Providing background information

The function labelled ‘communication of narrative causality’ includes providing background information, clarifying connections between events, creating causal chains, or anticipating a narrative development. When Arya talks to Nymeria in example (1) below, telling the wolf that she’s ‘heading North’ … ‘back to Winterfell’ (at 1:59), she’s also communicating to the audience what she is doing, and the scene anticipates her arrival in Winterfell later in the episode (Game of Thrones, HBO, season 7, episode 2).

Example (1)

Often, TV dialogue communicates information on something that took place in the past, either in a previous episode (then simultaneously functioning to create continuity between episodes) or further back. Here are three examples:

Example (2)
MICHAEL: […] Honestly, Linc. I don’t know how it’s come to this. And you can’t keep blaming mom for dying and dad for leaving, because I was there too. Difference is I got out. Mom had life insurance, I took my half, put myself through school. What’d you do with your half, Linc?
(SydTV, Prison Break)

Example (3)
RACHEL: […] Liv, what is this? Is this mom’s? Always? This isn’t mom’s.
OLIVIA: No. It’s from John.
RACHEL: John, your partner, John?
OLIVIA: Yeah.
RACHEL: You told me that you guys were, he asked you to marry him?
OLIVIA: Uh, no. He didn’t. It was a mistake, suffice to say that it never actually happened.
RACHEL: Uh, no. You can’t do that.
OLIVIA: Well, I have to.
RACHEL: I am your sister, and I have told you every excruciating detail of my failed marriage. There’s nothing that you can…
OLIVIA: He was a traitor. The people that he was working with, we still don’t even know who they were. But whoever they were, he was bad, and whatever was between us was a lie, so that he could gain my trust, so that I didn’t see him for what he was.
(SydTV, Fringe)

Example (4)
MELANIE: So how’d Sam find you? Was it an audition or… more of a personal connection?
YOYO: Look, your director came to my club. I gave him a lap dance, and he offered me a job.
DEBBIE: Of course. First open slot, he just hires a stripper.
(Glow, Netflix 2017-, season 2, episode 1)

Voice-over narration by characters or narrators can be used to communicate narrative causality, as in the character voice-over in example (5) and the narrator voice-over in example (6):

Example (5)
JACK (V): Right now, terrorists are plotting to assassinate a presidential candidate. My wife and daughter have been targeted, and people that I work with may be involved in both. I’m federal agent Jack Bauer and today is the longest day of my life.
(SydTV, 24)

Example (6)
VOICE: Oscar Vibenius and Napoleon LeNez were lab partners and the best of friends, until their divergent olfaction theories tore them apart. Oscar favored the wild, unfettered smells of the natural world, believing that people couldn’t appreciate the good smells in life without smelling the bad. LeNez believed that because smell has a powerful effect on human behavior, humans should surround themselves with only good, carefully controlled odors. Over time, their rivalry grew until neither man could stand the other. Each retreated to the worlds they found most comfortable, one above ground, and one below.
(SydTV, Pushing Daisies)

Dialogue-based title sequences can also function to provide necessary background information, often on the whole premise of the series, as in examples (7), (8) and (9).

Example (7)
JANE (V): See that aspiring model there? That was me, Deb, until the day I died. I thought I’d go straight to Heaven, but there was a bit of a mix-up and I woke up in someone else’s body. So now, I’m Jane, a super busy lawyer with my very own assistant. I got a new life, a new wardrobe, and the only people who really know what’s going on with me are my girlfriend Stacy and my guardian angel friend. I used to think everything happens for a reason… Well, I sure hope I was right.
(SydTV, Drop Dead Diva)

Example (8)
EARL (V): You know the kind of guy who does nothin’ but bad things and then wonders why his life sucks? Well, that was me. Every time somethin’ good happened to me somethin’ bad was waiting around the corner. Karma. That’s when I realized I had to change, so I made a list of everything bad I’ve ever done and one by one I’m gonna make up for all my mistakes. I’m just tryin’ to be a better person. My name is Earl.
(SydTV, My Name is Earl)

Example (9)
DYLAN REINHART (V): My name is Dylan Reinhart. Not too long ago, I was an operative in the CIA known as Agent Reinhart. When I left the Agency and started teaching, I became Professor Reinhart. I wrote a book about abnormal behavior in criminals, which was so successful, a serial killer used it as clues for his murders. That’s when the New York Police Department reached out to me to help catch him, which I did. So they hired me, and I became Consultant Reinhart. So now I’m working with this woman, Detective Lizzie Needham of the homicide division, catching killers. Looks like I need a new name.
LIZZIE NEEDHAM: Don’t they call you Professor Psychopath?
(Instinct, CBS, 2018)