TV Tropes

[charlietheowl]

Yeah, wasn't that the episode where his parents flew in for a visit, and they were under the impression he was in a financial rut, so his father got a job at Peterman while Elaine was still managing in his absence?

It might have been in that one, the one I remember off the top of my hand the clearest was the episode where he dates the "loser" and he flies his parents up from Florida to get their impressions of her.

 

[D'Snowth]

Oh yeah. That was when he was dating "Marcia Brady".

 

[minor muppetz]

Looking at the "lesser star" page, which also includes certain programs or propeties (such as referring to Duck Hunt as well as World Track Class Meet as lesser to Super Mario Bros. as NES pack-ins and also the Idioms part of TV Tropes and Idioms), I'm surprised it doesn't refer to the supporting segment of animated shows with the ABA format.

 

[minor muppetz]

I've noticed that in the "That Generic Guy" page it lists Kirk and Leslie from Newhart. I can see Leslie getting that attribution, but I don't think Kirk was a "generic character". He was a liar and often came up with schemes and such. That same section mentions that most of the first season episodes focused on Dick and George, but I'm pretty sure Kirk had more of his own episodes in those first two seasons than George did. In fact it seems like half of the second season episodes focused on Kirk.

And Kirk actually did have a bit of character development during his short time on the show. At first his main character traits (besides owning the cafe) were that he was a liar (but usually quick to admit he was lying, with only one episode where he really told an elaborate lie) and that he was attracted to Leslie (oh, and that he was vain). After the events of "The Boy Who Cried Goat" (where his reputation as a liar led to the insurance company not believing that he was robbed) he lied considerably less (and there's only one episode I know of after that where he does lie). After he finally does get a date with Leslie in "Grandma, What Big Mouth You Have" he accepts the fact that he doesn't have a chance with her and they decide to just be friends (and then Leslie only appears in one more episode... I guess the writers knew by that point she was going to be gone and gave Kirk's attraction to her some closure). And then in the second season Kirk got a new girlfriend, Cindy, whom he eventually married before the season ended.

 

[minor muppetz]

I wonder if Laurie from That '70s Show would fit under the trope "Karma Houdini". While there are some rare instances where she gets punished or what she deserves (like when Red got mad when he found out she was living with a man, getting grounded when Eric and Hyde got grounded for drugs because she had fooled around with Kelso, Red being mad at her when she came back for Thanksgiving, and that catfight she and Jackie had which Jackie seemed to win), she often gets away with nearly everything (in part because she was Red's favorite).

She flunked college, but we never saw how her parents reacted to the news (there's an episode where she comes home during spring break so she can beat her parents to getting her report card, and it seems they never get it, at least not in that episode). When Red found out she was dating a teacher (Eric knew but rather than tell on her decided to scare her into admitting it, not expecting the teacher to admit to it), she convinced him that the teacher had taken advantage of her (and also made it worse for Eric by pointing out that he saw it happen but did nothing to stop it). She dated Kelso behind Jackie's back and when Kelso decided to break up, tricked him into giving her a goodbye kiss when Jackie was there, causing their break-up, and later on when Kelso found out Laurie was cheating on him, nobody confronted her about it (because she had left the show at the time, so she wasn't even on screen when Kelso found out). Yeah, she and Jackie resented each other after that episode (though they had become friends in the Vanstock episode, it seems their friendship hadn't continued after that episode) and had a fight once, but it still seems like nothing.

When she came back for the Thanksgiving episode, Red was mad at her because she hadn't called while she was gone, but he seemed to forgive her after Eric had screwed up (after Red started to prefer Eric earlier in the episode), but even after the forgiveness, he acknowledged that Laurie was ungreatful. And in that same episode Jackie started to call her out on cheating on Kelso, only for it to turn into a thank you from Jackie.

Speaking of "Karma Houdini", it seems the text has changed a bit, cutting out the part about all the bad things a person did to be unlikable only to get off scott-free. It also changes the photo caption, which I had wanted to bring up for awhile but hadn't (I wonder if they realized what I'm about to say). The image is a newspaper headline about Mr. Burns' birthday, saying he "owes long life to Satan", and the caption previously sarcastically said "So I suppose the doctors who helped you after you were shot don't deserve any credit". But the episode where that scene came from (Rosebud) came before the Who Shot Mr. Burns episodes.

 

[snichols1973]

Other variants of the Chuck Cunningham syndrome:

Chuck Cunningham Syndrome - Television Tropes & Idioms

Judy Winslow (Jaimee Foxworth), who received comparatively less screen time on Family Matters compared to the rest of the family; she was cut due to a "budget consideration" during the fifth season and the series' continuity was re-scripted as though she never existed....

Herb Powell, Homer Simpson's half-brother, gets featured in the "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" episode, where Homer's dream car design ends up bankrupting Powell Motors, and his appearances after that are few and far between (Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes, and a voice cameo in The Changing of the Guardian ep.)

Chad Duncan, Jeremy's older brother in the Zits comic strip, who was occasionally mentioned during the strip's early days, but nowadays his appearances or mentions (if any) are very rare.....

Lyman, Odie's original owner from the early years of Garfield, appeared on a semi-regular basis from 1978 to 1981, and from then, he was gradually phased out, making occasional "background extra appearances" in a title gag panel or two (in some newspapers, the Sunday version is condensed with the opener sometimes omitted in order to fit the page layout), making an encore appearance in the "Long Lost Lyman" episode of CN's The Garfield Show.

 

[minor muppetz]

There's a few things that I wonder if they would qualify for "beam me up, Scotty!", which refers to lines lots of people incorrectly think were said on shows (or misquote, incorrectly combine different phrases into one, or were actually said but weren't said enough times to be a catch phrase but was such a popular line that people think is a catch phrase). I don't know if enough people made the mistakes or if it's the mistake of one.

Anyway, I used to think that in the old Life Cereal commercials, the ending line was "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!" but for years I thought the line was "He likes it! He really likes it!" To be fair I think "he really likes it!" makes more sense to follow than "Hey, Mikey!"

And for some reason my dad thinks that on Happy Days Potsy's catch phrase was "Funny as a crutch, Rich", but I don't ever recall Potsy saying that line on the show. I assume that if he did he said it to Richie, and I've seen most of the episodes from the Richie era (and seen many of the episodes enough times to know them well, though there are some episodes I haven't seen much).

Another one that I know multiple people have made, both in person and online (and I spent many years thinking this myself), at the beginning of the 1997 "Game Boy Pocket" commercial with a group of teenagers and old people bad mouthing each other at the mall, a few people I went to school with and I thought the commercial began with the teenagers saying "Ew! Old people!" I saw one video on YouTube of someone recreating the commercial (as the user couldn't find it on YouTube at the time) and starting with that line as well. But in the actual commercial, the line is just "Old people!", with no "Ew!" in the line.

 

[snichols1973]

There's a few things that I wonder if they would qualify for "beam me up, Scotty!", which refers to lines lots of people incorrectly think were said on shows (or misquote, incorrectly combine different phrases into one, or were actually said but weren't said enough times to be a catch phrase but was such a popular line that people think is a catch phrase). I don't know if enough people made the mistakes or if it's the mistake of one.

Anyway, I used to think that in the old Life Cereal commercials, the ending line was "He likes it! Hey, Mikey!" but for years I thought the line was "He likes it! He really likes it!" To be fair I think "he really likes it!" makes more sense to follow than "Hey, Mikey!"

And for some reason my dad thinks that on Happy Days Potsy's catch phrase was "Funny as a crutch, Rich", but I don't ever recall Potsy saying that line on the show. I assume that if he did he said it to Richie, and I've seen most of the episodes from the Richie era (and seen many of the episodes enough times to know them well, though there are some episodes I haven't seen much).

Another one that I know multiple people have made, both in person and online (and I spent many years thinking this myself), at the beginning of the 1997 "Game Boy Pocket" commercial with a group of teenagers and old people bad mouthing each other at the mall, a few people I went to school with and I thought the commercial began with the teenagers saying "Ew! Old people!" I saw one video on YouTube of someone recreating the commercial (as the user couldn't find it on YouTube at the time) and starting with that line as well. But in the actual commercial, the line is just "Old people!", with no "Ew!" in the line.

One of the notable movie misquotations (a.k.a. mondegreens) is "Play it again, Sam." which is not found in Casablanca.

It was Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) who requested that Sam (Dooley Wilson) play "As Time Goes By":

Ilsa: Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake.
Sam: I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.
Ilsa: Play it Sam; play "As Time Goes By."
Sam: Oh, I can't remember it, Miss Ilsa, I'm a little rusty on it.
Ilsa: I'll hum it for you. [hums "As Time Goes By"] Sing it, Sam.
Sam: [plays piano, sings] You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh, the fundamental things apply, as time goes by. And when two lovers woo, they still say "I love you"; on that you can rely, as time goes by.
Rick: Sam, I thought I told you never to play---

As for Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), he doesn't like to hear "As Time Goes By", because it brings back bitter memories, yet when Ilsa shows up in his cafe, Rick has Sam play it one last time to get the spite out of his heart:

Rick: You know what I want to hear.
Sam: No, I don't.
Rick: You played it for her, you can play it for me!
Sam: Well, I don't think I can remember---
Rick: If she can stand it, I can. Play it!

 

[D'Snowth]

You know, looking at the TV Tropes page for the movie GORDY sort of confirms my suspicions that some people out there are unable to think for themselves, because just about everything written on the page basically just paraphrases Nostalgia Critic's review of the movie.

Like I said, I'm a fan of Nostalgia Critic like anybody else, but honestly, I think some people just base their opinions on certain movies and just all on his reviews, and again, GORDY's TV Tropes page is an example of this.

 

[minor muppetz]

Speaking of the "Beam me up, Scotty!" trope, there was recently an episode of The Big Bang Theory where the main characters dress as characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation and their car gets robbed when they try to take a picture in the dessert. At one point they find a place where they can use a phone, somebody asks if they should just ask Scotty to beam them up (I can't remember the exact line in the episode). Sheldon dismissed that saying that "beam me up, Scotty" was original series while they were "Next Generation", but I had expected Sheldon's correction to be the fact that "Beam me up, Scotty" was never said on the series. Not sure if the writers/creators were aware of this misconception, but I think Sheldon would be.