The Coyote chases the Road Runner, but he will never catch him.
If you wanna talk cartoons: More generally, the predator/prey formula: Hunter tries repeatedly to catch hunted, only to experience futility, humiliation, and violence.
Popeye: Bluto/Brutus beats up Popeye, sexually harasses Olive. Popeye eats spinach. Popeye beats up Bluto.
Spy vs. Spy White Spy devises scheme to (spy on/steal from/physically harm) Black Spy, or vice versa, but instead experiences ignominius failure and/or cartoon-violent death thanks to other spy’s clever counterscheme.
The premise for The Sopranos is that Tony Soprano is a mob boss who also has family problems. The premise for House is that Dr. House is a diagnostician who breaks all the rules.
I know what’s going to happen at the 40 minute mark of House. I know that in every single freaking episode the first answer will be wrong and make the patient sicker, and that until you see House make that “durrr” face with the “inspiration” music in the background nothing good will happen.
I have no idea, for any given episode of The Sopranos, what will happen at the 40 minute mark.
Grounded for Life often had some kind of conflict develop and the true story would eventually come forth through flashback.
Medium. Allison has a strange dream, partially revealing the details of some unknown crime. Allison goes to work, crime scene, other location, where her dream’s relevance to “real-world” events is established. Over the next several days, Allison’s dreams reveal partial information and often misleading facts regarding the crime. Her boss & colleagues question the veracity of her dream-supplied information, despite their long relationship and her well-proven reliability. Everyone chases their tails for a while, and Allison mumbles things like “but why am I having these dreams then?” At the end of the episode, Allison has a dream that brings everything together and reveals the real culprit of the crime. Leaven with a little Dubois family drama, and you have the standard Medium episode.
Upon having her first dream, Allison would do well to keep her mouth shut and wait for the dream with the big reveal. But then each show would be five minutes long, and the network would have little opportunity to sell advertising.
Inspector Gadget:
His boss give him the assignment. Boss gets blown up when the message self destructs. Gadget blunders into the bad guys, is saved over and over again when wrong gadget pops out. Penny and Brain figure out what is going on, Brain shows bad guys (and Gadget) can’t figure out it is a dog in disguise. Brain makes bad guys give up to Gadget, boss comes, Dr. Claw says “next time, Gadget, next time.”
I bet they had a template with the page of the script in which these things happened. I know that in modern script writing certain plot turns are supposed to happen at certain pages, but they did this with a lot more detail.
Abarembo Shogun.
I grew up in Hawaii, so we got a lot of Japanese programming. And this series lasted something like twenty years with a remarkably stable formula.
[ol]
[li]The Shogun, meets with some noble or official in a ceremony.[/li][li]The Shogun goes out into the city of Edo and pretends to be a roustabout Samurai named Shin-san. His buddies at the firehouse introduce him to someone in trouble. It turns out the troubled person is being caused said trouble by the noble or official he met with earlier.[/li][li]Shin-san has a dust-up with the noble’s lackeys. Often he starts it by throwing his fan at their hand as they are about to slap a helpless woman.[/li][li]Endgame: Shin-san shows up and foils the noble or official’s evil plan. Noble or official almost has a heart attack when they realize that the freaking Shogun is at their house. Big fight ensues where Shin-san literally uses the back of his sword to beat unconscious something like thirty samurai.[/li][li]Then when it looks like he’s gonna kill the baddies, he summons his ninja-buddies to execute the noble or official, because they aren’t worth being killed by the fucking Shogun.[/li][li]Finale: There is a party at the fire house where the troubled person’s problem is resolved and Shin-san / The Shogun smiles knowingly looking over the common people he’s sworn to protect… or something.[/li][/ol]
:o Nevermind.
Many TV cartoons intended for children have formulas, it seems. (Although they sometimes poke fun at the fact and intentionally subvert the formulas for humor purposes.)
Pinky and the Brain: The Brain comes up with a plan to take over the world. It fails, due either to an unusual circumstance, dumb luck, or (usually) Pinky’s incompetence. The duo return to the lab to prepare for tomorrow’s attempt.
The Fairly OddParents: Timmy is angered by the way a certain person or circumstance is, so he asks his fairy godparents to change it. Chaos ensues, and Timmy learns that things are better the way they are.
The Replacements: See The Fairly OddParents, except replace “Timmy” with “Todd and/or Riley,” and “his fairy godparents” with “FleemCo.”
Phineas and Ferb: Phineas and Ferb come up with a project. Candace becomes suspicious and attempts to tell her mother, who isn’t paying attention. Meanwhile, Perry the Platypus goes off to fight Dr. Doofenshmirtz. The defeat of Dr. Doofenshmirtz leads to the destruction of Phineas and Ferb’s finished project, by which point Candace has finally gained her mother’s attention, leaving her looking like a fool.
Buttons and Mindy shorts from Animaniacs: The mother leaves and has Buttons look after Mindy. Mindy escapes, and Buttons injures himself trying to keep Mindy out of danger that she always seems to avoid. Mindy eventually makes her way back home, and the mother praises Mindy for being such a good girl and scolds Buttons for what appears to be his misbehavior, leaving the poor dog angered.
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (original series): Rita Repulsa sends a monster to Angel Grove. The Power Rangers fight it. Rita makes the monster grow. The Rangers go into their battlezords to finally defeat the monster. Other stuff happens that isn’t important in footage that isn’t overdubbed Japanese.
How I Met Your Mother is a flashback. The main character is talking about his past (which is actually the present) in the future to his kids, and he’s supposed to be about, indeed, how he met his wife…their mother. As you can see, he’s gone off on a very long tangent.
You forgot the first part: Rita sends down a bunch of putties, which the rangers defeat without Morphin.
This would explain the style of the Narrorator. Right? :smack: It all makes sense now.
You forgot a couple of “must haves” for each episode. The patient has to have an MRI, failing kidneys and at least one cardiac arrest. Every week, without fail.
Luckily, I don’t watch the show for the plot
Early House also frequently had patients falling into spasms.
The uber formula show: Sex And The City.
Hey, let’s see how many men we can bash this episode. Oh, and let’s give Sam an outrageous orgasm.
And it’s never lupus or vasculitis.
The thing is, the writers don’t seem confident enough to trust that the characters can carry the show, so they give you a shitty medical mystery just in case and make you hunt and peck for the character moments you’re waiting for.
But I like the medical mysteries. Whether they are real or not isn’t the point. Whether I can figure them out or not is not the point. The point is how House figures it out. What triggers his “Aha”?
As far as formulas, that’s pretty much most sit-coms.
NCIS is my current favorite formula episodic show. A crime occurs, or is discovered, the team trades morning quips and sets up a little subplot among themselves, Gibbs comes in, says “saddle up,” the team goes out investigating, one of the first people they encounter, however seemingly innocent, will end up being the killer, the team will pursue a couple very guilty looking red herrings, all of whom will turn out innocent, Gibbs brings Abby some Caf-pow in exchange for her forensic discoveries, all the pieces will be put together and the crime solved towards the end of the show and often it almost seems like an afterthought, leaving time for the team to trade more quips and resolve their personal little subplot.
It works though. The crime of the week is usually forgettable. Every once in awhile they revisit a longer-term plot arc. This week they brought back my favorite bad good-guy. Or good bad-guy. I dunno.
Lucy Ricardo trying to get into the show. Then she does and for some reason no one recognizes she is good. Except for one time and then they come up with some lame ass reason why she turns it down.
Lucy Carmichael (when the Lucy Show moved to California), Lucy finds a person who is having some bad luck and she offers to let him stay with her
Three’s Company, no woman can come within five feet of Jack without trying to sexually harass him.
I’m a few episodes into the current season. I thought you wrote a very thorough and accurate NCIS episode formula! I’ve watched the first five seasons within the last two months. I gotta get out more.