maybe i'm just slow... but why is it called "The Puppy Episode". I know most, if not all the episode titles have a kind of double meaning or is a play on words, but can anyone please explain to me why "puppy"? i just didn't get that, thank you!
shareThere was no double meaning. One of the producers suggested that since Ellen had not shown any interest in dating on the show for quite some time that maybe they should let her get a puppy. It was more a sarcastic suggestion than anything else since they had no idea what direction to take the show when the main character had no interest in dating. When the "coming out" episode was being written, they wanted something banal for a title so they could mask what the episode was really going to be about for as long as possible. There was much debate at the time as to whether to spring the whole thing as a surprise when the show aired (and avoid any controversy in case the predictable right-wing protests would get out of hand) or whether to let the cat out of the bag and garner a lot of buzz and big ratings. They chose to let the rumors fly but not quite confirm them. They let the "will she or won't she" come out build up before airing the show and it worked to perfection. Big ratings and television history all in one perfect episode. Then that episode won an Emmy for the script as icing on the cake. My only question is how on earth Helen Hunt beat Ellen that year for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
shareNot only that, but episode titles, until fairly recently, weren't official, they were just a shorthand way that the people who worked on the show had of referring to the show. A lot of shows didn't have episode titles, or had really banal titles, like "[the main character] and [guest star's charter]." A few shows had titles that were interesting, but they were anthology shows, and the titles were there to grab audiences, and were sometimes the titles of the source material (cf. Twilight Zone), or Perry Mason, for which each title had an alliteration, like the tiles of the Perry Mason novels.
A lot of shows had episodes that were commonly known to fans under one set of names, that had nothing to do with working titles, which were sometimes obscure. For example, the fan-titled episode of The Brady Bunch, "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," which is the title given on IMDb, and probably on the DVD set, can't be the original working title, because the episode first aired in 1969, and the Ellen Burstyn film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore wasn't released until 1974. There was a 1933 song called "Annie Doesn't Live Here Anymore," but since most Brady Bunch working titles were either one word, or a quote from the script, while the more creative titles tend to be fan-bestowed, and often have anachronisms, it's much more likely the show gets the title from the movie.
Friends has self-conscious titles that anticipate the way fans refer to shows, most of them starting with "The one with...." or "The the one where...."
Sometimes working titles were obscure to fans, because they might contain a reference to a writer, or set that isn't typically used, or an in-joke: the last is what "The Puppy Show" is. However, the episode quickly became so famous, that "getting a puppy," actually became a euphemism for coming out, for a while, and some people I know don't realize the show was the origin of the phrase, and assume the title is just a reference to the euphemism.
7 years late but that was a really interesting read. I didn't realise episodes having official titles was a relatively new thing. Thanks!
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