A scene that starts the episode before the titles - hooking the audience before any setup.
A cold open (TV's 'teaser') drops the audience into a scene before the opening titles - a body is found, a deal goes wrong, a question is posed. Its whole job is to make switching channels feel expensive.
In pilot scripts the teaser is often the most rewritten unit: it has to sell the show's engine, tone, and world in two to five pages, cold.
Go deeper: TV Episode (A/B/C Story Structure) - beat sheet
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