Contents
Summary
- Long-running shows sometimes use self-parody to stay ahead of critics and engage fans with nuanced in-jokes.
- Some self-parody episodes deconstruct storytelling and the form of TV.
- Self-aware TV shows can also comment on their own hype, their own fans, and their own public perception.
Long-running shows often fall into familiar patterns, and self-parody is a great way of staying one step ahead of the critics while treating hard-core fans to a nuanced in-joke. Self-parody obviously requires a lot of self-awareness, and this is hard to come by for many shows. It also requires a lot of intelligence. For a show to make fun of itself it needs to understand and highlight its eccentricities and its flaws.
Some shows which create self-parodies deconstruct the nature of storytelling and the medium of TV. This can lead to a lot of highly technical and specific humor that may go over some fan’s heads, but it will resonate deeply for those in the know due to its confessional nature. Most successful self-parodies tend to come from comedies, because highlighting the artificiality of a show breaks the suspension of disbelief needed for a drama. Self-effacing shows run the risk of turning away viewers, but when self-parody is done well, it can be extremely effective.
Related
10 Best Meta Castings In TV Shows, Ranked
Casting choices are important when it comes to TV shows, but some meta decisions can add more to a character than just the actor’s abilities.
10 The Simpsons (1989-)
Season 8, Episode 14, “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show”
Cast Tress MacNeille , Julie Kavner , Harry Shearer , Pamela Hayden , Nancy Cartwright , Hank Azaria , Dan Castellaneta , Yeardley Smith
Seasons 35
Network FOX
The plot uses the in-universe
Itchy and Scratchy Show
as a metaphor for how long-running shows become stale and resort to increasingly ludicrous methods to keep audiences hooked.
“The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show” was the 167th episode of The Simpsons, meaning that it finally passed the 166 episodes of The Flintstones. The plot uses the in-universe Itchy and Scratchy Show as a metaphor for how long-running shows become stale and resort to increasingly ludicrous methods to keep audiences hooked. It happened to The Flintstones when they introduced the Great Gazoo, a small green alien only Fred and Barney could see, and the writers of The Simpsons were commenting on how it could happen to them too.
Some of the writers of The Itchy and Scratchy Show are cartoon versions of the writers of The Simpsons, and they portray themselves as lazy and uninspired. Their changes to the show make it even worse, and they have to hastily kill off Poochie off-screen to appease their viewers. The Simpsons often uses The Itchy and Scratchy Show to comment on its own hype. For example, “Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie” commented on the incessant calls for a Simpsons movie 15 years before it became a reality.
9 South Park (1997-)
Season 6, Episode 7, “Simpsons Already Did It”
Cast Trey Parker , Matt Stone
Seasons 26
This seems to be Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s response to the constant irritation of being compared to
The Simpsons.
They create something utterly sick, but at least it’s original.
Just like Family Guy and pretty much every other adult animated sitcom made after 1989, South Park has had to endure non-stop comparisons to The Simpsons. The show’s response to this was season 6, episode 7, “Simpsons Already Did It,” in which Butters tries to come up with an evil plan, only to discover that The Simpsons beat him to every idea years ago. As his alter ego Professor Chaos, Butters plans to block out the sun, open up a monorail and cut the head off of a statue in the town square.
The episode counteracts this theme with a secondary plot that is so obscene and perverse that a family-friendly show like The Simpsons would never try it. The show’s main characters believe that they accidentally murdered their teacher, and their investigation takes a disgusting turn very quickly. This seems to be Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s response to the constant irritation of being compared to The Simpsons. They create something utterly sick, but at least it’s original.
8 Sherlock (2010-2017)
Season 3, Episode 1, “The Empty Hearse”
“The Empty Hearse” doesn’t just satirize the show’s increasingly complex mind games. It also aims a cheeky dig at the show’s own fan base and their nonsensical theories.
Despite its immense popularity, Sherlock was notorious for making its fan base wait a long time between seasons. The BBC drama finished season 2 on a massive cliffhanger, as Sherlock fakes his own death to escape Moriarty, but it took two years before it answered how he did it. In the time between seasons, Sherlock fans spread their own fan theories all over the internet, and the show gives a nod to these fan fiction writers.
“The Empty Hearse” doesn’t just satirize the show’s increasingly complex mind games. It also aims a cheeky dig at the show’s own fan base and their nonsensical theories. When Sherlock eventually reveals how he pulled off the trick, he is met with disappointment. The writers knew that no explanation could ever be as satisfying as a good mystery, and the response was simply to offer a wry smile and a shrug. Sherlock couldn’t recapture its best form. Ultimately, it was undone by the same problem Sir Arthur Conan Doyle faced when he killed Sherlock Holmes off in 1893.
7 It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (2005-)
Season 9, Episode 3, “The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award”
Cast Charlie Day , Rob McElhenney , Kaitlin Olson , Glenn Howerton , Danny DeVito
Seasons 16
The gang visit an award-winning bar and discover that a popular bar, like a popular sitcom, has bright lights, charming banter and a compelling will-they-won’t-they relationship between two of the main characters.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has always had a dedicated cult following, but it hasn’t ever garnered the awards success that should match its record-breaking longevity. The show’s response to this was season 9, episode 3, “The Gang Tries Desperately to Win an Award.” The episode follows the gang from Paddy’s as they try to win an award for their bar, but it’s a clear allegory for the creators’ own frustration with their show’s lack of awards season success.
The gang visit an award-winning bar and discover that a popular bar, like a popular sitcom, has bright lights, charming banter and a compelling will-they-won’t-they relationship between two of the main characters. By contrast, Paddy’s has a grim ambiance, people shouting over each other, and incessant fighting. The gang try to conform to the award-winning mold, but they resort to their own style of confronting, confusing humor. It’s Always Sunny’s best episodes might not have the broadest appeal, but the show is still going strong after 19 years.
6 The Boys (2019-)
Season 2, Episode 5, “We Gotta Go Now”
Cast Elisabeth Shue , Jensen Ackles , Goran Visnjic , Jessie T. Usher , Chace Crawford , Dominique McElligott , Laz Alonso , Nathan Mitchell , Aya Cash , Colby Minifie , Karl Urban , Erin Moriarty , Karen Fukuhara , Jack Quaid , Antony Starr , claudia doumit , Tomer Capon
Seasons 4
The Boys
uses Vought Studios as a way of reckoning with its own complicity in the saturation of the superhero genre.
The Boys changes the comics in a few key ways, and one of the show’s best additions is Vought Studios. The fictional movie studio is set up to satirize Marvel and DC’s studios, which makes The Boys a more relevant superhero parody in the era of superhero dominance at the box office. Like Marvel and DC, Vought Studios builds a cinematic universe with standalone movies for each supe and big team-up blockbusters like Dawn of the Seven.
However, as much as The Boys pokes fun at the big cinematic monoliths, it also uses Vought Studios as a way of reckoning with its own complicity in the saturation of the superhero genre. The Boys is far darker and more gruesome than Marvel or DC, but it’s a superhero show nonetheless, and it still sells immense action spectacle and sci-fi lore. The Boys has always hooked viewers with the idea of a more grounded representation of how superheroes would affect the real world, but Vought Studios suggests that this idea is pure folly.
5 Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974)
Season 3, Episode 11, “Dennis Moore”
Cast Graham Chapman , John Cleese , Eric Idle , Terry Jones , Michael Palin , Terry Gilliam , Carol Cleveland
Seasons 4
Network BBC One , BBC Two
British sketch troop Monty Python was made up of six members, and not all of them worked on every sketch together. This allowed them to make fun of each other’s work within their own show.
British sketch troop Monty Python was made up of six members, and not all of them worked on every sketch together. This allowed them to make fun of each other’s work within their own show. The dead parrot sketch is one of Monty Python’s most famous. The sketch has been referred to as one of Graham Chapman and John Cleese’s “thesaurus sketches,” because one of the characters rattles off a long list of synonyms for the word “dead.” This was typical of their approach to wordplay.
Terry Jones and Michael Palin wrote “What the Stars Foretell” as a parody of their friends’ thesaurus sketches. It features even more synonyms to hammer the point home, and the characters even point to a long list so that the audience can recite them at the same time. Graham Chapman got his own back by writing “The Dull Life of a City Stockbroker,” which lampoons Jones and Palin’s obsession with injecting surrealism into monotonous urban settings.
4 Monk (2002-2009)
Season 5, Episode 1, “Mr. Monk and the Actor”
Cast Tony Shalhoub
Seasons 8
Monk
is a lighthearted detective fantasy, so when it comments about junk science and logic leaps in crime procedurals, it does so with a knowing wink to the audience.
Stanley Tucci became one of Monk‘s best guest stars when he played a self-obsessed method actor in the season 5 opener. The episode follows Tucci’s character as he tries to get inside Monk’s head so that he can portray him in a TV movie. The movie in question is based on the case from the season 4 finale, “Mr. Monk and the Astronaut,” so Monk can retread its own steps while making everything just a bit more outrageous and dangerous in true Hollywood style.
“Monk and the Actor” wasn’t the first time the show constructed a parody of itself. The season 2 episode “Mr. Monk and the TV Star” follows Monk and his team onto the set of a popular cop show. They make fun of how ridiculous the police work on the show is, but Monk’s methods are far from realistic. Monk is a lighthearted detective fantasy, so when it comments about junk science and logic leaps in crime procedurals, it does so with a knowing wink to the audience.
3 Scrubs (2001-2010)
Season 4, Episode 17, “My Life in Four Cameras”
Cast John C. McGinley , Robert Maschio , Donald Faison , Christa Miller , Neil Flynn , Judy Reyes , Aloma Wright , Zach Braff , Sarah Chalke , Sam Lloyd , Ken Jenkins
Seasons 9
JD does live in a sitcom, but his daydream is really a way for the show to contrast itself with the typical sitcom formula of shows like
Friends
and
Cheers.
Scrubs‘ hospital setting automatically makes it much heavier than most other sitcoms, because the main characters are constantly dealing with extreme stress and even death. In “My Life in Four Cameras,” JD imagines what his life would be like if he lived in a sitcom. Of course, he does live in a sitcom, but his daydream is really a way for the show to contrast itself with the typical sitcom formula of shows like Friends and Cheers.
JD’s fantasy sitcom world is full of bright colors and playful banter, and every female character is overly sexualized. Eventually, JD snaps out of his daydream and the color palette makes a grim shift toward gray tones, grounding JD in the bleak reality of his situation. Scrubs has plenty of heartbreaking moments, but “My Life in Four Cameras” is a clever way of stating that it’s still a neatly plotted work of fiction. Scrubs isn’t like many other sitcoms, but it’s just as artificial.
2 Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
Season 6, Episode 5, “The Door”
Game of Thrones
proves that self-parody doesn’t have to be reserved for purely comedic shows, but it uses its self-satirizing play to different ends.
Game of Thrones proves that self-parody doesn’t have to be reserved for purely comedic shows, but it uses its self-satirizing play to different ends. Season 6, episode 5, “The Door,” features a play which retells the events of the earlier seasons. The performance and the crowd’s reaction highlights the difference between how the general public see the political situation and how those who experienced the events see it.
Ned Stark is portrayed as an incompetent fool, which completely undercuts the valiant nature of his death. Arya takes offense to this depiction, but she seems to be the only person in the audience who isn’t cheering and laughing along. Game of Thrones uses its self-satirizing play as a way of communicating the broad temperature of public opinion. The fact that the play paints Joffrey in a sympathetic lights is very telling.
1 Seinfeld (1989-1998)
Season 4, Episode 3, “The Pitch”
Cast Jerry Seinfeld , Julia Louis-Dreyfus , Jason Alexander , Michael Richards
Seasons 9
Seinfeld
has famously been described as a show about nothing, and this is George’s main selling point when he and Jerry go into a meeting with NBC to pitch their own show.
Seinfeld has famously been described as a show about nothing, and this is George’s main selling point when he and Jerry go into a meeting with NBC to pitch their own show. Since the character of George was initially based on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, their scene with the NBC executives is a parody of their own experiences when they were trying to sell the show. The resulting pilot, titled Jerry, is a more absurd version of Seinfeld, with a plot that features a judge ordering an uninsured driver to become Jerry’s butler.
To try and explain their unorthodox concept, Jerry and George use the example of waiting for a table to open up at a Chinese restaurant. This forms the basis for one of Seinfeld‘s best episodes, but the NBC executives in the show don’t understand it. With Jerry and George forced to rationalize their idea to NBC, the premise of Seinfeld does start to seem pointless and boring. Fortunately, the show was never about having a compelling concept.