Whedonesque : Comments on 9400 : IMDb has Episode Guides!

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January 29 2006

IMDb has Episode Guides! The Internet Movie Database's large resource irons out the difficulty in locating actor's guest appearances into easy-to-read episode guides. For example, Buffy (main link), Angel, and Firefly.

Rather than dealing with the frustrating TV.com (while lamenting the loss of TVtome.com) or wondering if the Wikipedia has a suitable episode guide from less-popular series, the IMDb provides a suitable alternative.

Each episode has its own page (e.g. The Body), which lists guest cast - and will specify which regulars actually appeared in that ep (e.g. James Marsters wasn't in The Body, so I've alerted the IMDb to that fact)

Actors pages list invidual series episodes they've guest starred in - so you can quickly see which episodes of "Veronica Mars" Alyson Hannigan was in - or "Angel" or "That 70s Show" or "Picket Fences"

crossoverman | General | 08:23 CET | 26 comments total | tags: imdb, angel, buffy

At least in terms of the actor's invidual pages, I preferred the old way because the guest roles were a bit more obvious in their own section. *shrugs* Oh well.

KernelM | January 29, 08:42 CET

That's kind of neat. Still I quite like TV.com (I don't know why it was referred to as frustrating here.) Hopefully IMDB will add more information.

rabid | January 29, 08:47 CET

Lots of ads, hard navigation, loss of a lot of data, etc, compared to TVTome.

KernelM | January 29, 08:52 CET

I hate the way they're doing this. It clutters up the actor's filmography page and makes it HARDER to find what particular episode a guest star was in(lets say I wanted to find out what episode of buffy that wenthworth millar guest starred in. before I could just look on one page, now I have to look through DOZENS of pages to find it).

I also hate how guest star credits are up with the regular credits. JM's smallville guest star credits beside his Buffy regular credit? Yuck!

[ edited by eddy on 2006-01-29 06:54 ]

eddy | January 29, 08:52 CET

(lets say I wanted to find out what episode of buffy that wenthworth millar guest starred in. before I could just look on one page, now I have to look through DOZENS of pages to find it).

So you go to Wenworth Miller's page and it's clearly listed!

I also hate how guest star credits are up with the regular credits. JM's smallville guest star credits beside his Buffy regular credit? Yuck!

Why should they be listed separately?

I have discovered one problem with this change - for example, on David Boreanaz's page, his credit for "Buffy" is listed more recently because he guest starred on eps of "Buffy" after "Angel" began! Weird.

[ edited by Keith G on 2006-01-29 07:28 ]

crossoverman | January 29, 09:24 CET

eddy: go to wenthworth millar's own page and search his filmography ... the clutter you criticise contains the answer you seek ... on one page!

btw: another benefit that the per-episode pages brings us is that they list the actual director/writers for that episode.

ironclad | January 29, 09:29 CET

I meant on the show's page. Sometimes you don't know how to spell a actor's name like Keith Sza..er, the Holtz guy.

Why should they be listed separately? Because it was helpful to know what was a regular role and what was a guest star role for actors. The filmographies are all cluttered now.

[ edited by eddy on 2006-01-29 07:40 ]

eddy | January 29, 09:39 CET

Maybe you have to be used to imdb. This site (imdb.com) is my home page. I use it constantly. This new discovery is great!! I like tvTome, too, but I find that site busy and hard to navigate. Oh, well. To each his own.

daedreams | January 29, 09:53 CET

Sometimes you don't know how to spell a actor's name like Keith Sza..er, the Holtz guy.

IMDb has always been good at bringing up like-names, punch in "Keith Szaer" gives you a list of 20 names with Keith Szarabajka at the top!

Because it was helpful to know what was a regular role and what was a guest star role for actors. The filmographies are all cluttered now.

It isn't perfect, I agree. But IMDb is likely to iron out any problems. Plus it seems fairly clear the difference between regular work and guest appearances (except in the case of someone like DB who both starred on Buffy and guest starred in it later - but for the majority of actors that isn't a problem).

crossoverman | January 29, 10:01 CET

Wentworth Miller is English? See all the useful knowledge you can get on IMDB? ;-)

[ edited by billz on 2006-01-29 08:35 ]

billz | January 29, 10:31 CET

Mmm...Wentworth Miller.

Okay, and getting back on topic here...

Yeah, the new system they have is a little weird, I guess it'll take some getting used to?

Emma Frost | January 29, 10:57 CET

Gosh, that's such an improvement. I love it. Wow. It does make the loss of the original TVtome much easier to bear. tv.com I dislike and tend to avoid.

Thanks for passing the news along.

k8cre8 | January 29, 11:13 CET

I wonder if they'll now let you rate individual episodes, too.

bovik | January 29, 12:41 CET

I don't like the guest appearences being up there with the film/made-for-tv credits... I prefer them in their own section

It was cool going into Stephanie Romanov's page and seeing a long list of Angel appearences.... now there's only 5 :(

aapac | January 29, 12:44 CET

It was cool going into Stephanie Romanov's page and seeing a long list of Angel appearences.... now there's only 5 :(

You must have missed the "(30 more)" notation under that, which links to Stephanie's TV Episode Filmography by Series page.

crossoverman | January 29, 13:08 CET

I quite like it. Just seems less crowded than TV.com (RIP TVtome, we hardly knew ye) tho', obviously that's partly because it doesn't have as much info (yet?).

Saje | January 29, 13:52 CET

This could turn out pretty good, but so far they (or we?) have a lot of work to do. I´m under the impression they just copied the entire crew part to each episode, so for example there are about 200 stuntmen in each episode of Buffy. Furthermore, I never understood how to figure out in which season a certain regular cast member was a regular, but they apparently don´t know either, since for example Seth Green is credited as being a regular in season 1 of Buffy. I don't know how to correct this either.

Celebithil | January 29, 14:00 CET

I used TV.com for referencing any TV show but my favourite Buffy reference site is The Buffy Trivia Guide.

Simon | January 29, 14:03 CET

Simon, i'm a big fan of the Buffy Trivia Guide too. It's very rare that it let's me down if i need a little info on a particular episode or character.

Buffyology, Buffy vs Angel and the Buffyverse Dialogue Database are all also fantastic resources for Buffy and Angel fans.

Buffysmglover | January 29, 18:19 CET

Just playing around with the guest listings and clicked on Charle Webber (Ben. Is he connected to Glory?) and Holy Crap! There's a Cruel Intentions Three!?

zz9 | January 29, 20:11 CET

Actually I much prefer this way of things. It means you can see the span of someone's career choronologically without having to look back and forth. That said, it would be even snazzier if the individual episodes appeared within their own years rather than bunched together.

feelinglistless | January 29, 20:28 CET

I suppose the new format for listing guest appearences is better then tv.com's. They list theirs alphabeticaly which makes it hard to gauge when they appeared rather then chronologicaly like imdb.com

flightofserenity | January 29, 22:13 CET

Maybe I've been drinking my company koolaid, but I love this new feature by my buddies over in imdb. Took me a couple of searches to get used to but really helps in the "who the hell was that actor in the Law and Order spot this week" game.

Mort | January 30, 02:19 CET

tv.com is good, it's just more commercial than tvtome.com was and you can't blame them for trying to make some money off it because bandwidth isn't exactly free.

The only thing that bothers me about tv.com is the fact thaty they number the episodes overall and not by season. (i.e. instead of being season 5 episode 8 I get episode 102.)

war_machine | January 30, 16:53 CET

tv.com is good, it's just more commercial than tvtome.com was and you can't blame them for trying to make some money off it because bandwidth isn't exactly free.

Well the bandwidth issue is due to the fact they've filled the site with video and photos and flash animation and every whiz-bang feature under the sun that even my hardy broadband connection takes exception to. It would be one thing if TV.com was in competition with TVtome, but they bought it and ruined it.

Why take a valuable resource and then make it less valuable? Why clutter it up with stuff that TVtome wasn't known for and didn't need to be saddled with?

crossoverman | January 31, 10:16 CET

IMDb have restored the Guest Stars link, but renamed it as Episodes Cast, even though it lists just guest stars, not the full cast.

I found another use for the page though - if you don't know the episode, but you know the character name, you can find both on the Episodes Cast page. Not so easy elsewhere.

ironclad | February 05, 13:55 CET

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