This is for scenes usually presented as parts of a work involving the characters or some of the real-life people involved in the show (depending on the nature of the show) discussing something about the episode, such as its message, or what led to idea to make an episode about the subject they chose, etc...
Often presented in the prologue or epilogue, and often in what looks like an otherwise quiet room, like a fancy living room or an office.
In some cases the speaker will be portrayed as sitting down and/or reading before and/or after said episode discussion moment. Goes well with a Very Special Episode and/or And Knowing Is Half the Battle.
Examples:
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Fan Works
- The third episode of Sword Art Online Abridged starts off this way, with a narrator named Sir Jack Dapper getting out a big storybook to introduce a Christmas Episode. That starts in April. When he returns to wrap up the episode, he's drunk, ranting about the Downer Ending and his own failed relationships, and puking on the good rug.
Films — Animation
- Fantasia begins in live-action with the conductor explaining the premise and structure of the film: a series of animated shorts set to classical music.
Films — Live-Action
- This is actually done at the beginning of The Fourth Kind. Milla Jovovich comes out as herself and explains the plot of the movie and the circumstances surrounding it.
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail had the historian who appeared on camera to begin to deliver a short lecture explaining the historical context of the plot (until the trope was subverted when one of the story's knights killed the historian in the middle of a sentence).
- Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily? lampshaded and subverted this trope:
Interviewer: Woody, since the story is a bit difficult to follow, would you mind giving the audience and myself a brief rundown on what's gone on so far?
Woody Allen: [tersely] No.
Live-Action TV
- Masterpiece Theater was famous for this ("Hello, I'm Alistair Cooke" was a meme several decades ago), and Sesame Street sent it up with ''Monsterpiece Theatre," hosted by "Alistair Cookie" (the Cookie Monster).
- Alfred Hitchcock was also fond of this in his Television show.
- There's one before the first post-9/11 episode of The West Wing, explaining that the episode that follows doesn't take place in continuity and is to be thought of as a stand alone play.
- One episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus had a rather embarrassed Terry Jones reading a summary of the show so far. He was confused when he came to a reference to the presenter getting hit on the head by a giant hammer, until it happened to him a moment later.
- Dinosaurs: Done at the end of the Drugs Are Bad Very Special Episode parody, with Robbie stepping out of character (in an Animated Actors way, not a the-actual-puppeteer-appeared-on-camera way) to talk about the message of the episode.
- Spoofed in Community episode 'Wedding Videography', which ends with the supposed writer of the episode Briggs Hatton (in actuality portrayed by actor Matt Gourney) discussing America's outdated incest laws, which he claims inspired the episode.
Visual Novels
- Each chapter of Double Homework beginning with the second has an intro in which Johanna and Tamara summarize the events of the previous episode according to the choices made by the player.
Web Comics
- Homestuck has a version of this when author Andrew Hussie appears as an illustration and describes the comic's events... In his own special way.
Western Animation
- Seth MacFarlane does this in "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein", a Family Guy episode he introduces with a parodical example of the "sitting in a chair, reading from a book before the scene starts" style.
- The Simpsons uses this from time to time as well, and again, largely parodically.
- "Bart the General" has Bart's "war is neither glamorous nor fun" speech at the end.
- "The Springfield Files" is an The X-Files parody with Leonard Nimoy guest-starring for the intro.
- South Park does this as well for Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride. Viewable here.
- Almost done Once per Episode in The Fairly OddParents!.
- Done both before and after the shorts in Tales From The Cryptkeeper.
- Also before each episode of Clerks: The Animated Series (on the DVDs, at least).
- Dave the Barbarian: The Stinger to "Girlfriend" features Dave looking at the camera and saying "Some of you may be wondering why I tied a squirrel to a megaphone. Well... Goodnight".
- Kim Possible: In "Grande Size Me" (a Stealth Parody of the Very Special Episode), Ron starts talking to directly to camera with a speech that sounds like it is going to be about the dangers of unhealthy eating, but is instead a Spoof Aesop about genetic mutation. As Ron talks and the credits roll, other characters wander into the scene, look at him strangely, and then start looking around, wondering who he is talking to.
