Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
"This is the kind of wacky, time-wasting nonsense I've been missing!"
Writing television is not born out of a powerful compulsion to torture imaginary people.
Really! At least hypothetically. In a few rare cases, it isn't.
One purpose of a Story Arc is to provide the necessary time to really get in there and just destroy everything. Crunch up the Love Interest, alienate the friends, heap a bunch of victories on the Big Bad, let all the phlebotinum leak out of the superpower, maybe throw in a scorching case of herpes and a drug dependency... you know, just do everything you can to grind a protagonist into a sticky paste.
While this is fun and all, it can occasionally get to be a little overbearing for the audience. The trick is to throw in a Breather Episode before they become too terrified to tune in, something a little lighter in tone.
The Breather Episode is used after a particularly grueling and emotional story arc or episode, and serves to lighten the mood; to contrast with the "dark" mood of the previous episode. These might feature several musical numbers and comic relief appearances by minor characters. They are presented in a fun-house manner, with plenty of bright and cheery colors.
It is tricky to get this just right as, improperly done, it makes the characters appear unsympathetic or in denial about the overarching plot.
This is not to be confused with Filler, though many breather episodes would qualify.
In anime, this will often be the beach or vacation episode.
See also Mood Whiplash. Contrast Wham Episode.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Slayers NEXT has an episode, in the middle of a Stern Chase, where they stop everything to fish for lake dragon, when Lina tries to buy some "dragon cuisine" and finds that it is fake.
- Slayers TRY has a breather episode disguised as a plot episode. Lina finds herself in a strange sort of wonderland pastiche, and is given to believe that it is the chaos between worlds, and that she ended up here after having failed to save the world from destruction the previous episode. Turns out it's just a theme park they got knocked into.
- The first Fullmetal Alchemist anime featured a comedic episode centering on the State Military members directly under Roy Mustang's command, right in the center of an intense plot arc involving a rebellion in a remote city.
- Mai-HiME had no less than two breather moments (the first consisting of two episodes), each directly following a Wham Episode. Episodes 9-10 were a Beach Episode followed by a Cooking Duel, but even they advanced the plot. Episode 16 turned out to be a Wham Episode by itself, thus making it two Wham Episodes in a row.
- A Yu-Gi-Oh GX example is Jun's love-motivated duel with Asuka, coming directly between the defeat of the last 7 Star and the final battle of the arc.
- Black Lagoon had one breather episode between the Nazi arc and the Roberta arc, and a very over-the-top free-for-all gunfest mini-arc between the disturbing Hansel & Gretel arc and the final Japan arc (which was surprisingly deep at times... For Black Lagoon, anyhow).
- The first episode of each Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni arc is usually nice and light-hearted, spending most of its time displaying anime comedy tropes, or simply showing a slice of life in Hinamizawa village. The episode will usually end on a slightly chilly note... And next episode, it gets worse. Big time.
- Eureka Seven most notably has a breather episode where the main protagonists take a break to play a soccer match at the direction of their spiritual leader. When asked why he directed them to do so, he reveals that it is, literally, a breather episode for both the audience and the characters.
- Sky Girls has several breather episodes. However, each breather episodes almost always turn to plot-relevant, and sometimes a Wham Episode combined. Examples: one episode has Otoha running around the base to look for the owner of a very large bra. It's all fun, but the beginning starts as Elise's backstory ( her home getting destroyed). One Onsen Episode gives The Reveal as the girls learn that they're not just an aerobatic team, they're there specifically to take down a breed of monsters long thought to have been extinct.
- Code Geass uses School Festival episodes to keep the show from getting too serious; whether or not it works is up to the individual viewer. However, as per the show's standard operating procedure, even the silly comedy episodes contain at least one serious plot point or a Cliff Hanger ending in order to keep things running.
- In the audio commentary for Stage 21 (the infamous "pizza festival" episode), it's actually directly stated that head writer Ichiro Okouchi thought that the plot at that point in the show was getting very serious and wanted to give everyone a break.
- Mahou Sensei Negima breaks formula a little by dumping a Furo Scene episode in the middle of a dramatic arc, right as the plot was building toward The Reveal.
- Basilisk, otherwise a very brutal and tragic story, has a Breather Episode two-thirds through which consists of flashbacks to flesh out some characters who have previously not been seeing doing anything but fighting. There are some very funny scenes with Oboro as a child, which are perhaps the only comedic moments in the series.
- Full Metal Panic gave us an entire breather season in Fumoffu, which served to seriously crank up the Mood Whiplash for when The Second Raid came along.
- The Second Raid also has a Breather Episode of its own; episode six takes some time off from the warfare to focus on Sousuke and Kaname's relationship, providing some comedy and some quiet, touching moments before things get worse.
- The original series had these as well. Arms Slave Ping Pong, anyone?
- Shakugan No Shana episode 9 ("The Poolside of Love and Desire") is a breather after the defeat of the first major villain and the fierce fight between Shana and Margery Daw.
- For Soul Eater, only one word is necessary: EXCAAAAALIBURRRRRRR!!
- A few more, technically: one breather chapter also followed the Asura resurrection arc. The kids play basketball, the grown-ups regroup and talk. And panic about getting fired, if you're Spirit. It serves to deal with the outcome of the arc, plus introduce some secondary characters in the form of three more of the Death Scythes.
- In Fairy Tail, after a long arc about a war with a rival guild and Lucy confronting her father we get a one chapter story about the main cast taking a mission to perform at a failing theater then having to replace ALL of the actors who left after it got a bad review.
- Kuroshitsuji has a couple breather manga chapters. After the Jack The Ripper arc and Madam Red's funeral we're treated to a much more lighthearted chapter where Ciel's aunt and his fiancee Elizabeth stop by for a visit.
- Episode 23 of Darker Than Black is a breather between November 11's death and the Grand Finale. In particular, about half the episode is spent on a Ship Tease-y sorta-date between Hei and Kirihara.
- The Bleach musical No Cloud in the Blue Heavens has a rather obvious one, where the dramatic reveal of Aizen being alive and the Big Bad is delayed so Aizen, Hinamori, and Hitsugaya can sing a happy little song while watching winter fireworks.
Comic Books
- Many comic books do this between long arcs. JSA, for instance, usually has an issue between arcs that follows the individual characters as they recover, and also allows for roster changes.
- After a particularly draining arc in Ultimate Spider-Man, where Gwen Stacy was killed, the next two issues were a Freaky Friday-esque romp, as the still-teenage Spider-Man changed bodies with Wolverine because of Jean Grey, who picked Peter as "the person Logan would least like to be."
Film
Literature
- Literature example: In John Dies At The End, immediately after Dave reveals that the reason he was sent to a special school was that he was implicitly gangraped in highschool and retaliated by cutting out the eyes of the ringleader, there's an entire chapter narrated by the Cloudcuckoolander sidekick and Unreliable Narrator John, which involves backflips, kung-fu fighting, and horse-theft.
- Also, after one story arc, there is a chapter that consists entirely of "Nothing happened for the next few months".
Live Action TV
- The second half of the second season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer featured possibly the show's darkest arc. Comedic episodes such as "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" and "Go Fish" lightened the mood.
- "Tabula Rasa," an episode of wacky mind-loss comedy before we plunge head long into darkness, and don't surface again until the end of the season. May even count as a subversion, as it is the episode where Tara leaves Willow and Giles leaves for England.
- Kamen Rider Ryuki had a couple,although it did introduce the Sixth Ranger to ORE Journal.
- Star Trek: Deep Space 9 had a few comedic episodes featuring the Ferengi to break up the heavy drama of the Dominion War.
- One episode, the last episode to air prior to the Dominion conquering DS 9, seemed designed to lighten a mood that was about to get pretty bleak.
- Other examples that are placed in the middle a string of arc episodes include the holosuite-centered "Badda Bing Badda Bang" (a heist caper in 1960s Las Vegas) and "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" (a baseball game versus a team of Vulcans).
- "In The Cards" surely warrants mention - big change in pace to break the tension before the season finale with Jake and Nog getting into all kinds of hijinks.
- Babylon 5 had a mix of Wham Episodes and Breather Episodes earlier on, but even the latter usually advanced some aspect of the overall series Arc, if only in B-plot. By the climax of the arc, they were rarer. They returned some in the fifth season, though they were not necessarily light or fluffy. For example, the fifth-season episode "Day Of The Dead," written by Neil Gaiman, was a completely stand-alone story, and a definite breather after the missteps of the Telepath plotline and before the Centauri War; it was not, however, simple fare.
- Since JMS didn't know if he'd get a fifth season, he packed two seasons' worth of the A plot into season 4, and season 5 was mostly made up of the leftover B plots.
- Xena: Warrior Princess employed this trope quite often, particularly when Xena and Gabrielle are each forced to kill each other's children in one particular episode.
- The episode "Smile Time" in Angel's last season (in which Angel is turned into a puppet) served as a breather just before the story took a dark turn.
- Also "Waiting In The Wings" from Season 3, where the crew attend a performance by a cursed ballet troupe just before the very dark arc dealing with Holtz's plan to kill Angel and kidnap his son.
- The episode "Boom Town" in the 2005 season of Doctor Who provided a much-needed break between the gritty darkness of "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" and the climactic "Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways".
- It's widely argued, however, that the 2007 season probably could have used one between the heart-breaking 'Human Nature' / 'The Family of Blood', the paranoia-inducing 'Blink' and the emotionally draining and really rather bleak 'Utopia' / The Sound of Drums' / 'The Last of the Time Lords', which meant that for almost half the season the regular viewer was getting their heart torn apart, being terrified beyond reason and being treated to an incredibly bleak and hopeless vision of the future of humanity that even a curiously Christ-like saviour moment couldn't entirely wash away - and sometimes all three at once. Even the production team later admitted that they'd probably gone a bit too far with that particular line-up.
- After the rather bleak trio of episodes revolving around the death and resurrection of Owen, the Torchwood episode Something Borrowed featured Gwen trying to prevent her wedding to Rhys being ruined by an unexpected alien pregnancy. Cue a genuinely funny runaround as the shape-shifting alien's mommy appears at the service looking to retrieve her baby by tearing it out of Gwen's belly.
- CSI had the lighthearted Lower Deck/Bottle Episode "You Kill Me," about The Lab Rat Hodges running the other Lab Rats through elaborate (and absurd) murder scenarios as part of a CSI-themed board game he was creating. The previous episode featured the Put On A Bus departure of a main character, while the following episode concerned another main character breaking down after becoming addicted to prescription drugs.
- After the hiatus, Supernatural had a Something Completely Different episode called Ghostfacers. It was meant to a light and silly little episode to give the fans a break before the last three episodes of the season. Fans literally scoffed until they actually saw the gore, the unhinged crazy and the massive angst-wallowing of those episodes.
- As Monster Movie was supposed to air between Are You There, God... and In The Beginning - but aired after Metamorphosis - it certainly counts as this. Fans generally loved it and it can be agreed that it was a lovely break from the increasingly unrelenting misery that Season Four episodes have so far inflicted on the boys. And therein lies the problem: Season Four has been so angsty and the boys are so fucked up that it makes this episode unable to fit in anywhere, thus making it a complete standalone.
- It's also remarkable how most of the season 4 "Monster Of The Week" episodes were incredibly goofy. First, there was Monster Movie. Then Yellow Fever (Even though it had an extreme Mood Whiplash). Then Wishful Thinking with the suicidal Teddy bear.
- There is usually at least one breather episode per season, where the show becomes ridiculously self-aware. See "Tall Tales" and "Hollywood Babylon", as well as those mentioned above. Although, this being Supernatural, it is hard to have a completely light-hearted episode.
- Firefly made it a point to follow some of the more intense episodes with much lighter-hearted ones, such as following the tense, horror-themed episode "Bushwhacked" with the lighter swordfight-y episode "Shindig," or the violent and gunplay-heavy episode "War Stories" with the much more humorous caper episode "Trash."
- The X-Files fourth season is generally considered the darkest, what with Scully's cancer and all. Towards the end of the season the mood is thankfully lightened by "Small Potatoes."
- Lost broke from the darkness of season 3 with "Tricia Tanaka is Dead." Mileage varied. Some fans disliked the episode because it did little to advance the plot. Other fans appreciated the lightness.
- Semi-lampshaded by Hurley in the episode:
- Almost every other episode up until season 5 was a breather episode. Even season 4, which was reduced in size by the writer's strike, had Eggtown, Ji Yeon and Something Nice Back Home.
- The Office had the amusing 'Café Disco' episode towards the end of the fifth season to break up the 'Michael Scott Paper Company' storyline and the (assumed) Pam / Jim baby storyline.
- Farscape had "Revenging Angel", which was mostly done in the style of a Looney Tunes cartoon, wedged between the two episodes dealing with the death of one of the Crichtons.
- In the midst of the dark and grim Ori storyline, SG-1 had 200, a Very Special Episode celebrating the 200th episode the show aired (coincidentally coinciding with Cam Mitchell's 200th trip through the 'gate, so they could have an excuse to give it that title.) Highlights of 200 include blatant Wizard of Oz references, zombie fighting, and self-referencing all around. Highlights of the episode before include savage murders and the Trust (again). Highlights of the next episode include genocide and presumed character death. So Yeah.
- Ronald D. Moore attempted do this once or twice with Battlestar Galactica. After nearly a dozen hours of the most dramatic and emotionally draining stories that the Sci Fi Channel had seen, the network pleaded with him to create a lighter, more humorous episode. That episode ended up being Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down. While somewhat more schticky than any previous or following episode, it certainly didn't help the goal that Eddie Olmos himself took the reigns as director.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation did this immediately after the climactic events of The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2. Picard was rescued and cured of Borg assimilation, and rather than dive straight back into adventure of the week, he took some shore leave on Earth to recover, in the episode Family. This was also incidentally the first episode in Star Trek history to feature no shots of the bridge of the Enterprise.
- The first four seasons of The Amazing Race had a non-elimination leg between the final elimination leg and the finale. Since there were no penalties given out to teams saved by the non-elimination for those seasons, most teams considered this a free leg.
Video Games
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII features a breather mission. Right after a very dramatic point, where Zack has to fight and kill his mentor and best friend, then spends the rest of the cutscene crying and being comforted by Aerith, Zack is next seen on vacation in Costa Del Sol. He's then attacked by scuba-geared enemies, and has to fight them off with a beach umbrella in lieu of his BFS.
- The original Final Fantasy VII featured one as well, after Aeris dies at the end of disk one, the beginning of disk two immediately gives you a snowboarding minigame to lighten the mood.
- Episode 9 of Disgaea could be considered one of these as its one of the funniest episodes of the game place right after one of the serie's biggest tear jerkers.
- The Hundred-Acre Wood, and later Atlantica, serve this purpose in the Kingdom Hearts series.
- Chapter 6 of Mother 3 is simply a walk in a field of flowers and a bunch of flashbacks. This is just after the battle-heavy, tower-climbing fifth chapter, and just before the boss-filled, massive seventh chapter.
- It's worth noting that it was a break only in gameplay; emotionally it is rather heavy.
- Though Planescape Torment is not that combat-based a game, the Brothel Of Slaking Intellectual Lusts, and in fact most of the Clerk's Ward is basically combat-free, epitomized by a sequence in which your characters hang out with a bunch of sexy women, swap stories, solve mysteries, and discuss philosophy with them while pleasant music plays in the background. You will find that hours have passed since you last killed anything. And after that everything goes to hell.
- The chapter "Black Mesa East" in Half Life 2 provides a welcome break between the long, tiresome canal sequence ("Route Kanal" and "Water Hazard") and the zombie-filled Survival Horror slaughterfest "We Don't Go To Ravenholm".
Webcomics
- Webcomic El Goonish Shive has a breather arc of sorts; after the intense Damien arc, the next story arc involved throwing Grace her first birthday party. However, as that arc took nearly a year to resolve and was stuffed to the gills with filler, it may have been too much of a breather from the main plot; in fact, you may have to think for a good five minutes to recall that there was a larger plot beyond people being turned into things.
- Done frequently in Sluggy Freelance. One of the most notable examples is the "Oceans Unmoving" arc, which was fairly serious and even depressing by Sluggy Freelance standards. It's broken into two halves, however. After the first half, Pete spent an arc showing everyone not involved in the "Oceans Unmoving" story going about their daily lives, trying to earn money and arguing over videogames. Then he did another arc that was an extended parody of 28 Days Later. Then another arc parodying the Harry Potter franchise, before finally resuming the "Oceans Unmoving" story. Then there's the "Aylee" chapter (also one of Sluggy's more serious outings) which took a break in the middle of the climax so Torg could tell a silly story about Riff sawing people in half with dimensional portals.
- Webcomic Ctrl Alt Del intersperses the story arcs with random stand-alone strips. For this trope in particular, Chef Brian.
Western Animation
- Avatar The Last Airbender had the light-hearted character vignette episode "Tales of Ba Sing Se" right after a very dark and dramatic episode that changed the perception of the "haven" of Ba Sing Se. Similarly, "Nightmares & Daydreams" was (for the most part) a breather between the quite scary and grim "The Puppetmaster" and the "Day of Black Sun" two-parter.
- The second half of the third season does this again with The Ember Island Players, a humorous, fandom-related recap of the entire series right before the 4-part series finale.
- This was a bit of a subversion though because the play ended up having a Downer Ending.
- The first four seasons of Teen Titans each have an off-the-wall comedy just before the season finale, all of which are varying degrees of dark.
- On a larger level, Season Three was almost a breather arc, seeing as it was a fairly lighthearted storyline about Cyborg's escalating enmity with Large Ham Diabolical Mastermind Brother Blood, sandwiched between the (dark) Terra arc and the (really dark) Raven arc.
- Danny Phantom is a blend of comedy and drama, but after the heavy handed "Reign Storm" dealt with a number of story arcs, Character Development, and continuity, the next episode was the lighthearted (possibly THE most lighthearted of the series) "Identity Crisis" which is played for laugh from start to finish. There is also "The Ultimate Enemy" which was just brutal Nightmare Fuel (and a fan favorite). After that episode aired, viewers got the lighthearted and cutesy Christmas Episode.
- The long and uncharacteristically dark "Transwarped" season premiere in Transformers Animated was immediately followed by the lighthearted antics of the Constructicons and a wacky one-shot character in "Three's a Crowd". Then "Where Is Thy Sting" took us right back to dark again.
- At the end of its second season, Justice League broke up the tense Joker episode "Wild Cards" and the Grand Finale "Starcrossed" with "Comfort And Joy," a completely hartwarming story that show how each of the League members spends Christmas.
- The late Season Two episode of Gargoyles, "Vengeance", which has the major plot of Wolf teaming up with his long-dead ancestor Hakon and hunting Goliath, had the minor plot of a schlub named Vinnie who'd lost a lot of jobs as a security guard thanks to gargoyles and seeking them for revenge. He had a BFG built and finally shot Goliath in the face. With a cream pie. And said that they were even now. This and the episode involving the three youngest males competing over Angela were in between much more serious episodes.
Web Original
|
|
