The original post: /r/television by /u/NBFM16 on 2024-04-27 23:16:34.
I remember in the Better Call Saul finale, they had three flashbacks and each one dealt with the idea of what certain characters would do if they had a time machine, i.e. what their biggest regret was. In the first two, Jimmy asks this question directly to Mike and Walt, respectively. Then, in the final one we see a conversation being had (and simultaneously not being had) between Jimmy and Chuck which ends with Chuck picking up H.G. Well’s ‘The Time Machine’, implying that this is Jimmy’s time machine moment. So the episode has this recurring time machine motif.
Similarly, in ‘Brand New Couch’, BoJack has to play a depressed character in a movie and shoot a scene where he dejectedly asks “What are you doing here?”. Because he’s on a positivity kick, he keeps saying it really happily rather than in the miserable tome he’s supposed to say it in. This occurs a couple of different times throughout the episode and even sees him say it once or twice outside the context of the movie. At the very end of the episode, after a particularly brutal conversation with his mother, he is depressed enough to get it just right and so that question kind of acted as a motif for the episode.
Any other episodes that have examples of this? I’m not talking about running gags or anything like that, but themes like this that are restricted to an episode (even though technically the BoJack example review throughout the season but that episode was it’s first occurrence).