A standalone episode is an episode of a series that contains a plot that begins and ends within its runtime, thus making it easy for the episode to be enjoyed without necessarily having seen the ones before or after it. This sort of episode used to be within the norm before the era of streaming, back when it was standard for a season to have at least twenty episodes aired, one per week. Without the easy access granted by streaming, people were unlikely to be able to watch every episode of a show faithfully and/or in order, which meant that it was necessary for them to be able to enjoy the episodes that they were able to catch without being completely lost. Moreover, the longer seasons meant that creators were given a lot more room to explore, develop and experiment with their plots and characters than is possible within the increasingly more common six-or-eight-episode format.
Shows would strive to maintain a good balance of standalone-to-overarching-plot ratio: enough open-and-closed narratives for people not to turn off their TV mid-episode in confusion and enough plot threads that slowly come together over the course of the season to keep the audience coming back for more. A good example is the first season of the 2005 Doctor Who revival. Every episode of the show could stand on its own, or at least be half of a two-parter, and at the same time, hinted at a bigger arc sprinkled in throughout the season. The Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper-led season maintains a virtually perfect balance. One can easily enjoy Dickens’ ghost encounters or an alien takeover of the British government and not focus on the scarce and easy-to-overlook hints of the “Bad Wolf arc”, but if the season is watched in sequence, the recurrent elements succeed in building enough tension and curiosity to keep the viewer wanting more.
With the rise and growing availability of VHS, DVDs, and eventually, streaming, it became easier to access entire seasons of TV shows or catch up on missed episodes, lessening the need for self-contained storylines. Shows became more and more focused on their serial aspect and began to strive to create season-or-series-long arcs, carefully crafting plot threads that would slowly build up to a big reveal or showdown. Standalone episodes became an occasional departure that sometimes worked (as is the case with Ab Aeterno from Lost) and sometimes didn’t (as is the case with Exposé from Lost).
In recent years however, standalone episodes have started to have a slow resurgence and become more experimental, giving show writers a chance to show off unique and peculiar ideas and explore different tones than the show’s usually one or focus on characters outside of the main cast. Perhaps the best example of the art of standalone episodes in recent years is Bojack Horseman, which stunned audiences with episodes like Fish Out Of Water and Free Churro.
Both standalone episodes have been deemed by the creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg as a good introduction to the show for new viewers. While in most episodes Bojack is surrounded by characters that the audience has gotten to know quite well, in these two he’s in the midst of unfamiliar faces. Both episodes have a distinct lack of dialogue, which means a lack of the witty back-and-forth one can usually expect from the show and a shift of focus to the protagonist and his innermost conflicts. Fish Out of Water takes place almost entirely underwater, with dialogue only at the very beginning and end of the episode, which allows the skillful animation, visual jokes, and Jesse Novak’s music to shine. Free Churro opens with a flashback of Bojack as a child in a car with his father, then focuses exclusively on Bojack’s eulogy at his mother’s funeral. This means that the only voice we hear is Will Arnett’s, as he voices both of the speaking characters, and that, after the flashback, the entire episode takes place in one room. Director Amy Winfrey and the animators focused greatly on Bojack’s facial expressions and only used three camera angles during the eulogy, which changed when the tone of Bojack’s speech did. These episodes have been described by Waksberg as inverses to each other, as one removes words and the other almost completely relies on them. Because of these peculiarities, Fish Out of Water and Free Churro are able to both stand out to a fan of the series and prepare a potential viewer for just how intense, touching, and yet hilarious the show can be.
Another type of increasingly popular standalone episode is one that departs from the main storyline and characters to focus on a separate storyline, which may or may not directly contribute to any development in the main plot, but often enriches it. Such is the case with Mythic Quest’s episode A Dark and Quiet Death, in which the usual ensemble is left behind to travel back in time to meet Doc (Jake Johnson) and Beans (Cristin Milioti) and follow them across the span of twenty years as they fall in and out of love. The tie-ins to the rest of the series are loose—mainly a shared location (the offices in which the couple opens their studio are the very same offices that house the Mythic Quest team) and a shared theme (the creation of video games). The episode could very well be skipped without hindering a person’s understanding of the rest of the show, just as well as it could be watched with no previous knowledge of the show. The same is true for Long, Long Time, the third episode of The Last Of Us, which spends the majority of its runtime telling Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank’s (Murray Bartlett) love story over the span of twenty years. Other than the apocalyptic setting, a viewer doesn’t need much more context to enjoy this episode, which has often been compared to an hour-long equivalent of the Married Life montage from Up. However, to a fan of the show, the episode adds depth of character, which carries over into the rest of the show.
All of the mentioned examples have been widely praised—although it should be mentioned that Long, Long Time also received a non-indifferent wave of homophobic criticism and was even review-bombed, a term which indicates the act of manipulating a product’s online rating by giving it a high amount of negative reviews.
In an era where shows are popping up like weeds and being aired, canceled, picked up, and rebooted at overwhelmingly fast rates and high quantities, and with an ever-growing number of shows being released by season rather than by episode, it is not easy to stand out with one singularly spectacular episode. The fact that some shows manage to do that is a testament to the skills and creativity of its cast and crew, and it’s also proof that although audiences are being constantly bombarded with new content, it is not impossible to make something new and different, to truly interest and draw people in and show them something they haven’t seen before.
The mostly overwhelmingly positive reaction to episodes like Fish Out Of Water, Free Churro, A Dark Quiet Death and Long, Long Time are proof that there is a place in the media landscape for standalone or departure episodes. Yes, the need for a self-contained narrative has undoubtedly dwindled to almost non-existent, but the appreciation for it remains, especially when the narrative is surprising and unique and supported by skillful, memorable performances.
