"X Episode" Tropes

I threw it on my TRS to-do list stored on my sandbox.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jul 15th 2022 at 4:38:34 AM

I generally agree. The use of homages and spoofing is one reason. Another reason is that genres are associated with character types. For regular works in that genre, characters are made to fit the genre. But for an Out-of-Genre Experience, it's the other way around — characters created for another genre are being fitted into different archetypes.

Take the My Little Pony episode "MMMystery on the Friendship Express". It's a Mystery Episode and Thriller on the Express plot about figuring out who ate a cake. At first Pinkie Pie leads the investigation, with Twilight as sidekick. Pinkie Pie's Cloudcuckoolander personality makes her fit the "eccentric detective" type, while Twilight (who is typically levelheaded) plays the role of the Only Sane Man assistant. Later on they switch, with Twilight's usual role as The Smart Guy making her suited for the role of the detective, while Pinkie becomes the comic relief foil.

Another My Little Pony example: "Rarity Investigates!" is a Noir Episode and Mystery Episode. Rarity, the Girly Girl Fashion Designer, takes on the role of the investigating detective. Her love of fashion leads her to go through multiple thematically-fitting costume changes throughout the episode, her theatricalness leads her to make Private Eye Monologues accompanied by shifts to black-and-white and jazz music, her eye for detail as a fashion designer plays a crucial role in noticing clues, her general sociability and empathy play a role in gathering information and reading others, and her occasional tendency to charm guys for favors leads her to take on the role of a Femme Fatale-esque Heroic Seductress at one point to gather information.

I have my reservations still, but by and large I agree with the idea that valid "X Episode" tropes (The Doll Episode discussion as well as the draft that prompted this thread are evidence that there are invalid ways of creating these tropes) are all explicitly a subtrope of either Formula-Breaking Episode or Out-of-Genre Experience. I'd also toss in Bizarro Episode and Bottle Episode (for location based Episode tropes). This means that these tropes cannot be applied to every medium unless the medium is Episodic in nature or structure. Standalone films and books for example can never have an X Episode example. so these tropes aren't just about the content of the work but the format of the work itself.

But to narrow in on ways to determine what is and isn't valid, a few questions/thought experiments

no one person needs to answer these questions, but I think working through them could help

Edited by amathieu13 on Jul 15th 2022 at 8:01:18 AM

When I was drafting Amateur Filmmaking Plot, I originally wanted it to be an Episode Trope... but then people pointed out that the plot itself is much broader, I retooled it. I really think a lot of it just depends on the works that use the trope. If episodic works use it in a specific and special way, I think that counts. If every work that uses it uses it the same way, then I think it's just a normal plot trope.

I don't know about franchises like the MCU though.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 15th 2022 at 7:55:47 AM

I agree with Jay, I think.

I think Formula-Breaking Episode can apply to books or film series that aren't normally thought of as episodic, provided it's long enough to have established a formula to be broken. A trilogy is probably the bare minimum necessary to establish a pattern, but the fourth Johnny Badass movie isn't breaking the pattern established by the first three - torture is not unusual for an action movie. (I'm not sure Beach Episode could apply to film - simply because of the differences in use of tension between film and television.) I imagine the same applies to the MCU, though I haven't actually seen Ant-Man.

As I suspected.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Jul 15th 2022 at 3:06:32 PM

I agree that a film series typically doesn't have enough entries to establish a "formula" to be broken. The MCU shouldn't count because it's such a diverse range of styles and genres that there's nothing to "break".

That makes sense. I think something like, say, The Land Before Time could have this, because there's a bazillion movies, but the MCU is already a mixed bag.

I don't have an actual example, but it occurred to me that anthologies or serial novels are probably episodic enough to count.

(Then I imagined the cast of Dracula spending a chapter in Margate to de-stress where vampires can't get them and made myself laugh.)

so in your opinion the 4th movie can't be a Torture Chamber Episode and the 3rd on probably isn't a Beach Episode.

But the first one would be a Heist Episode and the second one would be a Casino Episode?

in a similar vein, what about a book of short stories, something like Chicken Soup for the Soul in which each book is about a topic (like love, dating, marriage, grief, etc) and each story within them explores the topic in its own way. If for example in a book about grief, one of the stories featured going to the circus, would that be a Circus Episode?

I think I'm stuck on how we determine what a formula is enough to say its being broken for works with a formula that has never been consistent/ has included switching its premise from the very beginning.

Edited by amathieu13 on Jul 15th 2022 at 12:01:22 PM

Is it the same characters going to the circus, or just a story about the circus? I know your question is just a hypothetical, but these details matter.

For works that have no consistent premise then no, I wouldn't say any of these tropes really count because there's no formula to break.

Even then, Circus Episode is definitely one of the more nebulous ones. I guess the main thing is that it at least pulls the characters out of their normal setting and some of them might perform.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 15th 2022 at 12:04:58 PM

I wouldn't call Ant-Man a Heist Episode because its cast is introduced for a heist plot. If it were, say, Iron Man pulling a heist, that'd be another matter, since there are several Iron Man-focused movies, all in a similar genre to each other, and none of them are heist films.

I don't think any of them would be any of them.

The first one isn't a Heist Episode, it's just The Heist.

The second one isn't a Casino Episode, it just involves a casino. (That'd be like saying... which installment of The Godfather involved trying to establish the family in Las Vegas? I can never tell 2 and 3 apart. Anyway, describing it as The Godfather's casino episode would be a stretch.)

The third one isn't a Beach Episode, it's Sunshine Noir. Now the bare minimum for a pattern has been established, but every movie has had different settings and unrelated plots so at the level of detail we've been thinking about it consists of little more than "this is an action-adventure franchise".

The fourth one isn't a Torture Chamber Episode because it is not a divergence from the established formula... unless, I suppose, the entire film is set in the torture chamber (it is marked as a Bottle Episode subtrope), like a Dolled-Up Installment of Saw or Cube that was thought would sell better under the highly marketable Johnny Badass brand. I suppose that might qualify, but I'd still be inclined to find a non-episodic trope that was a better fit.

I'm mostly with WarJay on this. The X Episode is basically a shift to the usual flow and/or framing device of the story, but doesn't actually change the the status quo of the setting or the characters.

For example, a James Bond movie where Bond must infiltrate a crime lord's lair and spends most of his time in the latter's private beach would not be an example of a Beach Episode. It would count if the entire film is about the entire MI6 having a vacation at the beach and the whole movie is just about the fun and party and petty spats and drama that might occur during such events.

Edited by Adept on Jul 16th 2022 at 5:38:48 PM

Catching up: Jay's point about Amateur Filmmaking Plot reminds me of one of my drafts, Swear Word Plot. Originally it was Swear Word Episode, but I retooled it as I didn't want it to be limited to episodic works, as plots that put heavy focus on swear words can be standalone in theory. The only episode trope I launched was Chickenpox Episode, and that's mostly because it's a subtrope of Sick Episode.

In my head, "X Episode" sort of refers to a stock plot and specific set of challenges that characters have to undergo, but they are temporary by design. So stuff that puts them in a new setting like Beach Episode or Circus Episode might be valid, as well as conditions that are temporary by nature but change the way they behave for that episode, like Sick Episode or Injured Limb Episode.

I think for it to be Episode and not Plot, it should connect to Status Quo Is God, as this scenario can be mostly wrapped up in one single episode and the plot is thus restricted to this episode.

I know I keep bringing up Dream Episode, but since I launched it it's the easiest one for me to compare things to. So for Dream Episode, the reason it's Episode and not Plot is because these episodes are often just silly breaks from the routine that show you a little bit about the character's psychology while also having surreal antics with very low stakes, as the audience is aware the character is asleep.

So while there are in theory standalone works that take place in dreams (I can think of at least three), those don't have the same purpose I think as in those stories the dreams are often less surreal due to the needs to still tell a cohesive story with danger and stakes, whereas for episodic works it can be as wacky and light-hearted as it wants to be since the entire story doesn't need to be built around it.

In comparison, something like Heist Episode is a bit more questionable because I don't see many differences between The Caper and Heist Episode in terms of how they affect the plot and characters.

I'm pulling back from commenting to allow other voices and opinions, but I'm chiming in for a moment to comment re: Dream Episode. I think that falls under Bizarro Episode territory, or at least, from what you're describing that's what makes it a divergent from the norm, which is one of the potential criteria for differentiating between valid and invalid versions of the trope.

ok, back to reading others' responses!

I think you mean Formula-Breaking Episode, because Bizarro Episode is a subset of that, but yeah.

there are many ways to break the formula, so I was using Bizarro Episode because it specifies strange and the surreal and I think that's more in line with what a Dream Episode goes for. Call it a Sister Trope or a Sub-Trope

Edited by amathieu13 on Jul 16th 2022 at 9:53:16 AM

Eh, fair enough.

So... this is funny to me, because I have a personal writing project that consists entirely of Dream Episodes with the distinction you're describing in mind; in fact, it's the reason I thought about the possibility of epistolary novels and anthologies being considered episodic. (Each story/chapter is presented as an entry in the protagonist's dream journal, and her waking life has its own more cohesive arc but it only gets mentioned incidentally when it becomes relevant.)

If it were published, I don't think I would list it on the Dream Episode page any more than I would list Leverage on the Heist Episode page - it's part of the Once an Episode formula, not a break from it. However, I think it confirms your point anyway that being episodic, having an enclosed narrative that does not directly affect events of other episodes, actually does distinguish the use of a Dream Episode from standalone stories which are set in dreams.

First off, that story idea sounds super cool, I love shit like that!

And yeah, I do think the very fact that these plots are standalone, often with smaller stakes, does change the trope a bit. These are smaller plots designed around a gimmick, rather than entire standalone stories that might incorporate the concept.

For example, one story I thought of were all the various Poet Anderson works, mostly the novels. They're about a Dream Walker with exceptional lucid dreaming abilities battling against the personification of nightmares; however the dream world itself isn't incredibly surreal and the danger in the dream world is just as present as it is in the waking world. So it's one of the reasons I said these standalone works aren't always as surreal due to the stronger emphasis on plot, with the dream world being more of a backdrop than anything. Compare that to something like the Dream Episode from Spongebob, where we saw things like Mr. Krabs fishing for a giant dollar and Plankton being a giant town-destroying monster, with the dreams themselves being the plot of the episode.

So I guess it's another metric. For "episode tropes", the gimmick is often the plot, not just a genre or concept or whatever. With standalone works, the plot can and often does incorporate these sort of ideas, but the stories are more complex, whereas in an episode format these ideas are simplified.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 16th 2022 at 11:06:38 AM

This was on mind mind for quite a while, but not that there's a place to let it out, I envision...

• Merge most Episodes into Thematic Episode Plot or some other form of Something Completely Different Formula-Breaking Episode where the entire episode is centered about something the characters have to deal with. If that's too much, every folder at Episodes can be own trope (like Illness Episode)
  • For the sake of saving redundancy, Topic Wheel Episodes can be applied to a work where every episode deals with some kind of own theme.
• Remove Holiday Episode subtropes and push examples upwards. Example context can provide (if not already) which holiday the episode is themed after.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 1st 2022 at 8:30:02 PM

Something Completely Different is an index now, you mean Formula-Breaking Episode. I wouldn't want to merge these ideas together because they are all different tropes with different purposes for the narrative... When done properly, at least.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 1st 2022 at 1:27:22 PM

Yeah, I'm a lumper and it seems like an overlump.

I'm bingeing Community where part of the gimmick of the episodes is to somehow squeeze its 21st century sitcom cast of students into trope/work/genre parodies. There's no reason why they should be dressing up as cowboys with paintball guns rather than real guns (Community S2 E23: A Fistful of Paintballs) and deal with food poisoning that turns people into zombies at Halloween (Community S2 E06: Epidemiology) other than "it's fun to write/watch that happen".

I would rather discuss the specifics of each episode concept on the terms of each genre than under one Formula-Breaking Episode, or even under Spaghetti Western and Zombie Apocalypse.

Have we landed on any solid criteria to judge valid and invalid episode tropes? If so we can summarize them in a single post and potentially run a crowner on them.

From there it would just be a matter of going through the current episode tropes to see which ones make the cut and which ones can potentially be reworked into a plot trope or merged into an already existing plot trope.