A stock episode title doesn't have to be a Shout-Out. Regardless, we could avoid this debate by following the page's claim to list the most popular examples as opposed to titles that five series have used.
edited 8th Apr '11 1:03:02 AM by halfmillennium
I think the page would benefit if we tighten the requirement to 10 episodes.
This whole page just looks like someone made a chart from imdb.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
:(
I agree with restricting to 10 as well.
First key to interpreting a work: Things mean things.
Zzzzzzzzzz
I think 10 is too low, considering how long television shows have been using episode titles. For an episode title to be "stock", I think 25 should be the absolute low bound.
There are 693 entries on the chart. 514 if we cut it off at 10 or more. 479 if we cut it off at more than 10. There will still be 182 entries if we cut it off at 25 or more.
edited 14th Sep '11 8:37:10 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I agree. 25 sounds good. 10 sounds like coincidence.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
:(
Sounds good. I'm not set on a number; 25 still leaves quite a few examples on the page.
First key to interpreting a work: Things mean things.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Honestly, I'd personally like to set it even higher, but 25 works. It's not the length of the page that makes it a good page, and with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of episode titles, (? ) 10 shows using the same episode titles is hardly "stock".
edited 14th Sep '11 8:42:00 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I wouldn't mind it at 50 or 100 personally so that it's real stock titles and not just coincidence.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Zzzzzzzzzz
Well, I found a way to sort of get an answer-ish to "how many episode titles does IMDB list, anyway?" When I searched for TV episodes with "the" in the name, I got 126,723. So it's lots more than that.
I'll call it 150,000 for round numbers. That means that 10 episodes using the same name is such a tiny fraction of 1% that my calculator says the result is 6.666666666666666666666666666667e-5. 100 is the same except it end in "e-4". 1000 is 0.006 percent.
edited 14th Sep '11 9:08:57 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
So we should make it OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!
Considering the anti-stock phrase crusade, is this still a good idea to have at all? Seems like it's Not A Trope to me.
Stale since September. Is this done?
At the moment, the requirements for Stock Episode Titles are that at least five unrelated programmes have used the title.
Isn't that a bit broad? Five episodes using the same title is certainly possible even if the author doesn't copy the title. Would it be a good idea to move the goalposts: say, set the required number at 20 or perhaps 15? 15 is roughly halfway down the page. Even 10 would eliminate some of the obscure entires on the page.
edited 7th Apr '11 6:24:07 AM by halfmillennium