So It's Come to This: A Clip Show Thread

[mr3urious]

Where would TV shows be without the budget-saving potential of the clip show?

In the old days before reruns, DVDs, and the Internet, clip shows was more tolerated and allowed people to re-live moments from their favorite episodes, but nowadays it's seen as cheap. This thread is to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of the clip show.

Personally I like clip shows when they have an entertaining framing device behind them such as Malcolm in the Middle where the boys are forced to visit a shrink played by Andy Richter. Or if they parody them such as the Duckman episode "Clip Job" where Duckman gets kidnapped by a moral crusader who argues his point about him being responsible for causing a decline in morality on TV by playing rapid-fire clips of him being his typical immoral self. Ironically there was a lot of original footage used there, completely missing the point of what a clip show is supposed to do.

On the bad side of clip shows, there's one from Captain N which was just a collection of random clips with no dialogue whatsoever. When it did re-air in syndication, the voices were restored and narration was added, a lot of which still had nothing to do with what happened on screen.

 

[Drtooth]

On the bad side of clip shows, there's one from Captain N which was just a collection of random clips with no dialogue whatsoever. When it did re-air in syndication, the voices were restored and narration was added, a lot of which still had nothing to do with what happened on screen.

That one was made by NBC without DIC's help. They did a lousy job, ans as DIC didn't own the rights to it (not that they'd want to) it wasn't included on the DVD, and would have faded into obscurity if it wasn't for someone that had it on VHS and uploaded it on Youtube. And yes, the narrated one was worse. Though the Simon Belmont narrated bit was funny in a kinda unintentional way.

As far as actual clip shows go, I think the best way they were handled was Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. The music video ones are awful, I'll give you that (and I hate how they overlooked The Mighty Heroes and James Hound cartoons for consistency's sake). Stress for Success was... eh... confusing. But Scrappy's Playhouse, Anatomy of a Milquetoast, and Mighty Mouse's Tone Poem (which was unfortunately the last episode...yep... it ended on a clipshow) showed how clipshows were done. Scrappy's MST3K-style riffing on old Terrytoons, redubbing footage, and just having Mighty Mouse go nuts with footage from prior episodes (respectively)... Tone Poem takes insanity one step further with an entire 30 seconds of Mighty trying to get a hair off of the lens (of the projector)... done in live action shadow overlay.

 

[mr3urious]

That one was made by NBC without DIC's help. They did a lousy job, ans as DIC didn't own the rights to it (not that they'd want to) it wasn't included on the DVD, and would have faded into obscurity if it wasn't for someone that had it on VHS and uploaded it on Youtube. And yes, the narrated one was worse. Though the Simon Belmont narrated bit was funny in a kinda unintentional way.

NBC was pretty much done with the show around the time, and with Saturday morning cartoons in general. That explains the quality of the clip show and the subsequent 3rd season.

 

[Drtooth]

Off topic... yeah. That third season was just bad, with the exception of the admittedly good Mega Man 3 episode (though they screwed up one major thing no thanks to bad translation- the "Doc Robot")... and the Castlevania 3 episode was fun if you like that version of Simon. But the one about Hoopz? Unwatchable.

On the subject of Clip Shows... the funniest story has to be what Japan did to Beast Wars. They took two of the original episodes of the series out of rotation to give them two separate theatrical release, and in their place, they made "Where is the Banana" and "Remix! I lost the Banana." Both were uploaded to Youtube, and it seems that they just redubbed clips of episodes to make some story of some sort. Didn't understand what they were saying, though.

And apparently, that went over so well that the DVD version of the following Beast Machines series was followed by... "Where is the Banana? R"

Japan also made clip shows of the original G1 series that didn't exist in the US version... the history of Transformers Clip Shows is detailed Here.

 

[minor muppetz]

I've always liked clip shows. It's usually cool to see clips from past episodes in new episodes.

It seems like sometimes there's a joke that the clip show is a way to allow the writers to take a break. But they still need somebody to write the linking footage (okay, maybe they just need one or two writers for that). And depending on the kind of show and how many writers they have, wouldn't the writers be able to make regular breaks? On variety shows or sketch comedy shows, it can be easier to have all the writers write something, but when there's a narrative, I would think they'd only have a few writers per episode. I'd expect it to be easier for a single-episode narrative to be written by just one or two writers, as opposed to having all the writers working on material for a single episode. Though now that I think of it (and it's perhaps a topic for a different thread... I can't remember if I've actually asked this on the forum), do they usually put the subplots in the initial script drafts, or do writers write subplots on different paper, before the multiple plots are put together in a script?

I really wish that The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart had clip shows. Especially Newhart... I wonder if they would have included clips with Kirk or Leslie if that show had a clip show after season 2. In fact considering the show switched from videotape to film after the first season, I wonder how the first season footage would have looked when edited into an episode shot on film.

The Simpsons clip shows are hit-or-miss. I don't care too much for the first two clip shows. That's a little ironic, since the first one takes place on April Fools Day, one of my favorite holidays. And does the second one have any new footage at all? It took a long time before I noticed that even the linking footage was comprised of existing animation with redubbed dialogue. But I really like The Simpsons 135th Episode Spectacular, All Singing All Dancing, and Gump Roast. Has the show had a clip show since the switch to HD (and would the current show include full frame clips)?

Clip shows can especially be neccessary in anniversary shows.* Seasons 3-6 each had an anniversary episode. Interesting how they initially felt the need to celebrate an anniversary every season for awhile. Wait, now that I think about it, I don't think Mork Returns was promoted as an anniversary episode, it was just a general clip show.

*SCTV had at least two segments celebrating anniversaries that seemed to ignore the fact that anniversaries generally celebrate clip shows. There's the "Leave It to Beaver 20th Anniversary Special" which just played like a regular episode but with the characters being grown up (I know, they couldn't use actual clips from the show, but I wish they could have figured out a better way to have a grown-up Beaver sketch without it being advertised as an anniversary special), and then there was the Mel's Rock Pile anniversary segment where at one point Mel mentions a big surprise planned and one of the dancers correctly guesses "you're not going to show old clips from the show, are you?" The idea of having clips from old episodes as a surprise and expecting to not show old clips is an odd thing for an anniversary show.

 

[Drtooth]

What I really dislike is the "look at how far we've come" TV special clip shows. Those are meant to be seen once and only once, and are usually before a milestone episode or the series finale. Then they put them in syndication. I HATE always seeing those dry collections of Seinfeld gags out of context instead of the real show. There's no use for that kind of clip show in reruns. Framed memory based episodes where they actually do something is debatable, but 100th episode/series finale clip shows just take up space. I mean, they're reruns. You're already reliving the best moments of the series if you're watching reruns.

 

[mr3urious]

I really liked how the two Dinosaurs clip shows were handled, with the first having archaeologist Sir David Tushingham digging up artifacts and wondering just how the dinosaurs really lived only to come up short every time, and the other with Tushingham hosting an infomercial trying to get people interested in paleontology.

 

[mimitchi33]

My favorite show, Magic Adventures of Mumfie, had a clip-show episode called "The Album". It centered around a book of friends and adventures of Mumfie had. Each adventure is represented by an object, and revealed the order the episodes after the events Mumfie's Quest took place-revealing that they originally aired out of order! This clip episode relates to this thread because only two episodes in the clip show got released to VHS-Scarecrow's Birthday Surprise (which actually got released twice) and Scarecrow's New Best Friend (which appears on the same VHS as this episode). Here's the full episode:

 

[Mynameisdean]

Correct me if I'm wrong (pretty sure I'm right), but there hasn't been a Spongebob Clip episode, has there? I hope it won't happen in the future.

 

[Drtooth]

Eh, I think Truth or Square was one of those fake clip shows where they showed clips that never actually happened. I guess that counts.