Halfway Plot Switch / Live-Action TV

• The two-part finale of the second season of 3rd Rock from the Sun is about the aliens experiencing dreams for the first time (with elaborate, Three Dimensional Dream Sequences) and thinking they're going mad. This ends up as a season-ending Cliffhanger in which Sally, Tommy, and Harry have left Earth without Dick. When they return at the start of the next season, they've brought another alien (Roseanne Barr) who has been assigned Dick's wife by the Big Giant Head. The rest of the two-part season premiere is about this storyline. So essentially, it's a four-part episode in which the first two parts are about something completely different than the concluding two parts.
• 24:
  • In the first season this was enforced because they only had a 13 episode contract to start, so the plot begins at Midnight and every threat is resolved by 1 PM. When the series was extended, they dropped in a Sequel Hook scene and continued the plot from there.
  • The first half is either the first phase of the terrorist attack or is a diversion that was meant to waste their time but that would still be deadly if Jack Bauer didn't save the morning!
  • In Season 6, Islamic terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb, killing 12000 people and destroying Valencia. However, this plot thread quickly drops from focus in favor of stopping the Chinese from obtaining a MacGuffin that would give them control of Russia's nuclear arsenal and spark World War III.
• Has happened three seasons in a row with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the fall/spring season transition.
  • Season 2 has Whitehall's faction of HYDRA being destroyed, with the second half of the season centering on the introduction of the Inhumans and the conflict with the "Real" SHIELD.
  • Season 3 has Ward killed and SHIELD's issues with the ATCU resolved, with the second half centering around Hive escaping from his prison and taking over HYDRA.
  • Season 4 has the Ghost Rider plotline wrapped up, Daisy returning to SHIELD, and the old guard possibly coming to an accord with the new Director, only for Ada to start behaving dangerously, possibly as a result of reading the Darkhold.
• Angel did this in the second and fourth seasons.
  • The second season was more explicit, with the central arc of the season revolving around Angel's arc based around saving Darla and his vengeance against Wolfram and Hart ending early in the 16th episode, with the following two episodes somewhat wrapping up the aftermath. The next four episodes after that involve a complete shift in storyline to Lorne's homeworld and the rescue of Fred Burkle.
  • The fourth season builds around the coming of the Beast to bring darkness and destruction to LA, and the gang discovering out that Cordelia was possessed by some kind of evil being and was the Beast's master. Once again, this story reaches its finale in Episode 17 when Cordelia manages to give birth to a magical offspring. While still tangentally connected to this earlier plotline, the offspring is a fully-grown woman named Jasmine who is seemingly benevolent and intending to bring world peace while hiding a dark secret, and the plotline stands completely on its own. The last episode represents yet another switch as Jasmine has been defeated in the prior episode, and the season finale is instead spent setting up the following season.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer usually did this whenever bringing in the Big Bad
  • Season 2 pulled two switches: First, it seemed like the Anointed One would be targeting her the full season to avenge the Master's death in the previous season, only for Spike and Drusilla to come in just a few episodes later. They were the main adversaries on the show for a while until halfway through the season where Buffy and Angel consummate their relationship, and in turn cause Angel to lose his soul and turn evil.
  • Season 3 set up Mr. Trick as the main antagonist for the first few episodes, only to bring the Mayor of Sunnydale in and recruit Trick. Then Trick dies halfway through the season and the real Dragon approaches the Mayor with an offer he can't refuse...
  • Season 4 had Buffy constantly running across the secret organization the Initiative... then halfway through their creation, Adam awakes and busts out of the place.
  • Season 6 had a very late switch. Most of it was spent on the gang coping with their self-destructive behavior and life tearing each of them apart while also dealing with a pain in the ass trio of geeks trying to rub them out for the heck of it. And then by Episode 19, it looks like everything's wrapped up. Buffy's finally getting her life in control, the trio's been disbanded, Willow and Tara have reconciled... wait a minute, there's still three episodes left in the season, isn't there? Ex-leader Warren shows up and winds up shooting both Buffy and Tara, killing the latter... which leaves Willow becoming one very pissed off and vengeful witch.
• One episode of Burn Notice initially focused on Michael trying to fend off blackmail from another spy; the usual criminal-of-the-week was a mere stalker for a bank manager, and the spy repeatedly interferes with Michael’s attempts to deal with that as a power play. Then the “stalker” turns out to be leading a bank robbery and takes a number of hostages, Michael and the spy included. The two soon team up and the rest of the episode is a "Die Hard" on an X plot; the spy agrees to drop the blackmail once everything is over.
• The first five or six episodes of Cougar Town are about Jules entering the world of the cougar, and after that, the show shifts to a more ensemble-y show about Jules and her family and friends.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Ark" opens as a story about how the Doctor and his companions inadvertently introduce a deadly virus among the last survivors of humanity and try to put right their error as quickly as possible so that there are no long-term consequences... Except there clearly are as the second half of the story, set thousands of years later, makes very clear: the erstwhile servant race of Monoids have managed to enslave the humans as a result.
  • "The Seeds of Doom" starts as a The Thing-like story about three scientists in Antarctica recovering an alien plant and unwittingly causing great danger to the rest of Earth. The Doctor gets called in to help and arrives after one of the scientists is infected, with the resulting story apparently centering around the Doctor and Sarah having to work with the remaining scientists to stop the plant. By the second part, all three of the scientists have been killed and the base gets blown up, destroying the plant. The rest of the serial focuses on the Doctor and Sarah Jane trying to stop a second plant that's now in the possession of a mad herbologist living in an estate in England.
  • “The Stones of Blood” is a Gothic Horror story about Druids and human sacrifice in a stone circle which suddenly turns into a Black Comedy courtroom drama aboard a hyperspace ship.
  • "Kill the Moon" starts off as a bit of a Classic Who pastiche about the companions and guest characters getting the Base Under Siege treatment from giant orange spiders. There's a ton of Continuity Cavalcade and Internal Homage for ancient stories like "The Moonbase" and "The Ark in Space", just to make sure we get the point. At the midpoint of the episode, the story abruptly turns into a drama in which the characters earnestly debate the ethics of an allegorical abortion and whether the Doctor has any business deciding the fate of humanity for it.
  • "Fugitive of the Judoon" starts off being about the titular thuggish Space Police menacing Gloucester while looking for a fugitive. Once the fugitive is identified, the Judoon take a backseat as the plot shifts to the mystery around the fugitive's true identity.
• This happens frequently in ER, when a character-oriented episode will be interrupted by a large-scale medical emergency which will provide the drama for the rest of the episode.
• Father Ted 's "A Christmassy Ted" starts off being about the characters getting prepared for Christmas, which involves getting lost in the largest lingerie section in Ireland. Halfway through the plot changes to being about Ted being eligible for a Golden Cleric award. Graham Linehan has admitted the plots would have worked better as separate episodes.
• The Full House episode "Grand Gift Auto" spends its first two acts revolving Joey buying a stolen car and getting questioned by an officer. The third act revolves around Joey considering moving out, feeling that the Tanners see him as nothing but a joke, and the family trying to convince him that they really do care about him.
• The Good Life episode "The Windbreak War" details the, yes, Escalating War over the eponymous garden ornament.. until Jerry forces everyone to sit down and talk about it, after which they all get plastered on Tom's homemade Gargle Blaster and start hitting on each other.
• Homeland is about Deuteragonists Brodie, a celebrated but shell-shocked veteran of questionable sanity, and Carrie, a bipolar CIA agent who secretly investigates Brodie. After three seasons, Brodie's story has run its course. From the fourth season on, the show is only about Carrie's continuing and largely unrelated adventures trying to balance her life, psyche, and career.
• Homicide: Life on the Street:
  • "Bop Gun" starts off focusing on a family man (played by a very against type Robin Williams) grieving the death of his wife in a mugging and coping with her death becoming a high-profile news story. However, the focus gradually shifts to Howard's attempts to prove the suspected killer's innocence and Williams' character eventually leaves the plot entirely.
  • "In Search of Crimes Past" initially centers around a woman taking Barnfather hostage on the eve of her father's execution and demanding the detectives prove his innocence in exchange for Barnfather's release. When they succeed in doing so and get her to stand down, the rest of the episode shifts focus to Pembleton and Bayliss's investigation into an elderly woman's murder, which had previously been a minor subplot.
• Season 4 of House of Cards (US) starts by continuing on from the end of Season 3. After Frank recovers from getting shot by Lucas Goodwin in an assassination attempt a third of the way through the season, the plot switches to Frank scheming with Claire as part of a reinvigorated election cycle.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider Decade starts out as a show about the title character visiting alternate Rider worlds and solving their problem of the week, all the while wondering why people think he's the Destroyer of Worlds. Before the end of the show, this gets interrupted by the introduction of Dai-Shocker, a new incarnation of the franchise's original villains, and the show never gets around to explaining why Decade is the Destroyer of Worlds. Decade's second movie then consists of this exact same switch in miniature: the first half consists of Decade spontaneously turning into a Villain Protagonist and killing all of the other Riders, and the second half consists of him immediately turning back into a good guy, reviving all of the Riders he just killed, and teaming up with them to fight Dai-Shocker.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: The first half of the show consists of the Riders dealing with patients of the week while unknowingly helping Kuroto gather the data he needs to complete The Most Dangerous Video Game, Kamen Rider Chronicle. As soon as it's finished, the second half of the show switches gears to entirely focus on the Riders working to shut down Chronicle before it can claim any more victims.
• In Law & Order, an occasional plot is that the police start investigation of a recent murder, discover an underlying crime which is arguably a cause of the murder, and end up investigating this other crime. For example, the case in Season 21 episode "The Great Pretender" has this. The case begins with the detectives investigating the murder of a young woman, who turns out to be a con artist, who's actions are similar to the real life con artist, Anna Sorokin. While they look for suspects, they come across information about a pharmaceutical company flooding the streets with opioids illegally, and the episode suddenly shifts to the D.A going on a personal crusade to punish the people responsible because of the epidemic of opioid deaths in America.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is fond of this, especially as seasons continue. They often end up handling cases that only look sexual that change halfway into something completely unrelated. They never bother to explain why the non-special victims case isn't handed to another department.
  • One example is the episode "Vulnerable", which starts out as a case about an old woman being sexually assaulted and turns into a tangentially related storyline about another, non-sexual victim in a nursing home where the first victim just happened to be.
  • Another example is "Responsible" where the entire reason for SVU to be there was "We found her on a bed that had ejaculate on it" and any sexual motive was ruled out right after the opening credits so that the plot could dive into an examination of teenage drinking. Although technically it could be considered a child endangerment case (which SVU often dives into) because they were minors.
  • An even worse one would be "Wildlife" where they were called to a case because a bodily fluid was found on a victim: saliva. The murder weapon was described as a number of sharp uneven pointed things (obviously teeth) and there did not appear to be any sexual aspect to the crime. This did not stop them from investigating animal smugglers which resulted in them nearly blowing an FBI investigation getting an innocent man (and his pet tiger) eaten by wild hyenas and having Elliot shot (granted it was implied he took the case so he would not have to spend time with his family).
  • Possibly the weirdest, though, was the one that had what looked like a case of child molestation somehow turn out to actually be a Government Conspiracy to test new poisons on poor immigrants, essentially For the Evulz.
  • In a slightly more reasonable case, "Liberties" starts off as a story about a stalker who set his ex-girlfriend/stalkee up to be raped, but takes a turn when the judge in the case asks Elliot to find the body of the judge's murdered son. Though the rape case is largely sidelined in favor of the latter arc, there does turn out to be a connection between the two halves of the plot.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Season 2 of Daredevil starts with the Punisher as an antagonist. He is captured four episodes into the season, at which point Elektra and her plotline are introduced, alongside the Punisher plotline.
  • Luke Cage kills off the first antagonist, Cottonmouth, literally at the seventh episode, the middle episode of the 13 episode season. The same episode introduces Diamondback, who becomes the main antagonist for the rest of the season.
• NCIS pulls this with the "Enemies Foreign/Domestic" two-parter. "Enemies Foreign" focuses on trying to stop Palestinian terrorists from assassinating Mossad Director Eli David. The team successfully kills/arrests the terrorists, but the episode ends with an explosion that kills Mossad Officer Hadar and sends NCIS Director Vance to the hospital. "Enemies Domestic" then focuses on Vance's first NCIS mission to Amsterdam, since someone from that op was responsible for the explosion.
• Police, Camera, Action! was a Documentary that aired from 1994 to 2002, and 2007 to 2010, but used this trope fairly regularly. Let's go through them step-by-step:
  • "The Wild Side", which aired in January 1998, started out by discussing swans on the motorway and other wild animals, but after the commercial break, went into the dangers of driving while tired, and new police methods to stop stolen cars in London and a hostage situation in Dyfed-Powys area of Wales.
  • "Rust Buckets", which aired October 1998. After the first sequence of clips about The Alleged Car ("rust bucket" is British slang for the alleged car), it then discussed a police pursuit in Blackbird Leys, Oxfordshire, before focusing on the Scottish Highlands, foreign drivers on British roads, and drivers behaving foolishly.
• Happens in a couple of Red Dwarf episodes, including the Series VIII finale: the first half is about how Lister and Kryten playing pranks on each other turns into a potentially lethal situation... then halfway through they discover that a virus is eating the ship, most of the crew evacuates, and our heroes have to cross into a mirror universe to find the antidote. This was set up at the very beginning of the episode, but most of the events from the first half have no effect on the second half.
  • In the episode "Emohawk: Polymorph II" it happens twice. First, the crew is being chased by a rogue Space Corps police probe... this leads them to crash onto a Gelf moon, where they have to deal with the locals to fix their ship's oxygen system... this leads them to being back on the ship with the titular emohawk on the loose. Apart from the connections mentioned above, none of the previous parts have any effect on each new plot.
  • The first episode uses this, as well. The first half of the episode is a general snapshot of the routine on board the Dwarf and an introduction to some of the technology they have. The second half is, well... Everybody's Dead, Dave.
  • "Justice" begins with the crew finding a stasis pod drifting in space. They determine that it came from a Prison Ship and contains either a living human woman or a murderous simulant — and it will open automatically in a matter of hours. They go to the prison station to learn more, only for the prison's AI to scan their minds and find Rimmer guilty of causing the accident that killed Red Dwarf's crew. Most of the episode is then devoted to getting Rimmer released. That done, they decide to head home...
    The Cat: Come on, let's get out of here. I don't know what made us want to come to this hellhole in the first place!
    Lister: (staring at the now-open pod) I do.
    • In the end, the key to defeating the new threat is in how Rimmer dealt with imprisonment.
• Resurrection: Ertuğrul: Season 3 starts off revolving Ertugrul getting involved in the trade process by setting up shop in the Hanli Bazaar, as well as his subsequent rivalry with Ural Bey. Then Ural kills the market owner, and the governor of Karacahisar embargoes the Kayi goods that were supposed to arrive in his city, thus changing the direction of the arc from that point on. And that’s not even discussing the fact that Season 4 picks up directly after the events of the season 3 finale…
• Star Trek: The Next Generation has had a couple of examples where two plots that couldn't each fill up an episode were joined together.
  • "Up The Long Ladder" starts with the Enterprise evacuating an Oireland-style colony, complete with Anachronism Stew hijinks. They then visit a second colony populated by clones that are only a few generations away from losing genetic integrity — and the solution is to integrate both groups of colonists into one.
  • "Sins of the Father" starts with a Klingon officer named Kurn coming aboard the Enterprise as part of an ongoing exchange program and taking his post as temporary First Officer. What looks like an episode of the crew chafing under his Drill Sergeant Nasty attitude changes course when he reveals himself to be Worf's younger brother, and brings news that their deceased father Mogh is being falsely accused of treason. The rest of the episode is a Klingon-style Courtroom Episode as Worf fights to clear Mogh's name and restore his family's honor.
  • "The Drumhead" is a Courtroom Episode that starts with an investigation of espionage and possible sabotage. The spy is caught pretty quickly; the sabotage, on the other hand (which turns out to not have even been sabotage but an accident), leads to a Witch Hunt and a serious look at the issue of the security of the state versus the rights of the individual citizen.
• Star Trek: Voyager also this happen from time to time.
  • Season 2's "Meld". The plot begins with Tuvok investigating a murder that took place in Engineering. He finds out less than fifteen minutes into the episode, when the murderer, an unhinged Betazoid who works in Engineering, reveals himself, without even bothering to give a clear motive. Tuvok, as logical a Vulcan as there can be, cannot accept that there's simply no motive (even though the crewman in question is clearly just that unhinged), so he administers a Vulcan mind-meld to find out what it is. The plot then changes to the aftereffects of doing a mind-meld on a homicidal maniac, as Tuvok goes down one of the ugliest Sanity Slippages in the entire Trek franchise.
  • In season 3's "Worst Case Scenario," B'Elanna finds a holodeck program that simulates a rebellion of the Maquis members on Voyager. Soon enough, various different crew members are finding it, and, taking it with a good dose of humor, discuss the story possibilities this program has. Tuvok eventually reveals himself as the author, who simply wanted a training scenario to prepare in case the Maquis members ever did rebel, which didn't happen as they simply integrated into the crew without much fuss. Tuvok and Paris go into the holodeck, arguing over how to finish the story, and then the episode takes a turn, as Tuvok activating the program sets off a trap made by one of the Maquis - Seska, who had turned the program into a series of attempts on Tuvok's life, just out of petty revenge.
  • Season 5's "Latent Image" starts out as a standard Crisis of the Week involving hostile aliens and wiped memories, then changes into a debate on the rights of artificial lifeforms.
  • Season 7's "Author, Author": speaking of holodeck programs. The Doctor is nearly finished his holo-novel, Photons Be Free, a dramatized version of his own life as the Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram, and the struggles and oppressions he faces from being just a program. He even sent out an early edition to a distributor on Earth, just to sell him on the concept. The problem? The Doctor clearly used facsimiles of his own crew, except with different names. This naturally infuriates his fellow crewmen and friends, including the captain, who holds a meeting over it. The Doctor initially refuses to back down about using artistic license, until eventually he clues in that what he's doing is borderline slander. The Doctor gets back in touch with his distributor to keep him informed, only to find his distributor published the holo-novel already. In a Dramatic Irony, the distributor was able to do so because legally speaking, holograms have no rights. This turns into a court case, defending the Doctor's personhood, for the remainder of the episode.
• Super Sentai:
  • Gosei Sentai Dairanger:
    • The first few minutes of Episode 2 finish the cliffhanger from the first episode, then becomes a focus episode on Shouji trying to redeem himself for letting a kid get kidnapped by the Gorma.
    • The first half of Episode 3 focuses on Shouji and Kazu, while the second switches to Daigo.
  • In Episode 24 of Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger Umeko interrogated an alien about a bomb; then the rest of the episode was about the alien, and they only picked it up at the end.
  • An episode of Turboranger subverts this. It seems to do this with the earlier problem of Youhei being poisoned by the monster of the week being quickly overshadowed 5 minutes later by the fact that in attempts to recover the antidote for him Haruna received a blow to the skull and now thinks she's part of the bad guys with poor Youhei forgotten about. However, it turns out Haruna was only fooling to get the antidote and both plots wind up tying together after all.
• The Vicar of Dibley: The first part of the episode "Summer" deals with the people of Dibley suffering a severe water shortage during a heatwave, with barely enough water to drink and certainly not enough to wash; one scene shows Geraldine and Alice wearing old Halloween costumes because they're the only clean outfits they have left. Halfway through, though, we learn that the local council's solution to this problem is to flood Dibley for a water reservoir, and the rest of the episode deals with the fight to save the village, with no further mention of the problem that led to this in the first place — indeed, all evidence of the shortage disappears after this point.

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