Not Thriving (alt titles crowner June 6, 2019): Trainwreck Episode

Trainwreck Episode has been around since June 19th, 2008, over ten years, and it only has 20 wicks and 607 inbounds. It has also been subject to some misuse: the trope is about an episode that focuses on a disaster such as a car crash, fire, storm, etc., but some people have been taking the "trainwreck" part figuratively and have been using it for instances such as an episode of a Let's Play where the player or players keep failing a certain section of the game, episodes where the creator runs into a technical problem or episodes of a Reality Show where the contestants keep failing. I've cleaned up all the misuse and compiled it in this folder:

I think the reason for the underuse and misuse of the trope is the name. Trainwreck Episode's definition is broader than the name suggests which may lead to its underuse and "trainwreck" is a word that can be taken figuratively which leads to its misuse. I'd suggest a name that is broader and can't have a figurative double meaning such as Emergency Episode.

Sounds like a good name idea.

I agree that Emergency Episode is a big improvement.

I think going even more literal and renaming it to Big Disaster Episode is better. Emergency Episode sounds like a trivia page for episodes created in emergencies ("Uh oh, we don't have enough content for the season! Quick, cobble something together!")

I think having "disaster" in the name has the same problem as having "trainwreck": It can be interpreted figuratively in the sense of "episode featuring problematic moments". I'm not aware of any figurative meanings of "emergency" that can be interpreted that way.

I think similar words like "catastrophe" have the same issue, despite their literal meanings otherwise applying.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 17th 2019 at 1:33:18 PM

I'm going to disagree. First, while Emergency Episode doesn't have any figurative meanings, it's still Ambiguous Syntax: is it an episode that is an emergency, or is it an episode about an emergency?

Disaster Episode, on the other hand: disaster is a noun, so it should be clear that the name means "an episode about disasters". If it was an episode that is a disaster, it would be called Disastrous Episode or something, with the adjectival form.

Edited by BreadBull on Apr 18th 2019 at 4:36:11 AM

At the same time, people who want to complain will use the noun form as an adjective anyway.

Would we be focusing on the disaster itself, or disaster relief? If the latter, Disaster Relief Episode would be more clear.

Not exactly the relief, but the trope is more about the knock-on aftereffects of the disaster than the disaster itself. An easy way to verify that; do we care about the crash in Final Destination, or do we care about what happens to the characters after the crash?

More metaphorical, this trope would apply even if we never saw the disaster itself, only the aftereffects, whereas it doesn't apply just because a disaster happens, like a collapsing building. So I agree with a rename to Disaster Relief Episode or Disaster Relief Plot.

&Those name suggestions are good. I prefer Disaster Relief Plot over Disaster Relief Episode because the former would more clearly indicate that it can apply to non-episodic works, even though Tropes Are Flexible would otherwise make the latter work.

Edit: Also, adding to what was said in the first line of Brainulator's post, using a noun as an adjective is what already happened. "Trainwreck" is a noun and "a trainwreck of an episode" would be better syntax for what it's being misused to mean. The name of the existing trope Translation Trainwreck uses the noun form figuratively while using good syntax.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 18th 2019 at 8:17:41 AM

^ If we want to be really flexible we can fold Disaster Movie into whatever we want to call this thing here.

Not sure if "relief" is appropriate to all examples since the catastrophic event may occur but not be fully resolved in the same episode, e.g. if it's used to kick off a season. Are there actual examples of such a case?

Disaster Relief Episode also makes me think of characters fundraising to support a foreign disaster, i.e. the Go-Getter Girl holds a bake sale to support relief for victims of the cyclone in Insert Foreign Country.

I like Big Disaster Episode the best I think. A rename does seem to be in order.

Disaster Movie is thriving more than this trope, and it's only slightly older (by about one year). If anything, Trainwreck Episode should be merged into Disaster Movie instead of vice versa, possibly with the "Movie" part of the name being changed to account for non-film examples. Alternatively, leave the "Movie" part alone (especially due to inbounds, wicks, and the name being a preexisting term) and let Tropes Are Flexible do its work. Leaning toward leaving the name alone if a merge occurs, mainly due to its status as a preexisting term removing the definition-related ambiguity that Trainwreck Episode currently has.

Edit: To say things in a (hopefully) clearer way, eroock's mention of Disaster Movie, combined with Trainwreck Episode having a much lower wick count (less than a tenth) despite its age, leads me to wonder if the latter isn't distinct enough from the former (though it's definitely not Too Rare to Trope). Both involve a serious disaster; the key difference seems to be the disaster's out-of-universe scope (whole work vs. specific part of a multi-part work).

Edit: If we keep this as its own thing, maybe Big Disaster Plot or just Disaster Plot would work better than using "episode". A trend among the misuse in the OP is that the fact that it's a plot trope is often overlooked (specifically, applying it to non-scripted events), in addition to using "trainwreck" figuratively. As for the possibility of Big Disaster Plot or Disaster Plot being interpreted figuratively, I feel like anyone who would misuse it that way would already be using Idiot Plot that way.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 19th 2019 at 7:20:12 AM

So far, there have been 2 options suggested:

1. Rename
2. Merge with Disaster Movie, possibly rename Disaster Movie

Edited by ADrago on Apr 22nd 2019 at 11:42:15 AM

How about merging Trainwreck Episode and Disaster Movie under the new name "Disaster Episode"?

That doesn't sound too bad. I'd also like to retract what I originally wrote about that name.

I think "Disaster Plot" or "Big Disaster Plot" would be a better name for the merged trope to make it clear it's about a plot that focuses on a disaster.

Edited by ADrago on Apr 22nd 2019 at 1:15:24 PM

Disaster Plot works better. If anything, we just need a note saying something to the effect of:
"If you are looking for plots that are disastrous, see Dethroning Moment of Suck or So Bad, It's Horrible."

I agree that "plot" would be better than "episode", since, as I pointed out, a lot of the shoehorning listed in the OP was for non-scripted events. I mainly think the "trainwreck" part needs to go regardless of what the second word of the name is (third if "big" is being added to the beginning), and I think pretty much everyone is opposed to keeping the current name, regardless of whether this is being renamed and/or merged.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 23rd 2019 at 8:16:24 AM

"Big Disaster" Plot - I can go with that. Although, it would mean more effort to change the listing of Disaster Movie examples from D to B (if the merge gets approved).

Should we skip the Single Proposition crowner and just go to Page Action and/or Alternative Titles? I don't see any opposition to a rename.

I'd think it'd go to a Page Action crowner, since there's also discussion of merging Disaster Movie and Trainwreck Episode.

I'd also support that merge, by the way.

Alright, Page Action crowner.

I'm assuming those aren't mutually exclusive, i.e. if both options are voted up then it gets merged under a new name?

I would think that they are mutually exclusive. We can't really merge and rename at the same time.