Tonight Someone Kisses
A trailer hook that exploits Shipping for all its worth, used mostly in children's shows. This is a much more merciful way to attract attention than Tonight Someone Dies, though it usually falls victim to one of two problems with trailers:
- Unlike the other trope, where the "someone" can be kept a secret, the couple that kisses here is almost always announced, ruining the effect come air time. The reasoning seems to be: Who's going to watch it unless you show it to them?
- While an impending death promises a drastic change in the status quo (yeah, right!), the impending kiss could turn out to be accidental, be All Just a Dream, be an attempt to distract their enemies, happen while the participants are both drunk, or otherwise be still worth nothing at the end of the episode.
Hey, Aint No Rule that says you can't tease the shippers who haven't learned they should Never Trust a Trailer.
Examples of Tonight Someone Kisses include:
Live Action Television
- Brilliantly averted in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow and Tara's first on screen kiss is during "The Body". It wasn't even touched on in the trailers or given any importance in the show. It was a kiss between two people who love each other and it was treated like any other kiss. Though, it's not like anybody saw it, the episode is a good 40-something minutes of Tear Jerker and you were most likely bawling the whole time if you're a fan of the show.
- The Grand Finale of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide: As if no one could see the Last-Minute Hookup coming from two seasons away.
- iCarly: Trailers teased a potential kiss between Sam and Freddie for the episode iTwins. iSaved Your Life didn't bother teasing a potential Carly/Freddie, and showing them actually kissing. Also done that way with Griffin and Carly for iDate A Bad Boy. Melanie and Freddie in iTwins showed their kiss, but teased the idea that Melanie was fake and didn't exist and that Freddie was actually kissing Sam.
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A strange sort of anti-Ship Tease, as it showed Elliot kissing someone else besides Olivia, but the relationship never went anywhere.
- The very last scene of the very last episode of Gilmore Girls shows Luke and Lorelei kissing, which would have been the touching resolution to the suspenseful season-long Will They or Won't They? arc. Except that they'd been showing it in the previews for weeks.
- The teaser for the Stargate SG-1 episode "Grace". The kiss turned out to be an Indulgent Fantasy Segue within a hallucination.
- The tease for a Christmas episode of Bones told us that Booth and Brennan may kiss (with the camera slow motioning them closer together) which would have ruined the long waited-for moment, but it did not tell us the conditions of the kiss in which Booth and Brennan were coerced into doing it under the mistletoe by someone else. Though after that nudge they did stay lip-locked for a fair bit longer than the mistletoe dictated.
- Another trailer showed the two actors naked in bed but the situation turned out to be part of a novel written by Dr. Brennan/Booth's hallucination while in a coma.
- A trailer for the hundredth episode in Australia showed both kisses from the episode, one of which was a flashback, the other in which Brennan cuts it off - but of course they didn't show this. In the US, they just showed them leaning in.
- Doctor Who has done this in its season trailers for (new) seasons two, three and four so far - and showing the Doctor with a different woman each time.
- Ditto for the trailer for season five. It looked like season six would avert this, but the second big trailer showed him kissing River. Thankfully, this time it was actually legit - no body-swapping, "genetic transfers" or poison-removal involved.
- Previews for Lost's fourth season finale showed Sawyer and Kate about to kiss, and the writers promised a major kiss. However, the Sawyer/Kate kiss was only one of two; the major kiss turned out to be Desmond and Penny.
- This was also done during the first season, pre-"Confidence Man", but it was subverted before "What Kate Did".
- Nickelodeon recently advertised "Kisses and Misses Night", a stream of new episodes of various shows in which all of them fit this trope.
- House had one of these trailers during Season 5. Clip here. It was, indeed, All Just A Hallucination.
- A CSI promo teased fans of Grissom and Sara by calling them by their fandom name, calling it "The moment GSR fans have been waiting for".
- Make It or Break It had this with a couple of episodes in its Second Season, notably the episode "Rock Bottom" where Payson, at the peak of her crush, kisses her coach Sasha.
- Averted in Skins. In every promo for Naomi's episode in series three, the scene of Cook and Naomi making out was played up as though they were going to have sex. Needless to say, they didn't -- but Naomi and Emily did end up having sex.
- And then there's the aftermath of Emily's S4 episode, which left Naomi and Emily's relationship in serious trouble; the preview for the next episode, Cook's, showed Naomi and Cook making out again. It was an entirely platonic between friends thing and was immediately followed by a Ship Sinking.
- Glee did this for season two episode "Blame It On The Alcohol". Needless to say, both characters were drunk, but it did have a (somewhat controversial and ultimately meaningless) effect on one character for the rest of the episode.
- Surprisingly, they did not do this for the now-infamous Kurt/Blaine kiss in "Original Song," which undoubtedly contributed to the maniacal excitement that followed.
- Castle had a pic of the kiss from "Knockdown" doing rounds in every media 7 weeks before the airing.
- Both played straight and averted with The X-Files. The promos for "Triangle" played up a Mulder/Scully kiss, though in reality, the kiss was between Mulder and a hallucinated past version of Scully, not Scully herself. Averted in that when Mulder and Scully do kiss for the first time, in "Millenium", the kiss is never mentioned in the promos at all.
- Fans of The Avengers who love the palpable Will They or Won't They? tension between Steed and Peel probably are all too thrilled when they pull out their DVD of the episode "Who's Who?" for the first time and see an image of their favorite couple engaged in not just one of Emma's playful pecks, but a full on sexy makeout session. Trick is "Who's Who" is a body swap episode. Emma and Steed have their minds in the bodies of the villains and are tied up in a warehouse somewhere, while the villains are the ones in Steed's flat, in Steed and Peel's bodies, getting comfy and kissing while they live it up and continue an evil plot. Of course, since it's just the same sets of actors switching roles, that's STILL Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg full on frenching each other, so do with that what you will. And I'll remind you this is while they are playing villains, and Evil Is Sexy.
Western Animation
- In Danny Phantom, the exact same thing can be said for Danny and Sam.
- The so-called "final episode" (not) of KaBlam!!, where June kisses Henry. To the shipper's dismay, it never aired on Nicktoons.
- The School Play episode of Hey Arnold!!: At least they were honest about the circumstances.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender loves this:
- Sokka and Yue in the penultimate episode of Season 1
- Aang and Katara in the Season 2 Locked in a Room episode
- Zuko and Mai in the official preview for Season 3
- Sokka and Suki in the trailer for "The Boiling Rock"
- The series' Grand Finale trailer shows the staff are still up to their old tricks and that, unsuprisingly, the shippers still haven't learned their lesson.
- And the PR department once again strikes with no mercy for The Legend of Korra by doing this with Korra and Mako.
- The Fairly OddParents "Wishology" trilogy promos featured Trixie, in a wedding dress, about to kiss Timmy. Naturally, this sent two reactions through the fanbase: one hoping it was All Just a Dream, and the other hoping for a Relationship Upgrade. As it turns out, said scene was a dream, but by then they had kissed for real the previous night.
- Parodied on an episode of The Simpsons in which Bart laments missing the episode of Itchy & Scratchy where "they finally kiss."
- Total Drama World Tour pretty much revealed every kiss in the season in one of the first previews. One significant one is the reveal of a Gwuncan kiss.
- The supposed Grand Finale of Kim Possible had a Last-Minute Hookup between Kim and Ron. It would have been more poignant had Disney Channel not been advertising the seconds leading up to the kiss for several weeks at that point.
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