Non Sequitur Scene/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Friend: "Hey, watch this scene!"
You: "Um...okay."
[moments after the scene ends]
You: "Okay, what the hell just happened?"

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a really odd one that seemed like it should have been foreshadowing but it just never came up again. They're fighting an invisible girl and have seen a duo of MIBs hanging around the school. Just as they beat her, the Men In Black come in, apprehend her, and take her away. At the end of the episode we see her in a Government run school full of invisible students including her being taught to be assassins. One must wonder if they're perhaps also working on psychic assassins.
    • In "Once More With Feeling", Buffy and some vampires burst into song during some slayage. She then enters the magic shop hesitant to bring it up, seemingly preferring it to leave it in Non Sequitur territory. It even goes a step further, leaving the audience with the same WTF face, wondering if anyone is going to acknowledge it. But once she talks about it is it revealed that all the others were thinking the same about their own musical numbers that happened off-screen.
    • To be fair, the entire first season of Buffy contained quite a few hints at larger storylines that never got mentioned again, with monsters being hinted at as Not Quite Dead.
  • At Jim and Pam's wedding in The Office, when the entire cast danced down the aisle to "Forever". They were parodying a famous Youtube video. Michael even says: "I saw this on Youtube!" in case it was too subtle.
  • Doctor Who: Part 7 of The Daleks' Master Plan has our heroes picked up by police on Christmas, getting split up on a Roaring Twenties movie set, and finally breaking the fourth wall.
    • It should perhaps be noted that there was a good reason for this. The episode was broadcast on Christmas Day and the production team worried people might not bother tuning in to watch. By making the episode irrelevant to the plot of the complete (12-part) serial as a whole, they didn't have to worry about people tuning back in the week after and not having a clue what was going on.
    • One from the new series that straddles the line between this and Soundtrack Dissonance is in "The Sound Of Drums" when the Master has summoned the Toclafane and commanded them to literally decimate the earth[1] but when they come pouring out of the sky, "Voodoo Child" by Rogue Traders starts blasting all of a sudden. The Toclafane, of course, are mentioned later, but the Master's truly bizarre choice of music is never explained. Watch it in all its strangeness here
      • Although it does go some way towards proving beyond any doubt that this incarnation of The Master is utterly batshit insane. The next episode has him playing another song, (albeit one that makes a bit more sense for the situation,) so maybe the Master just likes human songs; he had already shown a liking for the Teletubbies (like I said, utterly batshit insane).
      • That whole scene with the second song is a BLAM all of its own. The best way to describe it is that the Master dances through it as though he's starring the opening song of a Pee Wee's Playhouse-style children's show where all of the other characters happen to be terrified and miserable for some reason. Again, he's crazy and cruel and therefore thinks it's funny, which is probably all of the explanation we need.
      • It really isn't a bizarre choice of music at all. The episode is called "The Sound Of Drums" (because that is what the Master has in his head all the time, and the song contains the lines "So, here it comes, the sound of drums" and "Here come the drums, here come the drums".
    • At the end of The Hand of Fear, Sarah Jane's departure is made slightly less sad by the sheer ridiculousness of her outfit, coupled with the items she happens to be carrying. As this blogger. described it, "Sarah then exits TARDIS left, clutching a variety of things that seem to be the physical embodiments of non-sequiturs -- an owl doll and a tennis racket being the most obvious -- as she walks away whistling."
  • In the Power Rangers Jungle Fury finale: the furry scene. Granted, in Juken Sentai Gekiranger, the furry suits made sense and actually were an integral plotline in that show at one point, but in the Power Rangers show, they are randomly summoned up during the finale, then suddenly removed within twenty seconds, and nobody mentions the event for the rest of the episode (adding to this is that the characters involved with said furries are reduced to Living Scenery status for the rest of the episode as well, and probably for good measure).
  • Shows like Flight of the Conchords, The Young Ones and The Mighty Boosh guarantee at least one Non Sequitur Scene per episode.
    • For example, in "Flight of the Conchords", there is a scene in which one of the main characters, Bret, suddenly sings a karaoke song in Korean linking two scenes he does not appear in. The song has lyrics such as "sometimes love is as pure as the milk of a cow that has done nothing wrong." As the song ends, he steps out of the screen and the next scene begins.
    • A very memorable one is the scene in a season two episode of The Mighty Boosh, in which a crazed man throws a book out of the window and kills a bear.

"Books? Books?! This book ain't gonna' save yer life when there's a grizzly bear on the loose!"

    • Hang on, that's not a BLAM, that a gag. And one with a far more traditional set-up/pay-of than most Mighty Boosh jokes. A better example of completely BLAM might be the random dance numbers like 'Mod Wolves'.
    • Snuff Box is kinda similar to the above, except usually the BLAM is the same song repeated every episode, with minor changes to the lyrics.
    • The Young Ones had a real-life explanation: the program-makers had classed it as a "Variety" series, so that The BBC's light entertainment TV department would give them a higher budget than a "Comedy" series. But that meant each episode had to contain at least one musical number and, y'know, sketches. This is not to say that the The Young Ones team didn't like being able to book and stage their favourite bands, but that's the reason why they did it, along with all the non-sequitur scenes.
  • Robin Williams and Billy Crystal's guest appearance at the beginning of the Friends episode "The One With... the Ultimate Fighting Champion" has no relevance to the plot and is never mentioned again. It wasn't even in the original script, they coincidentally just happened to be in the same building where Friends was filmed and the writers asked if they wanted to make a guest appearance.
    • There's also "The One With the Baby on the Bus", where Rachel cancels Phoebe's gig at Central Perk to make way for a better and more famous singer (played by Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders). This isn't weird by itself, but after said better singer is introduced, she proceeds to grind the entire episode to a screeching halt in order to play an entire song (about four minutes long) as though performing in concert for the studio audience. Even showing a snippet of the singer singing wouldn't have been bad — it's just that she went on...and on....and on...even though it had no bearing on the plot, was never mentioned again, and the song itself had nothing to symbolically or thematically connect itself to the events of the episode.
    • That's because it was just a snippet on the broadcast version. The DVDs have her singing "Angel In The Morning" as an extended scene within the episode.
  • On the final episode of series 19 of Have I Got News for You, after given his Odd One Out group, Paul Merton begins to ponder the answer. Suddenly, the camera fade-cuts to some footage of Paul and fellow captain, Ian Hislop, skipping through a field in slow motion to sappy soft music for several seconds. Camera cuts back to Paul, who's got a day dreamy expression on his face. He then shakes his head and apologising, saying he was "miles away". The footage popped up again in the later seasons when Joan Collins hosted in a Dynasty spoof, but aside from that, there was no explanation for it. According to Paul of the Very Best of HIGNFY DVD commentary, he tried for eight years to get that gag onto the show and was rejected two times by two different producers, the third try helped and the gag was put in.
  • A running joke in the fourth season of Nash Bridges had the SIU move into a former disco which would start playing "Disco Inferno" at random intervals without explanation. It's just as weird as it sounds.
  • One episode of the game show version of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? ended with Rockapella (who did the main theme) suddenly start singing another one of their songs, "Zombie Jamboree." It had absolutely no relevance to the episode, and unless the Zombie Apocalypse version of the game was very well-hidden, no relevance even to any incarnation of the series.
  • In the middle of a segment regarding binge drinking on the talk show The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, a picture of a cat in a high chair eating spaghetti randomly appeared for a few seconds, and then disappeared. Nobody acknowledges this or ever talks about it again. This quickly became a meme known as "Spaghetti Cat" and it became a running gag on another show, The Soup. Apparently it was a type of dialog censor, but it was still so outlandish and out-of-nowhere that it should count.
    • The dialogue they wanted to censor was one of the interviewees saying the word "retarded."
  • Arguably Chuck's attempted rape of Serena (and to some extent Jenny) in the Gossip Girl pilot. Due to the fact that the pilot was based heavily on the books while the rest of the show, not so much, pilot-Chuck differs from the character we see in the rest of the series. His assault of Serena is not only never mentioned again, but she keeps confiding in him and turning to him with her problems, plus she's highly supportive of his relationship with her best friend. Hardly the kind of relationship you have with someone who tried to rape you.
    • Chuck does eventually apologize to Jenny about it after some major Character Development, and Rufus finally finds out about it in season four.
  • Dennis Potter became known for making extensive use these in his TV dramas, particularly Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective.
  • The pilot for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has a bizarre and implausible (though entertaining) scene inside the wormhole where Sisko and Dax's runabout lands on a solid surface that seems to be a planet. Only, when they step out, each sees a different planet. Then they briefly see the planet the other was seeing, an Orb appears and envelopes Dax, Sisko is sent to a white void, and the episode gets on with the plot. While everything else that happens in the pilot regarding the wormhole and the Prophets is explained (or at least developed upon) in later episodes, the sequence with the subjective planet is never explained, never mentioned, and nothing comparable ever happens again.
    • This is probably a remnant of an Aborted Arc. The producers had intended to introduce a romantic relationship between Kira and Dukat around this point, but Kira's actress shot the whole thing down almost immediately, so it never went anywhere. The result is just... bizarre.
    • Not quite as bad, but one 4th season episode featuring Kira and Magnificent Bastard Dukat forced to work together to find a long disappeared prisoner transport ship has a scene with the two of them camping for the night. Dukat sits on a 3 inch spike, impaling his butt and requiring assistance from Kira. The next three minutes are just Kira giggling to herself as Dukat wiggles his butt around in the air trying to apply some medicine. Immediately after this, they start talking about the plot/mission again and Dukat reveals he plans on killing his own half-bajoran daughter if she is still alive...
    • I'd call that almost more of a Pet the Dog moment, since the point seemed to be "humanizing" Dukat somewhat, that he's just like other people: feels pain, and finds a little humor laughing along with Kira when he realizes the medical implement he's using isn't turned on.
    • Star Trek: The Next Generation, meanwhile, had one in its cold open for the episode "Up the Long Ladder". As one blogger put it:

Worf is shown at his security panel on the bridge, making Klingon discomfort-noises. He then later faints (“Klingons don’t faint,” he complains) and Dr. Pulaski (ugh) keeps it under her hat, so he thanks her by showing her the Klingon Tea Ceremony, which is apparently a thing. All of this happens before the second commercial break. It is then NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. It doesn’t relate to the rest of the episode, it’s not somehow a parallel, it’s just like “oh, here’s some stuff that happened.”

      • In the first season episode "Where No-one Has Gone Before", the Enterprise finds itself in a region of the universe where thought can shape reality, leading to scenes of random crewmembers engaging in activities like ballet dancing in full costume and playing the violin in an orchestra. Essentially the crew's random thoughts force Non Sequitur Scenes to happen all over the ship until Picard decides enough's enough and orders a red alert and for the crew to focus on their jobs.
  • "Sushi Roulette" at the start of Season 15 of The Amazing Race. Nearly every task on the show is something that comes out of nowhere and is never mentioned again (barring a Final Exam Boss challenge at the end), but they usually have some sort of bearing on the plot. This task, however, is a different beast entirely. Set on a Japanese game show, each of the eleven teams was positioned at a roulette wheel divided into eleven pieces, two of which always contained wasabi. When the wasabi landed in front of a team, the chosen person would have to eat it fast enough to receive their next clue. To really cement its BLAM status, there were such additions as falling confetti, a bizarre voice calling out "Eat the wasabi!" for each new round, and surreal animation that included a fire-breathing alligator that appeared whenever the wasabi became overwhelming. And when it was over, it never returned in any flashbacks during the season.
  • Completely intentional (as it's supposed to be a parody of early 80s music videos) example from Not the Nine O'Clock News; "Nice Video, Shame About The Song".
  • At the end of the first season of Skins, several characters, including a random bus driver and Tony who is in a coma at the time start singing Cat Steven's "Wild World". Not just singing it, but as a full-blown musical number, with backing music- See here: [1].
  • In the first episode of Spaced while Tim and Daisy are looking around the flat, they run into a pair of girlscout Creepy Twins in a closet who freak them out, before being promptly forgotten. Apparently, they were originally going to be recurring characters, until the makers decided that there wasn't much else that could be done with them.
  • The beginning of the second episode of the third series of Ashes to Ashes involves Gene, Chris and Ray dressed as mechanics singing "Up Town Girl". It's promptly revealed as a dream.
  • In the episode of Supernatural, 'Hammer of the Gods' the boys are doing their usual thing of looking for weaknesses in their Monster of the Week when after a few secondary characters have a little conversation the screen suddenly freaks out in a Do Not Adjust Your Set moment, the opening to Ghostfacers plays. It goes nowhere and is never mentioned again. Apparently, this was supposed to be a segue into a trailer for Ghostfacers. Why it was preserved in the commercialless web copies is anyone's guess.
  • At the end of one episode toward the end of Moonlighting, the episode was padded by having Herb Viola (Curtis Armstrong) sing "Wooly Bully".
  • The Full House special where the family went to Disney World had this short sequence where Joey visits an animation studio and draws a sketch of himself on a pad. The sketch suddenly becomes animated, and starts a conversation with Joey before bouncing around playing basketball. Afterwards, Joeys leaves the studio to resume the special's actual plot. Soooo... money well spent on paying the Disney animators, guys?
  • Toku series will occasionally do blatant promotion of an upcoming show within The Movie of the previous show; this happened for both Kamen Rider Decade and Samurai Sentai Shinkenger, where the action was interrupted so Double and the Goseigers, respectively, could show how awesome they were to get audiences worked up for their own series - all while interrupting the movie's actual plot and contributing little to nothing before running off.
  • On The Secret Life of the American Teenager, there is scene where Adrian is studying while listening the radio. Then she changes the station and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" starts playing. This prompts Adrian to get up and dance like a spaz for about 10 seconds before sitting back down and changing the station. No explanation is given.
  • Sonny With a Chance has, in season 2, been including musical numbers. On a show that's supposedly about a group of sketch comedy actors. Okay, 3 of the 5 cast members (4 from 6 if you include Marshall, who can do vaudeville) can sing, and sing well, but that's no excuse.
    • Something of a case of Fridge Brilliance and Truth in Television. Both Nick and Disney have as almost a requirement, that their teen/tweener star (especially the girls), have to be able to sing and dance, so they can push the tie-in Idol Singer CD's and tours.
  • The mute little girl sub-plot from the iSpace Out episode of iCarly.
    • Also, Spencer rubbing butter on his face in iPity the Nevel.
      • That happens because he's bored, in the end, he gets so bored he just randomly walks into the iCarly studio, during one of their webcasts, drinking what's obviously a beer and acting drunk.
  • The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash features a 'clip' of the animated film Yellow Submarine Sandwich featuring the song "Cheese and Onions". Appearing unannounced in the middle of the otherwise entirely live-action film, this series of unintelligible events appears to be pure BLAM, but is actually a dead-on parody of The Beatles' equally bizarre Yellow Submarine. The true BLAM occurs just minutes later with an excerpt of John and Yoko Nasty and Chastity's art-house motion picture A Thousand Feet Of Film. It's Exactly What It Says on the Tin. And it is hilarious.
  • Even though the show is about a bunch of singers, Glee has these all the time, with a sudden transition from say, Rachel and Quinn talking in a hallway at school, Quinn turning around and starting to sing, followed by a transition to the football field where her and the cheerleaders start a dance routing during the song.
    • Puck randomly stopping the plot and conflict during "Grilled Chesus" to sing Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young". The song itself is pretty related to the theme of religion present throughout the episode, but the way it's presented is so random.
  • With the crazy and often nonsensical sketches in Monty Python's Flying Circus, it'd be difficult for anything to stand out as a Non Sequitur Scene, but the end of Cycling Tour definitely qualifies. The episode is about Mr. Pither and his crazy adventures during a bicycle trip; at the end, when he and his companion part ways, two monsters jump out of the bushes and start dancing.
    • In the middle of the "Restaurant Abuse/Cannibalism" sketch, which was one of the odder ones[2] to begin with, a man in Ancient Groman dress enters, delivers a brief pseudo-Shakespearean speech that has nothing to do with the scene, is told off by the waiter, goes away and is not mentioned again.
  • The last season of The X-Files features an episode with Burt Reynolds as a bizarre man who may be God, the devil, or both. Just about every scene with him qualifies, none more so than the very ending in which two characters who occasionally showed up in the background start lip-snyching to an Italian folk song, during which the camera pulls away to reveal the area's topography looks just like Reynolds' face.
    • The X-Files actually has a few of these. It's even possible to watch an entire episode and not be fully sure what the point of some - or all - scenes were. But perhaps the strangest are in The Post-Modern Prometheus where Mulder, Scully, and the Monster go to a Cher concert at the end, in Jose Chung's "From Outer Space" where Men In Black supposedly keep showing up, and in Bad Blood where Mulder sings the theme song to Shaft...for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
  • Bedford's silent movie dream sequence in the 2010 BBC4 adaptation of The First Men in the Moon, which also doubles as a Shout-Out to A Trip to the Moon
  • An episode of The Colbert Report had Stephen lead into a long joke about sheep doing crystal meth getting their own show called Breaking Baaaaaa and then celebrated having executed the Best Pun Ever (BPE) with a balloon drop, music, being carried by men like an Egyptian king, fighting a minotaur to the death with a dagger, and then laying down in the company of several women who fed him grapes.
  • On The L Word, Jenny is looking for directors for the movie of her book, Lez Girls. After a series of relatively normal interviews, she shows up at a small theater where a French man describes his vision of her book as a musical, and opens the curtains to reveal his demo. As if this wasn't strange enough (the song being quite slow and trippy, very unlike your typical movie musical), at the end Jenny recognizes one of the performers as her ex-girlfriend, Marina. Episode ends, incident is never mentioned again.
  • Even Reality TV is not averse to this. One episode of Fame Academy, a BBC Talent Show, had footage of a governor (the part of the engine, not a U.S. Senator for a few brief seconds. Why this happened was never explained. This could possibly be a Stock Footage Failure.
  • This happened a few times in Are You Being Served, but it's most notable in the 1978 special. The store is celebrating Mr. Grace's birthday; the staff have rehearsed an extended musical number to perform as entertainment. At the last minute, they have to perform something else, so they break into an impromptu version of "Steppin' Out". Okay. Suddenly, Mr. Grace appears, holding a puppet body under his neck, singing a song about "bread and drippin'" which contains only a couple of intelligible words in it. This weird little ditty doesn't fit with the other music at all, and turns Mr. Grace from guest of honor to entertainment with no explanation. Then, the staff segue into "Happy Birthday to You" as if nothing had happened.
  • Fringe: Two Words: Singing Corpses!
  • Farscape, in one episode John orders Pilot to eject a fanatical woman who nearly caused the deaths of hundreds, out into space. When he does so, he laughs in a deep, maniacal, and almost demonic way. He does not laugh like this again throughout the series.
  • CSI: NY featured an episode where a murder is witnessed on a ChatRoulette-style website. This leads to the detectives playing around on the site and Jo gets connected to a Marine in Afghanistan. She picks up her laptop and gives him a view of the New York skyline because he's never been to New York.
  • Episode "Girls VS Suits" from How I Met Your Mother. Yes, part of the plot was about Neil Patrick Harris' character to seduce a woman without wearing one of his infamous suits, but still the episode ends with the whole cast in an epic musical number that comes out of nowhere in which Harris' character sings "Nothing suits me like a suit".
    • Yes, but it has relevance to the plot, as it moves along his decision on whether or not to go out with the bartender.
    • Not the first BLAM to appear on that show, we remember the same character showing his video resume that featured himself singing about himself "BARNEY STINSON, BARNEY STINSON, HE'S SO AWESOME! AWESOME!!!!".
    • In another episode, the main character starts singing to describe the best date ever, for no apparent reason, as some random technicians change the decor around him.
    • In the first episode of season 7 Robin and Barney have a sudden dance number in the middle of the episode that comes right out of left field.
  • Big Time Rush enjoys this trope from time to time, usually with random cutaway gags. Sometimes it subverts this by mentioning an event that happened in their past but has no connection to the plot save being much like what the episode covers (an example being in "Big Time Jobs" when the boys think back to times when they've destroyed things at the Palm Woods). Others it is played straight, like in "Big Time School of Rocque" when they are looking back to when they were wasting the brochures that Kelly gave them (including playing hockey with them, making cutouts of them and even taking a crap with them).
  • Red Dwarf. Tongue Tied. That is all.
    • For those who have never seen the show, that music video is the cold opening to one of the episodes. No context or anything, just that. It's revealed afterwards that it's a recording of one of the Cat's dreams.
    • One should note that the description of the video isn't even accurate, the scene has nothing to do with "parallel worlds". Apparently even the BBC don't know what was going on with this.
  • In series 3 of Waterloo Road Mr. Budgen, a champion dancer is his youth (which was a long time ago) is giving a class a ballroom dancing lesson. Bolton, not impressed, takes exception to his dismissive remarks about breakdancing and proceeds to give him a demonstration. Mr Budgen, not to be outdone, proceeds to demonstrate an earlier, related style which he evidently remembers from his youth and which seems completely and utterly out of character for him.
  • Law and Order: "Is this because I'm a lesbian?"
  • In Eureka, Henry tries to do something romantic for his wife and ends up asking Fargo for advice. The result is a Crowd Song. Technically not an example, since the entire episode was leading up to it, but gets a free pass since the entire point was for it to be something Henry would never do.
  • Lampshaded on an episode of Merlin which involves a goblin breaking loose of its prison and causing havoc among the citizens of Camelot. Having thoroughly embarrassed everyone, two of the characters meet in a hallway and agree never to discuss it again. And they haven't.
    • In the episode The Changeling, Princess Elena is fed a live frog by her nursemaid. Presumably, this was because she was possessed by a fairy at birth, but it's still a pointless scene, with no lead-up, and is never mentioned again.
  • VR Troopers features Jeb (the talking lab assistant dog) doing the Doggy Rap in Kaitlin's Front Page, an episode where a trap is set and the male troopers have to rescue Kaitlin. It is also done by the Troopers in My Dog's Girlfriend, so it's a slight subversion, but outside of those two moments, it is never done or mentioned again. However, it's such a hillarious and lighthearted break from the serious story, that ironically, it's not only the first thing people think of (or may be everything they remember from it) that remember that episode, but it's one of the more memorable moments from VR Troopers itself, despite the fact that it had nothing to do with anything going on at the time.
  • Boy Meets World, "That farmhouse, there."
  • In what was perhaps one of the worst edited seasons of Survivor ever, Redemption Island, this happened to Kristina Kell. She manages to set a Survivor record by finding a hidden immunity idol before day three, before any clues were even handed out. This incident is never mentioned again - even during the season recap, this is conveniently forgotten. Poor Kristina didn't even get to talk to Probst - and he had praised contestants for doing the same in seasons past.
  • In the Psych episode "Let's Get Hairy", Shawn activates a revolving bookcase which traps Gus on the other side. He then activates it again, bringing Gus back to the room everyone is in. Shawn doesn't notice, and it's never mentioned again.
  • In the 9th season premiere of Two and A Half Men, Evelyn Harper is showing Charlie's house to prospective buyers, when suddenly Dharma and Greg show up. They bicker for a second. Make sarcastic, and substantially darker comments than they did on their original show, including about divorce and suicide. They decide against buying the house and leave. To say that this is out of left field, (especially since Dharma and Greg was cancelled 9 years before, aired on another network, and actress Jenna Elfman already played a different role in an earlier season of Two and A Half Men), is an understatement.
  • The Star Wars Holiday Special is full of these.
    • No its not....it IS this!
  • In any episode of the remake of Battlestar Galactica that doesn't involve Gaius Baltar, there'll still be a random of scene of him in bed with a beautiful woman that serves no purpose other than to remind us that he's still in the story.
  • An episode of Season Two of The Good Wife has one at a gala dinner for the Cook County Bar Association where an amateur theater group puts on a strange, poorly-acted play for the lawyers, telling the story of a farm boy who doesn't want his best friend, a cow named Moo Cow, to be drafted to fight in World War II. It is never mentioned again, for obvious reasons.
  • In episode 2 of Sherlock, we see Sherlock fighting a sword-wielding man wearing a vaguely Arabian costume in his flat. By the time John gets back to the flat, the man has been defeated and Sherlock doesn't even mention it. We never find out who this guy is, why he attacked Sherlock, or what happened to him between the time Sherlock knocks him out and John gets back home.
  1. ↑ that is, kill 10% of its population
  2. ↑ and that, of course, is saying something
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