Previously (television)

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"Previously...", also sometimes referred to as "recaps", are narrative devices used by many television series to bring the viewer up to date with the current events and plots on the show. It is usually a short (between 20 to 40 seconds) montage of important scenes cut directly from previous episodes, usually short bursts of dialogue, which serve to lay the background for the following episode.

These devices are predominantly seen on episodic series where every installment furthers the plot, but otherwise are used for plot arcs, that is, when an episode is going to pick up on a storyline intitiated several episodes ago. A "Previously" will almost always be present in an episode that picks up from a "To be continued...".

These montages are inserted as the first thing into an episode so that viewers who had not seen the previous episodes or who do not remember what happened can understand from where the current episode will begin. They usually begin with a voiceover proclaiming either, "Previously on... [the show's name]", "Last (time/week/season) on... [the show's name]", "Earlier on... [the show's name], or "On the last (episode/season of)... [the show's name]". Many shows have begun to use a main character's voice for this voiceover rather than a neutral narrator, and some series such as Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis alternate which main character says "Previously on Stargate Atlantis...". Although, few shows have a different voiceover proclamation. For example, an episode of One Piece after the first episode opens with a voiceover saying "On the last piece of One Piece..." and recaping a previous episode. Each One Piece recap ends with a same voiceover reminding viewers to "Come aboard and find out!"

In the English dubs of various episodic Anime series that suffer editing for time or censorship reasons, recaps are unnaturally extended or introduced where they didn't exist to cover any shortfalls in running time. Two notable examples where this occur are Robotech and the English dub of Dragon Ball Z