Four Lines, All Waiting: Difference between revisions

There are advantages and disadvantages to having [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]; [[Day in The Limelight|giving each the spotlight can be time consuming]] as the focus rotates along the cast. To speed things up a bit, some authors use such formulas as [[Two Lines, No Waiting]] and [[Third Line, Some Waiting]], in which an episode shifts focus from one group of characters to another, thus creating multiple [[Plot Threads]].

 

 

See also [[Kudzu Plot]].

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ''[[Bleach]]'' episodes fell into this in the middle of [[Gratuitous Spanish|Hueco Mundo]] arc, and it got worse from there as the plot went into the Fake Karakura Town arc. Things got simplified once everyone started focusing on taking down [[Big Bad|Aizen]], though.

** This might be because of their poor track record with multiple plots. Such as the invasion of Konoha where the 3rd Hokage and Orochimaru were stuck in the same combat pose for weeks, or in the Rescue Gaara Arc with Naruto and Kakashi never actually catching up to Deidara until literally the last few episodes of the arc, despite spending at least 10% of every episode beforehand showing them slowly advancing.

** And in the latest arc it's doing this with battles. We have the main fight that the majority of the secondarcy cast is in {{spoiler|the Five Kage vs. Madara, Naruto, Killer B, Kakashi, and Gai vs. Tobi and resurrected Jinchuuriki, Karin trying to escape Konoha, and Sasuke just ran into resurrected!Itachi, who's going off to fight Kabuto/stop Edo Tensei}}. And then we have {{spoiler|Suigetsu and Juugo}} finding some information that they think could "change the entire tide" of the battles. And the manga keeps cutting between everyone, since it's all going simultaneously.

* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'':

** The school festival mega-arc has Negi visiting nearly all of his students, entering a fighting tournament, and {{spoiler|dealing with the machinations of his time-travelling Martian descendant}}. This is actually a clever aversion of this trope though, as {{spoiler|Negi uses time travel to do everything in the three days of the festival, and you see it from Negi's chronological point of view instead of a bunch of scene-cuts.}}

** f) Harley Quinn and Holly Robinson getting trained as warriors by Granny Goodness disguised as Athena, teaming up with Hippolyta, and winding up on Apokalips, and...

** g) Triplicate Girl and Karate Kid getting stranded in the past and running around looking for a cure to a lethal virus. All of this interspersed with scenes of Darkseid playing with his action figures, heroes who have nothing to do with the plot running into the main characters, Super-Manboy-Asshole-Prime destroying planets and fighting Monarch, and the Monitors endlessly spouting [[Atop the Fourth Wall|"We should do something!" "Should we do something?"]]

* Part of the problem of the first year of Amazing Spider-Man's Brand New Day arc. Storylines such as the identity of Menace, the mystery of Harry's return, the election of a New Mayor of New York, and the Spider-Tracer murders were all milked for all they were worth for an entire year, and mostly resolved within a single storyline. Creators have gone on record saying they intended to touch base on the plot threads a lot more in the year prior, but ran out of time. This despite having at least three times the length as any other series to make such plans. And that didn't stop plotlines in the next two years from being milked for all they were worth and not resolved until the "big finale" of Brand New Day- Origin of the Species.

* Averted, and very well, in [[Sin City]]. While you can see some characters talk on the background, some of them are recognizable, or even main characters, their story WILL be expanded on next storylines and issues, and most of these storylines occur in a single frame of time, characters with their own story crossing each other. A particular example is in 'The Hard Goodbye', as Marv enters Kadie's bar, we see how Dwight appears in a bar, as Shellie, a dancer, picks him up, and is in his story, 'A Dame To Kill For'.

* ''Cradle Will Rock'' consists of no less than six concurrent stories woven together to give a picture of [[The Great Depression|Depression-era]] New York, including: capitalists materially supporting European fascists, a ventriloquist struggling in vaudeville's death throes while falling for a rabid anti-Communist, Diego Rivera painting a mural for John D. Rockefeller, Hallie Flanagan trying to save the Federal Theatre Project in the face of [[Red Scare]] politics, an Italian immigrant distancing himself from his pro-fascist family - all of which is united somehow by [[Orson Welles]]' and John Houseman's increasingly troubled production of ''The Cradle Will Rock''.

* The finale of [[The Phantom Menace]] cut rapidly between four separate battles, which would not be an example of this trope if they didn't vary so wildly in tone. The rest of the movie also had the Anakin plot, the Sith mystery, the Invasion story, and the Political Maneuvering plot.

* The film version of ''[[He's Just Not That Into You]]'', which literally features four different plotlines of varying style. Suffers from some [[Mood Whiplash]] because of it.

 

* A rare comedic version was ''[[Seinfeld]]''. A typical episode saw three or four separate plots, each involving one of the four main characters. It being a comedy, these different plot-lines would typically come together at the end of every episode, in a [[Crowning Moment of Funny|single hilarious scene]] uniting all the disparate stories.

* ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''.

** The ''third'' season has everyone's complicated stories [[Luke, I Am Your Father|and bloodlines]] interconnected to the point where trying to comprehend it all is a leading cause of aneurysms.

* May possibly have killed ''[[Drive]]''. Unless it was the overall lack of planning.

* ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' attempted this in Season Eight, with all six major characters getting a personal subplot:

** Adam Schiff's re-election fight.

** Anita Van Buren's discrimination law suit against the department.

** Lennie Briscoe's turmoil with his daughter - an ex-junkie turned states witness.

* The one or two episodes prior to a ''[[Lost]]'' season finale have multiple groups of characters setting out on the lines that will blow up in a '''BIG''' way during the thrill-a-minute final (2-hour-long) episode. Each group makes some progress, but the payoffs are deferred.

* Subverted in ''[[Farscape]]'' in its third season by splitting John Crichton into two people, and then sending each copy on a different ship with part of the crew. For much of the season, episodes alternated between the two crews, allowing the show to more manageably juggle episodic and arc plots. {{spoiler|Ironically, the copy of John Crichton involved in the more arc-oriented episodes was the one who ''didn't'' survive.}}

** As of the End of Act 5, this trope has been more or less turned around. The cast has been divided into three groups: {{spoiler|The Green Sun Team, consisting of Rose, Dave and the surviving trolls, The Scratched Universe Team, with John, Jade, and the refugees of the four planets and Skaia, and the Troll Incipisphere Team, with Jack Noir, PM, and WV. And Serenity.}}

*** And then played straight again with Act 6.

* In [[El Goonish Shive]], the Hold On Hope storyline was like this.

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' finished an arc which was itself part of a bigger arc during which the Toughs were split into four commands; each command got it's own arc, and arcs after the first would occasionally have a caption stating where, temporally, these events were taking place relative to the event that ended the larger meta-arc. It took well over a year, and this is a ''daily comic''.

[[Category:Script Speak]]

[[Category:Just for Pun]]