What's In a Name? Or, Does Anyone Care About Episode Titles?

Is there a way to make a blog about TV episode titles interesting? I’m not sure. Let’s find out.

I’m intrigued by titles because just about every episode of every scripted television show has one, yet even the most ardent TV fans rarely use them. Even today, when the titles are readily accessible in reference books and on DVD cases and at imdb.com, most TV fan conversations are filled with references like “the one where Maude finds out she’s pregnant” or “the one where Fonzie gets glasses.” 

The creators of Friends, who grew up with these shows from an earlier era, picked up on this predisposition, which is why they start every episode title with “The One…”

The practice of showing the title on screen is more conspicuous with dramas than comedies, though exceptions in both genres abound.  

The Quinn Martin shows (Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The Fugitive among others) made the biggest fuss about them. Each series had a narrator who, after listing the guest stars, would solemnly intone, “Tonight’s episode…Night Flight to Murder.” 

Did that add anything to the viewing experience? Maybe a dash of additional substance, but ultimately it didn’t matter – when two Barnaby Jones fans get together they won’t talk about “Trap Play” or “Venus in a Flytrap”; they’ll say, “Remember the one where that punk kid called Barnaby “Pops”?

Full disclosure: The “Pops” line is actually an old Jay Leno joke, since that was something that happened in almost every episode.

If the title didn’t appear on screen during life pre-Internet, you might find it in TV Guide. But even in the Comfort TV era when that publication covered the medium with care, intelligence and insight, its policy toward titles was hit-and-miss. 

Titles were restored to prominence for awhile at Nick at Nite, when each episode would be introduced not just by title but also with the episode number and the original airdate. I enjoyed that. After years of watching the Lucy Show episode where Lucy gets a date with Dean Martin, it was nice to finally be able to put a title to that story. Turns out, the title was “Lucy Dates Dean Martin.” Maybe that’s why more viewers don’t know or care about titles – most shows rarely put much effort into them. 

A list of shows that were laziest about titles could start with Twin Peaks, which opted for numbers instead of names, and the British series Sapphire and Steel, which had seven episodes titled “Assignment 1” through “Assignment 7.”

Daytime dramas also don’t have episode titles. I guess the fear was they’d run out after awhile, or start recycling them just as certain stories are reused (General Hospital episode #10,624: “Sonny Gets Arrested (again).”

But lest you think titles are completely superfluous, there have also been instances when a show’s title came first, before it had a story or even a writer. ABC Television executive Fred Silverman was so excited about Charlie’s Angels that he made a list of titles for stories he’d like to see. One of them was “Angels in Chains,” which was later written by Robert Earll and became one of the series’ most popular episodes.

There is also one subset of classic TV where titles are more acknowledged, and that is science fiction shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who, which command a more obsessional fan base. You’ll never hear Vulcan-garbed fans at a convention talking about “the one where Kirk goes back in time and meets Joan Collins.” They all know that episode is “City on the Edge of Forever.” 

Think you know your TV episode titles? Here’s a list of titles from classic shows, all of which were attached to episodes that rank among the more prominent from their respective series. Can you identify them by name?

“Job Switching”

“The Town of No Return”

“The Case of the Deadly Verdict”

“Mr. Big”

“Put On a Happy Face”

“Balance of Terror”

“That’s My Boy”

“The Bellero Shield”

“The Subject Was Noses”

“Time Enough At Last”

“A is For Apple”

“Lamb To the Slaughter”

“TV or Not TV”

“The Judgment”