TV: Episode Naming Patterns

*Posted December 4, 2008*

The folks over at TV Squad wrote an interesting article about shows that stick to a certain naming convention for their episodes. Episodes of Friends always started with "The One..." (The One With All the Thanksgivings). Seinfeld always started shows with "The" (The Puffy Shirt? Works. The Serenity Now? Not so much). Gay's Anatomy and One Tree Hill use song titles, Scrubs starts with "My" (or "His" or "Her," depending on the narration). Nip/Tuck's titles are the names of whomever the patient is that week. 24 simply uses the current time to title each episode (5:00 am-6:00 am). So apparently there are a whole bunch of shows that do this, but is this clever trick better than the standard stuff? Pretty much all of the shows I just mentioned either have a boring format (24, Nip/Tuck), a continuously annoying format (Friends, Scrubs), or a hit/miss (song titles rarely coincide well with the plot). Are the regular shows any better? I can recall some Firefly episodes off the top of my head (War Stories, Ariel, The Message) and those are mostly boring. So which show does the best job at picking titles? LOST. Man of Science, Man of Faith. Through the Looking Glass. Walkabout. I could go on. In fact, we already know that the episode for the Season 5 premiere will be "Because You Left." OOOoooOOoOOOOOooo!!! I'm already geeking out about what the hell that could mean!

I have no idea, by the way. Speaking of LOST...