Four Lines, All Waiting: Difference between revisions
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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]].
And then there's '''Four Lines, All Waiting''': When a show - typically a [[Soap Opera]], although any [[Soaperizing|Soaperized]] show will do - maintains four or more concurrent plotlines advancing simultaneously throughout an episode. Sometimes ''every'' episode of a season. The episodes are structured like a miniature [[Soap Wheel]] cycling through a day's worth of events in "real time", going from one group of people to another then starting the cycle anew.
See also [[Kudzu Plot]].
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** 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.}}
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** 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?"]]
** The entirety of Countdown can be described as "Between Eight and Ten [[Kudzu Plot
* ''[[Empowered]]'' started with several more or less unrelated one-shots, but with time, some plots started to emerge: So far we have Thugboy's plot (his past, and everything Willy Pete-related), Ninjette's plot (involving the other ninjas), the Fleshmaster/Capeys/Manny plot, and of course the romantical plot for our [[OTP]] / [[OT3]]. And even now, there's time for some smaller stories.
* 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.
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* ''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.
* There are several plots going on all at once in ''[[Camp Nowhere]]''. First, there's the primary storyline about the kids faking a summer camp and maintaining the facade. Then there's the four kids' various [[Character Development
* 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.
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* 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 format is such that you have multiple characters with powers dealing with the day to day implications and difficulties thereof. Their troubles can grow to be so isolated and insular it's a wonder they interact ''at all.'' Occasionally, these characters do meet and then go on their way due to a strange kind of "fate interconnectedness" [[You ALL Share My Story|(a bit of a show theme).
** 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.
** Basically, when Heroes is good, you get [[Two Lines, No Waiting]], occasionally dipping into [[Third Line, Some Waiting]]. When it gets bad, it jumps into "everything happens at once and nothing makes sense." Basically, [[Third Line, Some Waiting]] is a tightrope that easily lets you fall into
* A common complaint of ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'' Season Two. You had the Maquis vs. Starfleet plot, Kazon/Seska plots, Paris pretending to be a jerk to get thrown off, is there another Caretaker out there, etc. A key factor of [[Better on DVD]].
* May possibly have killed ''[[Drive]]''. Unless it was the overall lack of planning.
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** Anita Van Buren's discrimination law suit against the department.
** Lennie Briscoe's turmoil with his daughter - an ex-junkie turned states witness.
** Rey Curtis' martial strife, stemming from the one-night stand he had in "Aftershock" (s6e23)
Most L&O fans consider it the series's low point,<ref>Prior to Season Twenty's parade of political anvils</ref> as the episodes would come to a screeching halt every time the subplots came along. Season Nine wrapped up every single one within the first few episodes, with only Van Buren and McCoy's plots having any lingering effect past mid-Season Nine.
* 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.}}
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