Television
Japanese anime series sometimes present their plot in nonlinear order. In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, for example, the episodes were deliberately aired in non-chronological order. A more nonlinear example is Baccano!, where every scene is displayed in non-chronological order, with most scenes taking place at various times during the early 1930s and some scenes taking place before (extending back to the 18th century) and after (extending forward to the 21st century). Other examples include Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito, Touka Gettan, Rental Magica, Ergo Proxy, Fullmetal Alchemist, Axis Powers Hetalia, and (partly) Boogiepop Phantom.
The ABC television series Lost made extensive use of nonlinear story telling, with each episode typically featuring a primary storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character's life, either past or future.
FX's Emmy Award winning legal drama Damages starring Glenn Close, begins each season with an intensely melodramatic event taking place and then traveling back six months earlier. Throughout the season, each episode shows events both in the past, present, and future that lead up to and follow said event.
The English sitcom Coupling would often utilize non-linear narratives in which groups of men and women would independently discuss an event, after which (or during) the event would be portrayed.
Read more about this topic: Nonlinear Narrative
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“So by all means let’s have a television show quick and long, even if the commercial has to be delivered by a man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck, selling ergot pills. After all the public is entitled to what it wants, isn’t it? The Romans knew that and even they lasted four hundred years after they started to putrefy.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)