It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s titles usually tell you exactly what’s going to happen in that episode. “Dennis and Dee Go on Welfare” “The Gang Finds a Dumpster Baby” “Dennis Looks Like a Registered Sex Offender” And they have title cards at the beginning of each one, after the cold opening.
Man, I love that show.
One of the IMO best was the specific episodes of Breaking Bad Season 2 that showed the flash-fowards of what was to come in the finale.
You’d see the eye in the pool, the burning Teddy bear, etc. If you take the episode titles of just those episodes, they explained what was going to happen: “Seven Thirty-Seven” “Down” “Over” “ABQ”
Ooh, great topic!
All of the episodes of The Young Ones had one-word episode titles (“Demolition”, “Interesting”), except the final episode, “Summer Holiday”.
Every episode of I’m Alan Partridge was titled for a well-known film, but with “Alan” in the title (“Watership Alan”, “I Know What Alan Did Last Summer”).
I liked the one when the cold opening was Dee talking about her new boyfreind and the gang arguing about whether or not he was retarded. It ended with her saying “My boyfriend is not retarded” and then the title came up “Dee Dates A Retarded Person”
You might be joking, but if you’re not, it’s probably a reference to Donnie Brasco.
Good one! I just rewatched that episode again the other day, actually.
King of the Hill didn’t do this for its whole run, but for several seasons all the titles were puns based on movie/book/song titles, ie The Substitute Spanish Prisoner, Of Mice and Little Green Men, Beer and Loathing, My Own Private Rodeo, Full Metal Dust Jacket, An Officer and a Gentle Boy, The Miseduction of Bobby Hill, etc.
True Blood often (if not always) names its episodes after the songs (usually blues or country rock, sometimes jazz, almost always something fairly obscure) that it plays during the closing credits.
This is a long-standing formula for thrillers, especially by novel-mill authors like Ludlum. The adjective often comes from some proper noun, and the head noun usually is of Greek or Latin origin, or at least a word that’s otherwise associated with official things like law, government, etc.: The Odessa File, The Pelican Brief, The Bourne Conspiracy, The Hades Factor, The Janson Directiveand so on, ad nauseum.
The TNT show **Memphis Beat **(with Jason Lee) named all of its episodes after Elvis Presley songs.
On the Adam West Batman TV show, each story was a two-parter, and the dual episode titles would rhyme.
Examples:
“The Joker is Wild”
“Batman is Riled”
“The Penguin Goes Straight”
“Not Yet He Ain’t”
“The Puzzles Are Coming”
“The Duo is Slumming”
They fell in and out of this as the series went on, and dropped the conceit completely in the third season when the format changed.
Two and a Half Men uses a quote from the episode for the name.
I’m pretty sure that Desperate Housewives uses titles of songs from musicals, though I don’t know if that’s a rule for them.
No Ordinary Family uses “No Ordinary [something]” for all its episode titles. The first episode was “No Ordinary Pilot”. Other episodes include “No Ordinary Ring”, “No Ordinary Friends”, “No Ordinary Anniversary”, and “No Ordinary Sidekick”.
It started out as Sondheim titles, then it became musicals in general (but usually Sondheim), and then it became lines in songs in musicals (again usually Sondheim).
My favorite of all time - Robot Chicken Season 4
Titles:
“Help Me”
“I’m Trapped”
“In a DVD Factory”
“They Took My Thumbs”
“Two Weeks Without Food”
“Tell My Mom”
“I Love Her”
“But Not In That Way”
“Love, Maurice”
“P.S. Yes, In That Way”
“Dear Consumer”
“We Are a Humble Factory”
“Maurice Was Caught”
“Unionizing Our Labor”
“President Hu Forbids It”
“Due to Constraints of Time and Budget”
“The Ramblings of Maurice”
“Cannot Be Erased, So Sorry”
“Please Do Not Notify Our Contractors”
“Especially the Animal Keith Crofford!”
The episodes of Bottom are named to line up together with its own title, i.e. 'S Up, Burglary, Accident = Bottom’s Up, Bottom Burglary, Bottom Accident.
A little bit off of the topic, but most quests in Fallout: New Vegas are named after 1950’s era songs.
I’m ashamed to have to say this one, but no one else has (because no one else is watching), but The Mentalist episodes all contain some form of the color red (or a reference to something red) in their title.
Examples:
Rose Colored Glasses
Bleeding Heart
Redline