What is the most recent non-ironic* clip show you can recall?
*ironic including the Community clip show made up entirely of new material.
Do you mean just sitcoms & dramas, or do talk shows count too? Because Ellen is running clip shows all this week.
Didn’t conciser talk shows, but no reason they sholdn’t count.
Legend of the Seeker did a full-blown cheapo clip show in 2009. I was stunned.
They filmed 10-15 minutes of new footage and did the whole “remember when” type flash back thing. It was so crappy.
Scrubs did one in 2007 and it was definitely unusual at the time. I read something at the time about it being a forced extra episode by the network or something. The actors are obviously calling it in; it is noticeably worse. Dr. Cox is bald in the episode, which is out of continuity. He shaves his head in solidarity with a cancer patient later, but they threw this episode in mid-season after filming it later.
Most of the ones I recall were in long running shows running out of ideas. So I expect to see one on a show like Big Bang Theory or Modern Family soon.
Does radio count? Because I think “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” does one about every month or so.
British quiz shows seem to do them at the end of every season. QI, Would I Lie To You, Mock the Week… The Graham Norton Show (British talk show) does it too.
ETA: “Wait Wait…” is America’s closest thing to the British quiz show…
And it follows the British shows’ lead with clip shows a few times a year, usually around holidays, IIRC.
It’s usually a cost saving measure. It’s basically the cheapest thing they can do.
The Office did one in 2010.
ISTR that NCIS does them periodically as well.
I’m ashamed to say that if it’s a show I like, then… I love the clip show. It’s like a greatest hits album. BUT, the setups they contrive to justify it are embarrassing. If they just said “Hey, everyone, it’s the Best Bits of the Year! Sit back and enjoy…” then I’d really love it.
Here’s a question for everyone: What have the justifications been for a clip show? I’ll bet there’s a wide range, from “I’m afraid Coach is in a coma, a 47-minute one. I wonder what’s going on in his mind right now…?” to “Gee whiz, Floyd, remember that one time…?”
ST:TNG did the first one, putting Riker into a coma. WKRP did the latter, as a way of catching viewers up when they came back from an early hiatus.
Rick and Morty does them every season: Morty’s Mindblowers, Interdimensional Cable, etc.
The ST:TNG clip show is a particularly bad example since it aired during the second season. Most shows have 4-5 years of episodes to pull from, they only had 30-35 episodes.
Hell, WKRP did a clip show for their 9th episode!
That was how the daily show set up its clip shows featuring correspondents last week.
Clip shows do have the benefit of catching people up, and filling in important information that may have been missed. This was probably a bigger problem when TV was on when it was broadcast, and getting time shifting to a more convenient time was difficult. People missed shows much more then, so a clip show had a decent chance of having material that wasn’t new, but was new to you.
Now, with DVDs, streaming, and DVR, there is less reason to miss shows, and so less need for recaps and reminders. A recap show at the beginning of the season to remind viewers as to what they have forgotten over the year that the show has been off could be useful, but anything midseason is just filler.
Clerks: The Animated Series did one for their 2nd episode. But that doesn’t qualify under the OP’s “non-ironic” rule.
They do that when they’re taking a week off. They could just re-run an old episode, but so much of what they do is based on that week’s current events. The clips they tend to use tend to rely heavily on the parts of the show (like “Not My Job”) that don’t date as much.
Something similar might be true of other talk or quiz shows.
Do those count since they’re all new material? When I think “clip show”, I think of previously aired clips they they’re pasting together to save a few bucks.
That was because of the “early hiatus” mentioned by silenus. It had been over two months since the most recent episode of WKRP had aired, and the show hadn’t had particularly high ratings during that first 8-week run. Episode 9 was something of a relaunch, in a better timeslot (right after the powerhouse of MASH*), with some slight retooling. The clip show format was a deliberate choice to catch up everyone who might not have seen the first few episodes.
I was also someone who, back in the old days, used to really enjoy clip shows. It was a chance to see some of the best bits again, and in those days before DVR, on-demand, and endless syndicated reruns, chances like that were rare.
Golden Girls did them all the time. Maybe because TV has evolved since then, but you don’t see much of it now.