Two Lines No Waiting / Live-Action TV

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Two Lines, No Waiting in Live-Action TV.

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• Each episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun usually goes with an A-story centering on Dick, and a B-story featuring another character.
• Perfected by 24. After all, it is the Trope Namer for Trapped by Mountain Lions.
• Angel:
  • Season 2 indulged in this a fair amount midway through its run, as Angel would fire Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn from Angel Investigations so he could fight off Wolfram & Hart, Darla, and Drusilla by himself without being tethered down by their objections to his underhandedness. As a result, several episodes feature plots of Angel dealing with whatever the law firm had planned while Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn continued to help the helpless without him, with the two groups rarely intersecting outside of a single scene at a time. This is rectified in "Epiphany" when Angel realizes that he had been going at things in the wrong way and sets out to make amends with his friends.
  • The latter portion of Season 3 would dip into this after Wesley gets kicked out of the group for stealing Connor, with much of his screentime spent on the developing relationship between him and Lilah Morgan. He begins to interact with the group again at points in Season 4 (as seen when he rescues Angel from the bottom of the ocean or helps Fred in her vendetta against her old professor) before he rejoins the team officially midway through the season.
• While Avataro Sentai Donbrothers already follows the usual Super Sentai formula of "dealing with the Monster of the Week while life-challenges ensue," The general narrative of this season is also split in two: The show flips between (and occasionally merges) the Donbrothers' battles with the Noto over the fate of the Hitotsu-Ki monsters and distant member Inu Brother's independent search for his lost girlfriend - which plunges him headfirst into The Conspiracy surrounding the body-copying Juto that took her away one year before the show began, causing his Frame-Up.
• Awake (2012) does this as part of the show's premise: the main detective character lives in two realities that constantly react to each other. Thus whenever he starts a case in one reality, another case (somehow linked to the first one) starts in the other, resulting in at least two plotlines per episode.
• Babylon 5: This trope was so prevalent on the show that episodes with only one plot line really stand out, whereas at times the viewer could get up to an F plot to keep track of. One big example of a single plot episode is the fourth season episode "Intersections in Real Time," which focused exclusively on Sheridan being tortured by EarthForce.
• Banjun Drama: While most Banjun Drama episodes follow a single plot thread because of their short length, "Dangerous Love" features two threads. The A-Plot focuses on Jun-su and Chang-min as they find themselves injured and saved by a woman inside her abandoned Closed Circle house, while the B-Plot centers around Jae-joong mistaking Yun-ho as gay after being shown a romantic fanfic with Yun-ho and him.
• Battlestar Galactica always has at least three storylines, and sometimes as many as five.
• The Big Bang Theory: After Amy and Bernadette joined the cast, there were several episodes that featured one storyline for the men and one for the women with little if any overlap.
• This became the standard for Blake's 7. With several main characters the writers needed to find something for all of them to do, and so the plot would often split up into two lines: the first for the ones who make planetfall Down There, and the other for the ones who run into trouble Up There on the Liberator (and later on Scorpio).
• Happened quite a lot in Boston Legal, as different characters are taking different cases, usually with one case being the serious one with a Character Filibuster or Author Filibuster in it, and the other case being the slightly light-hearted one (usually involved Denny Crane).
• In Boy Meets World, most episodes had an A plotline with Cory, Shawn and Topanga and a B plotline with Eric (and Jack starting in season 5 and Rachel starting in season 6), though this varied a good bit. In many of the later season episodes one plotline was serious while one was comedic.
  • In Girl Meets World, the A plot is about Riley, Maya, Farkle, and Lucas and the B plot about Topanga and Auggie; Cory could be in either one or both.
• Burn Notice does this in practically every single episode. One storyline will involve tracking down the people who burned Michael or, in season 5 whoever framed him for murder. This will invariably bring Michael one step closer, but won't result in a major development unless the episode is a season finale. The other will be generally involve saving an innocent victim from the Monster of the Week. Seriously, this formula is used so consistently, one has to wonder how none of the characters ever seem to notice that its happening.
• Castle has this as well. The A Story centers around the crime drama, and the B Story centers around Richard Castle's family drama.
• Very common in Chuck - the A story revolved around Chuck, Sarah and Casey, while the B story revolved around Chuck's friends at Buy More.
• Most episodes of The Closer have the investigation as the A plot and something involving Johnson's personal life as the B plot. Usually they're tied together thematically and/or the B plot provides the weekly "Eureka!" Moment. In addition, the B plots often stretch for more than one episode.
• Community sometimes has subplots spanning every member of the study group. If there are two friends in an A plot (say Jeff and Britta), some of the other members (Abed and Troy for example) will have a B plot together.
• Corner Gas:
  • The series has two or three storylines per episode, which is merely one of the reasons it's often compared to Seinfeld. Its larger main cast (more than four) divides up pretty evenly among the storylines. This is most interesting when the divvying of the storylines doesn't happen according to the common pattern (the two police officers, the old married couple, the gas station workers—Hank functions as a wildcard, who may have his own storyline like a Good Hair Day).
  • "The Littlest Yarbo" where Hank discusses his plot, and Brent randomly starts talking about his own:
    Hank: Maybe The Littlest Hobo was the first ever reality show, did you ever think of that?
    Brent: Hold on here! If I can see my logo, then her logo is on the outside all the while giving her free advertising!
    Wanda: Come on, guys! I can only handle one weird obsession at a time!
• Lampshaded on Cougar Town which usually sticks to A and B-plots but occasionally works in a C as well. When they are trying to think of a name for Bobby's (landlocked) boat, one suggestion is The Sea Story because "everything that happens on this boat is kind of a sea story".
• Criminal Minds has done this on a few occasions, most notably in "Damaged" when the main story saw Morgan, Prentiss and JJ help Rossi solve his cold case, with the "B" story featuring Hotch and Reid interview a serial killer looking for a way to stave off execution.
• This device is used in the various CSI shows (although much more often in the original than the spinoffs), and others in the current crop. Occasionally the characters will find out halfway through the episode that the crimes they are investigating are tied together. Some episodes pull this off better than others.
• Season 2 of Daredevil is pretty evenly split between the Punisher and Elektra storylines.
• The Canadian drama series Da Vinci's Inquest was cancelled in part because of this trope. At the end of the series, the main character, a coroner living in Vancouver, successfully announces his bid to become the Mayor of the city. In the spin-off/sequel, Da Vinci's City Hall, the story balances the problems he has while in office, his quest to get a "red light district" up and running, his bid to create safe-injection sites for drug users, the trials and tribulations of his former partner working at the city morgue, events happening at a police station...if you missed one episode, you were lost. The show suffered in the ratings, and was cancelled as a result (although there may have been other motives).
• Dawson's Creek always had more than one storyline but for much of the post High School 5th and 6th seasons (especially the latter), interaction between the storylines was minimal, or non-existent.
• Desperate Housewives usually has 5 plots running simultaneously; one for each of the four main housewives and one involving the season's Big Bad or creepy/mysterious neighbor. These plotlines will mesh in the big catastrophe episodes, but generally stay apart.
• Very recurring on any sitcom on Disney Channel does this:
  • Lizzie McGuire consistently used Lizzie and her friends as the "A" Story, and her little brother Matt doing something for the "B" Story.
  • Shake it Up. Usually there is one plot with Cece and Rocky, and Rocky's brother Ty, Deuce and Flynn have a plot. They may or may not intersect, and minor characters Gunther and Tinka may appear in both.
  • That's So Raven: Raven, Chelsea and Eddie in the A-Plot and Cory and Victor in the B-Plot.
  • Hannah Montana: Lilly/Hannah in the A-Plot, Jackson and/or Rico in the B-Plot. Oliver and Robbie Ray can be in one or both.
  • Good Luck Charlie: Teddy and Ivy in the A-Plot. PJ, Gabe or Bob in the B-Plot.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place has Alex and Harper and Justin in the A-plot, and Max and the parents in the B-plot.
  • The Suite Life of Zack & Cody have Zack and Cody in the A-plot, and London and Maddie in the B-plot. The twins are joined by Marcus and Woody in the A-Plot, whereas London and Bailey are in the B-plot on The Suite Life on Deck. Moseby and Carey can be in either one.
  • Sonny with a Chance: Sonny and Chad and/or Tawni in the A-Plot, Grady and Nico in the B-Plot. Zora may intercede in either, or just spend the time being weird.
  • Zeke and Luther: The title characters plus Kojo and Ozzie in the A-plot, Ginger in the B-plot (before she left the show), when she's not the antagonist in the A-plot.
  • I'm in the Band: The only consistent was that Tripp is in the A-plot.
  • Jessie: Jessie and two of the kids in the A-plot; Bertram and the other two kids in the B-plot.
  • A.N.T. Farm: Chyna, Olive, and Fletcher in the A-plot; Cameron or Angus in the B-plot. Lexi can be in either one, and Paisley is almost always in Lexi's plot.
  • Austin & Ally: Almost always Austin and Ally in the A plot, with Trish and Dez in the B plot.
  • Lab Rats: Tends to vary. Usually, it's one plot for two of the Rats and another for the third Rat and Leo. With the adults it's usually Donald or Douglas in one plot and Perry in the other.
  • Kickin' It: Jack and Kim are the A-plot; Jerry, Eddie, and Milton are the B-plot, and Rudy the C-plot. After Eddie left, the standard formula was Jack/Jerry/Kim and Milton/Rudy.
  • Crash & Bernstein: The title characters are the A-plot; Cleo and Amanda are the B-plot. Pesto can be either helping out the boys in the A-plot or crushing on Amanda in the B-plot.
  • Mighty Med: For season 1, the plots were mostly Kaz/Oliver A-plots and Skylar/Alan/Horace B-plots. Gus tended to be either one or the other. Season 2 had Kaz and Oliver occasionally separating and having separate plots.
  • Kirby Buckets: Kirby, Fish, and Eli in the A-plot and Dawn and Belinda in the B-plot.
  • K.C. Undercover: The plot is usually KC and Marisa in the A-plot and the rest of the cast in the B-plot; with another character (usually Ernie) making the jump to the A-plot when necessary.
  • Best Friends Whenever: Cyd and Shelby in the A-plot, Barry and Naldo in the B-plot, the twins are usually just causing hijinks and are more likely to be with the boys.
  • Gamer's Guide to Pretty Much Everything: Conor is in the A-plot. The other three kids bounce back and forth between the two plots.
  • Bizaardvark: Paige and Frankie are the stars of the A-plot, while Dirk and Amelia are in the B-plot. Bernie is usually bouncing back and forth between the plots. After Dirk left, Bernie became more often than not in the B-plot with Zane and Rodney in the wild-card slot.
• Doctor Who:
  • "The Empty Child": The Doctor and Rose split up early on, and the plot follows the two of them simultaneously during their encounters with Nancy and Captain Jack Harkness respectively.
  • "Extremis" switches between Missy's execution in the past, and the situation with The Veritas in the present. Or, rather, the Doctor watching the recording of the last several hours of the Prophets of Truth's most recent simulation while guarding the Vault in the present day.
  • "Fugitive of the Judoon" splits up the Doctor and the companions early to incorporate two plots. The Doctor has the A plot, where she gets info about the titular fugitive. Graham, Ryan and Yaz have a B plot, where Jack Harkness returns and kidnaps them to give the Doctor cryptic information.
• Elementary works and develops its story arc and characters this way. Even exposed in the writer's twitter as we can see here.
• Exception: Everybody Loves Raymond is unique in the sense that every episode followed one storyline, there were no subplots. Yet it was still very successful and ran for nine seasons. They did have minor inter-episode stories as running gags, such as periodically reverting to the arguments between Marie and Frank (over things like what constitutes something as "fork-split", who will die first and what the remaining one will do, etc.) throughout the episode.
• Family Matters generally had an A-story centering on the children and a B-story centering on the parents. However, being a Kid Com, the children's storylines were predictably far more interesting than the parents' storylines.
• Fantasy Island juggles three or more plotlines per episode. In fact, the plotlines even have separate titles in the credits, and usually different writers. In fact, when it was offered up in syndication, the series had two formats, the original one hour episodes as well as an Edited for Syndication half hour format featuring only one story and Roarke's opening greeting "My dear guests, I am Mr. Roarke, your host" dubbed to "My dear guest, I am Mr. Roarke, your host".
• In documentary TV, each The First 48 episode tracks two murder investigations, each in a different city and having nothing to do with each other.
• Frasier:
  • The majority of the episodes have this structure. Typically, there's the main A plot and the secondary B plot, one of them focusing on Frasier and the other on one of the four other major characters. The main plot isn't necessarily about Frasier, though: Niles especially gets plenty of A plots as his character becomes more rounded.
  • One episode ("Death and the Dog", Season 4) hanging a lampshade on it. The events of the episode are being told as a Whole Episode Flashback to a caller, and Roz wonders why Frasier is telling the caller about her date in the episode.
• Friends does this quite often, usually preferring the three-storyline model. The relationships between the characters allowed some fluidity in the pairings.
  • "The One Where They're Going to Party" - Ross, Chandler, and Joey in Plot A, Monica and Rachel in Plot B, and Phoebe in Plot C.
  • "The One Where Ross and Rachel... You Know" - Ross and Rachel in Plot A, Monica and Phoebe in Plot B, and Chandler and Joey in Plot C.
  • Particularly in later seasons, episodes frequently split along with the Ships: Ross and Rachel, Chandler and Monica, Phoebe and an outside cast member or love interest (Duncan, Eric, Mike, and so forth.)
  • "The One with the Routine" had Monica, Ross, Joey, and guest character Janine in Plot A, with Chandler, Phoebe, and Rachel in Plot B; "The One with the Blackout" had Chandler by himself in Story B, while everybody else was in Story A.
  • "The One Where They're Up All Night" featured a whopping number of four storylines: Ross and Joey, Chandler and Monica, Rachel and Tag, and Phoebe vs. the fire alarm.
• Invoked and enforced in the China-produced God of War Zhao Zilong, which attempts to spin a new take on Romance of the Three Kingdoms with the focus on Zhao Yun, basically turning it into a typical idol drama running parallel with Romance since Zhao Yun shouldn't be in the corresponding chapters of Three Kingdoms yet. The best example would be the three masters who trained Zhao Yun before heading to the war front, joining the armies of Yuan Shao, and sadly falling in combat against Hua Xiong. After word of their death reaches Zhao Yun, Hua Xiong ends up facing a certain newcomer to the war front by the name of Guan Yu... and word of the result of that reaches home a little faster. Zhao Yun learns from all this just how much further he has to go, and how much tougher he needs to be.
• Go On does this in most episodes, generally with one plot centering around Ryan King, and another plot focusing on someone else from the support group.
• Grey's Anatomy does this in a way similar to Scrubs but usually a lot less contrived and there is almost always a real struggle with morality that Meredith references when she does the voice over in the beginning and end of an episode. If the plots are too separated, the writers link it together with a more broad aesop... like "trust your closest friends" or something. Clever!
• On Haven, especially in seasons 1 and 2, there typically was an A-plot with Audrey and Nathan investigating a Trouble(superpower) related crime and a B-plot with Duke, sometimes intersecting with the A-plot (often Duke would find himself involved in the Trouble somehow), and sometimes a C-plot involving finding Audrey's past. As the other characters were fleshed out more, there started being a C-plot involving the Teagues, Dwight and/or the Guard. In season 5, there usually is an A-plot with one character and Mara and a B-plot involving the other characters dealing with a Trouble.
• After the first few series, Heartbeat always divided its episodes between an A plot of the police investigating something serious and a comedy B plot of whoever the Lovable Rogue was at the time (Greengrass, Vernon or Peggy, or occasionally their supporting cast if they weren't in the episode) getting involved in some sort of light-hearted shenanigans.
• Heroes:
  • In its first season, the series does a very interesting bit with this in the long-arc scenario. It has multiple long arcs — Nikki, Petrelli Bros., The Bennets, Hiro's Quest, and Sylar (roughly) — with an encapsulating long-arc. Each sub-arc gets some screen time every episode, with the emphasis (length) shifting from arc to arc. Less obvious is the title names for each episode. They're metaphoric and (usually) can apply to any and all events that occur in a single episode.
  • Later seasons tried similar juggling, but balls got dropped, and things sprang out of nowhere and didn't always connect to the other threads. The last season got back on track (though not quite as adept - there wasn't room for everything to prove terribly important, and characters went absent longer than they would in S1, but it was a marked improvement), but not in time to save the show.
• Homicide: Life on the Street generally focused on two plots per episode. Often an episode would focus on two separate pairs of the detectives going off on totally different investigations, or had a comedic subplot for the sake of providing levity.
• House:
  • The series often has this (particularly in the last few seasons), where plot A is the current medical drama and there's usually one or two sub-plots concerning House messing with his team and/or Wilson and/or Cuddy (or vice versa). Less frequently, an episode would have two medical plots: one case involving the entire team, and another that House would solve on his own. The second type becomes more common in the first few seasons where House has a minor recurring clinic case that often provides him with the inspiration to solve to main case.
  • "One Day, One Room" has no medical mystery. Instead, it follows House treating a pregnant rape victim who refuses an abortion, while Cameron tries to help a dying homeless man who refuses treatment.
• How I Met Your Mother:
  • The A Story usually runs through Ted, while the B Story tends to involve the stable couple of Marshall and Lily. Barney and Robin sometimes end up in their own plotlines, but are more often part of the A Story or B Story.
  • Season 5 places the main focus away from Ted more often than not; Barney and Robin's romantic subplot takes up most of the first half of the season, Robin and Don take up the second half, with Marshall and Lily's attempts at having a baby the standard B-plot. Ted himself rarely stars, but is always the Framing Device.
• Intervention follows two families coping with addictions, cutting back and forth.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia usually begins with the gang getting to an argument and then splitting off into two or three groups with different objectives as the result of the argument, which form the plots of the episode. The entire concept is Lampshaded in "The Gang Exploit the Mortgage Crisis" which begins with Dee and Frank explaining their individual schemes and the rest of the gang actually voting on which plot they want to be a part of.
• Jeeves and Wooster would quite often have two separate plotlines that Bertie Wooster got involved in. This was due the screenwriter, Clive Exton, often combining two different short stories into one episode.
• Kamen Rider OOO, a season of Kamen Rider with Rule of Three as its central premise, would often advertise its unique concept of Three Lines No Waiting across every two episodes, complete with a Previously on… segment recounting "these three things" - as the series went on, they would often separate a plotline's cause and effect to make up the number.
• One particularly memorable Law & Order episode actually screwed with the long established premise of one case, one episode, by showing a day in the life of the police officers and their relations with the DAs. Rather than the one case followed from crime to verdict, one principal case is brought up, and several other minor cases crop up to plague the detective's concentration.
• Most episodes of Lie to Me involve two different investigations going on at the same time. In a standard episode Cal and Ria will be investigating a death or a murder while Gillian and Eli are investigating a scandal.
• Lost:
  • The series does a variant on this in every episode: one Backstory-revealing plot told in a series of FlashBacks, usually thematically related to the primary "present day" plot. By the first half of the fifth season, the flashbacks are gone and instead the episodes are split between the group of people on the island and the Oceanic Six. The second half retrieves the flashback format, but abandons the "two present day stories" for, at-episode 10, 12, and 13 are centered on only a single plotline, 11 only features a brief scene from another, and 14's b plot is only a few scenes at the start and end.
  • In a number of episodes, there's not only the Flash Back and the "present day" plot but also a secondary "present day" plot that's more lighthearted and features the leftover characters. There have been cases of people playing golf and table tennis, and Hurley & Sawyer tracking then squashing a noisy frog (seriously).
  • Most of season six has three plot-lines per episode: two of the Island groups are featured, along with a story set in an alternate universe where 815 never crashed.
• Malcolm in the Middle did this every episode, typically with three storylines running at once or more. The most common one was the A Story being about Malcolm and one other family member, and the other stories revolving around the other family members and Francis always had his own story, until he became a part-time cast member.
• This became increasingly common in later seasons of Married... with Children, with some members of the cast getting involved in their own side adventures away from the main plot.
• The delicate balancing of sitcom hijinks and medical/war drama seen throughout M*A*S*H appeared to be a little too much for the writers to handle in the last few seasons, so instead every episode was given two storylines, one funny and one serious. It was rather obvious that they were putting all their effort into the serious storylines and the "funny" storylines tended to fall flat as a result.
• Used in nearly every episode of The Mentalist. Plot A follows Jane with the murder mystery and whoever happens to be his sidekick this week, usually Lisbon or Cho. Plot B follows the more exciting cop business with Rigsby and his sidekick of the week. Sometimes the plots are related, and sometimes they're not.
• Midsomer Murders: In "Painted in Blood", Troy is working on a murder and Barnaby a series of petty thefts, but the most recent theft leads to a bank robbery which helps Barnaby figure out the motive for the murder.
• Modern Family often use this, having the family divided into smaller groups as part of their own individual plots before usually all coming together near the end. This plot structure was used of particular note in the first episode to facilitate a First-Episode Twist. The show initially seemed to follow three different families— a "standard" nuclear family (Claire, Phil, and their children Haley, Alex, and Luke), a blended family with an older husband, younger wife, and stepson (Jay, Gloria, and Manny) and a same-sex couple with an adopted daughter (Mitchell, Cameron, and Lily.) At the end of the pilot, it is revealed that Claire and Mitchell are Jay's adult children from his first marriage and that the show will follow the whole extended family.
• My So-Called Life usually had a B story involving Angela's parents, thanks to child labor laws (Clare Danes and Devon Gummersall couldn't be in every scene of the show).
• Over in non-fiction land, MythBusters does this too. Partially justified in that a single myth is generally too short to provide a sixty minute (including commercials) show. However, it is the presentation of each myth in parts that qualifies MythBusters as an example.
• Every episode of season one of Naturally, Sadie would have one 'Sadie' plot and one 'Rain' plot, except one where the plots merged. This was less common for the second and third season.
• This happens pretty often in New Tricks. Sandra normally goes off with one other member of the team about a quarter through the episode, with the other two members going off on their own plotline as well. Sometimes there are even three plotlines in one episode.
• Recurring on Nickelodeon shows:
  • iCarly: Carly/Sam/Freddie A plot, Spencer (and later Gibby) B-Plot. Formula for dozens of episodes. Occasionally one of the trio jumps into Spencer's plot whilst the other two deal with the A-plot.
  • Victorious: Tori in the A-Plot, and a B-Plot which uses cast not required for the A-Plot. Trina is often what the b-plot revolves around.
  • Carly and Victorious have later a crossover special, leading to an epic 10 Lines, No Waiting: Carly's time with Steven, Tori's time with Steven(which later intertwine), Andre and later Kenan trying to catch the panda, Robbie/Rex in an epic rap battle, Cat having to use a headband to talk, Trina babysitting for Lane, Sikowitz trying to scare Beck, Spencer, Beck, Jade and Sikowitz in the hot tub, Sinjin video game surfing, and Gibby trying to find his mole. Eventually all the plots build into one another leading to everyone singing karaoke.
  • Drake & Josh: The titular brothers in the A-Plot, Megan in a B-Plot when not directly involved in screwing up the A-Plot for the boys.
  • Zoey 101: Same thing as Victorious except Zoey in place of Tori.
  • Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: A-plot with the main character that may involve one of his friends, and a B-plot that involves the other friend (or two B-plots when Ned is alone in the A-plot).
  • The Thundermans: Phoebe and Max in the A-Plot; Nora and Billy in the B-Plot. The parents can be in either one, but tend to more often be in the B-plot. Occasionally Phoebe and Max are in separate plots, with Phoebe almost always getting the main plot in that case and Max interacting with his younger siblings. For the supporting cast, Cherry is always in Phoebe's plot, Dr. Colosso in the Max or Nora/Billy plot, and Chloe in the Nora/Billy plot.
  • Henry Danger: Henry/Ray/Charlotte A-Plot; Jasper/Piper B-Plot. Schwoz is usually involved providing support in the A-Plot and Henry and Piper's parents in the B-Plot.
  • Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn: The plot usually split the quadruplets four ways, with Dawn usually being in the A-Plot and the rest varying.
  • Game Shakers: Usually has Babe and Kenzie in the A-plot, Trip and Dub in the B-plot, and Hudson going back and forth between the two.
  • The Other Kingdom: A majority of the episodes have an A-plot with fairy princess Astral experiencing how humans live as Devon's exchange student and recording her life lesson reports in her crystal, along with a B-plot story centered in Athenia, particularly centered around British exchange student Winston Percival Althazar, who was supposed to be Devon's original exchange student but ended up in Athenia. And he has to adjust to his new life in Athenia and learn to stand up for himself and care about nature and the kingdom's inhabitants.
• Northern Exposure typically has three or four plotlines per episode.
• This was the basic storytelling method in the first season of Once Upon a Time. Every episode featured a story in the cursed community of Storybrooke and a story in the past of the Enchanted Forest, with the flashback story usually shedding narrative light on the characters in Storybrooke. The second season added a third plot thread.
• HBO's Oz featured several continuing plotlines in more of a serial format (starting and ending with the season), as well as single-episode plots.
• Pie in the Sky is about a semi-retired police detective who runs a restaurant when he's not being obliged by his old boss to go and solve some mystery or other. Most episodes have a plotline focused on his police work and another focusing on the goings-on at the restaurant.
• Within Power Rangers, this happens more in the Zordon Era than in subsequent seasons. Normally, the A plot was the Rangers fighting against the Villain and/or their Monster of the Week. The B plot didn't always involve the Power Rangers in their civilian lives, but it sometimes did, starting in season 1, with Zack's birthday being the main focus of one episode. Out of all the recurring civilian characters, Bulk and Skull had the most side plots; their primary season 2 side plot in a lot of the episodes was their attempts to figure out the identities of the Power Rangers. Power Rangers Zeo gave them a mystery to solve in each episode, while in Power Rangers Turbo, it involved their job of the week.
• Pushing Daisies usually only has one actual murder mystery per episode, but there are other personal plots for the characters to deal with at the same time. In some of the later episodes, two of the main characters would investigate the case while the others had something else to do.
• Often seen in the British mystery series Rumpole of the Bailey. A typical Rumpole episode involves two plots: the case of the week Rumpole is defending, and a plot involving either some intrigue back in chambers or some intrigue in Rumpole's household.
• Scrubs does this often, and tries to tie them together in a central theme at the end. "It's hard living life... whether it's giving birth on a sinking submarine... eating a fellow doctor's testicles... or just plain sitting around at home in your jammies, smearing baked beans on the TV."
  • In "My Waste of Time", J.D. lampshaded this practice by saying his moral out loud in front of others after having an epiphany:
    Dr. Cox: What in the hell are you talking about?
    J.D.: Oh, I'm just doing this thing where I use a slice of wisdom from someone else's life to solve a problem in my own life.
    Jordan: Seems coincidental.
    J.D.: And yet I do it almost every week.
  • In some commentaries and interviews on Scrubs DVD sets, it is mentioned that Bill Lawrence's parents found it hard to keep up with the multiple storylines.
  • "My Lunch" has a high drama factor. The A plot deals with organ transplants to several patients, almost all of whom won't survive without immediate surgery. The B plot consists of Carla and Elliot trying to convince Todd that he should admit to being gay, leading to him harassing both male and female characters from that point on.
• Seacht seems to be doing this with Decko, whose interaction with the rest of the cast has so far been minimal.
• Seinfeld perfected this tactic, with a twist. The two story lines would turn out to be physically (not just thematically) interrelated through some absurd coincidence or twist. Larry David has mentioned in several DVD commentaries that he had the idea to interweave the separate plotlines early on in the show's run, but didn't perfect the practice until Season 4.
• The Shield usually runs three police plots (the Strike Team, Dutch and Wimms, Danni and Julien), plus Macky's private and Aceveda's political lives, with plotlines crossing and merging.
• Silent Witness starts using this approach from s6 onwards, with the introduction of the three-main-characters format. Typically (although there are quite a few different variations on this structure), the Lyell Centre team takes on two cases per two-parter, each primarily assigned to one pathologist, with the third backing one or both of the others up. Occasionally the cases will turn out to be connected as part of a larger plot, but usually they're entirely independent from each other.
• Squid Game: The A-plot follows Gi-hun and the other players playing the games. The B-plot features Cowboy Cop Jun-ho going undercover among the guards and finding out more information about the games (for the audience's benefit).
• Very common in Star Trek spin-offs.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation's early seasons suffered badly from a sense that the writers felt obligated to have multiple plotlines, and events that should have been the centerpiece of an entire episode were relegated to the B-story (e.g., the re-introduction of the Romulans). Through the remainder of the series there was usually one plot line where the Enterprise was in danger even if it only came up in a few scenes.
  • A later-season Next Generation example is the episode "Disaster", which leaves various characters stranded in different parts of the ship and unable to communicate and each dealing with their own problems, leading to five distinct storylines:
    • Troi, Ro, and O'Brien on the bridge, trying to solve the crisis without the ability to communicate with the rest of the ship.
    • Data and Riker trying to reach Engineering. (This would eventually intersect with the bridge plot, the only two storylines in this episode to do so)
    • Picard trapped in a turbolift with three schoolchildren
    • Beverly and Geordi in the cargo bay
    • Worf treating patients, including a laboring Keiko O'Brien, in Ten-Forward
  • The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Silent Enemy." The A plot is a strong, tense plot where the Enterprise is face with an enemy that outclasses their ship in every way. The ship is boarded, lives are nearly lost, and in order to even survive, the Enterprise has to risk blowing half the ship apart with newly-built experimental weapons. The B plot is centered around Hoshi finding out Reed's favorite food (pineapple). Hilarity Ensues, despite, you know, the ship endangering crisis going on. Needless to say, the A plot is horribly undermined by the thematic discontinuity, and gross stupidity, of the B plot.
  • A similar problem occurred with the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Life Support", where the A plot is a Trauma Conga Line about the slow death of popular recurring character Vedek Bareil and the B plot is a comedy storyline about Jake and Nog going on a disastrous double date. No-one realised just how bad the Mood Whiplash was until they saw it all edited together.
  • This structure is seen in every episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, with the notable exceptions of the late-first-season episode "Duet" and the second-season episode "Whispers".
  • Also used in the movie Star Trek: First Contact. Oddly, the movie's title came from the "B" plot.
• Stranger Things: The show juggles multiple plotlines in each season, with slightly different character groupings in each before getting everyone together by the end.
• In Super Sentai and Power Rangers, most episodes revolve around two plots: A Monster of the Week and some real-life challenge for one or more of the main characters. In many cases, the two get interwoven, with the everyday plot ending up teaching one of the Rangers a valuable lesson which then becomes instrumental in defeating the Monster of the Week.
• True Blood is setup like this. The main story is usually focused on Sookie and Bill. Sam and Tara have their own subplots which cross with each other and Sookie's from time to time. Lafayette and Andy show up regularly with their own problems, but not as much time is dedicated to them. Meanwhile Jason is off doing his own thing.
• Warehouse 13 switches to this in Season 3. With the addition of Steve Jinks, the standard episode structure is that Pete and Myka search for artifact A while Claudia and Steve search for artifact B.
• The West Wing does this a lot, and also frequently juggles three or more storylines per episode.
• The Witcher (2019) utilized this during its first season, showing Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri's stories concurrently, even when they were happening decades apart.
  • For much of the second season, Geralt and Ciri's plotlines are combined since they're traveling together, while Yennefer has her own separate story, which intersects with those of Cahir, Fringilla, and Tissaia. Fringilla in particular gets more focus in Season 2.

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