Book Ends/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

** Also, one episode opened with Meredith dreaming of a threesome with her two love interests ended with her and her two friends lounging on the bed eating ice cream. Another started with McDreamy pulling Meredith out of a bathtub, which turned out to be foreshadowing for a dark and dramatic ending.

* Especially well done in ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|Mash]]'' "A War for All Seasons." The episode opens with a boisterous New Year's Eve party, which turns quiet when Col. Potter makes his toast. "Here's to the new year: may she be a damn sight better than the old one, and may we all be home by the end of it." The episode takes place over the course of a year, and ends with the next year's New Year's Eve party. Poignantly, Col. Potter makes the same toast he did at the previous party.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'', "Army of Ghosts/Doomsday": "This is the story of how I died...".

** The TV movie begins and ends with the Doctor sitting in the console room of the TARDIS reading [[H. G. Wells]]' ''The Time Machine'' and listening to a jazz record, before the jazz record abruptly sticks and jumps. The first occurrence was a moment of sinister foreshadowing; the second is [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] ("Oh, no - not again!").

** And a specific episode example: season 1 episode 6 opens and closes on the same image: {{spoiler|Brandon's}} dead body [[Dead Guy on Display|displayed on the hood of a car]], the beginning on the real thing, and the end in the photograph on Lieutenant Daniels' desk.

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' has played with this a lot.

** In two instances, the opening narration is used to imply that "we're back to the beginning" or "it's come full circle":

{{quote|'''Picard:''' Space, the final frontier... these are the voyages of the Starship ''Enterprise''. Her ongoing mission...

'''Kirk:''' ... to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations...

* The first episode of ''[[ER]]'' begins with an ambulance full of patients and a lagging Dr. Carter. Dr. Greene calls out to him, "Dr. Carter, you coming?" The final episode ends with an ambulance full of patients and a lagging Dr. Greene (the daughter of the man in the pilot). Dr. Carter calls out to her, "Dr. Greene, you coming?"

** And both the pilot and the finale begin with a similar shot of Greene/Carter asleep and then woken up by the same exact nurse.

* Episodes of the [[Discovery Channel]] series ''[[American Guns]]'' often begin and end with Rich Wyatt and his family firing guns together.

* In the pilot episode of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Peter catches a cab driven by Mohinder. Peter asks Mohinder if he ever had the feeling he was meant to do something special, and a conversation about destiny and natural selection ensues. In the first episode of Volume Four, after an adventure that put both of them in a bad light (and made plenty of heroes turn on each other), Peter again catches a cab driven by Mohinder and, laughing, asks the same thing. Mohinder says he had the feeling, but was proven wrong.

 

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[[Category:Live Action TV]]