The naming of TV Episodes

I was sat in the bath and the idea for discussing the ideas behind the naming of episodes of TV Shows.

I'm not sure how this discussion will go, but there are several things I find interesting

1) Some shows don't display the name of episodes (I believe Fox is known for this)
2) Some shows have "themes" in the episode titles. I'll list some of them shortly. Is this a good idea? Do they work? Or is it old news.
3) Some titles seem to come up over and over again. For example "Tabula Rasa" is the name of a Buffy episode as well as X-Files, Heroes, Lost, Stargate and many others.


So, let's start with number 2. You ask the man in the street to name a TV show with "clever" episode titles and the top answer will be Friends. They took the idea that no one really knows the episode names, so went with "The one where..." or "The one with..."

But what other shows have clever titles?

Two and a half men - the episode title is a line from the show
Scrubs - All the episodes are "My" something (with a few exceptions when it's "our")
The Mentalist - All the episodes have something to do with Red
Knight Rider - All the episodes have the word "Knight" (either replacing "Night" or not_

I won't list any more as I'd like to hear what people think about the best way to title episodes? Which work? Which are corny? Which are clever?

 

I think all Smallville titles are one word.

I wish a more common practice was to name seasons. Especially in where seasons are increasingly one big story arc, it would make sense for them to have proper titles instead of just Season 1 and so forth.

 

Babylon 5 had season titles, which were titles of pivotal episodes in that series. So you knew when THAT episode came along, things would change.

 

I rather like the Seinfeld approach. Call it "The [Episode Gimmick]" so the writers spend their time on the script and not on trying to think up clever titles.

 

I despise writers who use an episode title as a cheap tie-in ploy.

Call the episode WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT, then have a character bring
up Richard the III ("Have you ever read Richard the III, Kato?").

The WGA,West should have rules against such pap.

 

I actually like it when the title has an obscure tie-in to the episode, I like trying to figure it out!

ER had some that I loved: "It's Not Easy Being Greene", "Dr. Carter, I Presume", "Whose Appy Now?" and"Nobody Doesn't Like Amanda Lee" were among my favorites. They not only tell about the episode (enough that I can recall details about that eppy, even if it wasn't one of my favorites) but they did it in an amusing way. Or perhaps I just have a strange since of humor! *shrugs*


...so the writers spend their time on the script and not on trying to think up clever titles.
I figure the episodes that have clever titles are the ones that practically write themselves. Sometimes when I'm writing the title just comes to me as I'm writing and it fits perfectly. It's when I have to actually think about a title that they are pretty boring.

 

Terminator:SCC had 3 episodes named after Bruce Springsteen songs: Sampson and Delilah, Adam Raised a Cain, and Born to Run. I liked those and thought they were all appropriate for the episodes.

It's not a good show, nor are the episode titles any good, but I believe all of Hannah Montana's episodes are plays off of famous songs which I suppose works for what the show is. Another show with themed episode titles that's not really any good is The L Word. Every episode title started with the letter L.

Chuck is sorta in the same vein of Friends. Instead of being "The one with", it's "Chuck vs." Short and to the point. I like it.

Episode titles aren't really a big deal to me as I can't recall ever seeing them on TV. However, now that I have satellite, I notice they come up when I select the info for an episode. This leads me to occasionally spend the whole episode trying to figure out why the episode was thus named and can be distracting.

 

The odd clever title can work fine, but when you have a show with 7 series "Two and a half men", of which ALL of them tell you nothing about the episode, it's impossible to keep track on which episode is which.

Some more series with special titles

Bones - The something in the something
King of Queens - All the titles only had 2 words

 

Well, with Seinfeld, they actually implemented it as a rule because they felt the writers were susceptible to working on the titles instead of the script. It's so that, if the title doesn't write itself, they're not wasting time on it. Just call it "The _____" and move on.

 

This is one area where 24 comes up way short.

 

I hardly ever pay attention to episode titles, but I rented some Smallville DVDs from Netflix once upon a time and liked the one word titles. Brief and informative, I never found myself wondering "Which one was that again?"

 

I really like the way Psych goes about naming their episodes, they just give a feel for the goofy fun the show has. Examples include: "Gus's Dad May Have Killed an Old Guy!", "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, He Loves Me, Oops He's Dead", "If You're So Smart, Then Why Are You Dead?", "Disco Didn't Die. It Was Murdered!", and my personal favorite, "Meat is Murder, But Murder is Also Murder."

 

The X-Files was sort of the benchmark for episode titles. Like, Fearful Symmetry, for instance, from the second season, which was the one where the aliens were kidnapping zoo animals and cloning them. Of course, if you recognize the reference to Blake's Tiger, Tiger, you figure that out a lot quicker.

 

There's a new series called Scoundrels, and it appears that all the episodes are lines from nursery rhymes. So again, no good for jogging the memory as to what the episode is about.

 

i find it a shame that i do not often find the names of episodes anywhere unless i specifically hunt them down.

x-files were often evocative and i also love the simpsons puns.