Metahumour

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John_Lazarus

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This thread was inspired by Kay Cee’s fourth wall thread.

Anyone know of any kinds of self-referential humour or callouts in a show (other than breaking the fourth wall)? Like where a character acknowledges some connection in the real world? For instance:

In an episode of Growing Pains, the Seavers are hosting a party, I guess a meet and greet of some sort; a guest asks Mike, “Which one is your father?” Mike replies, “See that guy over there? Looks like a talk-show host?” [Alan Thicke, who was once a talk-show host].

In an episode of NCIS, someone asks Gibbs what Ducky (David McCallum) looked like as a young man; Gibbs answers, “Illya Kuryakin.”
 
The show Community used a lot of metahumor. One of the main characters loved TV and treated his life as a television show…when his life was a television show. 😉
 
  • 30 Rock* also used metahumor a lot, especially to poke fun at their network (NBC). I’ve noticed that on a lot of NBC shows, actually, but not so much on the other networks.
 
John_Lazarus said:
In an episode of NCIS, someone asks Gibbs what Ducky (David McCallum) looked like as a young man; Gibbs answers, “Illya Kuryakin.”
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I always got a kick out of that one.

I’ve never been able to make a habit of viewing it, but I know that on ABC’s *Castle *there are frequent references to a short-lived science fiction television program (ie *Firefly, *Nathan Fillon’s previous and short-lived series)

On USA’s *Psych *someone once observed that Shawn and Gus’s psychic investigation service was “…Like that guy on The Mentalist…” (Shawn: “Yeah, except that he’s a fake and we are real”). I think they took other digs at *The Mentalist *but they may have been fourth-wall breakers, as the series frequently did.

A couple from lo-oooong ago:

An episode of *The Lucy Show *guest starred Robert Stack and Bruce Gordon (who had played Eliot Ness and Frank Nitti in *The Untouchables *(a Desilu production)) as a law officer and a gangster. At one point Robert Stack explains the two have been trapped in a cycle: “a series of crimes followed by a series of arrests follwed by a series of trials…” and Lucy observes that their trouble is: "You’ve been too long in the same series!"

On an episode of the *Beverly Hillbillies *some guest stars are dancing around the Clampetts’ entry hall and Ellie Mae expresses her admiration, Granny dismisses the comment with “They ain’t no Vilma and Buddy Ebsen” (Jed: “Who?”)

😃
🍿
tee
 
And even longer ago:

When the stage play *Arsenic and Old Lace *premiered on Broadway back in the 1940’s, the character of Jonathan Brewster was portrayed by Boris Karloff. Throughout the play and the movie, the escaped insane criminal Jonathan, due to a series of bad plastic surgery attempts at disguise, is described as looking “Like Boris Karloff!”

:eek: :bigyikes:

tee
 
Free Cary Grant Association…

In the movie *His Girl Friday *Cary Grant

  • *]Makes reference to Archie Leach, which was, of course, Grant’s birth name. (He may have done this in another movie or two as well?)
    *]Describes another character as looking “like that fellow in the movies…Ralph Bellamy” – The character is, in fact, portrayed by Ralph Bellamy.

    🍿
    tee
 
Last one for a while.

In the movie *The Freshman *Carmine “Jimmy the Toucan” Sabatini, a mafioso of sorts, is played by Marlon Brando, and bears a remarkable resemblance to Don Vito Corleone from *The Godfather *(also portrayed by Brando). When it is remarked upon, the explanation is that the *Godfather *movie in the movie universe deliberately made the character to look like Jimmy the Toucan.

tee
 
I don’t know why this one even came to mind out of the recesses of my childhood, but…

Married With Children for a time brought in some kid into the Bundy household. I can’t recall if he was a foster child or adopted or what the situation was that led him to live with them. Anyway, they just sort of dropped him from the show with no explanation as to where the character went. Then one episode, they zoomed in on a shot of a milk carton with the “Missing Child” photo and it was a picture of the kid. It was funny because I hadn’t even noticed the kid was gone until they did that. 😛

Fresh Prince of Bel-Air employed such humor after they changed actresses for the mother. There was some joke about Mom not looking like herself.

I know shows like The Simpsons and Futurama use this type of humor a lot, too.
 
Ooooooh, never was a fan of the show, but I am told the actress playing one of the daughters on *Roseanne *left the series for a time and another actress played the role until the original returned. At some point in all this (I think after the return), the Roseanne character, disgusted with some action or other of the daughter, glares at her and says “You can be replaced, you know”

tee
 
The pant-huffing stoners in X-files “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” are also the same couple that is cast as dung-huffing stoners in “The War of the Corprophages” and the toad-licking stoners in “Quagmire” In the episode the couple looks up at the sky and comments that maybe the should be doing something else with their lives other than getting stoned.
 
Another movie that I’m not sure I’ve seen all of at one sitting, but in *Ocean’s Twelve *part of the con is played out by the character Tess Ocean, played by Julia Roberts, being persuaded to impersonate…the actress, Julia Roberts!

🍿
tee
 
In the movie remake of *Maverick *the title character, played by Mel Gibson, is in one scene held up at gunpoint by a black man wearing a bandanna over his face. When the bandanna is removed, the actor is revealed (to those in the audience who had not caught on previously) to be Danny Glover, Gibson’s long-time co-star in the *Lethal Weapon *series of buddy-cop movies.The two look each other cross-eyed :whacky: but I do not think they actually break the fourth wall.

tee
 
The above one reminds me of Eddie Murphy in Coming to America. He gives money to two homeless guys who were the people rich guys in Trading Places which Eddie Murphy also starred in.
 
Dandelion_Wine said:
The above one reminds me of Eddie Murphy in Coming to America. He gives money to two homeless guys who were the people rich guys in Trading Places which Eddie Murphy also starred in.
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I thought of that one too, but was not sure if it counted as breaking the fourth wall (probably not – Good call! 👍 )*

But – Even Better:

In *Trading Places *there is a scene where Dan Ackroyd tries appealing to his former friends at “the club”, but they won’t touch him. The scene begins with one of the young ladies, undoubtedly the actress credited as playing “Bunny”, delivering the line (apparently the end of a story): “…and she stepped on the ball!” (Spoken in that New Engand prep-school accent sometimes called Mid-Atlantic or Trans-Atlantic)

Now to understand this, you have to time-travel from *Trading Places’ *1983 all the way back to the 1958 classic Auntie Mame. In that movie, Patrick Dennis’s (the male lead) girlfriend, Gloria Upson (an Eastern seabord deb, who also speaks in the Mid-Atlantic accent), during a party falls flat while telling the story of the ping-pong tournament between herself and her friend, Bunny Bixler: As they vied for the tournament winning point *"… I went back for this really terrific shot… And I stepped on the ping-pong ball…!" *:yawn:

The same story is being related in movies 25 years apart! 😃

(* PS. One of those guys, from *Trading Places *and Coming to America is …(drum roll)…[post=13695438]Ralph Bellamy[/post]!)

tee
 
In How to Marry a Millionaire, Lauren Bacall, who was married to Humphrey Bogart, says “I’ve always liked older men… Look at that old fellow what’s-his-name in The African Queen.”
 
My wife and I rented *The Martian *last night. I loved the sequence where they named the effort Project Elrond and Sean Bean had to explain what the Lord of the Rings reference meant.
 
Dandelion_Wine said:
My wife and I rented *The Martian *last night. I loved the sequence where they named the effort Project Elrond and Sean Bean had to explain what the Lord of the Rings reference meant.
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That was cool and serendipitous – The scene is lifted directly out of the book, in which Sean Bean, naturally, did not appear.

I heard once that when the director realized it was happening, he wanted to cut the line. Every member of the cast and crew absolutely refused to do so. 😃

tee
 
tee_eff_em said:
That was cool and serendipitous – The scene is lifted directly out of the book, in which Sean Bean, naturally, did not appear.

I heard once that when the director realized it was happening, he wanted to cut the line. Every member of the cast and crew absolutely refused to do so. 😃

tee
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One does not simply cut a line from a movie…
 
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