Title Please
When a series, especially a TV drama series, has episode titles, but those titles never appear on the screen. It's generally assumed that everyone has access to an interactive program guide, so this former courtesy has long been waylaid.
Examples of Title Please include:
Anime
- Bleach. There is a title screen for each episode, but it only shows the number of the episode in a style unique to that episode.
- Some of the anime 4Kids localized, like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Ultimate Muscle, suffered from this.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the sole exceptions being "Once More With Feeling", "Conversations With Dead People" and "Bargaining".
- Battlestar Galactica
- The Big Bang Theory
- Cheers
- CSI franchise
- Criminal Minds
- Friends doesn't show the names of its episodes, however, since the titles all start with 'the one where...' they usually aren't too hard to guess. General rule of thumb is that the title refers to either the most important, interesting or funny thing in the episode.
- A pretty clever idea, as even when the titles are shown, fans generally refer to episodes of a programme in this fashion anyway.
- House
- Kamen Rider did this between 2001 and 2005. Kamen Rider Agito, Kamen Rider Ryuki, Kamen Rider Faiz, Kamen Rider Blade and Kamen Rider Kabuto all did not list episode titles on screen, but the titles were given on the official Web site.
- The 2008-09 Revival of Knight Rider, though the original series showed its episode titles.
- Law and Order originally had episode titles displayed, but stopped doing so shortly into the second season.
- Lost
- Millennium averted the trope in season two, but played it straight in seasons one and three.
- Mash
- Privileged
- The Red Green Show
- Sabrina the Teenage Witch
- Saved by the Bell
- Torchwood: Miracle Day
- The X-Files - the writers considered showing the titles in a subtle way such as using them as the title of case files but decided that not mentioning them added to the mystery.
- Most shows on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel does this (except their animated shows).
Western Animation
- Futurama
- Kim Possible
- Hanna-Barbera's version of Richie Rich had segments of four different lengths: "Gems", "Riches", "Treasure Chest" and "Zillion-Dollar Adventures". Beyond those generic titles, the segments were not identified on screen
- The Simpsons - there were about four exceptions (one of which was a gag where "Bart Gets Hit By A Car" showed up, right before Bart got hit by a car. According to the episode commentary, they put this in so that viewers would wonder if they had always been giving the titles and they'd just missed it somehow.)
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars, even though they could easily have slipped them in instead of the fortune cookie lines shown after the title sequence.
- All three of Seth MacFarlane's cartoons: Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show