprise has one of the rare examples of this trope churning out a great episode: over dinner, T'Pol regales Archer and Trip with the tale of an ancestor of hers who lived on Earth over a century before First Contact.
- LOST's infamous "Stranger in a Strange Land". A high ranking Other is introduced, along with their legal system. Neither is mentioned again. Jack's tattoos are apparently full of important insight into Jack's character. He had never mentioned them before. Nobody had. And then Jack flashbacks to his borderline incoherent experiences with a possibly psychic Thai tattoo artist who he sleeps with, then gets beat up for. This is never mentioned again. Meanwhile, Sawyer and Karl discuss the Brady Bunch and how Karl and Alex named stars together. None of this is mentioned again.
- The final episode of Candle Cove. Puppets screaming and crying. For 30 minutes.
- What episode were you watching? The real BLAM is why everyone suddenly loved watching static, of all things...
- Power Rangers in Space. Four words. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- On the subject, Super Sentai has this for its Samurai Sentai Shinkenger iteration in the form of its Direct to DVD movie. Released after the end of the series run, it talks of the team 'returning,' since they part at the end. The team is together for the whole movie, and then there's the content itself.
- There's also the now-traditional DVD shorts that both Sentai and its block-mate Kamen Rider give out yearly in Telebi-kun Magazine. A lot of these are very nonsensical even compared to other filler episodes within the series.
- Speaking of Kamen Rider, it is something of a tradition for a couple of episodes around episode 30 of each series to be a bit... different.
- Kamen Rider OOO had 2 episodes celebrating the 999th and 1000th episodes of the franchise, featuring loads of old monsters, the cast trying to make their own Kamen Rider Movie, and Kougami watching Kamen Rider on about 50 different screens.
- Kamen Rider W had Shoutaro and Phillip chasing a Dopant that sent people into comas through lucid dreams. To catch him, they fall asleep (while transformed, in the middle of a football pitch) and went into the dream world, where they were samurai. Or something. Even one of the villains point out how odd that is. And that's just the first part!
- Kamen Rider Kabuto had the Dark Kitchen arc, featuring cooking duels and food that can manipulate emotions, and very little actual Kamen Rider action (just one or two obligatory action scenes disconnected from the plot)
- Kamen Rider Blade had Hajime losing his memory and meeting a man identical to himself. They swap lives and have cooking duels, culminating in Hajime's lookalike making himself a suit of armour and beating the monster of the week.
- Part of the charm of Lexx is that the normal status quo is what would be a BLAM episode in most shows, but it still has a few BLAM episodes by its own standards. The most obvious is the fourth-season episode A Midsummer's Nightmare, where the crew is trapped in the fairie kingdom by Oberon, who seeks a new bride to replace Titania. Oberon is gay, Titania is a male midget crossdresser, Puck is Camp Gay, Kai ends up turning into a tree while dancing and singing, Stanley nearly marries Oberon and gets as far as putting on the wedding dress... Oberon even admits that he has zero understanding of the show's cosmology, lampshading how the batshit insanity everyone is going through just plain doesn't fit into it.
- In the fourth-season episode "Prime Ridge", the crew (having been unable to find the Lexx's key for several episodes) decide that they have nothing to do, and so they buy a house in a small-town neighbourhood (which is being sold by Britt Ekland). 790 hacks an ATM. The crew live in it for several days. Stanley sleeps on the lawn for some unexplained reason, and then gets hit on by said real estate agent and her daughter. Xev gets a job as a stress counsellor (despite having no resume or references) and the whole episode culminates in a giant firefight between the FBI and a pair of stoned teenagers wielding machine guns. Xev, Stan and Kai get in a car and drive away, and never mention the incident again for the rest of the series.
- "The Bicycle Tour" episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. Not only does it have the same plot throughout, whereas most episodes were a series of sketches, but it does not begin with the usual theme music and animation.
- "iSpace Out" from iCarly has a BLAM subplot, with a random little girl wandering into the apartment when Spencer is there, and not doing anything until she walks out again, it takes up half the time of the episode and literally nothing happens or is resolved. "iMake Sam Girlier"'s entire plot was Sam wanting to get a boyfriend; she tries to act more girly, but in the end Be Yourself wins out. The guy vanishes and is never spoken of again, not even to explain why.
- iCarly and Victorious each aired an April Fools'' episode back to back. Both were utterly nonsensical episodes. Nothing made sense, and it was completely random. There was No Fourth Wall. They were both pretty much aware of this trope all the way through
- Even Police Stop! isn't infallible to this. The episode Police Stop! 3 has subjects that are never mentioned again for the rest of the series and doesn't mention the United Kingdom very much. The same can be said for Police Stop! 4, its sequel that followed in 1995, which had no idents between episodes. This is surprisingly rare for a documentary to do such things. However, your opinion will differ on this. If you do wish to see the series, watch it on ITV4, it's nearly always shown as reruns.
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys gives us the 4th season episode "... And Fancy Free", in which Hercules enters a dance competition. Nothing rests on this competition other than his partner's self esteem, and a nice trophy. Apparently, in spite of this, the town magistrate finds this competition important enough that he spends most of the episode sending assassins after Hercules and his partner to stop them from winning. No other motivation is given, he just wants his daughter to win. Bonus Points for guest starring Michael Hurst in drag as the dance instructor
- There is a later episode featuring the same characters in struggle over fashion...which is about as pointless as "...And Fancy Free". Also no explanation is given as to why the town magistrate has apparently given up his duties to go into the world of ancient Greek fashion.
- Speaking of Hercules, the episode set in the present day which is all about Kevin Sorbo having gone missing, and features the memorable and hysterical restroom whistling scene.
- The Hannah Montana Forever episode "Kiss It All Goodbye".
- The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical Episode "Once More With Feeling" is a bizarre case of a BLAM episode that is based on an utterly ridiculous premise, is important to the season's major story arcs and remains one of the most loved episodes of the entire series, like a BLAM Episode and WHAM Episode mixed together.
- The season 4 finale, "Restless", starts like this. Eventually what's going on is clarified, as well as the fact that it contains large amounts of foreshadowing.
- "Superstar". Season 4, ep 17.
- Also, the season 3 episode "The Zeppo" can be seen as this, diverting from the building plot threads of that season to tell a completely zany, full-out self-parody of every Buffy trope in the book.
- All of these just go to show that Tropes Are Not Bad in the hands of a skilled writer.
- Crime Story was stylishly moody and gritty...then there was the 2nd season episode "Pauli Taglia's Dream". It did show how mobster Ray Luca and his goofus flunky Pauli had earlier survived a nuclear bomb test, but through Pauli's point of view - complete with cartoon sound effects, Three Stooges slapstick, and cuts of him lipsynching Bobby Fuller's "I Fought the Law" wearing impossibly high rockabilly hair and a radiation suit.
- Over its last two seasons it became clear that Day 6 of 24 was a Big Lipped Alligator Season. Events like the detonation of a nuclear device in an American city by foreign terrorists and the attack and incapacitation of an American president while in the White House - both of which happened within hours of each other and would have deeply impacted the country's history and internal and international policies - are never mentioned or even alluded at in the following seasons. Matter of fact, President Wayne Palmer was effectively "brother Chucked" without as much as a throwaway line to explain what ultimately became of him. Howard Gordon has stated he lived, but a prop newspaper from the made-for-TV movie Redemption mentions his death, thus leaving his fate unknown. Day 7 has its couple of BLAM episodes in which an African tin pot dictator and his five - six at most - bodyguards take the White House and everyone inside hostage - with some help from (what else in 24?) moles on the inside. Jack Bauer resolves the entire situation in two hours of "Real Time" and the entire situation does not impact the rest of the season - the second half of it - in any significant way.
- Similarly, many of the events of Friday Night Lights Season Two aren't referenced in later seasons, the most egregious of which would be Landry KILLING a man to protect Tyra, and even confessing to it. Other stuff happened that season, too (Matt and Grandma Saracen's maid, Buddy raising a ward named Santiago), but the only major event to happen that season with any significant impact on future seasons is Jason Street getting a woman pregnant.
- Breaking Bad has the episode where Walt becomes obsessed with killing a fly that has somehow gotten into the meth lab. There are a few moments of legitimate character development and overall series value to this episode, but for the most part, it's a big steaming pile of BLAM.
- Merlin. In the middle of the season that also included Merlin losing his first love, Arthur discovering the truth about his mother, Morgana's Start of Darkness and the introduction of two of the most powerful/terrifying villains the show had ever showcased (Morgause and the Witchfinder), two utterly superfluous episodes were devoted to a troll successfully marrying King Uther and becoming Queen. It was a great performance by Sarah Parish, but the humor was made up of pratfalls and Toilet Humour, Arthur, Gwen and Morgana were utterly (and uncharacteristically) useless, the audience was scarred for life by being forced to watch Uther go to bed with a troll, and after the episode ends, no one ever again thinks to mention that a shit-eating troll had been the Queen of Camelot for an extended period of time.
- The 1980's War of the Worlds episode "Candle In The Night". This is a show that thrived on an overarching conspiracy by aliens to overthrow the Earth, interpersonal conflict between the cast and gratuitous violence that pushed the limits of what syndicated television could show...and someone decided that an entire episode should be focused on a supporting character having a birthday party. The plot follows one of the team members, Debi, who sneaks out of the Blackwood Project's headquarters to have a birthday party with a bunch of random kids she meets. There's no real tension or drama in the episode, and none of the characters or events are mentioned again.
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles had a surreal, cyborg-free episode where Sarah is in a sleep clinic and is haunted by nightmares which are actually real, while the clinic is a hallucination caused by a one-off villain probing her mind.
- The Odd Couple had a flashback episode that parodied the James Bond films and featured Felix and Oscar's fathers.
- The Kids in the Hall episode "Chalet 2000" was one long Buddy Cole sketch (with it's own credit sequence), and to top it off, Queen Elizabeth appears and ends up sleeping with a talking beaver.
- Power Rangers Ninja Storm while surfing Tori got into a major wipe out, and wind up in a Mirror Universe where the Rangers are the bad guys and Lothor and his goons are good guys. She eventually gets back to her own universe by getting wiped out again.
Music
- "Bakerman" on the Midnight Oil album Red Sails in the Sunset. It's a Japanese school band playing an instrumental oompa ditty, in the middle of an otherwise pre-alternative rock album. Also very Mood Whiplash.
- Synchronicity: "Mother", a repetitive tune in 7/4 with screamed vocals and weird lyrics, shows up after the comparatively normal "Synchronicity I" and "Walking in Your Footsteps".
- "You're Gonna Die," a 9-and-a-half minute song (using the term loosely) at the end of Reel Big Fish's We're Not Happy Till You're Not Happy album. It's essentially nothing but screaming and static in the same vein as "Revolution 9" and even contains a Big Lipped Alligator Moment of it's own in "Aaron is Made of Babies," a one-minute novelty song thrown smack-dab in the middle of the hectic track.
- "Anyone's Daughter" from Deep Purple's Fireball. The lyrics are typical DP - a man sleeps with a bunch of women and marries one of them when he gets her pregnant - but the music is in a C&W style that's out of place for this period of the band.
- Tell Me What To Swallow by Crystal Castles. A dark acoustic song in the middle of electronic stuff. Also Mood Whiplash.
Video Games
- City of Heroes has this issue with the Mission Architect system. Due to the overwhelming amount of player-made content in the database and a ratings system that leaves something to be desired, it's inevitable that BLAM Story Arcs will come up fairly frequently in any random sample. If the first time a player tries the system results in having one of these thrown at them it can easily be the last time they will ever bother with the Mission Architect.
- Which is why a number of authors have been taking it upon themselves to review arcs and compile lists in the official forums make it easier to find the "good stuff."
- Atlantica in Kingdom Hearts II also counts. It has absolutely no plot relevance and features the characters singing in order to keep Ariel happy with undersea life. Even more BLAM is the fact that the entire story of the world is based on mini games and seems to just be an excuse to put the world in the game.
- Also odd was how nobody seemed to remember any of the events that happened in Atlantica in the first Kingdom Hearts game; except for who Sora is. Ariel just...forgot how the last time she made a deal with Ursula ended, and Ursula forgot...dying.
- The minigames were a way to include the world itself, while avoiding having to include the underwater combat from the first game. Notice how Neverland (which featured a similarly-controlled "flying combat" mechanic) doesn't get a return appearance, just a Peter Pan summon cameo?
- Metal Gear Solid Mobile. It takes place at a weird point in continuity and gives Snake technology that he shouldn't have yet in addition to making him confront The Patriots long before he should even know they exist; Otacon, instead of being chipper Codec support, is the "ninja"; and everything is revealed to be All Just A Virtual Reality Simulation Snake has been placed in by The Patriots for a reason that is not revealed and never will be. Snake also gets his memory of the events erased, but Otacon doesn't, thus implying that in addition to providing needlessly cryptic advice through sinister channels he then kept the entire ordeal and critical information secret from Snake for at least two years.
- Star Fox (the 1993 Super NES game) combined this with an Easter Egg — "Out Of This Dimension".
- Happens halfway through Kid Icarus: Uprising, when the main plot is completely put on hold when an utterly random alien invasion forces all of the main, characters to work together to stop it. This lasts for about 3 chapters and then it is never mentioned about again when its done.
- Actually it is brought up a few times afterwards. In fact it's the first thing Pit remembers after finding out that he's been turned into a ring. The aliens also appear when Pit battles against the Chaos Kin and later when he fights facsimiles of them in Dyntos' workshop.
Web Comics
- Sluggy Freelance brought us Chapter 63: Safehouse, bringing us Torg taking up gardening, and coming up with increasingly surreal plans to protect the garden from chipmunks and deer, that all fail spectacularly, Bun Bun robbing a bank with the help of a talking bear and an old man with a huge mustache, and the entire main cast getting addicted to the latest computing technology and the possibilities it offers, and getting tangled up in weird on-line community shenanigans, and playing a suspiciously addictive online game which, after a hacker attack, starts a zombie apocalypse that only affects animals.
- While randomness is par the course for Sluggy, what makes this a BLAM episode is that it went on for an extended period of time right after a very dark storyline, and pretty much ignores all of the lingering questions, including the fate of a character that the group lost contact with and is on a dangerous mission, a character that refuses to accept that her friends thought to be dead are alive, and a plan to finially get rid of the resident physcopathic, ninja, Stalker with a Crush that caused said friends to become almost dead. Word Of God seems to indicate the arc will bare no overall importance as well.
Web Original
Western Animation
|
|
