What the deal with time jumps?

[Joe Washington]

Battlestar Galactica did it and so did Desperate Housewives. And I'm hearing some other show may be doing the same thing though I don't know which one. Time jumps seem to be the new TV trend and I'm wondering why? Why do you think shows do time jumps? What other shows do you think would benefit from one?

 

[Starbreaker]

Two shows doing it over the span of a decade isn't really a trend, although Lost had one too... so I guess that's three.

 

[Joe Washington]

Oh, yeah, I forgot.

 

[wamdue]

One Tree Hill did one.

 

[RoJoHen]

It's a way to tell a more "realistic" story, I think. One can't expect something super exciting to happen every week for years on end. Sometimes you have periods in your life that are boring and not worth filming for TV.

It's also a good way to change the status quo so you can tell different stories with the same people.

In the case of BSG, I thought it worked really well with their first "One Year Later" jump at the end of Season 2. It was a good way to progress the story without having to show what was going on in the meantime.

 

[Caliburn24]

Every show does a time jump, it is called summer break.

The Gilmore Girls trekked through Europe, Chuck trained in Prague, Clark Kent goes to Metropolis(Fortress, etc)the list is endless.

Time jumps allow the writers to reinvent the characters and show to a certain extent and keep it from feeling totally stale.

 

[Harvey]

24 does it at the end of every season, but that's only logical, given that each year of production portrays one singular day. On the other hand, they've had so many time jumps that the series is several years in the future now, no matter when you place season one.

 

[Christopher]

Every show does a time jump, it is called summer break.

The Gilmore Girls trekked through Europe, Chuck trained in Prague, Clark Kent goes to Metropolis(Fortress, etc)the list is endless.

That's actually a relatively recent conceit, and one I still find contrived -- this odd desire to pretend that events in the show correspond to real time, so that the heroes only have adventures between September and May and the biggest events in their lives always come during sweeps months. It's very unrealistic to have such clockwork regularity to things.

Besides, lots of shows have cliffhanger season finales with the premieres picking up immediately thereafter, so it's certainly not true that "every" show employs that "take the summer off" conceit.

On the other hand, I think the use of large time jumps in shows these days is partly a corollary to the increase in serialization, with a lot of shows telling fairly continuous stories that span less time in-story than they do in reality, with 24 and Lost being the precedent-setters. In a case like that, time jumps can be necessary simply as a way of catching the show up with real time.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Every show does a time jump, it is called summer break.

The Gilmore Girls trekked through Europe, Chuck trained in Prague, Clark Kent goes to Metropolis(Fortress, etc)the list is endless.

That's actually a relatively recent conceit, and one I still find contrived -- this odd desire to pretend that events in the show correspond to real time, so that the heroes only have adventures between September and May and the biggest events in their lives always come during sweeps months. It's very unrealistic to have such clockwork regularity to things.

I don't think that's terribly recent. Growing up, most shows in a school setting seemed to take this approach. Back to the school set for the season premier where everybody seemed excited to see each other again, having (it seems) not seen each other since the previous school year.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think that's terribly recent. Growing up, most shows in a school setting seemed to take this approach. Back to the school set for the season premier where everybody seemed excited to see each other again, having (it seems) not seen each other since the previous school year.

Well, your standard for "recent" is probably different from mine. It's something that pretty much came along in the '90s, which for me is recent, since I grew up in the '70s and '80s. For instance, TNG's season finales were usually cliffhangers that led right into the next season's premieres, but DS9 got into the pattern of having gaps of 2-3 months between season finale and season premiere.

 

[The Evil Dead]

I believe Alias jumps ahead a year or two at some point as well.

 

[Joe Washington]

It was two years and that happened at the end of Season 2.

 

[TheGodBen]

The West Wing had an unannounced 1 year jump at some point in season 5 because the writers had trouble coming up with good stories based in the White House and wanted to do a storyline about the next election. That jump doesn't fit in anywhere; if you analyse the fifth season it clearly only takes place over one year, but at the start of season 6 the characters start saying that its their seventh year in office rather than their sixth. The Exec Producer, John Wells, even lied about it in an interview by saying that there was no time jump and that the first season began during Bartlet's second year in office, which just wasn't the case.

I can forgive them because the election story revitalised the show after a relatively poor fifth season, I just wish they hadn't pretended that the jump didn't exist at all.

 

[milo bloom]

The West Wing had an unannounced 1 year jump at some point in season 5 because the writers had trouble coming up with good stories based in the White House and wanted to do a storyline about the next election. That jump doesn't fit in anywhere; if you analyse the fifth season it clearly only takes place over one year, but at the start of season 6 the characters start saying that its their seventh year in office rather than their sixth. The Exec Producer, John Wells, even lied about it in an interview by saying that there was no time jump and that the first season began during Bartlet's second year in office, which just wasn't the case.

I can forgive them because the election story revitalised the show after a relatively poor fifth season, I just wish they hadn't pretended that the jump didn't exist at all.

Never watched The West Wing, but going along with this, I don't mind them doing it if they truly embrace it, and even occasionally show glimpses of that time (like BSG's Unfinished Business, yes I'm one of the dozen fans that like that ep).

And what really annoys me are the ones that only affect certain characters, like kids that get magically grown up so the show doesn't have to spend a couple of years on them before they can start talking (and sassing and causing trouble).

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Well, your standard for "recent" is probably different from mine. It's something that pretty much came along in the '90s, which for me is recent, since I grew up in the '70s and '80s. For instance, TNG's season finales were usually cliffhangers that led right into the next season's premieres, but DS9 got into the pattern of having gaps of 2-3 months between season finale and season premiere.

Yup, good point on "recent", without doing any heavy research, everything I'm pretty much thinking of was probably in the 90's. I was born in '79, so late 80's early 90's is definitely my frame of reference.

Then again, if you think about it, the 90's WAS over a decade ago. That's quite a few minutes!!

 

[Christopher]

Which is why I said "relatively recent."

 

[Greg Cox]

Ghost Whisperer did it this season, too.

Basically, it's a short-cut to setting up a new status quo. In the case of GHOST WHISPERER, they did it to in order to turn Melinda's newborn baby into a walking, talking kid whom had more story potential than a baby in a crib. It also gave her husband a chance to finish medical school and become a doctor overnight.

Not a bad strategy. Did we really want to watch three seasons of Melinda changing diapers while waiting for her baby to learn how to to talk?

If VERONICA MARS had been renewed for a fourth season, I believe the plan was to skip over her undergraduate years and jump straight to her starting training at FBI Academy . . . .

 

[RJDiogenes]

I always wished that episode of TNG-- I think it was called "Future Imperfect"-- where Riker came around from a bout of amnesia sixteen years in the future was a real time jump. That would have been a nice change to the format.

 

[McCoy]

It's a valid story-telling method: set up a situation that is significantly different than the last you remember and then use flashbacks to show how you got there.

Done right, it can be an exciting approach to telling a story in a new way.

 

[bigdaddy]

West Wing jumped through time without ever explaining it, and it made no sense and no one questioned it.