Something Completely Different/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The X-Files: "X-Cops" (which was shot as an episode of the show COPS), "Post-Modern Prometheus" (black and white), "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" (told through conflicting flashbacks), "Bad Blood" (also told in conflicting flashbacks), "Triangle" (split-screen), and "Humbug" (first comedy episode).
  • One of the biggest offenders being The Drew Carey Show having April Fools Day episodes, live episodes, and the like.
  • M*A*S*H had several of these during its run: The Documentary, the "letters to home" episodes, the newsreel episodes, the Real Time episode, the Near-Death Clairvoyance episode, the "Hawkeye monologue" episode, the episode done totally from the point of view of a wounded soldier, and the "dreams" episode, among others. (Some of these may well have been the initial examples of their kind, copied by later series.)
  • An episode of Married... with Children which focused on the Verduccis, and aside from a 3-4 minute appearance by Al, featured none of the regular characters.
    • Another pilot-in-disguise episode featured a pair of radio jockeys at Bud's college, with only minor appearances from Bud and Kelly.
  • Various episodes from both Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its companion show Xena: Warrior Princess.
  • "Once More With Feeling", the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
    • Other examples from Buffy the Vampire Slayer include "Hush" where nobody speaks for most of the episode, "Restless", which takes place mostly in the characters' dreams, and "Superstar" where an extremely minor character usurps main character status, even taking over the opening credits.
    • There was also "Conversations With Dead People," which features five stories taking place in different places at the same time, each of which includes, well, a conversation with a dead person. The stories weren't even thematically linked until the next episode, when they all converged.
    • And the group amnesia episode - Angel had one too.
    • "The Body" was probably the best example. It begins immediately where the last episode ended, with Buffy finding her mother's pale, lifeless body on the couch, and except for the last five minutes features nothing supernatural, just the poignant shock of an entirely normal, unexpected death. The effect is heightened by long stretches without background music, close-ups of seemingly random details, etc.
    • Also, the episode "The Zeppo", which took place entirely from Xander's perspective
    • And don't forget "Smile Time", wherein the basic formula is the same, except the main antagonists are puppets, and Angel himself becomes a puppet for the duration of the episode.
  • The Millennium episode "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me" featured four demons sitting in a coffee shop discussing humanity's flaws; the main character of the series only appeared for brief periods. Many fans of the series consider the episode a favorite.
  • Scrubs had a few episodes following this. "My Musical" was, of course, a musical. The episode "My Life in Four Cameras" becomes a typical Sitcom. Also, to a lesser extent, the "His/Her Story" episodes, as they're narrated by different characters than normal.
    • There was also "My Day Off", where JD had to experience the hospital as a patient, not a doctor.
    • And "My Princess" in which the events of the episode are portrayed as a fairytale being told by Doctor Cox.
  • News Radio had two episodes which, while not actually changing the format of the show or the characterization of the leads, instead changed the setting (by way of a clever set redress). The characters act as if nothing is different. The 3rd season finale was set on a radio station in space, and the 4th season finale was set on the Titanic, and roughly followed the plot of the hit 1997 film. These episodes, naturally, do not follow series continuity, especially since both involve the deaths of nearly all of the main characters.
  • Law and Order Special Victims Unit, episode "Gone". The episode literally begins with the arrest and preliminary hearing of two suspects, but soon a twist is thrown in. The audience is caught up to speed when the ADA asks the detectives to tell her again all the details of the case. Pretty much the entire episode deals with the legal side of things.
  • The My Name Is Earl episodes "Y2K" (which, in flashback, deals with the characters' experiences at the turn of the millenium) and "Our "Cops" Is On" (most of which is presented as an episode of COPS featuring the characters).
    • And don't forget "Our Other "Cops" Is On".
  • Doctor Who has had a few of these, including the new series' "Doctor-lite" episodes, made because the actors playing the Doctor and his assistant don't have the time to film 45 minutes of footage for all 14. So we get an episode with the main characters reduced to a few, usually crucial, minutes of screen time that they could film in a day or less.
    • In the original series, "Mission to the Unknown" did not feature any of the cast, who did not get a mention. The episode concerned some humans' doomed struggle against Daleks on an alien planet and acted as episode-long prologue to "The Daleks' Master Plan", which aired a few weeks later.
    • "The Feast of Steven", a strange Christmas Episode break from the "Daleks' Master Plan" storyline done partly in the style of a silent comedy and ending with the Doctor wishing the viewers happy Christmas.
    • The Doctor-lite "Love & Monsters" told a story set in the Whoniverse from the perspective of an ordinary human (and Unreliable Narrator) who only knew rumours about the Doctor's existence.
    • "Blink" has... well, best to experience it spoiler-free. (If you can handle that.)
    • Series 4 gave us the Donna-lite episode "Midnight" and Donna-centric Doctor-lite episode "Turn Left", which were filmed at the same time with different crews and casts and both unusually dark stories. Donna only has about one minute of screentime in "Midnight" and the same is true for the Doctor in "Turn Left."
    • The Series 3 episode "42", which had the normal cast, took place in Real Time.
    • The "Deadly Assassin" 4th Doctor story was the first and only Doctor Who arc to not include a companion.
  • The penultimate episode of House's first season, "Three Stories", takes the form of a lecture that Gregory House gives to medical students. He narrates three case histories, absurdly embellished to the point where one patient is "played" by Carmen Electra. As House's own memories intrude, it turns out that Carmen Electra is actually House himself, in a flashback to his infarction.
    • And the second-season finale "No Reason" contains about five minutes of "real world" time; the rest is House's various hallucinations after being shot in the teaser.
    • The fourth season episode "Ugly" was The Documentary.
    • Season two had an episode called "The Mistake" where Stacy investigates what caused the death of a patient. The patient storyline is told mainly through (sometimes conflicting) flashbacks.
  • The wonderfully irreverent Lois and Clark did this quite frequently. The episode "Don't Tug On Superman's Cape" is a collection of TV pastiches revolving around Supes and Lois' relationship troubles, with a hamtacular Jonathan Frakes providing the B-story/frame story of the episode.
  • The Law and Order episode "Aftershock" was a famous episode that showed the main characters on their day off from work, having attended an execution of a criminal the night before, culminating in Claire Kincaid getting Killed Off for Real in a drunk driving accident.
    • Also of note, was "Marathon", another episode which famously followed Briscoe and Logan spending a twenty-four hour period dealing with a variety of cases, with the prosecution team appearing only briefly. The episode was popular enough that the writers did a sequel several years later, with Briscoe and Green.
  • The Eastenders episode dated 31/01/2008 featured only one character, Dot Branning, recording a message for her husband. This was due to the actor playing the husband suffering a stroke. The episode made this editor cry into a cushion.
    • Surely somebody mis-typed the above - a whole episode of Eastenders featuring only one character?
  • Seinfeld: The backwards episode "The Betrayal".
  • Star Trek: Enterprise had the two-parter, "In a Mirror, Darkly", set entirely in a Mirror Universe, complete with evil Special Edition Title. And it is awesome.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation had "Family," which took place on Earth and featured the crew members seeking out their families while Picard dealt with the emotional trauma of his recent assimilation and clashed with his wine-making brother.
  • Supernatural's third season featured a Sam-and-Dean-lite episode, "Ghostfacers," which focused on two characters from the first season episode "Hell House". It was also shot like a real pilot, with handheld cameras and everything. Demonstrates one of the dangers of these episodes in that it did not look like an episode of Supernatural and, combined with the confusion due to the writers' strike and a lack of advertising, many people didn't realise they were watching the right programme. And switched off.
    • In fact, Supernatural does so quite frequently (the episode "Monster Movie" comes to mind). It is one of the (many) reasons the show is a firm two-thirds in Deconstructor Fleet territory.
  • Coupling did this enough so that it practically became the norm. Episode quirks include the following: One told first from the point of view of Jeff talking to an Israeli woman who speaks no English, which then switched to an Israeli perspective where the Hebrew dialogue is in English, the English dialogue is in gibberish, and we find out what she's really saying; One that takes place entirely in a split-screen perspective after a break-up, where one-half of the screen is devoted to each member of the break-up; And the one that narrates the same nine and a half minutes from three different perspectives.
  • Jimmy Olsen's Day in The Limelight episodes on Smallville have been taking on a style like this. "Noir" was a Film Noir parody, and the most recent was done in the style of a spy thriller. Fans have noted they are some of the weakest episodes in the series.
  • The Monkees: "The Monkees on Tour" (a cinema verite documentary about the actual band playing a live show); "The Monkees in Paris" (basically a longform music video of the guys romping around Paris and getting chased by gorgeous models); "Fairy Tale" (a Fractured Fairy Tale with cardboard cutout sets and props.)
  • The West Wing had the seventh season episode "The Debate", which was a real time presidential debate between Santos and Vinick shot in one take. It was pretty freaking amazing.
    • Not just in one take, but done twice - once for live broadcast on the East Coast, and once for live broadcast on the West Coast.
    • In addition, the fifth season episode "Access" was a mock documentary of Press Secretary C. J. Cregg. It was not great.
  • Murder, She Wrote, especially in the later years, had multiple "Jessica-light" episodes focusing on recurring characters (e.g. reformed Gentleman Thief Dennis Stanton; MI 6 agent Michael Hagarty) or supposedly based on one of Jessica's books.
  • An episode of The Father Dowling Mysteries, which was partly told by a "fictionalised" version of events set in the 1920s. (So when Father Dowling was visited by yuppified gangsters in sharp suits, his fictional counterpart was visited by stereotyped hoods in double-breasted pinstripes.)
  • 3rd Rock from the Sun with the two-part Alternate Universe episode set in New York City. Then there's the episode "Dick and Harry Fall Down a Hole". The title says it all. They also did a documentary episode.
  • Moonlighting featured an episode spoofing The Taming of the Shrew entitled "Atomic Shakespeare", written entirely in Iambic Pentameter.
  • Stargate Atlantis: The series' penultimate episode, "Vegas" is set entirely in an Alternate Universe, with Sheppard as a Las Vegas homicide detective. The writing and visual style of the episode is an homage to CSI, even including a Necro Cam shot of a Wraith victim's heart desiccating. The only connection to the primary Stargate Verse comes at the end, when the resolution of the plot foreshadows events of the series finale.
    • Stargate SG-1 did "200", their 200th anniversary episode, which is basically a clip show of events that never actually happened in the series. I've heard that it's out of continuity, and the style and plot are mainly unrelated to the rest of the show. It's never referred to again.
      • Well, it could be never referred to again just because it aired in the last season and didn't have anything to do with any recent plots. There's no reason to think the episode is out of continuity except that it mocks the series so furiously and hangs so many lampshades.
      • It's not out of continuity. The whole episode is basically about SG-1 sitting around the table while trying to come up with good movie idea. Of course they never were a crew of Enterprise, and SGC was never invaded by zombies, but there is nothing indicating that episode itself isn't canon.
  • The Day in The Limelight episode of CSI Las Vegas, "Lab Rats". The whole episode takes place inside the laboratory, focusing on a group of lab technicians revisiting the miniature killer case, the main investigator team making only short appearances, and the whole atmosphere being a lot more humorous.
    • "A Space Oddity". An episode where one of the techs kept daydreaming he was Captain Kirkthe lead in a cheesy old sci-fi show. The show contains homages to Star Trek, as well as both the original and re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.
    • "You Kill Me". Hodges uses the other lab techs to play-test a game he designed based on the the CSI lab.
    • An episode where three seemingly-unrelated cases are linked together through a non-linear story told in a series of progressively-earlier flashbacks.
    • The episode "Rashomama", which is told mostly through conflicting flashbacks.
  • The sitcom Mad About You did an entire episode in one take, with Paul and Jamie sitting outside of the bedroom door waiting for Mabel to fall asleep.
    • A first-season episode was entirely in flashback, showing how Paul and Jamie met.
  • On one April Fool's Day, Alex Trebek (host of Jeopardy!) and Pat Sajak (host of Wheel of Fortune) switched places.
    • For a week in 1968, Ed McMahon hosted The Match Game while that show's Gene Rayburn hosted Ed's Snap Judgment.
  • Family Matters did one episode as if it were a trashy Jenny Jones-like talk show.
  • Psychoville's fourth episode focused entirely on one of its five storylines, rather than jumping between them. It also consisted of just one scene, shot in two takes.
  • Heroes tends to have one flashback episode each volume.
  • Power Rangers has had two really memorable ones: "Lost and Found in Translation" (Dino Thunder) had the Rangers watching a Japanese TV show based on their exploits (actually a Hong Kong Dubbed episode of its source series Abaranger); and "And... Action!" (RPM) was a behind-the-scenes episode. For a while there were also yearly teamup episodes where the current team joins forces with the previous years'.
  • Bones: The season four finale is a Dream Sequence in which Booth and Bones are married and running a bar, with most of the cast working for them.
  • The Fringe episode "Brown Betty" is mostly the story that Walter tells to Olivia's niece, in which Olivia is a Private Detective in a pastiche, dealing with variations on the shows characters. Who occasionaly sing.
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show presented its Christmas Episode, "The Alan Brady Show Presents", as an episode of the fictional Alan Brady Show.
  • Criminal Minds usually has the team trying to hunt down a Serial Killer. Episodes that did something different include "Secrets and Lies" (the team searches for a mole in the CIA headquarters), "Honor Among Thieves" (the team investigates a kidnapping perpetrated by the Russian mafia), "Derailed" and "Minimal Loss" (the team become embroiled in a hostage situation), "Lessons Learned" (the team go to question a terrorist), "Masterpiece" (the killer turns himself in at the beginning), "Tabula Rasa" (the team help prosecute a killer) and to a lesser extent "True Night" (like a regular episode, except the killer is the main character).
  • There have been a few of these in Home and Away's 2010 season. One such occurrence was an episode themed around dreams (Annie had some dreams of Romeo that involved nudity, Tony and Rachel had dreams about how they weren't prepared to care for Harry). Another occurrence was an arc where Miles gained an imaginary friend who turned out to be an aged-up ghost of his daughter, complete with psychic ability.
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus itself has the Cycling Tour episode, which is unique in Pythonian terms since it actually has a continuous and more or less coherent plot.
  • Community would provide several examples of this if it weren't for the fact that, at this point, doing this pretty much is its general formula.
    • For this reason, it could be argued that the show itself is Something Completely Different, because unlike pretty much every other show out there, it doesn't have any discernible formula except for its lack of any discernible formula.
  • The Thirty Rock episode "Queen of Jordan" was done entirely in the format of a Bravo reality show.
  • Lost had a few of these episodes. The first was "The Other 48 Days" which, instead of featuring one character with off-island flashbacks, focused on all the characters from the tail section of the plane, and told the story of their time on the island.
  • Each season of the Masters of Horror anthology (usually set in modern day Everytown, America) had one episode set in the early 19th century and another filmed in Japan and directed by a Japanese actor.
  • The Farscape episode "Revenging Angel" features repeated excursions into the psyche of the comatose John Crichton...in the form of pitch-perfect Looney Tunes parody animations. That's weird enough, but when the slapstick and cartoon logic start to cross over into live-action sections it all gets a bit brain-breaking. And horrific. They blew up D'Argo!
  • The How I Met Your Mother episode "Symphony of Illumination" used the Framing Device of Robin talking to her kids in the future, rather than every single other episode's framework of Ted talking to his kids. However, it turned out that all the narration and the kids were figments of Robin's imagination while she was reflecting on the events of the episode, and Future Ted actually was telling the whole story in the end, making the episode an imagine-spot-within-a-framing-device-within-a-story-within-a-framing-device.
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