Reset button technique
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The reset button technique (based on the idea of status quo ante) is a plot device that interrupts continuity in works of fiction. Simply put, use of a reset button device returns all characters and situations to the status quo they held before a major change of some sort was introduced. Often used in science-fiction television series, soap operas and comic books, the device allows elaborate and dramatic changes to characters and the fictional universe that might otherwise invalidate the premise of the show with respect to future continuity. Writers may, for example, use the technique to allow the audience to experience the death of the lead character, which traditionally would not be possible without effectively ending the work.
Effective use of this device depends on the audience being unaware of the continuity status, or successful suspension of disbelief that continuity is or will be interrupted, and the eventual communication of the status of continuity to the audience. It is usually employed as a plot twist that effectively undoes all the happenings of the episode. Common uses of this technique draw liberally from science fiction and metaphysical ideas, perhaps contributing to its widespread use in those genres. Examples of the reset button technique include lucent dream sequences, alternate-history flashbacks, daydreams, time travel and hallucinations.
Continuity-wise, there are two types of television shows: serial and episode-by-episode. In serial shows, each episode not only follows but builds on previous material, and so the RBT is not needed - and although it can still be used, any use generally leaves a negative imprint on the general continuity. In episode-by-episode works, on the other hand, the RBT is necessary to eliminate dangling plot threads. Soap operas are almost universally serials; toons and sitcoms are almost universally episode-by-episode.
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History
The idea of a return to the status quo ante is certainly not original to television; Shakespeare scholars have recognized it as a regular device of his comedies, and it is in fact a standard literary device in general.
Prime examples
The grand reset button is easily discovered in most sitcoms, with Gilligan's Island being a particularly notorious example: nothing the castaways do ever jeopardizes the continuation of the series, as nothing they do actually succeeds in getting them off the island. The television show Dallas also famously used a variation of this device, in which an entire season of the show, including the death of a major character, was written off as a dream of another character.
In some TV westerns of the 1960s and early 1970s (and notably prominent on the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service), if any male character on the show got seriously involved with a woman, as soon as he married her, she was killed off or died gruesomely in the same episode. This reset button technique was an inevitable side-effect of the writers wanting to have both love interests for characters on an episodic basis, but also allowing status quo ante, everything returning to normal by episode's end. This happened in The Big Valley each time one of the Barkley sons got married, and in Bonanza whenever any of the Cartright sons got married. This also was the case with the father in Bonanza, Ben Cartright, in that each one of his sons was the offspring of a different wife, who, when shown in a flashback episode, would die in the same episode (except for the wife who gave birth to Hoss, who lasted for two episodes).
The various Star Trek series, but most notoriously so Star Trek: Voyager, have provided a great deal of other prime examples. Sometimes the writers liked to kill off or significantly alter characters or circumstances, but still not wanting to make the change permanent so a semi-casual viewer doesn't have trouble keeping up, or because the actor whose character has died is still on the payroll. Another example occurs when the writers do not wish the story they have told to have any permanent effects on the canon. This especially happens in a series like Star Trek because almost every episode is written by a different writer, and it would therefore be difficult to coordinate rapid changes to the overall continuity.
Regardless of what happens in the span of one episode, by the end of that episode, everything is as it was at the beginning. One of the most often quoted examples of such an episode is the Star Trek: Voyager episode Year of Hell, where the reset is an explicit part of the plot, as time travel causes the entire events of the episode to have never happened (and usually for the show, no-one has any indication that anything happened, whereas normally one main character, generally the telepathic crewmember, will either remember the events or at least have the inkling that something strange happened). Another example is the final television episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Star Trek: Voyager so egregiously used this plot device that the ship is sometimes referred to by fans as the "HMS Reset Button".
Early episodes of The Simpsons mocked the reset button by having Mr. Burns being unable to remember Homer even though Burns' assistant Smithers reminds him that "all the important events of your recent life have involved his family in one way or another." Sometimes the show would explain at the end of an episode why Mr. Burns doesn't remember Homer in the next, such as having Mr. Burns fall out a window and forget most of the episode's events, or sometimes the episode would not have Burns forget at the end only for him to have forgotten again by the next episode. This has since been mostly abandoned on the show, and the tendency has simply been absorbed into Mr. Burns' character, who for example in "Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part 1" forgets Homer's name several times in the same episode.
The Simpsons have also parodied this in the episode "The Principal and the Pauper," where it is discovered that the Skinner we know is an imposter, replacing a man he thought died long ago whose dream was to become a principal. In the end of the episode they cart the "real" Skinner away because they prefer the presence of the fake Skinner, real name Tanzarian. The entire population of Springfield then promises that they will never speak of this incident again, therefore making all that had happened prior totally pointless. In a much later episode ("I, (D'oh!) Bot"), the Simpson family's cat Snowball II is killed. Lisa gets a Snowball III, then IV, only to have them die as well. Eventually she gets a Snowball V that she says she will just call Snowball II to avoid confusion. Skinner then walks by (his only appearance in the episode) and makes a snide comment on these affairs, to which she replies by calling him Tanzarian. Startled, he acknowledges "Snowball II" by name and leaves.
As stated, animation series (very much including anime) are also often keen to employ the reset button so that no new design work is required, and to be able to reuse existing cels. Animation writers enjoy poking fun at the constraining practice when possible; for example, Cardcaptor Sakura has an episode where Sakura captures The Time. This event has the card's spirit continuously repeat that same day over and over again, using the reset button multiple times in the duration of the episode. See Groundhog Day (film).
Another anime - the Excel Saga - has widely parodied the whole concept, with "the Great Will of the Macrocosm" repeatedly resetting the whole universe whenever things head off unsatisfactorily.
In the French animated television series Code Lyoko, the main characters have access to a machine that turns back time. This is used consistently through most first season episodes to undo nearly every unwanted change. In the second season, Code Lyoko embraces a story arch technique.
One science fiction television series to present a notable exception to this rule is Babylon 5. Due to the fact that creator J. Michael Straczynski served as a writer for the vast majority of the episodes, the series was able to maintain a progressive continuity, consistency that isn't reliant on the reset button technique. Hence, the series was able to feature many interspersed stories, spanning multiple episodes, where characters evolved substantially over the course of the greater story arc, and events from one episode had serious repercussions throughout the rest of the series. Other exceptions include Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Alias, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. All these shows have proven very popular.
Fan reaction
Many fans feel frustrated by reset-button stories, especially when the reasons for negating the change are not driven by plot or character, but some external reason – such as logistical production concerns ("We can't blow up the ship, the sets are too expensive!"). However, many writers of "Star Trek" preferred a reset button over a continuous "story arc", feeling that episodes which only were a piece of a larger narrative would not stand up on their own as well, and that a major twist or resolution mid-series would be an example of jumping the shark. A major exception was the death of Tasha Yar in The Next Generation series, as well as a substantial number of the 'war' episodes of the Deep Space Nine series.