It took me a while to realize that the individual episodes of television shows had titles when I was a kid. This isn't as nutty as it sounds, because when I was young, my only television listings came from newspapers, and they would print episode synopses, but rarely episode titles. If the title of an episode didn't appear onscreen at the start, I didn't know that it existed. I knew cartoons mostly had titles, because they would run with a title card. I knew that "The Twilight Zone" episodes had titles - Rod Serling would sometimes use them in the introductions. But all the episodes of "Mr. Belvedere" had titles? And "The Golden Girls"? And "Murder She Wrote"?
Onscreen episode titles were actually more prevalent in the past, but started to disappear in the '80s and '90s, especially when networks started shaving time off of shows to make more time for commercials. Eventually I got my hands on TV Guides and entertainment publications that would list all of those unknown episode titles, and they were pretty accessible if you knew where to look for them. Once the internet came around, the information became common knowledge. For a few years, though, I was making up my own titles for episodes of shows like "The Simpsons." I would put together my own episode guides for cartoons back then, before the official ones were really a thing. I remember many official titles for comedies and sitcoms being very pun-based, and I didn't get most of them.
In the streaming era, it's hard to imagine a time when the episode titles weren't available. They're part of the way we navigate our viewing choices and talk about our shows. However, it doesn't feel like most people actually use them casually. You talk about the episode of "The X-files" with the leech man instead of "The Host." Or, you talk about the episode where Lucy Ricardo sold Vitameatavegamin instead of "Lucy Does a TV Commercial." There's still kind of an inside baseball quality to knowing the episode titles for certain shows, and many are rife with in-jokes and references. Most episode titles of "Friends" start with "The One With…" or "The One Where…" The first two seasons of "Hannibal" named its episodes after French and Japanese cuisine. "3rd Rock From the Sun" is all about the Dicks. "Mr. Robot" used programming syntax and computer status codes. However, it's "Person of Interest" that has an episode that's literally titled "/," also known as "Root Path."
I still feel like the only people who really use episode titles are either critics or committed fans - the type who are going to make Top Ten lists, or speculate about who's getting the Emmy. In some cases the titles are so unwieldy, they're clearly not meant for casual use. "Orphan Black" took its titles from phrases out of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" and other texts, resulting in installments like "Nature Under Constraint and Vexed," "Transgressive Border Crossing," and "Variable and Full of Perturbation." Then there's "Rick and Morty," which seems committed to cramming the main characters' names into the titles as awkwardly as possible. The last Christmas episode was called "Ricktional Mortpoon's Rickmas Mortcation." I feel like the only time we ever discussed episode titles as a culture was that time "Breaking Bad" snuck a spoilery secret message into the episode titles of the second season. That was fun.
As a viewer, I don't think episode titles are necessary for many scripted shows. I admit there are a couple where I remember episodes by season and episode number, or even airdate, before I'll think of the actual title. Older shows like "Full House" and "Dallas" put almost no thought into episode titles because no one except those involved with the productions would ever see them. Most were very basic and descriptive, like "Anniversary" or "Summer Vacation." Even now, "Law & Order: SVU" episodes have very simple titles like "Intersection" and "Bad Things," because hardly anyone uses them as identifiers. The few remaining daytime soap operas don't even bother with titles - episodes are only numbered.
It's a good sign, however, when you do see them come up in conversation. I know "The Constant" is the best episode of "Lost" even though I've never seen "Lost." Sometimes you can bring up "Ozymandias" or "The Suitcase" or "The View From Halfway Down" without bothering to clarify which shows they came from. I take it as a good sign that we're taking television more seriously as a medium, and it's making more of a cultural impact. Episodes are less interchangeable, and being singled out more often. And of course recap culture, reaction culture, and how we watch TV shows have changed immensely. As for episode titles, they're still not important to some shows, but others like "Stranger Things" and "Doctor Who" are doing title drops as part of new season hype.
I honestly never thought I'd see the day.
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