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openNo Title Live Action TV
What's it called when the Hero is tied up and one of the Bad Guys walks over with a knife/sword, looking like he is about to kill the Hero, but at the last moment cuts his bonds to free him instead of hurting him? Happens a lot on TV and movies both.
openNo Title Live Action TV
I remember a late 1980s-early 1990s TV episode about an angry woman astronaut/scientist working with a bioengineered human/alien on an alien planet. She is in a building and there is a glass separating her from him on the other side when he comes in the airlock to the building. He is able to go out onto the surface of the planet without protective gear and has a bulky/rocky-type shape that is still hominid. She is very rude to the 'creature' but he is very nice to her and asks her questions about her life. At the end of the episode, he reveals he is her husband, whom she thought was dead. The episode ends with him walking off on the planet, never to return, and she is screaming his real name and "They told me you were dead!" I cannot remember either of their names. It was a series like Tales from the Darkside or the Twilight Zone, but I cannot find the episode in those lists or other similar series. I cannot remember if it was broadcast or cable. I only saw the end and I am interested in finding it to watch the entire episode.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope listing times people who look and sound very similar have been put on the same creative work, leading some viewers to have trouble working out who is who? This is different from when the similarity of appearance is a deliberate part of the plot. What I'm talking about is more directorial carelessness.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope for: a hardened criminal goes to prison, and while there he decides to study the law and becomes a lawyer. Now he's gone straight and works at a law firm. (The law firm isn't evil - at least no more so than average.) Kind of an inversion of Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook.
openNo Title Live Action TV
What's the trope where a character enters the scene at the exact moment to join a conversation? It's almost like they were listening at the door, waiting for the right time to jump in and give their two cents. It's pretty common in crime dramas.
Beckett: You know, I bet about 50,000 people live within walking distance of that corner. Castle: We could canvass local businesses. Beckett: For an average-looking white guy? I mean, we can't even be sure what he looks like. (Shaw enters the room.) Special Agent Jordan Shaw: Looks aren't the only method we have to identify him. We also have behavior.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope for shows where one cop and one non-cop works together to solve cases, usually with loads of unresolved sexual tension?
Examples: Sleepy Hallow, Blue Collar, Bones, Castle, Mentalist and Elementary
openNo Title Live Action TV
I'm thinking of a possible YKTTW, unless it exists somewhere already.
It's the tendency of a TV series (or really, anything in a series medium) to go from subtle to obvious over time. The Ghost might turn up as an onscreen character (like Jenny Piccalo in Happy Days) or running jokes become detailed plot points (I think The Playbook in How I Met Your Mother) developed like this. Characters undergo Flanderization, like Chrissy in Three's Company, who was originally an adult but a little naive and became increasingly childlike and dumb. In sitcoms, the tendency is to become more cartoonish, a parody of itself. In drama, it might be to become more preachy, like M*A*S*H. For mystery-oriented shows, like Lost, the focus goes from creating the mystery to solving it.
This would be kind of a supertrope, encompassing several others, including those highlighted above. Would this make sense?
Edited by schoolmannopenNo Title Live Action TV
What's it called when someone uses a commercial kitchen as a mode of egress? It's a staple of spy and police shows and nobody in the kitchen ever gives a fuck. Edit: Kitchen Chase, duh, but I'm thinking of the case where the pursuer isn't right behind. Just the general concept of always being able to leave by the kitchen no matter what. See Blacklist Season 1 Ep. 17.
Edited by TVsVeryOwnopenNo Title Live Action TV
In the Castle episode Death Gone Crazy, Castle and Beckett prove that the culprit is the camera man, and they break his alibi when they see that the camera he used was not moving during the estimated time of death.
Which trope does that alibi fall under?
Edited by sentairider42openNo Title Live Action TV
This trope must be on here somewhere, but I can't remember ever seeing it. It applies to mainly to TV shows but can apply to pretty much any Long-Runner.
The trope I'm thinking of is when a show ends by making extensive references to its beginnings and recapturing the old magic. It may just be a matter of tone, but it may also bring back old characters, use old settings or even actively engage with the first episodes using flashbacks or time travel. Some examples are Lost, where the whole final season does this, Glee, where the final season restored the original premise and featured a full-episode flashback to the pilot, and outside of TV, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which puts original characters back at the forefront and deals extensively with the story's beginnings, and Return of the Jedi, which re-uses a lot of stuff from A New Hope and puts Luke, Han and Leia's relationships back in focus.
Does this exist? Surely it must do! Thanks.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Watching a new sitcom "Car Share", where two ill-assorted people are forced to share a car-pool arrangement to work every day. There's a major continuity glitch (I live in the city where the show was filmed) where live-action filming of the two people in the car, and the necessary limitations of repeat takes and editing, means their progression along familiar streets in the city of Manchester, England, is utterly bizarre. The action is meant to be a seamless whole between pick-up and arrival at work, and the show is live-filmed via camera in the car. But to somebody watching who knows the streets and the main roads (I accept I have privileged local knowledge here)the route they take is apparently crazy. It doubles back on itself, meanders over the entire city, jumps between scenes in a way suggesting the car is a random time machine, and makes no sense at all. Is there a continuity trope that would describe this? And I do accept the vast majority of viewers wouldn't notice and would see only two people interacting in a car. so maybe my local knowledge is making me extremely picky here. But thanks for help!
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there one for a character who isn't The Unseen, but who never appears on screen in person, only ever appearing on the other end of a video screen
openNo Title Live Action TV
I'm trying to find this trope, which I believe has become cliche, appearing commonly in crime/cop series/movies:
A police team (usually the SWAT and a hard-boiled detective) is seen preparing to raid a room (a warehouse is very common as well) where the audience expects the villain or hero to be. These shots are intercalled with the villain or heros in the room which we suppose is about to be assaulted by the police, increasing the tension/suspense.
Then, we finally see the police team breaching the room/the warehouse and the writers want the audience to believe they will catch the villain/heros who are apparently in that place, but when the law enforcemente enters the precint, the climax is: nobody's there. There are two usual outcomes:
A) the villain has already left, leaving a message or a victim (in this case, the villain is most often a serial killer). The moments where the villain is shown are actually in the past, meaning the police has arrived too late.
B) if it's a hero or good guy, usually a fugitive, they are in a completely unrelated (but still very similar) place, and in the end we find out they are safe and sound.
Example A occurs frequently in CSI (Las Vegas), and B, happened once or twice in Prison Break (Season 2), where the federal agent Alexander Mahone and SWAT are seen raiding a warehouse to arrest the fugitives from Fox River prison, but then it's show to be empty. While this, protagonist Michael Schofield and his gang are seen calmly leaving another warehouse in another location.
This is a very and overusedcheap trick imho, and I doubt any reasonable watcher with minimal critical thinking will catch the bait.
Edited by ksio89openNo Title Live Action TV
Original Run: Episodes 01 > 02 > 03 > 04 > 05
Rerun: Episodes 01 > 05 > 03 > 04 > 05
That makes Episode 02 a Missing Episode , but how would you call the copy-paste they did with Ep.05 to cover it? Some would call the second instance a "repeat", but how to name the first "earlier than it should be" instance?
Edited by RiddleTCopenNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope covering people on Show A encouraging their viewers to switch channels and watch Show B instead?
openNo Title Live Action TV
What is it called when a gay person hides his sexuality due to fear and rejection.
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is there a trope for "Beta Couple hooks up before the Alpha Couple do," or is that just an inherent part of their Beta Coupleness?
openNo Title Live Action TV
Is it a trope when someone states the obvious in a convoluted way, and then someone else sarcastically replies with the same thing stated in the more obvious way. For example: "Isn't it crazy that we have 2 classes in a row together?" "Yeah, it's crazy that two people in the same grade with the same classes have two of them together."
openNo Title Live Action TV
Just tracked down an episode of A.J.'s Time Travelers, and noticed that the style of the show is incredibly similar to Beakmans World. I know it's humorous rather than serious, but the humor is of a weird and somewhat off-putting (to me as an adult) style in which, for example, the characters don't answer a question until they've made weird gestures with their arms or mugged the camera a bit, and where the camera switches angles fairly frequently like they're expecting you to fall asleep if they don't. And where their expressions are very over-the-top and somewhat disconnected from what's going on.
I'm vaguely recalling similar elements from other shows I'm less familiar with... maybe Lazy Town, The Big Comfy Couch, stuff like that? But AJTT and BW seem to be the most pronounced in my head.
I kind of expect this to be a trope (or genre?) I haven't met yet, or else I'd post this on YKTTW. Any clues?
Edited by Kilyle

What trope is it when a character has his makeshift staff broken in half by an opponent, followed by the character beating his opponent even worse with the two halves?