TV Tuesday: Deja Vu

[yourlibrarian]

In the past, shows used to create “clip episodes” which were made up of segments of other episodes with a brief wraparound story. This was usually done to save money, extend writing time, or cover for the absence of a lead character.

Is this something you miss? Is there one you've particularly liked? Given currently shorter seasons, are these still being used in any shows you’ve seen?

Comments

[jo]

I can't say I miss clip episodes, as often, as you point out, they were done for reasons that had nothing to do with creativity or advancing the show in any way. However, some shows did manage to use the format fairly effectively.

One of the best, I think, was the M*A*S*H* episode "The Interview". It was presented as a black and white documentary/50s TV news special with the characters were being interviewed by Clete Roberts. In the 2023 special, MASH: The Comedy That Changed Television, if I'm remembering things correctly, the actors answered the questions as their characters, without a script. Then you have Community, which flipped the script on clip episodes by doing clip episodes that contained all new content. Friends did a few clip episodes that didn't feel like fillers.

One of the absolute worse, however, is "Shades of Gray", the last episode of season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was done as a cost-saving measure because a few other episodes that season ran over-budget. The head writer referred to the episode as a "piece of shit". The "plot" was Riker gets infected by a deadly virus during an away mission, and the only way to save his life is to put him in a coma and hook him up to a machine that will artificially stimulate his brain neurons, keeping them active and resisting the virus. This causes Riker to dream of his past adventures aboard the Enterprise. Most of seasons 1 and 2 of TNG were pretty bad, but this one takes the cake.

I can't think of any current/recent shows that have done clip episodes, and given 1) the shorter seasons you mentioned and also 2) streaming, I don't know if they make sense now. We tend to forget the past when there was no streaming, no DVDs, some shows didn't have reruns everywhere. If you were watching season 7 of a show and they had a clip episode with clips from earlier seasons, it might have been years since you'd seen those clips -- and maybe you'd never seen them. That just isn't the case anymore when you can binge 10 seasons of a show in a matter of days/weeks.

[rogueslayer452]

Honestly, I was never really a fan of them. While some could make it interesting, most times it was just pointless filler for the reasons stated (saving money, an actor being absent during the time, etc). I usually just skip those episodes.

And with the shows today, that's not really common (and I think stopped being used as much a while ago), and I would be pissed if it happened now considered the shorter seasons we're currently getting and they wasted it all on a clip episode.

[starfleetbrat]

I don't miss them at all. I think because it was a rare episode when one was done well, but mostly because I just never saw the point in them.

I hope shows today aren't doing them. I can't think of any of the top of my head anyway.

[shadowkat]

Rarely seen now, but I admittedly only watch streaming, with the exception of my soap opera and PBS.

Grey's did it recently - but I've begun to drift away from Grey's. It's been on for 21 years...I've gotten tired of it, finally. Seriously - it may be the longest running medical drama. It beat ER.
Speaking of medical drama's? The Pitt is the best I've seen - if you like hyper-realism and emphasis on medical procedure.

I can't say I like it? It took me out of the story and show - and I felt like it was more an advertisement than an episode?

They kind of stopped doing it after Netflix took off with streaming. Because - it doesn't work well in that format, and Netflix acquires a lot of network series for rebroadcast distribution. We don't need DVD's or DVR's for that matter - with streaming. (Well except when the series disappear completely from streaming like Veronica Mars (S1-3) did.)