| 1 | %%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct alphabetical order. |
| 2 | !!Series with their own pages |
| 3 | [[index]] |
| 4 | * ''TakeThat/TheGoodPlace'' |
| 5 | * ''TakeThat/{{Psych}}'' |
| 6 | * ''TakeThat/TheGoldenGirls'' |
| 7 | [[/index]] |
| 8 | ---- |
| 9 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 10 | |
| 11 | [[folder:#]] |
| 12 | * ''Series/ThirtyRock'': |
| 13 | ** The ShowWithinAShow ''[=MILF=] Island'', which is basically a gigantic spoof of ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' that takes LowestCommonDenominator to new lows. Coincidence that ''Survivor'' comes on at the same time as ''30 Rock'' and regularly slaughters it in the UsefulNotes/{{ratings}}? |
| 14 | ** ''30 Rock'' has also been happy to dance on the corpse of ''Series/Studio60OnTheSunsetStrip'', most notably in their parody of the infamous episode which features Timothy Busfield's Director touring the studio with a writer from the "golden age." ''30 Rock'' cast member Tim Conway as an aged and irrelevant old hand from ''30 Rock'''s past, being led around by Kenneth the Page, while Conway spouts such lines as "We called that the Jew room!" about the writers' room. |
| 15 | ** During the second season episode "Rosemary's Baby," ''30 Rock'' also took a shot at the career of former ProductionPosse recurring guest star Creator/RachelDratch, whose film ''Film/SpringBreakdown'', about a group of 30-something women who go on spring break and attempt to relive their college experiences, was having trouble finding a distributor at the time. During the episode, a senile former comedy writer (played by Creator/CarrieFisher) pitches a film about... cougars going on spring break.[[note]]Making this more shocking, ''Spring Breakdown'' also featured Creator/AmyPoehler, who's famously Tina Fey's BFF.[[/note]] |
| 16 | ** "Creator/LeeMarvin vs. Derek Jeter" delivers a Take That at Liz, which is very shocking given that she's Tina Fey's AuthorAvatar. Liz seems very flippant when the subject of affirmative action comes up, and states that a black co-worker got his job because of his race while as a white woman, she had no such advantage and had to work hard to find success. In the end, she is told that she owes her entire career to programs designed to help ''women'', such as Title 9, a revelation that humiliates her. |
| 17 | ** A bit in which Tracy does a terrible job of {{Corpsing}} was likely a snipe at Tracy Morgan's former ''SNL'' castmate Creator/JimmyFallon, who frequently cracked up during skits, much to Tracy's annoyance. |
| 18 | [[/folder]] |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[folder:A]] |
| 21 | * ''Series/AgentsOfShield'': |
| 22 | ** When the scientist Dr. Radcliffe creates an android that, [[AIIsACrapShoot surprise surprise]], goes rogue, we get this between Yo-Yo and Mack: |
| 23 | --->'''Yo-Yo:''' Someone needs to make Radcliffe watch all the Franchise/{{Terminator}} movies.\ |
| 24 | '''Mack:''' ...even ''[[Film/TerminatorSalvation Salvation?!]]''\ |
| 25 | '''Yo-Yo:''' He brought this onto himself. |
| 26 | ** And in a BadFuture when someone is blown away by how dangerous and effective guns are, they get a good dig in at the issue of gun control: |
| 27 | --->'''Deke:''' Guns, man! It's like cheating! They shouldn't give these to anyone that's not a really really good person!\ |
| 28 | '''May:''' [[SarcasmMode You'd think there'd be a law]]. |
| 29 | ** The time-displaced Daniel Sousa (it's a long story) complained once that nobody really looked each other to the face in the 80's compared with the 50's. May just tell him to wait until people get smartphones. |
| 30 | * ''Series/AmericanGods2017'': The [[RightWingMilitiaFanatic self-appointed border patrol thugs]] murder several devoutly Christian Mexican migrants... along with ''Mexican Jesus''. Which symbolizes that their hate of illegal immigrants is far stronger than all of their supposed Christian values. |
| 31 | * On the episode "Charlie and Kate Battle Over A Patient" of ''Series/AngerManagement'', Charlie enters Patrick's workplace wearing a shirt similar to that of Charlie Harper from ''Series/TwoAndAHalfMen''. They insult the shirt, and Charlie ends it by throwing the shirt away, saying how he'll 'Creator/{{chuck|Lorre}} it'. |
| 32 | * ''Series/TheApprentice'': After UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump called Sir Alan Sugar (who hosts the UK version) a small-timer, Sugar had the mention of his worth (over a billion pounds) reinstated to the show's opening. This was just weeks before Trump became US President(-Elect), unfortunately for Sir Alan's ego. |
| 33 | * Towards the end of its run, ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' took so, so, SO many shots at everything from Fox to ''Series/DesperateHousewives''. |
| 34 | ** Lampshaded in one episode where GOB makes a reference to do-gooding George Michael as "Opie", the narrator (Creator/RonHoward, who played Opie) promptly calls him out on it. |
| 35 | ** Inverted with yet another nice ActorAllusion. |
| 36 | -->'''The Narrator''': No one was making fun of [[Series/TheAndyGriffithShow Andy Griffith]]. I can't emphasize that enough. |
| 37 | * ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' gets on the "mock ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga''" fad right in the first episode when Oliver and Tommy are eyeing a girl at a party. |
| 38 | -->'''Tommy''': She looks like the girl from ''Twilight''.\ |
| 39 | '''Oliver''': What's ''Twilight''?\ |
| 40 | '''Tommy''': You're so better off not knowing. |
| 41 | [[/folder]] |
| 42 | |
| 43 | [[folder:B]] |
| 44 | * ''Series/BabylonFive'' was not shy about insulting other works: |
| 45 | ** The series took a big swing at ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' this way[[note]]''Deep Space 9'' was alleged by some to have been plagiarised from an early ''B5'' pitch[[/note]], when Ivanova complained about a gift shop on the station: "This isn't some deep-space franchise, this station is ''about'' something!" For added humor, the line was written by Creator/PeterDavid, best known as one of the most talented ''Franchise/StarTrek'' tie-in writers, and he was surprised that Creator/JMichaelStraczynski was going to use it. |
| 46 | ** The same episode also saw the appearance of the infamous "Ba-bear-lon 5" teddy bear. Later on, David and Straczynski would trade {{Take That}}s over teddy bears. |
| 47 | ** As well, a TV Guide writer with the last name Jarvis predicted after watching the pilot movie that the show, planned from the beginning as a single story told over five seasons, wouldn't last a month, resulting in the occasional line such as "The Jarvis toilets are acting up again." The fourth season finale, the first episode written after JMS knew for sure that he would get to tell the whole story, takes a far more direct approach: it ends with a simple shot of text on a black background that says, ''"Dedicated to all the people who predicted that the Babylon Project would fail in its mission. Faith manages."'' |
| 48 | ** It's mentioned that San Diego got nuked in a terrorist attack sometime in the past, and a covert government group has a base in its ruins. WordOfGod has that JMS picked the city because he had been mugged and almost killed there. |
| 49 | ** At the start of the second season, ExecutiveMeddling made the creators sex up Ivanova's appearance. She started wearing redder lipstick and had her hair loose instead of pulled back. When Garibaldi came out of his coma and returned to duty, he commented on her 'new look'. Ivanova snapped back "With everything that's been going on around here I'd think you'd have other things on your mind besides my look!" Take That, Executive Meddlers! |
| 50 | ** During the first battle with the Shadows, Delenn says that it is hopeless. Sheridan replies "No offense but I've heard that before." Which is a polite way of saying, "I'm ''Starkiller'' and all you Minbari better be grateful for it too." |
| 51 | * ''Series/TheBabySittersClub2020'': Laine snarks that if the hermit from the legend cursed the theater because the people were rehearsing ''Theatre/{{Cats}}'' it would be understandable. |
| 52 | * ''Series/BeakmansWorld'' took friendly jabs at the competition on occasion. Beakman, on letting his mom do a challenge: "But none of the other TV [[Series/BillNyeTheScienceGuy science guys]] let their moms do stuff!" His mom replies with the JumpOffABridgeRebuttal. |
| 53 | ** In the last episode, the show managed to pull off the mother of all {{Take That}}s. |
| 54 | --->'''Beakman''': You wrench 'em, I'll drench 'em, let's Macarena!\ |
| 55 | '''Everyone in the entire friggin world, including the makers of the song''': '''''LET'S NOT!''''' |
| 56 | * An episode of ''Series/BeautyAndTheBeast2012'' ("Basic Instinct") has this exchange- |
| 57 | -->'''J.T.''': Call that CSI guy again.\ |
| 58 | '''Catherine''': CSU. [[Series/{{CSI}} CSI is a TV show]]. |
| 59 | * In the first two episodes of ''The Best Years'', Dawn was a former teen actress whose never-seen ShowWithinAShow existed solely to poke fun at ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration''. In one case, it parodied a specific ''Degrassi'' episode. When Dawn gets cast as Lady Macbeth in a college play, she can't understand the role at all, and says, "if Lady Macbeth were buying her first bra or discovering the dangers of under-age drinking, I could do this." The producer of ''The Best Years'' worked on ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'' for almost its entire run, and a few of the ''D:TNG'' cast has shown up on guest roles — in fact, on The-N's website, Jay from ''Degrassi'' was on one of the clips they showed from Dawn's TV role — so this could be more of an AffectionateParody. |
| 60 | * ''Series/{{Bewitched}}'' had an episode called "Three Wishes", in which Endora does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin to Darrin - granting him three wishes. The real meaning is about ''Series/IDreamOfJeannie'', which stole many ideas from ''Bewitched''. |
| 61 | * There was an episode of the Christian superhero show ''Bibleman'' where Scott Baio ([[Series/CharlesInCharge former co-star]] of the actor who played Bibleman) is heavily implied to work for Satan. |
| 62 | * ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'': Early into "The Closure Alternative" Sheldon talks about how various TV series gave their fans forms of closure: ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' continued in a comic book and ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' had a movie. His comment on ''Series/{{Heroes}}''? That it [[SeasonalRot gradually lowered in quality season by season]] until fans were thankful it was over. |
| 63 | * ''Series/BigWolfOnCampus'': |
| 64 | ** One episode featured a Werewolf-Slayer named "Muffy". Three guesses [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer who]] she's supposed to be poking fun at. |
| 65 | ** In another episode, they poke fun at ''Film/TheLostBoys''. And, who was the special guest of that episode? None other than Corey Haim. |
| 66 | * ''Series/BlackMirror'' often explores and takes swipes at modern culture. First and foremost, the target is humanity's propensity to adopt new technology without taking ethical or societal consequences into account, but there are others: |
| 67 | ** ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorFifteenMillionMerits Fifteen Million Merits]]'' is one to reality TV culture and consumerism. People in this dystopian future do pointless work to earn pointless money to buy pointless things and the only distraction is tedious games and reality television. |
| 68 | ** ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorWhiteBear White Bear]]'', ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorShutUpAndDance Shut Up and Dance]]'' and to an extent ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorHatedInTheNation Hated in the Nation]]'' is one to the concept of "justice porn". The protagonists are no saints themselves (the protagonist of ''White Bear'' [[spoiler:abetted in a gruesome child murder]] and the protagonist of ''Shut Up and Dance'' is [[spoiler:a pedophile]]), but it's made very clear that [[HumansAreBastards Humans Are]] {{Knight Templar}}s. |
| 69 | ** ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorTheWaldoMoment The Waldo Moment]]'' is a take that to the cynicism of modern politics and to populist politicians who rely more on public spectacle and personality than sound policy or ethics. |
| 70 | ** ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorNosedive Nosedive]]'' is one to social media stars like Instagram models and Facebook personalities. |
| 71 | ** ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorTheEntireHistoryOfYou The Entire History of You]]'' and ''[[Recap/BlackMirrorArkangel Arkangel]]'' are attacks on insecure partners and overbearing parents. |
| 72 | * In the third season of ''Series/BlueMountainState'' all of the college football team's litany of misdeeds (drugs, drinking, hazing, recruiting violations, bribery, and more) finally come to roost as the NCAA launches a full investigation. In the middle of it all, Alex openly asks why the NCAA cares so much about punishing the school for messing with their rules when their entire organization would lose the hundreds of millions of dollars a year they make off of the college players who are legally prevented from getting any of that money for themselves. |
| 73 | * An episode of ''Series/{{Bones}}'' ended with the characters and suspects describing in detail how useless and unreliable luminol is; luminol is one of the most popular pieces of ForensicPhlebotinum on ''Series/{{CSI}}''. |
| 74 | * The short-lived series ''Series/TheBookOfDaniel'' was basically one long Take That on, well, practically everything, but mostly religion, as it concerned a priest named Daniel Webster (yes, really) who has visions of [[Literature/TheBible Jesus]] (yes, ''really''). You'd think that would be more than enough, but the show also gives the priest an alcoholic wife ''and'' a gay Republican son ''and'' a teenage druggie daughter ''and'' an adopted Chinese son who's dating a girl whose parents hate Asians ''and'' a brother-in-law who runs off with church funds and abandons his family ''and'' a lesbian sister-in-law ''and'' a female bishop who is sleeping with Daniel's married father ''and'' [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking a mother with Alzheimer's disease.]] ...it was basically crystallized [[ExaggeratedTrope Up to Eleven]] smoked through a TakeThat bong. |
| 75 | * One episode of ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'', in which Mr. Feeny starts a lunchtime radio show at school, took some shots at a few then-contemporary musicians: |
| 76 | -->'''Mr. Feeny:''' ''[over the school intercom]'' And now, because the halls of our school beat with the lively heart of contemporary youth, here is the happening sounds of Mr. Music/MichaelBolton!\ |
| 77 | '''Everyone:''' Aaaaaaaaahhhhh!\ |
| 78 | '''Cory:''' Make it stop! Make it stop!\ |
| 79 | '''Shawn:''' It's hard to cut the wires with a plastic spoon!\ |
| 80 | '''Cory:''' Just rip the whole speaker down!\ |
| 81 | Later:\ |
| 82 | '''Mr. Turner:''' If you guys are serious about [taking over the radio show], I'll talk to Feeny after lunch.\ |
| 83 | '''Mr. Feeny:''' ''[over the school intercom]'' And now for you kiddos, Menudo!\ |
| 84 | '''Mr. Turner:''' I'll talk to him ''now''. |
| 85 | * ''Brookside'': In its final months, the writers had a drug dealer named Jack Michaelson show up and later get lynched in the last ever episode. It was a TakeThat against Michael "controller of Channel 4, as opposed to the Moonwalk guy" Jackson, who had cancelled the show. The finale ended with the longest-serving character giving a thinly veiled rant about TV and society, before vandalizing the titular "Brookside Close". |
| 86 | * ''Franchise/{{Buffyverse}}'': |
| 87 | ** ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' and ''Series/{{Angel}}'' both take [[AffectionateParody shots at each other]], and Hilarity Ensues. |
| 88 | ** Arguably the best one was in "Tabula Rasa" when, upon losing his memories, Spike believes that he is a vampire with a soul, a good guy on a quest for atonement who [[Series/{{Angel}} "helps the helpless"]]. Buffy replies, "A vampire with a soul? How lame is that?" |
| 89 | ** "The Girl In Question" gives us this: |
| 90 | --->'''Angel''': "How'd she (Buffy) ever fall for a centuries-old guy with a dark past who may or may not be evil?" |
| 91 | ** In [[Series/{{Angel}} Spike: After The Fall]] a character complains about [[Series/Charmed1998 "that awful show with the three witch sisters."]] The bad guy thinks it's great. |
| 92 | ** Something bad always happens when the characters drink ("Beer Bad" and "A New Man"). |
| 93 | ** In Season 4 of ''Buffy'', when Giles asks BuffyFaith who's president she replies they're testing to see if it's really her, not a concussion. Could easily be either of them. |
| 94 | ** The Season 8 comic series of ''Buffy'' started over a year before the success of ''another franchise that featured a human girl in love with a vampire'', so no-one thought much about the BigBad of the season being named Twilight, with Buffy's only interaction with the villain coming before the other series became well known. But when they come face to face for the first time since then, Buffy points out the she did the whole Human-Girl-In-Love-With-a-Vampire thing first, and her vampire was so much better than the other one. |
| 95 | ** Spike has his dislike of his rival for Buffy's affections programmed into the Buffybot. |
| 96 | --->'''Buffybot:''' Angel's lame. His hair goes straight up, and he's bloody stupid! |
| 97 | ** Along with ties to fictional corporations like Weyland-Yutani and Yoyodyne, Wolfram & Hart also works with Newscorp. |
| 98 | ** Season seven just got petty with this with one of the first potential slayers killed is a girl in Germany wearing black leathers and red hair, ala Sydney Bristow of ''Series/{{Alias}}''. That would have been enough but the techno music and spy cutting left utterly no doubt who the show was slamming. The rest of the series would show the scene of Slayer!Bristow being killed at every single opportunity possible. |
| 99 | ** In a meta example, when the show moved from WB to UPN, a WB executive said that UPN stood for "Used Parts Network". A UPN executive countered that WB stood for "Without ''Buffy''". |
| 100 | ** The ''Series/{{Angel}}'' episode "Harm's Way" starts off with a video apparently made to introduce new Wolfram & Hart employees to the firm. It lists off three companies that are clients of Wolfram & Hart: [[Film/TheAdventuresOfBuckarooBanzaiAcrossThe8thDimension Yoyodyne]], [[Franchise/{{Alien}} Weyland-Yutani]]... and News Corp, parent corporation of FOX, the network that {{screwed|ByTheNetwork}} ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' a year earlier. |
| 101 | ** Also any time Lorne mentions Creator/AndrewLloydWebber. |
| 102 | [[/folder]] |
| 103 | |
| 104 | [[folder:C]] |
| 105 | * On ''Series/{{Castle|2009}}'', Creator/NathanFillion mocks ''Series/CSIMiami'' almost every week. ''CSI: Miami'', of course, is their main timeslot competition. He also got in a good shot during the 2009 Emmys, during his appearance as Captain Hammer. |
| 106 | * The Heritage Trust in ''Series/CharleysGrants'' was intended to be a piss-take of organisations such as arts councils that distribute taxpayers' money to nourish creativity of one kind or another, the joke being that someone as un-artistic as Lord Charley could be able to take them for all they were worth. |
| 107 | * ''Series/Charmed1998'': |
| 108 | ** Season 3 seemed to be throwing these toward Creator/ShannenDoherty as Prue is PutOnABusToHell. In "[[Recap/CharmedS3E18SinFrancisco Sin Francisco]]", she was possessed by the Deadly Sin of Pride, turning her into a raging egomaniac. "[[Recap/CharmedS3E21LookWhosBarking Look Who's Barking]]" turns her into a literal female dog, and she also was responsible for destroying Piper's wedding in "[[Recap/CharmedS3E15JustHarried Just Harried]]". It seemed like everybody was grateful to see her leave. |
| 109 | ** The episode "[[Recap/CharmedS6E21WitchWars Witch Wars]]" features a demonic reality game show of the same name, where the objective is to kill witches on television while a demonic audience watches. Naturally there are a few digs at reality shows in general, and ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' in particular. |
| 110 | * As much SelfDeprecation as a TakeThat: On a crossover episode with ''Series/PicketFences'', ''Series/ChicagoHope'' gave a bitter nod to then-ratings powerhouse ''Series/{{ER}}''. When Kathy Baker's guest-star character became frustrated at what Chicago Hope's doctors were telling her, she irately declared, "We could have gone to the ''other'' one!" The hospital director's reply? "We ''never'' mention the other one." The backstory on this and other such moments is that the two shows premiered in the fall of '94, in the identical Thursday@10PM time slot. Despite ''Hope's'' better reviews and predictions that ''it'' would win the ratings battle, ''ER'' quickly buried its competitor, forcing [=CH's=] move to Monday nights, where it had a respectable multi-year run. |
| 111 | ** Additional swipes taken: |
| 112 | *** Dr. Shutt was constantly told how much he resembled [=ER=] star Creator/GeorgeClooney and always professed not to know who Clooney even was. |
| 113 | *** At one point, a corporate executive made a promotional video for the hospital that was a straight ripoff of the ''ER'' opening credits, complete with ethereal music, a giant [=CH=] logo appearing on the screen repeatedly, and all of the cast members replicating the poses from the then-current [=ER=] opening credits. After the video was over, the staff was thoroughly unimpressed, one member saying, ''"Hmmm. Looks familiar."'' |
| 114 | * ''Series/CobraKai'': Counsellor Blatt advocates for an anti-violence program called "Hugs, Not Hits!" She describes it as being "... like D.A.R.E., except it works!" |
| 115 | * Interestingly, on ''Series/TheColbertReport'' during the ''Franchise/StarWars'' portion of the Colbert Green Screen Challenge, Star Wars [[TheScrappy Scrappy]] Jar-Jar Binks makes an appearance, asking who would represent democracy, and hopes it's not that annoying boy from the desert wasteland who later joined the empire. He then whispered [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush Darth W Vader]]. He even goes as far as poking fun at himself in the scene. Now why can't Jar-Jar be more of a DeadpanSnarker in ''Star Wars''? |
| 116 | ** And now "the new Crossfire''" - Jim Cramer. It's not an interview, [[http://www.cc.com/video-clips/fttmoj/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-exclusive---jim-cramer-extended-interview-pt--1 it's an execution]]. |
| 117 | ** On his part in getting ''Crossfire'' canceled, Stewart said he had no idea that all he had to do to get a show canceled was say that it was hurting America. He then announced that ''Series/AccordingToJim'' was hurting America. |
| 118 | * ''Series/CommanderInChief'': |
| 119 | ** The show with Creator/GeenaDavis as the country's first female president, did this pretty blatantly in one episode. There was an episode where a coastal city was hit by a hurricane. Within hours, the president was there helping oversee the relief effort. Guess who that was a swipe at. The president was later shown ''reading to children'' when an aide came up and told her something important was happening. She immediately handed the book to one of the kids to continue reading, got up, and walked away. |
| 120 | ** They actually ''did'' work in a shot at ''Series/TheWestWing'' — they had Geena Davis' president handle an almost-identical situation to Martin Sheen's President Bartlett. The situation was similar enough to be a "Our fictional prez is better than your fictional prez" moment. |
| 121 | * ''Series/{{Community}}'': |
| 122 | ** In "[[Recap/CommunityS2E11AbedsUncontrollableChristmas Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas]]", Abed goes on a [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind journey inside his own mind]] to find the meaning of Christmas. But all he finds in there is a present containing a DVD boxset of the first season of ''Series/{{Lost}}''. |
| 123 | --->'''Pierce:''' ''That's'' the meaning of Christmas?\ |
| 124 | '''Abed:''' No, it's a metaphor. It represents lack of payoff. |
| 125 | ** The series has more than a couple {{Take That}}s against ''Series/{{Glee}}'': |
| 126 | --->'''Jeff:''' I hate ''Glee''.\ |
| 127 | '''Pierce:''' Eh, I'm not crazy about Glee either.\ |
| 128 | '''Jeff:''' ''(sobbing)'' I hate it. I don't understand the appeal at all! |
| 129 | *** Jeff and Britta ''fondly remembered'' a time when they filled in for Greendale's Glee club, who ''died in a bus crash''. Their version consisted of melodramatically going "sing sing singaling ling ling" for several minutes. For which they apparently won "lots of awards". |
| 130 | *** Dan Harmon went above and beyond in Season 3, devoting an entire episode to parodying ''Glee''. Though it is surprisingly more subtle than one would expect with emphasis on smaller details (the ascending level of chairs, the never mentioned piano player, Mr. Rad's sweater vests, the clipped dialogue delivery, the constant mash-ups and remixes and an apparently endless supply of costumes and props that come out of nowhere), there are some more blatant moments (Jeff shouting "Not liking Glee club doesn't make us bullies and implying that is reverse bullying", characters constantly talking about regionals, the extreme seriousness with which they take the club). It also played out as a riff on ''Film/InvasionOfTheBodySnatchers'', in which the study group lose their individuality one by one as they each join the Glee Club. |
| 131 | ** Surprisingly, there was actually an INVERSION in one episode. Community fans have made no secret about their intense dislike of The Big Bang Theory, so naturally a lot of them were elated in an episode where Jeff goes on about how much he hates the Barenaked Ladies, saying he doesn’t understand why so many people love them, a complaint many Community fans have about TBBT. However, this was actually NOT a jab at TBBT. The online backlash was so severe that Dan Harmon had to come out and clarify that it was not a potshot at The Big Bang Theory and had nothing to do with the show. It was genuinely his feelings about the Barenaked Ladies, saying he doesn’t hate them, he just doesn’t get their appeal, and that it had nothing to do with The Big Bang Theory. |
| 132 | * ''Series/CountdownWithKeithOlbermann'': Keith Olbermann's ''Worst Person In The World'' segment on MSNBC — an, ah, ''enthusiastic'' expansion of an old Radio/BobAndRay routine -- consisted of nothing but {{Take That}}s. Unsurprisingly, the most frequent "winner" of the title was Olbermann's arch-rival in political commentary shows, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News. |
| 133 | ** However, Olbermann did "ban" O'Reilly from the lists for two months following the murder of Dr. George Tiller, believing that O'Reilly's show indirectly drove Tiller's murderer to commit the act and, because of that, Billo could no longer be considered "funny". He finally put Bill back on the lists to dispel rumors that MSNBC forced him to stop mentioning O'Reilly. |
| 134 | ** When Olbermann returned to TV with his self-titled [=ESPN2=] program, the segment came back as "Worst Persons In The Sports World". Other than a few shots at the staff of WFAN radio in New York (a competitor to ESPN's New York radio station), Olbermann has avoided taking on other media personalities. |
| 135 | * During a late season episode of ''Series/TheCosbyShow'', a young member of the Huxtable family approaches Heathcliff wearing a [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Bart Simpson]] mask, and Cliff snaps at her to take it off. At the time, ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' was losing its ratings battle with ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', and Bart Simpson was considered a bad role model for young children. ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' took aim their former time-slot rival ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' when "Bleeding Gums" Murphy does a cameo on the show. The children complain that wedging him in as a grandfather makes no sense, and Cosby degenerates into nonsensical ramblings instantly while Bleeding Gums just looks around nervously. |
| 136 | * The fourth series of ''Series/{{Coupling}}'' is maligned [[SeasonalRot for]] [[ReplacementScrappy many reasons]], not always entirely fairly. But was totally worth it to hear a line that in one fell swoop buried the failed attempt at an American version. Steve to Jane: "Jane, could you stop doing this? Could you stop just wandering through my front door? Because this is not, I repeat NOT, an American sitcom!" |
| 137 | * ''Series/CriminalMinds'': |
| 138 | ** One episode has Prentiss explaining that the poor preservation of a crime scene was due to "the crime scene investigators" who "all want to play cop instead of just being scientists". And where exactly were they working the case? Yes, [[Series/{{CSI}} Las Vegas]]. |
| 139 | ** The episode "JJ" [[spoiler: was intended to be JJ's last episode and is a TakeThat to CBS for trying to get rid of AJ Cook (The actress who plays JJ). They transfer JJ, making it beyond everyone's control. Then the quote at the end spoken by JJ talks about "taking the high road" and "not wanting to be angry" and just about leaving family, like the team (and the cast) so obviously were. Fortunately JJ returned to the show after all]]. |
| 140 | * Ironically, on an episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}'' itself, when a reality TV crew was filming the [=CSIs=] while they were working, Grissom remarked that there were too many forensic crime shows on TV. |
| 141 | ** Never mind that William Peterson, TV's Gil Grissom, was against the splintering of the CSI franchise, even refusing to appear in character with anyone from the ''Miami'' cast. |
| 142 | ** The [[Series/TwoAndAHalfMen Chuck Lorre]] written episode "Two and a Half Deaths" was a long "Take That" against Cybill Shepherd, Roseanne Barr, and Brett Butler, all of whom Lorre worked with in the past. |
| 143 | ** "Who do you think I am, the Series/GhostWhisperer?" was also said on an episode of ''Series/{{CSI}}''. |
| 144 | [[/folder]] |
| 145 | |
| 146 | [[folder:D]] |
| 147 | * ''Series/TheDailyShow'' hands out {{Take That}}s on a regular basis, most memorably when host Jon Stewart was invited onto the CNN political op-ed show ''Crossfire'', as a really, ''really'' ill-judged ratings grab. Stewart announced right off the top that he was no-one's 'monkey', and proceeded to demonstrate by spending the entire hour attacking the hosts, accusing them of irrelevance, partisan hackery, and just generally a complete lack of journalistic integrity. He wound up by calling one of the hosts a 'dick' to his face. Not entirely coincidentally, ''Crossfire'' was cancelled a few months later. |
| 148 | ** ''Series/TheColbertReport'' took the idea and ran with it. [[Awesome/TheColbertReport White House Correspondents' Association]], anyone? |
| 149 | * ''Series/DearWhitePeople'': Chapter I of Season 3 features a mild one toward ''Series/TheHandmaidsTale'', noting how what July (the {{expy}} for June) complains of is something many black women already had to bear. Not to mention the fact that the [[Creator/ElisabethMoss lead actress]] is part of a real cult, but doesn't notice the irony. In spite of this, Sam says that she's addicted and has watched the show religiously. |
| 150 | * ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'' once had a TakeThat against the game show ''Series/TwentyOne'', where Dick Van Dyke's character went on a corrupt game show called ''Thru The Roof'', featuring soundproof booths. He noted that it was difficult to breathe in the booths. |
| 151 | * Creator/JimHenson's ''Series/{{Dinosaurs}}'' delivered one to ''Series/UnsolvedMysteries'', which played in the same timeslot on another network. After being asked how they keep their material so fresh, the host of "Mysteries Which Haven't Been Solved Yet" answers that they have four mysteries that they show over and over again. "Luckily, nobody seems to notice." |
| 152 | -->'''Earl''': Why are we even watching this show anyway? I wanna watch the puppet show on the other channel!\ |
| 153 | '''Fran''': That's a kid's show.\ |
| 154 | '''Earl''': Not so! They do some very sophisticated juxtapositions of reality!\ |
| 155 | '''Fran''': It'll last a year. |
| 156 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 157 | ** Prior actors of the Doctor bicker non-stop whenever [[TimeyWimeyBall they happen to meet each other]]. Creator/JonPertwee and Creator/PatrickTroughton turned this bickering into an art during convention appearances, and Creator/ColinBaker and Creator/PeterDavison have traded insults on DVD commentaries. |
| 158 | ** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS16E3TheStonesOfBlood "The Stones of Blood"]], a damaged and derelict spaceship seen at one point is recognisably [[OffTheShelfFX derived from a licensed toy]] of an Eagle Transport from rival show ''Series/Space1999''. |
| 159 | ** "The Sunmakers" has a villain with large eyebrows who taxes people to death, as a caricature of then-Chancellor Denis Healey. |
| 160 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E2TheEndOfTheWorld "The End of the World"]]: When Rose tells the Doctor that she's going to talk to Lady Cassandra, the self-proclaimed "Last Human" who has had so many plastic surgeries that she's just a face on a piece of skin stretched in a frame attached to her BrainInAJar, Rose refers to Cassandra as "Michael Jackson". |
| 161 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E5WorldWarThree "World War Three"]] has aliens take over the British government and contrive a situation so they'll be given access to nuclear launch codes under the pretense of stopping nonexistent "massive weapons of destruction". |
| 162 | ** This classic moment in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E13ThePartingOfTheWays "The Parting of the Ways"]], where Creator/RussellTDavies expresses his ambivalent and nuanced feelings regarding the TV movie's claim that the Doctor was part human: |
| 163 | --->'''Rose:''' But that makes them... half-human!\ |
| 164 | '''Dalek Emperor:''' [[AC:[[PunctuatedForEmphasis THOSE WORDS ARE]] ''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis BLASPHEMY]]''!]]\ |
| 165 | '''Daleks:''' [[AC:Do not blaspheme! Do not blaspheme! Do not blaspheme!]] |
| 166 | ** This line from [[Recap/DoctorWho2005CSTheChristmasInvasion "The Christmas Invasion"]]: |
| 167 | --->'''Harriet Jones, Prime Minister:''' You may tell the President this, and please use these exact words: He's not my boss and he's ''certainly'' not turning this into a war. [[note]] That line was also a bit of a shot at Tony Blair, who (in the show's canon) had preceded Jones as PM. Blair's critics often accused him of being little more than a lackey for his "boss" George W. Bush. Its a BrokenAesop anyway, since she opens fire and destroys the aliens after the Doctor defuses the situation.[[/note]] |
| 168 | ** Fandom is divided on whether "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E10LoveAndMonsters Love & Monsters]]" is an AffectionateParody and loving tribute to the things that make fandom special, or just a huge TakeThat to its fans. The truth is it's kind of both; the "good" fans are presented as being slightly geeky and socially awkward but fundamentally decent and good people who come together, make connections, are inspired creatively and even fall in love as a result of their fandom, whereas the "bad" fans are humourless jobsworths who treat fandom as a joyless ritual, establishing pecking orders and sucking all the life and creativity out of the whole thing for the sake of their own ego-fulfillment. It might not be coincidental that it is sometimes suggested that the Absorbaloff is based on Ian Levine, a well-known fan who [[SmallNameBigEgo arguably represents more than a few of these negative traits]]. |
| 169 | *** In a similar event, some have suggested that the pretentious, overly-analytical and unpleasant nerd in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E10Blink Blink]]" was named Lawrence as a swipe at ''Literature/EighthDoctorAdventures'' writer Lawrence Miles, who was known for being [[DarthWiki/RuinedFOREVER extremely negative]] about the revival series in general and Creator/StevenMoffat in particular. |
| 170 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E3Gridlock "Gridlock"]] takes a swipe at metropolitan traffic jams, London's in particular. The people stuck in what has to be the universe's worst traffic jam ever think that going 5 miles in 12 years is making good time. |
| 171 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E10Blink "Blink"]]: While exploring Wester Drumlins, Kathy suggests to Sally that they call themselves "Sparrow and Nightingale" if they're going to be investigating things, which Sally dismisses as "a bit ITV". Kathy agrees. This doesn't stop Sally and Kathy's brother Larry from calling the shop they own at the end of the episode by that name, though. |
| 172 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E12TheSoundOfDrums "The Sound of Drums"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E13LastOfTheTimeLords "Last of the Time Lords"]] clearly flipped the bird at the American government when the Doctor manages to turn back time a whole year to avoid a vast majority of the deaths that occurred... and stops ''just'' short of saving the US president as well; with the Doctor specifying that "everything is back to normal". This aspect is arguably justified in it is clearly established that the TimeyWimeyBall effect that allowed him to do this only kicked in ''after'' the President was killed — however, the President's depiction as a [[StrawCharacter arrogant, buffoonish jackass]] who bore a certain resemblance to a certain then-current President definitely belongs here — and vitriolic comparisons made in that vein on the US DVDCommentary fuel the fire even more. |
| 173 | *** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E12TheSoundOfDrums The Sound of Drums]]" also features Martha suggesting the Master could be the Doctor's brother, only for the Doctor to shoot down the idea as silly and suggest she's been "watching too much TV". This could be a Take That at the proposed storylines for a potential US ''Doctor Who'' series from the early 1990s in which the Master would have been the Doctor's "evil brother". |
| 174 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E4TheSontaranStratagem "The Sontaran Stratagem"]] has this moment early on where the Doctor is letting Donna fly the TARDIS.[[labelnote:*]]The Doctor's response is so vague that it could reference any person involved with a negative 1980s event; it could be Creator/JohnNathanTurner, Creator/EricSaward, or Michael Grade in relation to the DWU; hell, it could even be a UsefulNotes/ColdWar joke or a joke about the fashion and music. Given how weird this universe is, it might even be a NoodleIncident.[[/labelnote]] |
| 175 | --->'''The Doctor:''' Getting a little too close to [[The80s the 1980s]].\ |
| 176 | '''Donna:''' What am I gonna do, put a dent in them?\ |
| 177 | '''The Doctor:''' Well, someone did. |
| 178 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E10VincentAndTheDoctor "Vincent and the Doctor"]]: |
| 179 | *** There's a minor example when, after Vincent's sketch of the Krafayis confuses the Doctor's species scanner, he rants in frustration that he wouldn't be having this problem with a "proper" painter. |
| 180 | *** Later, to cheer up Vincent when he's painting ''The Church at Auvers'', the Doctor puts down Michelangelo for agreeing to paint the Art/SistineChapel while being acrophobic and Creator/PabloPicasso for needing to be reminded that people have two eyes. |
| 181 | ** During the moment in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E6TheAlmostPeople The Almost People]]" where the Doctor's Ganger is going through the memories of previous regenerations, there is this line most likely aimed at the fans still bitter about Creator/DavidTennant leaving the show. |
| 182 | --->'''Ganger!Doctor:''' ''[David Tennant's voice]'' Hello, I'm the Doctor... ''[Matt Smith's voice]'' NO, LET IT GO! WE'VE MOVED ON! |
| 183 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS33E6TheBellsOfSaintJohn "The Bells of Saint John"]]: |
| 184 | *** Moffat, notably not a fan of Website/{{Twitter}}, makes a dig at it: |
| 185 | ---->'''The Doctor:''' Just think of it. Thousands of people, trapped in the Wifi, unable to escape, crying for help.\ |
| 186 | '''Clara:''' Isn't that basically Twitter? |
| 187 | *** Also from that episode, this time aimed at the Tenth Doctor: |
| 188 | ---->'''Clara:''' What chapter are you on?\ |
| 189 | '''Artie:''' 10.\ |
| 190 | '''Clara:''' 11's the best. You'll cry your eyes out. |
| 191 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS37E4ArachnidsInTheUK "Arachnids in the UK"]] has American CorruptCorporateExecutive Jack Robertson, whose illegal business practices result in several deaths, and who is a BadBoss who throws other people under the bus to save himself and refuses to admit fault in the incidents of the episode. And he plans on running for President in 2020. However, he [[EvenEvilHasStandards hates the real person he's a skewering of]]. |
| 192 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWho2019NYSResolution "Resolution"]]: The Doctor discovers, while attempting to phone for assistance with the villain, that UNIT operations have been suspended pending a budgetary review — obvious shade in the direction of Brexit and the then-current British government's SkewedPriorities regarding budgeting. |
| 193 | ** [[Recap/DoctorWho2021NYSRevolutionOfTheDaleks "Revolution of the Daleks"]] has Jack Robertson taking the credit for stopping a Dalek attack he was responsible for with talk he may be awarded an honourary Knighthood. This can come across as a dig at the often cronystic-looking British Honours System, with honours often being awarded to unscrupulous business people who have helped out whichever Government is in power at the time. |
| 194 | *** The Prime Minister in this episode Jo Patterson is a SleazyPolitician who works with the {{Trumplica}} Jack Robertson to help her political career and supports brutal security measures with his Dalek Drones. She can come across as an {{Expy}} of [[UsefulNotes/TheresaMay Theresa May]], who was the Prime Minister at the time this episode was written (though by the time it had aired she had been out of Office for well over a year). |
| 195 | * In an episode of ''Series/DogWithABlog'', the eponymous TalkingAnimal Stan says that he in order to be a celebrity, he will need an agent, sunglasses, and a political cause that he doesn't really understand, in which he is probably referring to Brian from ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy''. |
| 196 | [[/folder]] |
| 197 | |
| 198 | [[folder:E]] |
| 199 | * ''Series/EerieIndiana'': |
| 200 | ** Several per episode. These include an evil businessman who calls himself "[[UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump The Donald]]" in "Zombies in P.J.s". |
| 201 | ** In "Just Say No Fun", Nurse Nancy, who brainwashes children to eliminate their need for fun, is a reference to the former First Lady Nancy Reagan. |
| 202 | ** In "The Broken Record", Simon is very taken with the Music/{{Carpenters}} song "We've Only Just Begun". Marshall says, "Simon, we have a lot to talk about." He tries to convince Simon how uncool it is but to no avail. |
| 203 | ** In "No Brain, No Pain", it is revealed that UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan was given the brain of [[Series/MacGyver1985 MacGyver]] (quadrupling his IQ) so the Republicans could win that election. The same episode had Dash threaten to destroy Simon's brain by saying he'd make him "[[UsefulNotes/DanQuayle Vice-Presidential]]." |
| 204 | * ''Series/{{ER}}'' even took a swipe at ITSELF. An episode that had a doctor who worked with a news crew hovering outside the hospital and giving incorrect information to the public had a character commenting, "Ugh. TV doctors." |
| 205 | * ''{{Series/Euphoria}}'': Episode 3 takes a rather vicious shot at [[YaoiFangirl horny fangirl]] [[MostFanficWritersAreGirls writers of]] [[SlashFic homoerotic]] RealPersonFic with an explicit, ''fully-animated'' extended sequence from one of Kat's fanfictions where [[Music/OneDirection Harry Styles fucks Louis Tomlinson.]] |
| 206 | * The second series of ''Series/{{Extras}}'' was largely a Take That towards sitcoms that Creator/RickyGervais and Creator/StephenMerchant don't like -- primarily catchphrase-based, broad and unnaturalistic shows such as ''Series/LittleBritain''. |
| 207 | ** And the Christmas special series finale was greatly pointed at ''Series/BigBrother''. |
| 208 | ** Gervais and Merchant have noted, however, they were not attempting to label people who do "broad" comedy as being bad, but that you shouldn't settle for less if you want to aspire to greater things. Granted this does not mean they necessarily like such shows, but it's not quite as venomous as the show would make you think... |
| 209 | ** Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse aimed a Take That at ''Extras'' with a bemused couple watching a tv show featuring a Stephen Merchant sound-a-like ranting about how he's good friends with Ben Stiller. |
| 210 | [[/folder]] |
| 211 | |
| 212 | [[folder:F]] |
| 213 | * ''Series/FeelGood'': James Bond as a role model is brought up by the addict Mae relapses with, and by George's immature dad. |
| 214 | * ''[[RecycledTheSeries Ferris Bueller]]'''s pilot episode opens with the title character trashing [[Film/FerrisBuellersDayOff the film his show is based on]] as a heavily fictionalized account of his real adventures, even going so far as to take a chainsaw to a cutout of Creator/MatthewBroderick. This evidently left a ''very'' foul taste in fans' mouths, as ratings were pretty good for the show's sneak preview but then dropped like a rock afterward, and the show was cancelled at only one season. If there were a guidebook on adapting films into TV shows, "Immediately set the tone for fans of the wildly popular and successful source material by denigrating and attacking it within the first few minutes!" would surely be found in the "DON'T" column. |
| 215 | * When Fox executives complained that ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' should have aliens because it was a sci-fi show, Joss gleefully inserted a carnival barker claiming that "aliens are among us!" It turned out to be a mutated cow fetus. Note this was in [[RefugeInAudacity the last filmed episode of the series.]] |
| 216 | * ''Series/{{Frasier}}'': |
| 217 | ** The series did one to its parent show ''Series/{{Cheers}}''. In the parent show Sam and Diane have a vicious argument only for Sam to ask "Are you as turned on as I am?", to which Diane responds "More!", and [[TheBigDamnKiss they kiss]]. When Frasier tries this when arguing with a coworker, it is met with a horrified "NO!" |
| 218 | ** The Emmy-winning season six episode "Dr. Nora" is one long take-that to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the most popular radio psychiatrist of the time (and a competitor of Dr. Joy Browne, another radio counsellor and ''Frasier'' consultant). The entire episode portrays Dr. Nora as a sadistic, mean-spirited satire of the famously ultraconservative Schlessinger, though she does have several VillainHasAPoint moments. |
| 219 | * ''Series/AFrenchVillage'': Geneviève is told by the US Army Colonel that one of the soldiers who attacked her will be hanged... the one who had ''not'' committed rape, because he's Black, which he freely admitted was due to American racism. Antoine is very disgusted by this, saying it's a joke for the US say it represents freedom and democracy while they do such things. |
| 220 | * ''Series/FutureMan'': Creator/BillCosby and Creator/JamesCameron both get it. Josh is shocked to learn in 1969 that Cosby had joked about drugging women even back then. When his impression of Cosby makes one black student say he almost stopped liking him, Josh says "Get used to it". Cameron is portrayed as completely egotistical, having programmed his house AI to sing his praises in an over-the-top manner. |
| 221 | [[/folder]] |
| 222 | |
| 223 | [[folder:G]] |
| 224 | * ''Series/GhostWhisperer'' had an entire episode dedicated to knocking ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' in general and the StalkingIsLove aspect of it in particular. In it, Melinda has to help out a teenage girl who believes one of her classmates is a vampire, because of the weird stuff that's been happening around her. This being ''Series/GhostWhisperer'', it of course turns out that she's actually being haunted by the ghost of a friend who'd died after they'd lost contact and was [[ChildhoodFriendRomance upset that they'd never be able to have a relationship]]. |
| 225 | * ''Series/GilligansIsland'' creator Sherwood Schwartz named the Castaways' boat, the ''Minnow'', after Newton Minow made his famous "vast wasteland" speech. |
| 226 | ** A TV movie about the making of ''Series/GilligansIsland'' was narrated by the original show's cast: except for Tina Louise, who was the only surviving cast member to not participate. It's probably not a coincidence that she's portrayed as a bitchy, slutty moron in stark contrast to the downright saintly portrayals of everyone else. |
| 227 | * ''Series/{{Glee}}'': |
| 228 | ** The series took a shot at ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' in the episode "Theatricality", where Principal Figgins informs Tina that she must abandon her Goth look due to the pseudo-vampirism caused by the popularity of the book series. |
| 229 | ** "The Sue Sylvester Shuffle" has a barrage of Take Thats in the top ten losers of the year. |
| 230 | ** The show took shots at Music/BritneySpears and Creator/LindsayLohan ("You have Britney and her shaved head, Lindsay Lohan looks like something out of lord of the rings" - Emma Pillsbury, season 1, episode 14) before having them both guest star on the show in later seasons! Even after Britney appeared, they took shots at her in season 4, having a whole episode dedicated to parodying her depression back in 2007. |
| 231 | ** The episode "Guilty Pleasures" in which Jake wants to perform a song by Music/ChrisBrown, and upon learning this the girls of the Glee Club (even shy girl Marley) corner him to change his mind because of how much they hate him, particularly Tina, who states with a yell "the dude is a psychopath!" (Ironically, they don't have a problem with his doing "My Prerogative" by ''another'' singer called Brown known for beating up his partner.) |
| 232 | * ''Series/GoodNewsWeek'' has one of these about every five minutes, besides news stories politics and religion get the worst. It's not uncommon for someone to comment "we're going to have pissed off everyone by the end of the episode" this just results in more TakeThat's. |
| 233 | [[/folder]] |
| 234 | |
| 235 | [[folder:H]] |
| 236 | * In the ''Series/{{Haven}}'' episode "Shot in the Dark", Jennifer comments that she read a book called ''Unstake My Heart'' and it is even worse than ''Literature/{{Twilight|2005}}''. |
| 237 | * In the smart cop drama ''Series/HomicideLifeOnTheStreet'' impressionable Detective Bayliss became awed after interviewing an emergency-room doctor about the death of a patient and said, "It's like she was doing God's work," he enthused. "How can we compare?" Not long after, his cynical, veteran partner, Detective Pembleton was sick of it. "You want glory? Go work at Series/{{ER}}," he snapped. "Homicide's fine by me." A not so subtle jab at the wildly popular hospital show. |
| 238 | ** And the producers of ''Homicide: Life on the Street'' had good reason to do a take that against ''ER''. Originally, ''Homicide'' was supposed to replace ''Series/LALaw'' on Thursday nights at 10:00 PM in the fall of 1994, which at the time was one of the best time slots on NBC. However, ''ER'' tested so well, that the executives at Creator/WarnerBros, ''ER'''s production company, campaigned NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield to give ''that'' series the prized Thursday slot, which he did. The producers of ''Homicide'' felt that if ''they'' had been given that time slot instead of ''ER'', the show would not have had to constantly deal with ratings struggles which, in their minds, were the prime reasons why the show was constantly dealing with ExecutiveMeddling throughout the run. |
| 239 | * ''Series/HorribleHistories'': |
| 240 | ** The show got in on the "mock ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga''" fad; their sketch about Lord Byron included some lines based on the movie, and was ended with a bumper reading "twit light" in the same font as the movie titles. |
| 241 | ** ''Horrible Histories'' also ''really'' loves to mock Simon Cowell. Among other things, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I sing in their song "The Tudors," "At least we're not as rude as... Simon Cowell!" |
| 242 | * ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'': |
| 243 | ** Had an interesting in-universe Take That. Ted finds out that his ex-fiance's ex-boyfriend made a movie called ''The Wedding Bride'', which is a retelling of the whole marital drama between the trio except blatantly skewed in favor of the ex-boyfriend. To Ted's horror, the main antagonist of the film is called "Jed", and is played up to be the biggest, most unsympathetic {{Jerkass}} in the history of the world. |
| 244 | ** There is also a TakeThat at ''Series/{{Friends}}'' in an episode where the guys go to a coffee shop. |
| 245 | --->'''Ted:''' So I guess that settles it.\ |
| 246 | '''Marshall:''' Yep.\ |
| 247 | '''Barney:''' Hanging out in a coffee shop, not nearly as much fun as hanging out in a bar. |
| 248 | ** In an episode where Ted imagines what the future will be like, when he imagines a good future he's reading a newspaper with the headline "UsefulNotes/AlGore signs new bill into law." Later, when he imagines a horrible future, the headline says "Bush elected for surprise third term". |
| 249 | ** There's also one aimed at Creator/GeorgeLucas: |
| 250 | --->'''Marshall:''' I can't believe you threw up in your Stormtrooper helmet.\ |
| 251 | '''Barney:''' Eh... I did something worse in it after ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' premiered. |
| 252 | ** The Season 8 episode, "The Fortress", has Barney explaining his feelings to Robin by using the [[Film/SupermanTheMovie first]] [[Film/SupermanII two]] Franchise/{{Superman}} movies as an analogy. Then, he disregards ''Film/SupermanIII'' by calling it "a complete trainwreck". |
| 253 | [[/folder]] |
| 254 | |
| 255 | [[folder:I]] |
| 256 | * ''Series/ICarly'' has an entire episode setup as a shot at the Creator/DisneyChannel (transparently disguised in-universe as the "Dingo Channel") for ripping off stuff the creator of ''iCarly'' had done, to the point where the characters invade the bowels of the studio, and steal Creator/WaltDisney's (or his closest FictionalCounterpart) cryogenically frozen head. |
| 257 | ** To top it off, the stuff the Dingo Channel creates is said to be completely bland, stale, and devoid of anything even remotely resembling entertainment value. |
| 258 | *** Disney seems to have fired back. Notice ''Series/SoRandom'''s resemblance to ''Series/AllThat'' in ''Series/SonnyWithAChance''. The resemblance is because one of the creators of ''All That'' is the creator of ''Sonny with a Chance''. |
| 259 | *** Another funny thing about that is that there ''is'' a studio called Creator/{{Dingo|Pictures}} ''[[Creator/DingoPictures Pictures]]'' that steals ideas from Disney. |
| 260 | ** They actually kind of {{lampshade|Hanging}}d that (sort of), with Spencer commenting on the stupidity of the adults on the Dingo Channel shows, [[HypocriticalHumor only to have Carly remind him that he forgot to put on his pants...]] |
| 261 | ** In case you still have doubts about the reference to Disney: In Europe, "Dingo" is the French name for Goofy. |
| 262 | *** And then there's "iCarly Saves TV," a subtlety-free TakeThat to network television's idea of TV for kids. |
| 263 | ** Another Take That was aimed at the fans (or more specifically, the ones who are constantly nagging about Seddie or Creddie pairings) during the episode "iStart A Fan War", by showing them as crazy losers who don't care about the show itself, only about the {{Shipping}}. |
| 264 | * Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, the creators of ''Series/InsideNo9'', have stated publicly that they based the character Angel (an annoying, demanding vlogger) in the episode "Thinking Out Loud" on the influencer Elle Darby. At the time of writing, she had been publicly criticised for asking for a free hotel stay in return for a review; which they considered a very entitled thing to do. |
| 265 | ** In "Wise Owl", Wilf is a former actor who voiced Wise Owl, the mascot of a series of [[PublicServiceAnnouncement public information films]] in the 1970s. He says he was invited to reprise the role for a new CGI version of Wise Owl, but declined because "it would have been crap." This is a swipe at several attempts in the real world to revive characters from public information films in CGI (including Charley Says, and Joe and Petunia), which Shearsmith and Pemberton didn't like. |
| 266 | * ''Series/TheITCrowd'' takes a jab at Microsoft when a bomb-disposal robot starts playing up: |
| 267 | -->'''Moss:''' What operating system does it use? |
| 268 | -->'''Bomb-Disposal Expert:''' Vista! |
| 269 | -->'''Moss:''' We're going to die! |
| 270 | * In the ''Series/IZombie'' episode "Grumpy Old Liv", Liv ends up temporarily saddled with the personality of a rude, cantankerous old man. At one point, she refers to a lab rat (which BollywoodNerd Ravi has nicknamed [[Film/ANewHope "New Hope"]]) as "Final Hope". Ravi responds that if he'd wanted the rat to have a depressing name, he'd have gone with [[Film/ThePhantomMenace "Phantom Menace"]]. |
| 271 | [[/folder]] |
| 272 | |
| 273 | [[folder:J]] |
| 274 | * In the ''Series/{{JAG}}'' episode "Tiger, Tiger", A frigate has been taken over by terrorists. Harm and his girlfriend’s ten-year-old kid are cut off in the hangar. |
| 275 | -->'''Josh Pendry''': ''Film/UnderSiege!''\ |
| 276 | '''Lieutenant Commander Harmon Rabb''': What?\ |
| 277 | '''Josh Pendry''': Creator/StevenSeagal in ''Under Siege''. He got the Pentagon on a satellite radio from a lifeboat.\ |
| 278 | '''Lieutenant Commander Harmon Rabb''': Well, [[ThisIsReality unfortunately this isn't a movie]], Josh. These lifeboats have satellite radios with an emergency beacon and a short-range voice transmitter. We could activate one. The UsefulNotes/CoastGuard would come, but before we could inform them of our situation, who knows what these terrorists are likely to do.\ |
| 279 | '''Josh Pendry''': It's so cool in the movie.\ |
| 280 | '''Lieutenant Commander Harmon Rabb''': Well, I'm sure it was. |
| 281 | * ''Series/JaneTheVirgin'' was NOT subtle with jabs at UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump either before or after the election. The show pulled off a spectacular one in "[[Recap/JaneTheVirginS4E15ChapterSeventyNine Chapter Seventy-Nine]]": When Alba becomes a U.S. citizen [[spoiler: she looks at a framed picture of President Trump...which then morphs into a picture of UsefulNotes/BarackObama.]] |
| 282 | * ''Series/JustTheTenOfUs'': In "Dreamgirls", Connie says she'd rather be a novelist than help her sisters become a famous singing group. Wendy says that if Connie gets famous, it will guarantee that anything she writes will be published. To exemplify this, she contemptuously points out how Creator/SuzanneSomers published a book of poetry (which Cindy likes but the other sisters view as trash). [[note]] Somers actually wrote that book before becoming famous, though.[[/note]] |
| 283 | [[/folder]] |
| 284 | |
| 285 | [[folder:K]] |
| 286 | * ''Series/KnightRider'': |
| 287 | ** A HUGE one on ''Series/TheDukesOfHazzard'' in the episode "Give Me Liberty... Or Give Me Death". In a race with alternative-fuel powered cars, there is one car run on moonshine and driven by Bo and Luke Duke {{exp|y}}ies - the brothers are even named Prince (a higher rank than a duke) - and while other contestants are threatened, the Prince brothers are the only ones killed. For good measure, their car, which is the General Lee without the Confederate flag (same orange color) is blown up with them in it! |
| 288 | ** After ProductDisplacement enforced by General Motors declared the words Pontiac, Trans Am, and everything related off-limits, the writers responded by having KITT (the lead talking car) praise rival Ford Motor Company's founder's color choice. |
| 289 | [[/folder]] |
| 290 | |
| 291 | [[folder:L]] |
| 292 | * The ''Series/LandOfTheLost1974'' episode "Hurricane" includes a line from visiting Texan astronaut Beauregard Jackson, “That [[SwirlyEnergyThingy shimmer]] just took off [[LastSecondWordSwap like a bat out of]] [[UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} Philadelphia!]]” |
| 293 | * A lot of Creator/CraigFerguson's jokes on ''Series/TheLateLateShowWithCraigFerguson'' are (admittedly mostly joking) {{Take That}}s towards CBS and TV in general. He has also said a direct TakeThat to ''Series/{{MASH}}'', saying that his upcoming Robot Skeleton Sidekick will be the "the most awesome thing not just in late-nite television, but in all television, ever!" |
| 294 | ** It's become one of Ferguson's catchphrases. These days, when he feels he's been mean towards someone who didn't deserve it, he'll often inverse this trope, jokingly saying things along the lines of "Take that, nice woman in the audience!", or "Take that, single mothers!". |
| 295 | * The last episodes of ''Series/LateNight'' hosted for Creator/DavidLetterman are full of ''Take That'' moments against Creator/{{NBC}}, but the finale include a subtle one: "The World's Most Dangerous Band", led by Paul Shaffer, played as a musical interlude the song titled [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3AjfobLpws&feature=related#t=07m51s We Gotta Get Out Of This Place]]. The lyrics of this [[The60s sixties']] song say: "We gotta get out of this place / If it's the last thing we ever do / We gotta get out of this place / Girl, '''there's a better life for me and you'''". |
| 296 | * Two different sketches on ''Laugh-In'' made fun of the other two networks. |
| 297 | ** In a quick sketch, we hear the voices of cast members Alan Sues and Henry Gibson as network executives. One has just pitched a show and the other likes it and wants to call it "Laugh-In". The first says it's already taken and suggests they call it "Hee Haw". To ram the point home, the only thing we see is a door labeled "CBS Program Development". |
| 298 | ** In a little longer sketch, Dan Rowan and [[ItMakesSenseInContext Sammy Davis, Jr.]] are Mexican stag film producers talking about the recent slump in the stag film economy and that they're stuck with their first full-length film. As the sketch ends, Sammy suggests that [[spoiler: they sell it to California school boards under the title ''Series/LeaveItToBeaver'']]. Dan quips "Makes no difference. We put it on ABC, nobody gonna watch it, anyway." |
| 299 | * Speaking of which, an episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' had Lennie disgusted at a lab tech, saying "Those crime scene guys are highly overrated. The problem is, they all think they're cops." A fairly clear dig at ''Series/{{CSI}}'' and other {{Forensic Drama}}s. More than a few cops feel that way in RealLife too. |
| 300 | ** On another episode after arresting a wannabe mafioso who did a lousy job covering his tracks, one of the police officers looked at the other and said something to the effect of "It's ''Series/TheSopranos''. Makes them all think they're invincible." |
| 301 | ** A later episode featured a [[{{Cult}} sinister, scientology-like cult]] that was portrayed as litigious, greedy, psychologically and possibly physically abusive, kept secret files on their own people, and were ''strongly'' suspected of [[DrivenToSuicide driving the victim to her death]] [[spoiler: however, this particular Take That ended on a rather weird note: not only was the cult not directly responsible for her death, the real killer ''joined them in order to find peace'', and one of the prosecutors quips that ''he'' might be involved in the influential cult as well]]. |
| 302 | *** The confusion may be resolved by noting that this episode was [[strike:RippedFromTheHeadlines]] inspired by a real-life case. Naturally, a few details were changed to avoid litigation. |
| 303 | ** The series finale didn't even try to hide the fact that they were ripping from the 4chan/Anonymous headlines, with the main antagonist's online screename literally being "moot". In particular, one of the suspects (trying to be "moot") was stand-in for one of moot's longtime rivals, a pedophile rival message board owner who had a history of trying to destroy 4chan via spam bots flooding 4chan with spam for his rival website. |
| 304 | ** An early episode had a spoiled, rich, adult man firmly under his mother's thumb. He got sent to Riker's Island for breaking bail (by taking his children to Barbados on vacation). The DA's office decided to send in an informant to very carefully ''not'' elicit information as the rich man broke under the unpleasant pressure of prison. |
| 305 | --->'''Schiff:''' Who can we send in?\ |
| 306 | '''Stone:''' We've got an armed robber... a landlord... they're both ripe for deals.\ |
| 307 | '''Schiff:''' Send in the armed robber. The jury will find him more sympathetic than a landlord. |
| 308 | ** The show was also a fan of doing episodes where they mocked existing shows, ranging from "Series/TheRealWorld" (cast member kills another cast member, manipulated by a corrupt Creator/{{MTV}} executive), ''Series/RescueMe'' (two episodes were done that criticized that show's take on firefighters), ''Series/NipTuck'' (plastic surgeon accidentally kills a patient), and the various TLC shows about families with large numbers of kids. |
| 309 | * ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' features as a recurring character an obnoxious, loudmouthed, blond cable news anchor named "Faith Yancy", no points for guessing who she's an Expy of. |
| 310 | ** Yet another episode featured a video blogger named [=WeepingWillow17=] who owned a stuffed monkey puppet and got kidnapped, obviously based on ''WebVideo/{{Lonelygirl15}}'', a series co-created by one Miles Beckett. The episode in question also featured a scene where an amateur video maker named Miles was criticised for including too many cuts; his show was described as "visual masturbation", with "no depth, no theme, no narrative..." Ouch. Just in case the viewers didn't get it, the videos were then compared directly to [=WeepingWillow17=]. |
| 311 | ** CI somehow managed to deliver a Take That to Tom [=DeLay=] on both the show and in real life. |
| 312 | * In-Universe example in ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'': in the episode "Authority", Elliot Stabler arrests Merrit Rook for tricking a fast food restaurant worker to tie-up and sexually assault a female co-worker. Rook is found not guilty, then the following day, appears on a talk show about his campaign for people to not be subservient sheep, bring a live sheep on the show named "Elliot". |
| 313 | * A poster for the showings of ''Series/{{Lost}}'' season 4 on Sky said in big letters ANSWERS ARE COMING and underneath in much smaller letters [Unless you have Virgin Media or Freeview]! To clarify, [[Creator/{{Sky}} Sky One]], the channel that premiered seasons 3-6 of ''Lost'' in the UK, was pulled from Virgin Media between 2007 and 2008 after a dispute between Sky and Virgin. |
| 314 | * ''Series/LostInSpace'' took a potshot at ''Series/IDreamOfJeannie'' in "The Thief From Outer Space". The titular character and Dr. Smith spend most of the episode fighting over a magical genie bottle. At the end, it's revealed to the horror of both men and the Jupiter II crew that the genie is an overweight, shrill woman who is unnervingly creepy about satisfying their desires. The genie is shoved back into her bottle and is promptly forgotten about. The only one who takes any interest in her is The Robot, who proceeds to lean over to the bottle, pick it up... [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments and tell her his life story]]. |
| 315 | * Spanish puppet show ''Series/LosLunnis'' once did a truly spectacular one to both promulgate a ReadingIsCoolAesop and to attack competitor TV channel Cuatro and its broadcast of ''Manga/DragonBallZ''. |
| 316 | [[/folder]] |
| 317 | |
| 318 | [[folder:M]] |
| 319 | * ''Series/MadTV1995'': |
| 320 | ** One episode had SantaClaus (played by Michael [=McDonald=]) erasing a kid's memories of himself. Santa remarked that while he was erasing memories, he wanted the audience to forget about a show called ''Series/SaturdayNightLive''. In another sketch, Martin Short (who guest starred on ''[=MADtv=]'' and was a cast member on ''SNL'' in the mid-1980s), "Live from New York!" and is told that that's another show. |
| 321 | ** In an episode cold opening, George W. Bush (played by Will Sasso) calls for a manhunt against Chris Kattan after seeing ''Film/CorkyRomano''. ''And'' in another episode cold opening, Nicole Parker insults an old man who only came on ''[=MADtv=]'' because he thought Creator/JimmyFallon was a cast member on the show. |
| 322 | ** The parody song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80McIE1vBDY What's on TV]]" (a take-off on Music/{{Eminem}}'s "Without Me") is one long-winded "Take That!" against pretty much every television series of the late 90s and early 2000s. The targets are ''Series/{{Frasier}}'', ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', ''Series/DawsonsCreek'', ''Series/{{Friends}}'', ''Series/{{ER}}'', ''Series/TheKingOfQueens'', ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'', ''Series/{{Becker}}'', ''Series/JustShootMe'', ''Series/TouchedByAnAngel'', ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'', ''Series/{{ED}}'', ''Series/YesDear'', ''Series/JudgingAmy'', ''Series/ThePractice'', ''Series/TheView'', ''Series/SeventhHeaven'', ''Series/{{JAG}}'', ''Series/BigBrother'', ''Series/AccordingToJim'', ''Series/SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'', ''Series/CrossingJordan'', and the channels that show them. It's capped off with "Em" declaring that ''[=MADtv=]'' is the best show on TV. [[GreenEyedMonster Wow]]. |
| 323 | * An episode of ''Series/TheMaryTylerMooreShow'' had Lou Grant stuck babysitting Bess Lindstrom. She wants to watch TV, so he asks about "[[Series/TheBradyBunch The Clancy Clan]]". Bess unenthusiastically describes it as a show about a family that has a lot of kids, and they have all these laughs because...they have all these kids. Lou notably did not ask, "What's their story?" |
| 324 | * ''Series/{{Medium}}'' does this to ''Series/GhostWhisperer'' when Allison investigates [[spoiler: what seems to be the spirit of a dead author going into an injured man to reunite with his wife. It turns out the "new" husband is a fraud who found the dead man's unpublished autobiography]]. |
| 325 | * Creator/AdamBuxton's SketchShow ''Mee BOX'' has a sketch involving [[http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0DJnR5OT9UQ an interview with a fictional actor "Famous Guy"]] which has several Take Thats within. The first and most obvious is a jab at the popularity of actors, as Famous Guy is referred to as a "pretending man" and "the best at pretending". It also parodies the movie industry's constant rehashing of the same ideas with nondescript movie titles like "Horse Chase", "The Exploding Car" and "They Came From Space There". American actors trying to duplicate a UsefulNotes/{{British Accent|s}} is sent-up with Famous Guy's bad attempt at a Cockney accent. There's a more subtle jab at men's magazines in the first part of the sketch: if you pause at the "Man Magazine" you can read headlines such as "Articles about sex inside here" and "Are all feelings homosexual? Why the answer is yes". This is perhaps aimed at [[UsefulNotes/BritishNewspapers the Daily Sport]], which has relaunched itself as being about nothing but "Sports, girls and funny stuff". |
| 326 | * ''Series/Millennium1996'' was apparently the subject of so much ExecutiveMeddling from the Broadcast Standards and Practices that series writer Darin Morgin parodied him in the episode "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me", with a segment about how a demon drives a Broadcast Standards & Practices guy insane. This eventually results in the hilarious line, "You will not get away with this! The final scene is gratuitously violent! Aliens would not carry an Uzi! They are a superior race and they would not carry or utilize automatic weapons! I will not approve this! ''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis I am Broadcast Standards and Practices!]]''" |
| 327 | * ''Series/{{Misfits}}'' has had a couple of pretty overt jabs at ''Series/{{Heroes}}''. Very early on there's a scene where all of the characters break down laughing at the idea that they should all start fighting crime and saving the world (although that could just be superhero stories in general). But S2 has a wimpy SoapboxSadie champagne socialist rich-boy who jumps to the conclusion that he might become the most important of the characters... and instantly gets killed off. And the villain of the S2 Christmas episode is a handsome dark-haired guy who wants to be the most powerful person in the world, collects other people's powers but mostly uses telekenesis... and is an utterly pathetic douchenozzle who dies ludicrously well before the end of the ep through stupidly misusing one of his own powers. Anyone get the idea that the writers don't like a certain trustafarian male nurse or a certain guy named after a watch brand? |
| 328 | * ''Series/MockTheWeek'' is about 28 minutes of this per half-hour episode, but the August 29, 2009 example takes the prize for being the most...direct. Dara O'Briain, the host, had fluffed his "That's right, the answer is [X]" several times, and announced "Just in case this gets on one of those outtake clip shows, Anne Robinson's a cunt." |
| 329 | * ''Series/{{Monk}}'': |
| 330 | ** The episode "Mr. Monk and the TV Star" has a a scene where Monk and Sharona are on the set of a ''Series/{{CSI}}'' stand-in called ''Crime Lab: SF'' while investigating their lead actor. We later see a summation bit from the show being redubbed. What we see of the scene demonstrates many of CSI's distinctive visual effects where the killer of the episode in question ''took out his own blood and froze it into a bullet mold, just so that it would melt without a trace later''. |
| 331 | ** "Mr. Monk and the Really, ''Really'' Dead Guy", where Monk outwits the FBI's state-of-the-art computer technology, just to demonstrate that it is actual thinking and thought processing that closes cases, not computers and flashy technology. |
| 332 | * Promos for ''Monsterquest'' have shown Bigfoot and a swamp-creature living casually in suburbia, with the caption "If they lived among us, there would be no quest". This may be a TakeThat against ''Lost Tapes'', a competing cryptid-themed show with the tagline "Do they live among us?" The poor quality of the promo costumes may also be a TakeThat, as ''Lost Tapes'' monsters are usually pretty fake-looking. |
| 333 | * ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'': |
| 334 | ** The series aimed a few Take Thats at programme planners, who had irritated the team by moving the programme about in the schedules seemingly at random. Among the brickbats include John Cleese's comment in the second series "I'd like to be in programme planning, unfortunately I've got a degree" and an extended sketch in the third series where penguins were discovered to be more intelligent than programme planners. |
| 335 | ** The ''Python'' team also aimed a few Take Thats at former employer David Frost; in one instance parodying him as the narcissistic Timmy Williams whose TV show credits proclaimed him as sole writer, followed by a neverending list of names under "Additional Material". |
| 336 | ** They also aimed at British politicians in specific ("Number 26: Margaret Thatcher's brain") and in general ("It was never our intention to imply that politicians are weak-kneed, political time-servers who are concerned more with their personal vendettas and private power struggles than the problems of government..."). |
| 337 | ** Their "Upper-Class Twit of The Year" skit is just one big TakeThat against the British upper class. |
| 338 | ** The Piranha Brothers sketch talks about Dinsdale's "warm interest" in associations that are implied to be populated by gay men: "boys' clubs, [[HelloSailor sailors' homes]], ... and of course the Household Cavalry." |
| 339 | * Creator/MorecambeAndWise had a long-running faux feud with Des O'Connor, with Take Thats on almost every show. In a Julius Caesar sketch: |
| 340 | -->"The people in the Colosseum are rioting!"\ |
| 341 | "Des O'Connor wasn't singing, was he?"\ |
| 342 | "No we'd thrown him to the lions- but they threw him back.") |
| 343 | * ''Series/MorkAndMindy'': |
| 344 | ** A third season episode actually has [[CelebrityParadox Mork meeting]] Creator/RobinWilliams, but before he actually meets him, Mork spends most of the episode being horrified that people think he looks like Robin, making the first part of this episode Robin doing a Take That at himself. |
| 345 | --->'''Mork''': Do you know what "Robin" means on Ork?\ |
| 346 | '''Mindy''': What?\ |
| 347 | ''Mork whispers to Mindy''\ |
| 348 | '''Mindy''': That's disgusting!\ |
| 349 | '''Mork''': Don't look at me, I didn't give him that smutty name! |
| 350 | ** And later... |
| 351 | --->'''Mork''': He looks like he does his hair with a Cuisinart! Man, he's got a road map for eyes! You could pack a family in that nose, man! I mean, look at that mouth, "Duuurrr...". They had to airbrush his entire face, are you kidding? I mean, I'm bright and cheery and this guy's got big problems! |
| 352 | ** The episode "Mork's Mixed Emotions" had a brief TakeThat against Creator/SteveMartin. Mork, after a wild night of overwhelming emotions, bursts into the record store and throws a cardboard cut-out of Steve across the room and yells Steve's trademark "EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEE!". Perhaps not really intended as a Take That, since Steve and Robin were good friends in real life, but it sure comes off as one. |
| 353 | ** And one of the more bizarre episodes was a TakeThat against commercial television, with Mork becoming a zombie consumer and then having a nightmare about all his friends becoming tools of the advertisers. Of course, [[BrokenAesop being on a commercial network, they had to add a coda that "advertising is okay and it's up to the consumer to decide whether to buy or not."]] It even had a FourthWall breaking ending, with Mork saying "If there's something on television you don't want to watch, you can simply just press this butt-"... followed by the screen shrinking down to a dot like when older [=TVs=] turned off. |
| 354 | * During the MTV Awards in 2003, when Gollum of ''Lord of the Rings'' accepted his award, he went on a profane-filled rant, ripping apart the entire movie cast, and even ripped into [[Literature/HarryPotter Dobby]]. Anyone wanna sign Gollum up for his own talk show? |
| 355 | * ''Series/TheMuppetShow'': |
| 356 | ** JustForFun/StatlerAndWaldorf are the anthropomorphic personifications of this trope. If they aren't being snide about the actors on stage, they're aiming at the (theater) audience. And got popcorn thrown at them a couple of times. There's a reason that them doing their schtick on a couch at home didn't work so well. |
| 357 | ** A moose tried to get on the show, saying his name was "Mickey". Kermit shooed him away, saying that [[Creator/{{Disney}} Mickey Moose]] was a dumb name. |
| 358 | * ''Series/TheMuppets2015'': |
| 359 | ** According to the episode "Going, Going, Gonzo", not even Creator/JosephGordonLevitt understood the plot of ''Film/{{Looper}}''. |
| 360 | ** From the same episode, Piggy's water brand (which is full of fat) appears to be a shot at Coca-Cola's Vitamin Water (which has as much sugar as soda). |
| 361 | ** A parody of One Million Moms shows up in "A Tail of Two Piggies", protesting Piggy showing her tail (there's an inexplicable in-universe prejudice against pig tails despite the other Muppets who are animals leaving them uncovered). There's only three of them; they like to round up. |
| 362 | * One of the later episodes of ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' featured a rather savage attack on ''Series/{{Friends}}'' (the fact that the episode was titled "Murder Among Friends" should have been enough of a hint) in the form of a ShowWithinAShow called "Buds", among whose cast there was, of course, the requisite murder. And murderer. This was because TPTB were angry that CBS executives had [[ExecutiveMeddling inexplicably moved the show ]] from its comfortable Sunday-night timeslot where it had been a ratings powerhouse for nearly a decade, to Thursday nights, opposite ''Series/{{Friends}}'', where it was now being slaughtered. |
| 363 | ** There's also the series finale, which could be a very symbolic Take That. The episode involves the murder of a radio station manager who is murdered after deciding to gain younger viewers by firing all employees over a certain age and switching the format from classical music to hard rock (symbolism much?) The title? ''' ''Death by Demographics'' ''' (''Murder She Wrote'' was moved to Thursdays and fed to the sharks because it wasn't picking up enough 18-39 viewers.) |
| 364 | ** There was an obvious spoof of then-rival ''Cagney & Lacey'' on ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' -- the cops of the week were female partners, one blonde and one dark, both with rather outrageously blue-collar accents, shown as almost constantly on the phone trying to solve personal/family issues. |
| 365 | ** And another episode took place on the set of ''Danger Doctor'' - an obvious ''Series/DiagnosisMurder'' spoof. Jessica became involved because the writers had ''stolen one of her stories''. |
| 366 | * ''Series/MurphyBrown'' was famous for mocking politician UsefulNotes/DanQuayle with attacks ranging from subtle to outright. It got to the point that when the titular character became pregnant and decided to raise her child as a single mother, Quayle took the opportunity to publicly denounce single motherhood. ''Murphy Brown'' gave it right back by having Murphy tearfully complain to Frank that Quayle was mocking her lifestyle. Frank, incredulous at Murphy's trauma, responded simply, "Murphy, it's ''Dan Quayle''." In the following episode, Murphy responds in an apparently mature way by having a special edition of ''FYI'' focused on several kinds of families... then hires a truck to dump several tons of potatoes on Quayle's front door. |
| 367 | * ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' does this all the time. |
| 368 | -->'''Crow''': This movie is like ''Film/{{Porkys}}'', [[{{Dissimile}} only without the charm]]. |
| 369 | ** They also subverted it, with a deliberately unfunny "lampoon" of ''Series/LoveAmericanStyle''. |
| 370 | ** They also had a history of doing this to Leonard Maltin. In the episode "Laserblast", Dr. Forrester mentions that Maltin gave this movie 2 and a half stars. Mike and the bots then take out his movie guide and mock him during the credits. In the episode "The Undead", they find out he gave the movie three stars. Mike dressed up as him and apologizes. Maltin actually got back at them by appearing on the show and suggesting that Mrs. Forrester force them to watch ''Film/{{Gorgo}}'', which he actually also liked (though he admitted it put two of his book editors in intensive care). |
| 371 | ** Show creator Joel Hodgson considered fellow prop comic Gallagher something of an arrogant dick after a pre-[[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]] encounter, and would regularly drop Take Thats on him. |
| 372 | ** The "Avalanche" episode has Jonah and the Bots mocking movies like ''Film/{{Birdemic}}'' and ''Film/{{Sharknado}}'' by buying the rights to a LongList of names for "stupid-on-purpose hybrid B-movies" to keep them from being made. |
| 373 | ** The "Cave Dwellers" episode drops one in a scene where the heroes are slaughtering some mooks: "They're kinda dumb, they're easy to kill -- the Series/AmericanGladiators!" |
| 374 | ** In [[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S05E12Mitchell "Mitchell"]], Joel escapes from the Satellite of Love on a single-seat escape pod because it was [[DiscouragingConcealment hidden in a crate labeled "Hamdingers"]], which Gypsy comments that no one likes. |
| 375 | %% ** Morrissey [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQR78U6zvGI Tupperware]]. |
| 376 | * On the Duct Tape Island Survival episode, the ''Series/MythBusters'' had this advice: [[TakeThat Don't]] [[Series/ManVsWild drink your own urine]]. |
| 377 | [[/folder]] |
| 378 | |
| 379 | [[folder:N]] |
| 380 | * The first episode of ''Series/{{NCIS}}'' has Gibbs talking to a security guard when arriving at a crime scene. |
| 381 | -->'''Gibbs:''' Gibbs, NCIS.\ |
| 382 | '''Guard:''' Is that like CSI?\ |
| 383 | '''Gibbs:''' Only if you're dyslexic. |
| 384 | [[/folder]] |
| 385 | |
| 386 | [[folder:O]] |
| 387 | * ''Series/OddSquad'': |
| 388 | ** Soundcheck, a generic boy band whom Otto loves, is a jab at other generic boy bands like One Direction. In "Disorder in the Court", they treat claims of them having "manufactured sound and meaningless lyrics" as compliments by remarking that that's what they do best. Likewise, the Villain People, featured in the Season 3 episode "Music of Sound", is a jab at girl groups. |
| 389 | ** The episode "Oscar the Couch" has a ColdOpen of Delivery Debbie being unable to deliver her Hawaiian pizza because the house she needs to deliver to is in a "No Hawaiian Pizza Zone", referencing the ongoing debate about pineapple as a topping on pizza. |
| 390 | ** In "O is Not For Over", Olive and Otto take a potshot at the people in the fandom who ship them by way of Otto asking Olive if they have to be married now that they are Mr. O and Ms. O, and Olive responding in shock and horror before telling Otto not to make things weird. |
| 391 | ** Oprah's justification as to why Party Pam isn't selling any sandwiches with her marketing tactic in "First Day" ends with a clapback at the show's critics, who often berate Oprah for yelling too much at other characters even though she's a parody of real-life bosses. At the end of the episode, she yells her catchphrase at Olympia and Otis, stating that she still has one yell per day. |
| 392 | --> '''Oprah:''' If you're always yelling, that's all people think you do, and they don't see that there's a lot more to your character. |
| 393 | ** The ColdOpen in "The O Team" has Dustin call Mr. Fonts a sellout for expressing his desires to turn his newly-written novel into a movie. |
| 394 | ** Similarly, the ColdOpen of "O is for Opposite" takes a potshot at businesspeople by having its starring client laugh with someone on the phone, suddenly say "stocks", and then hang up on them. |
| 395 | ** In "Agent Orchid's Almost Half-Hour Talent Show", Olympia suggests that Orchid make her talent show longer, giving 30 minutes as a duration. Orchid fires back by saying that no one likes shows longer than 20 minutes, which is a dig at Creator/PBSKids and all of their shows, most of which are a half-hour in duration. Doubles as BitingTheHandHumor, since PBS Kids is the network where the show airs. |
| 396 | ** "The Ninja Situation" is one entire episode-long jab at the {{MacGuffin}} trope and its use in various works. |
| 397 | ** The show has taken two potshots at Segways and their poor popularity -- first in "Oscar of All Trades", where Oscar tells Olive that he simply drove a Segway around Headquarters as a job, and "Nature of the Sandbeast" where Omar refers to the machine as a "strange two-wheeled scooter". |
| 398 | ** The stoic sound operator that helps Oppola out in "Welcome to Odd Squad" mentions how cynical he is and how he has lost all hope for the world, which is a Take That at people who feel the same way due to the COVID pandemic. |
| 399 | ** One scene in "Monumental Oddness" slams tourists by painting them as people who refuse to be smart and run away from danger because they dismiss it as not important and want to see the sights instead. |
| 400 | * ''Series/OnTheHouse'': In "Take Me to Your Leader", Arnold rudely calls Dr. Stanley "Malcolm Muggeridge on wheels". |
| 401 | * ''Series/TheOrville'' has a very clever moment in this trope during its second episode, "Command Performance". The episode focuses on a zoo which houses sentient beings. Captain Mercer and Commander Grayson are held captive there until the Orville bargains for their release. Alara Kitan trades an archive of Earth's 21st Century Reality Television in exchange for Mercer and Grayson. We see a huge gathering outside the cell as it plays an episode of ''[[Series/TheRealHousewives Real Housewives of New Jersey]]'' to a vast number of aliens. The owners of the zoo describe it as their best exhibit yet. |
| 402 | [[/folder]] |
| 403 | |
| 404 | [[folder:P]] |
| 405 | * In ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'': |
| 406 | -->'''Tom''': Well, Entertainment 720 is dead. It's up in company heaven along with Pets.com, Blockbuster, and Ask Jeeves. My company is no better than a company where you ask a fake butler to Google things for you. |
| 407 | * ''Series/{{Patriot}}'': The episode "Fuck John Wayne" features a disabled cop talking about how John Wayne's real name is Marion Morrison and that he shirked fighting in World War 2 while later acting in films where he pretends to fight bravely. He goes on to argue that Wayne's phony bravado has convinced lots of men to be [[StiffUpperLip ashamed of their own suffering]], so he wears a shirt reading "Fuck John Wayne" when exercising to remind himself not to try to hide his pain. |
| 408 | * ''Franchise/PowerRangers'' had this happen at various points in the show's history. |
| 409 | ** The first season of ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' had the episode "Mighty Morphin Mutants," a TakeThat against rival show ''WesternAnimation/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|1987}}''. They later made up when the Saban-produced ''Series/NinjaTurtlesTheNextMutation'' had a crossover early on in ''Series/PowerRangersInSpace''. |
| 410 | ** ''Series/PowerRangersDinoThunder'' had the trading card game Dragon War, which makes a mockery of ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' and dragon-based monsters such as the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. The cards get turned into a monster which is promptly destroyed by the Power Rangers. |
| 411 | ** ''Series/PowerRangersJungleFury'' was aired around the time ''Naruto'' was popular, and spent quite a lot of time mocking Naruto's concepts of Sharingan, Rasengan, and other types of powers. |
| 412 | ** They've even mocked themselves on occasion- ''Series/PowerRangersWildForce'''s MilestoneCelebration "Forever Red" featured a TakeThat at the [[NeverLiveItDown infamous]] episode of ''Series/PowerRangersTurbo'' where the Rangers got baked into a giant pizza. |
| 413 | %%* A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKdtN01DeIw February 1976 Showcase skit]] on ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' took a potshot against Creator/{{NBC}}. |
| 414 | [[/folder]] |
| 415 | |
| 416 | [[folder:R]] |
| 417 | * On a 1980 episode of ''Real People'', one of NBC's few primetime hits in that era, one of the hosts, John Barbour, joked "If you base a TV show on another TV show, it's called a spinoff. Unless you work for ABC, in which case it's called a ripoff." "Oh, that's incredible!" responded Sarah Purcell, referring to that network's [[DuelingWorks Dueling Show]]. |
| 418 | * In the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "Beyond a Joke", Kryten drives a tank into a virtual reality adaptation of ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice''. According to the accompanying article in the Magazine/RadioTimes, the sentiment was: "Can't the BBC do anything later than the eighteenth century?" Judging by [[SeasonalRot how well that season was received]]... probably not. |
| 419 | ** An in universe example from the same episode. The fussy, obsessive nature of entire 4000 series of androids are a caricature of their creator's ex-fiancé, Kryten included. |
| 420 | ** The episode itself had Kryten compare something thoroughly unsurprising to ''Series/TalesOfTheUnexpected''. |
| 421 | ** ''The Last Day'' has Kryten speculate he might have just realised the value of friendship. Lister instructs him to can the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' crap. |
| 422 | ** In "Back To Reality", when the crew are hallucinating that they've been playing ''Red Dwarf: The Total Immersion Video Game'' very badly, we see a brief snatch of the next players, who are supposedly doing "better". Lister is a stereotyped American action hero, Kryten is just a bald human in a mechanoid suit, and Cat and Rimmer simply don't appear very distinctive. Now look at Grant Naylor's criticisms of the failed US pilot... |
| 423 | * Near the end of ''Series/RemingtonSteele'', there was an episode with an elderly British spy who said "We in [=MI5=] thought Film/JamesBond was a sissy." Creator/PierceBrosnan was in the running to play James Bond when Creator/RogerMoore left the role, but had to back out due to commitments to ''Remington Steele''. [[Film/GoldenEye It all worked out in the end...]] |
| 424 | * ''Series/RemoteControl'', the TV trivia game show that was MTV's first venture out of music videos, took a potshot at similar game show ''Series/CouchPotatoes'' shortly after the latter debuted. One of the skits in between episodes of a "best of" marathon featured the new ''Remote Control'' hostess thinking she had walked onto the set of ''Couch Potatoes'' after host Ken Ober described the rules for her... at which point Ober openly accused ''Couch Potatoes'' of ripping them off. |
| 425 | * The second-to-last episode of ''Series/{{Riptide|1984}}'' had the team helping out an obvious-but-stupid version of ''Series/{{Moonlighting}}'' (the show that beat it in the ratings). |
| 426 | [[/folder]] |
| 427 | |
| 428 | [[folder:S]] |
| 429 | * ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'': During his time on SNL, Creator/DavidSpade had the recurring "Weekend Update" segment "Spade In America", where he'd make wisecracks about celebrities. His most infamous one was in 1995, when he mocked former SNL superstar Creator/EddieMurphy, saying "Look, children, it's a falling star! Make a wish!". [[BerserkButton This]] ''[[BerserkButton really]]'' [[BerserkButton enraged Murphy]], who then refused to have anything to do with SNL for nearly 20 years. |
| 430 | * In ''Series/ScotchAndWry'', Frankenstein's monster is rather unimpressed by his bride: |
| 431 | -->"I see Avon didnae call... Did your mother come fae Ireland or were yer teeth ay that colour?" |
| 432 | * On the last episode of the game show ''Series/{{Scrabble}}'', Chuck Woolery addressed the show's cancellation and said, "I kept telling 'em, "Look, find somebody else to do it, it'll be a huge hit. Look what happened to ''Series/WheelOfFortune''!" This is, of course, a reference to Chuck's having left ''Wheel of Fortune'' in 1981 over a salary dispute. |
| 433 | * ''Series/ScreamQueens2015'': |
| 434 | ** When Hester is trying to convince Chanel that Ouija boards work, she asks if she saw "[[Film/{{Ouija}} the movie]]", to which Chanel responds, "Of course not, no one did." |
| 435 | ** After [[spoiler: Pete]] outs himself as an accomplice of the Red Devil killers, he tries to justify it with a bit of HeWhoFightsMonsters. Grace isn't impressed. |
| 436 | --->'''Grace''': You're quoting ''Nietzsche''? You're already a ''murderer'', [[spoiler: Pete]]. You don't have to be a ''douche'' as well! |
| 437 | * ''Series/{{Scrubs}}'' has a pretty mean TakeThat against ''Series/GreysAnatomy'' disguised as a compliment. |
| 438 | -->'''J.D.:''' I love ''Grey's Anatomy''. It's like they took our lives and put it on TV. |
| 439 | ** They did another one against ''Series/{{House}}'', when Keith mentions seeing a disease on ''House'' and Cox goes on a rampage. |
| 440 | *** But they also did the episode "My House", which definitely falls in the AffectionateParody category. |
| 441 | ** In the episode "My Own Worst Enemy," J.D. wins a "Who-Cares-y" award from Doctor Cox, and thinks "Suck on that, Creator/TonyShalhoub". Zach Braff has been nominated for a Best Actor Emmy twice, and lost to Shalhoub both times. |
| 442 | *** And in "My Jerks" JD delivers a ''very'' meta-textual speech at the end in which he says "now, I know we never do great come medical awards season - well, except for Dr. Shalhoub, he wins everything". |
| 443 | * When ''Series/{{SCTV}}'' moved to Creator/{{CBC}} in Canada, they had two fewer minutes of commercial time than the U.S. syndicated airings, so the network requested that they pad this time out with two "extra" minutes with "distinctively Canadian content." The writers and performers mocked this idea: "What do you want us to do? Throw up a map of Canada and sit there wearing tuques and parkas?" They ended up doing exactly that to prove their point of how ridiculous the CBC mandate was... and ended up creating Bob and Doug [=McKenzie=] -- [[SpringtimeForHitler the most popular characters in the show's history]]. |
| 444 | * ''Series/SesameStreet'': |
| 445 | ** More of a loving parody, but the feature "Monsterpiece Theater" parodied Beckett's much celebrated ''Theatre/WaitingForGodot'', calling it a "play so modern and so brilliant, that it makes absolutely no sense." Even the tree gets fed up with the play by the end of the sketch, and walks off the stage, muttering about how he wanted to be in ''Oklahoma'' instead. |
| 446 | ** They also parodied ''Film/HighSchoolMusical'' with the sketch "Pre-School Musical". It has the Muppets hold notes for exceedingly long periods and naming an odd number of sequels. |
| 447 | ** One sketch serves as a parody of ''Theatre/SpiderManTurnOffTheDark'', featuring Mr. Johnson as the sole attendee of the seventeenth opening night of ''Spider-Monster: The Musical'', starring Grover. Grover attempts to "fly" by jumping off the stage and onto Mr. Johnson, and it just goes downhill from there. |
| 448 | * Music/DemiLovato claimed they were a victim of this after Disney made a joke about eating disorders on an episode of ''Series/ShakeItUp''. This was only shortly after Demi left Disney, partially due to the actor's struggles with bulimia. Lovato took to Twitter to criticize the channel for its insensitive choice of humour. Whether it was actually a "take that" to Demi remains unclear as Disney refused to comment. |
| 449 | * ''Series/SiliconValley'' is about opinionated hacker geeks, so this trope is common. |
| 450 | ** "You know who else comes from Canada? Music/JustinBieber, the Hitler of music!" |
| 451 | ** Gavin Belson's use of unreliable holoconferencing technology is in reference to CNN's much-derided tendency to trot out such tech during US elections. |
| 452 | ** Richard states that no one could watch more than one minute of ''Film/CloudAtlas'' |
| 453 | ** Gilfoyle on Big Head: "He's as pointless as ''Videogame/MassEffect3'''s multiple endings." |
| 454 | ** Erlich announces that all musicians are either a thieves or assholes, especially Music/{{Radiohead}}. Richard is about to object, but Erlich insists, "No... they're ''assholes!'' |
| 455 | ** Whenever Russ Hanneman gets into a car, he's exclusively listening to NuMetal bands such as Crazy Town and Music/LimpBizkit to further establish him as a douchebag with no taste. |
| 456 | * The short-lived sitcom ''Series/SledgeHammer'' was filled to bursting with examples of Take That. Series creator and executive producer Alan Spencer had a deep-rooted contempt for other television sitcoms. |
| 457 | ** The show frequently digs at ''Series/MrBelvedere''. Ironically, both programs aired on the same network, Creator/{{ABC}}. |
| 458 | ** Another episode featured Sledge's reaction upon meeting a ''Series/MaxHeadroom'' version of himself: "An hour with ''you'' would be hell!" (This was '''another''' ABC show.) |
| 459 | ** Sledge is once shown shooting a TV set in response to the announcement of a ''Series/MiamiVice'' episode. |
| 460 | ** In "All Shook Up" (where Sledge goes undercover to find out who's murdering {{Elvis impersonator}}s), Dori tells him he's going after an impersonator from Dallas and before one from Miami. "Between ''Series/{{Dallas}}'' and Series/{{Miami|Vice}}? What a terrible place to be," he comments (all three shows aired on Fridays at 9 pm that season). |
| 461 | ** "All Shook Up" contains another jab at ''Mr. Belvedere'' with an exchange between the Japanese janitor and Sledge: the janitor says he wants to get home to watch ''Mr. Belvedere'', to which Sledge replies "I guess ''somebody'' has to." [[spoiler:Just to ram the point home, the ''Mr. Belvedere'' fan turns out to be the murderer]]. |
| 462 | * In the second-season premiere of ''Series/{{Smash}}'', the characters read the review of the (disastrous) Boston preview of ''Bombshell''. It says that the musical numbers are great but are sabotaged by Julia's writing. Julia is the character of former showrunner Theresa Rebeck, whose ControlFreak tendencies, particularly in the writing department, were widely considered to have adversely affected the show's first season. |
| 463 | * This is pretty much the basic format of Joel [=McHale's=] hosting on ''Series/TheSoup'', particularly that of his fellow shows on the GuiltyPleasures-saturated E! (especially ones featuring [[Creator/KimKardashian a certain gluteally-blessed Armenian-American socialite]]). The fact that he clearly has so much fun doing it as opposed to sounding bitter or jaded helps him avoid the usual traps. |
| 464 | * British TV show ''Series/{{Spaced}}'' did this a few times to ''Film/ThePhantomMenace'' in series two. For example a parody of the end scene of ''Return of the Jedi'', except instead of Anakin's body being burned, it was a set of boxes of Star Wars memorabilia. Ironically, George Lucas's company gave the series leave to use music cues, etc to do this with because of the homages and shoutouts in the first series. |
| 465 | * In ''Series/SpecialUnit2'', one of the main characters explains to the newbie that every monster legend she has ever heard of is true — [[Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer except vampires, they're complete fiction]]. |
| 466 | * When Heather Locklear debuted as Catlin on ''Series/SpinCity'' and declares that Mike isn't going to push her around, Mike replies "Let's not get overly dramatic - this is not some cheesy soap opera" - a clear TakeThat at Locklear's previous show, ''Series/MelrosePlace''. |
| 467 | * ''Series/StargateSG1'', possibly in retaliation to Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich expressing their disdain with the series and stressing their uninvolvement with it at every opportunity, pulled a TakeThat against their next movie ''Film/IndependenceDay'' in the episode "Politics": |
| 468 | -->'''Daniel''': Senator, we have reason to believe that the Goa'uld are about to launch an attack, in force, in ships. \ |
| 469 | '''Kinsey''': Then I think they'll regret taking on [[AmericaSavesTheDay the United States military]]! \ |
| 470 | '''O'Neill''': Oh, for God's sake... \ |
| 471 | '''Daniel''': Oh, you're right! We'll — we'll just [[EverythingIsOnline upload a computer virus]] into the mothership! |
| 472 | ** In the episode "Family Ties", Jacek expresses his disappointment at the SGC facility to Samantha Carter. What follows sounds like meaningless banter, unless you know that the SG-1 series was in its last season, and had been replaced with the show ''Series/{{Eureka}}'' by Creator/{{Syfy}}. |
| 473 | --->'''Carter''': The truth is the Stargate program just doesn't get the support it used to from the people in charge.\ |
| 474 | '''Jacek''': Why not? \ |
| 475 | '''Dr. Bill Lee''': (yells, from the background) Eureka!\ |
| 476 | '''Dr. Bill Lee''': (as they turn to look at him) One down, twelve to go!\ |
| 477 | '''Jacek''': That's too bad because after all your Stargate program has accomplished for [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall this network]] of planets, I'd think that the decision makers would show it the respect it deserves. |
| 478 | ** In an episode where the cast of the [[ShowWithinAShow show within a show]], Wormhole X-Treme!, are discussing a scene, an actress asks a logical question that also serves as a "Take That!" against the ''Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Next Phase". Her question was, "If we're out of phase, why don't we fall through the floor?" The show creator and director were unable to answer the question. In the ST: TNG episode, out-of-phase characters run through walls and one is pushed through an exterior wall into outer space, yet none of them fell down to a lower deck. |
| 479 | ** ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' had a deleted scene (filmed, but not included) in "Miller's Crossing" where Sheppard and Ronon are watching TV in a motel when ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' (the version running concurrently with ''Atlantis'' in RealLife) comes on. Ronon watches it for a bit, and then tells Sheppard "We need to help those people." Sheppard tells him it is just a TV show and people write TV shows to make life more exciting, then jabs at them by saying their lives are more interesting than those of the ''Galactica'' characters. |
| 480 | * ''Series/StElsewhere'': In "Where There's Hope, There's Crosby", Phil Chandler mentions that Dr. O'Brien has gone to UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity. Jack Morrison replies, "She won't last thirteen weeks in New York." In the 1986-87 season, the medical drama ''Kay O'Brien'', which took place in Manhattan General Hospital, aired on Creator/{{CBS}}. It was cancelled after only eight episodes. |
| 481 | * Most of ''Series/Studio60OnTheSunsetStrip'' was a TakeThat directed to ''everyone'' who annoyed Creator/AaronSorkin, but ''SelfDeprecation'' drove the show as much as TakeThat. |
| 482 | ** The entire concept of the pilot is a massive TakeThat towards ABC (which cancelled ''Series/SportsNight'') and NBC (which ran ''Series/TheWestWing'', from which Sorkin quit). Matt Albie, the Sorkin self-insert, is an incredibly talented writer. People can't get over how talented he is. He's so talented and classy that they've just got to repeat it over and over again. Sadly, his intelligence and outspokenness are far superior to that of the network, which fires him, after which point his show steadily declines until they are forced to come grovelling back to him. Later, Jordan fights to pick up a pilot for a show written about the UN with striking similarities to ''The West Wing'', gushing over the excellent scripting. |
| 483 | *** It's also worth noting that pretty much the entire second half of season two of ''Series/SportsNight'' is a series of {{Take That}}s against ABC, culminating in the line "Anybody who can't make money off ''Series/SportsNight'' should get out of the money-making business." Never mind the fact that ABC had actually stuck with ''Series/SportsNight'' for two full seasons and spent a great deal of money advertising and promoting the show, despite the fact that its ratings were consistently poor. |
| 484 | ** Also at former ''West Wing'' writer Rick Cleveland, with whom Sorkin had a public feud over "In Excelsis Deo", an episode which the two co-wrote. Cleveland is written into ''Studio 60'' as Ricky Tahoe. Ricky is time and again characterised as a hack, a nasty little man who publicly ostracised Matt over a controversial statement Matt had made. He ultimately leaves the show with a crappily written pilot script, petulantly taking the entire writing staff with him. |
| 485 | * Many people see the ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E09MalleusMaleficarum Malleus Maleficarum]]" as a TakeThat against ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'', since it includes The Book of Shadows and a group of witches who arguably looked and acted like the ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'' girls. |
| 486 | ** The episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS02E18HollywoodBabylon Hollywood Babylon]]", which is an ''AffectionateParody'' of the show itself, contains some {{Take That}}s aimed at different groups. |
| 487 | *** They do both {{Take That}}s and ExecutiveMeddling with the CW executives, when the horror movie's producers and director all die horribly. Eric Kripke claims that every request that the executive producer made was an actual request that the writing staff received from the CW execs, which included making the show LighterAndSofter, among other things. Gary Cole's character was the first to die--''on the film's set in the middle of shooting'', no less. |
| 488 | *** Creator/JensenAckles, who got his first break on ''Series/DaysOfOurLives'', has his character Dean make a few jokes about how terrible daytime TV is. |
| 489 | ** There are a few examples in the episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS04E18TheMonsterAtTheEndOfThisBook The Monster at the End of the Book.]]" |
| 490 | *** The episode contained a thorough TakeThat to Sam/Dean shippers. Sam and Dean find a series of books that document their lives exactly. Sam then mentions that there's fan fiction of the series. And we get the following exchange: |
| 491 | ---->'''Dean''': What's a slash fan?\ |
| 492 | '''Sam''': As in... Sam-slash-Dean. '''Together.'''\ |
| 493 | ''[Long pause as it slowly dawns on Dean what Sam means.]''\ |
| 494 | '''Dean''': Like...''together'' together?\ |
| 495 | '''Sam''': Yeah.\ |
| 496 | '''Dean''': They ''do'' know we're brothers, right?\ |
| 497 | '''Sam''': Doesn't seem to matter.\ |
| 498 | '''Dean''': Aw, come on. That... That's just SICK! |
| 499 | *** Sam and Dean want to know how Chuck knows enough about them to be writing these books. At one point Dean demands to know why Chuck wouldn't tell them that he is a Prophet. |
| 500 | ---->'''Chuck''': It was too preposterous, not to mention arrogant. I mean, writing yourself into the story is one thing, but as a prophet? That's like, [[Creator/MNightShyamalan M Night]] level douchey-ness. |
| 501 | *** To show they're not immune to criticism themselves, the writers also took potshots at examples of their own bad writing. |
| 502 | ** There's the episodes "[[Recap/SupernaturalS03E13Ghostfacers Ghost Facers]]" and "[[Recap/SupernaturalS04E12CrissAngelIsADouchebag Criss Angel is a Douche Bag]]", the latter of which has a Criss Angel {{expy}} with his own reality show. |
| 503 | ** At the beginning of season five's "[[Recap/SupernaturalS05E03FreeToBeYouAndMe Free to Be You and Me]]", as Dean kills a vampire: "Eat it, Literature/{{Twilight|2005}}!" |
| 504 | ** "[[Recap/SupernaturalS05E08ChangingChannels Changing Channels]]", the episode where the Trickster throws Sam and Dean into different TV shows, contains {{Take That}}s to ''Series/CSIMiami''. |
| 505 | ---->'''Dean''': Calm down? I'm wearing sunglasses at night. You know who does that? No talent douchebags. |
| 506 | *** The episode also contains a borderline TakeThat and AffectionateParody of ''Series/GreysAnatomy''. (It's established that Dean is an unabashed fan of ''Dr. Sexy, MD'', the ShowWithinAShow which resembles ''Series/GreysAnatomy''.) A specific moment of Dr Sexy/Greys involved a plot point about a ghost who was only alive in the eyes of an obviously crazy Doctor. Sam mocked 'Dr Sexy' for being a medical drama with supernatural elements, while a fangirling Dean claimed it was still compelling. There's other instances of AffectionateParody for the original ''Series/KnightRider'', Japanese game shows, and old-school sitcoms. |
| 507 | ** In season 1, Dean asks Sam, "Who do you think is the hotter psychic: Patricia Arquette, Creator/JenniferLoveHewitt, or you?" This is a TakeThat towards the two other psychic shows running at the time (''Series/{{Medium}}'' and ''Series/GhostWhisperer'' respectively). |
| 508 | ** In season 5, Creator/ParisHilton plays a God pretending to be herself. Dean tells her that he is not a fan of Paris Hilton and has never even seen ''Film/HouseOfWax2005'', to which Sam gives him an odd look. (Creator/JaredPadalecki was actually in ''House of Wax'' with Paris Hilton.) |
| 509 | ** In the season 6 mind bender "[[Recap/SupernaturalS06E15TheFrenchMistake The French Mistake]]", the angel Balthazar transports the characters Sam and Dean to a parallel world where they are mistaken for two actors named Jared and Jensen, who star in a TV series called ''Supernatural''. So, the actors are playing characters who then assume the identities of the actors who are playing them. The big TakeThat comes though when one of that season's bad guys, Virgil, travels to the parallel world and "kills" actors who are portraying Eric Kripke and Robert Singer, Supernatural's producers, along with Misha Collins, the actor who plays the angel Castiel on the show. |
| 510 | ** Crowley gets an ''epic'' one while chewing out one of his followers: |
| 511 | --->'''Crowley:''' I only have one rule: make a deal, keep it. There's a reason we don't call our chits in early: consumer confidence. This isn't Wall Street, this is Hell! ''We'' have a little something called integrity! |
| 512 | ** The episode "[[Recap/SupernaturalS06E05LiveFreeOrTwiHard Live Free or Twihard]]" is basically one giant Take That to ''Twilight''. |
| 513 | * ''Series/{{Swarm}}'': |
| 514 | ** The ''very'' white-passing Hailey's fandom of Music/{{Halsey}} might be one to Halsey in general, and the fact that she's also white-passing (it could also apply to Creator/ParisJackson, who's also white-passing). |
| 515 | ** At an afterparty, Dre meets a light-skinned actor called [[Creator/JesseWilliams Jesse]] from ''Series/GreysAnatomy'' who claims to have invented the term "black girl magic". |
| 516 | [[/folder]] |
| 517 | |
| 518 | [[folder:T]] |
| 519 | * ''Series/{{Taken}}'': In the final scene of "John", General Beers reports on the progress of the search for Allie to UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush over the phone. After hanging up, Beers says, "We have enough to do in the field without having to cover Junior's ass." |
| 520 | * ''Series/TeenAngel'' had an episode in which wayward magic made the cast think they were living in the 1970s. Marty, the angel, couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. His list of things that just "didn't feel right" included: |
| 521 | -->'''Marty:''' ...I was watching ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' and it was fresh and inventive! |
| 522 | * ''Series/ThatMitchellAndWebbLook'': |
| 523 | ** A sketch about a comedian making a cup of tea for everyone in Belgium as the result of a bet, and as a result writing a bestselling book about his exploits, was a dig at comedians who did similarly unlikely things [[TheBet supposedly as the result of bets]], such as Tony Hawks (played the entire Moldovan football team at tennis, hitchhiked round Ireland with a fridge) David Gorman (flew around the world meeting people called Dave Gorman), and Danny Wallace ([[Film/YesMan spent a year saying yes to everything]]). |
| 524 | ** They delightfully skewer Film/JamesBond in their "Friends of Moneypenny" sketch: |
| 525 | --->Remember that drinks do I had just before Christmas, Moneypenny brings James along - Oh God, but Christmas spirit and all that. So I said, "hi James there's some mulled wine and I think there's some beer in the fridge." Cock asked for a martini...what does he think it is? 1973? |
| 526 | ** There's also a sketch about how ''Series/TheApprentice'' was created. "So, it's coverage of idiots behaving idiotically for an audience of idiots?" |
| 527 | *** Not to mention the very concept of ''The Apprentice'' is skewered, with the Alan Sugar-stand in pointing out how impractical firing one-fifteenth of his staff every week would actually be. |
| 528 | ---->'''Businessman:''' This is a complete departure from normal. I wouldn't be a millionaire if I fired one-fifteenth of my staff every week. Just to help out, does anyone want to lie pointlessly or take credit for something they didn't do?\ |
| 529 | ''(the contestants shake their heads)''\ |
| 530 | '''Businessman:''' Worth a try... |
| 531 | ** "[[FishOutOfWater Fishmonger out of Watermonger]]" mocks every aspect of {{Reality Show}}s like ''Faking It'', with a fishmonger trying to produce a reality show in 2 days. "Tim has just five minutes to come up with his arbitrary deadline". His end result is also apparently good enough for Channel 5, but not good enough for Dave. |
| 532 | ** "My Shags as a Whore," a series by the incompetent screenwriting duo that refuse to do research or make any kind of an effort, is an adolescent male fantasy where being a prostitute is sexy, empowering, and consequence-free. It's also pretty clearly aimed at ''Series/SecretDiaryOfACallGirl''. |
| 533 | ** "Coverage Of People Buying A House And Then Living In It" skewers ''Location, Location, Location'' and similar property programmes. Both the host and the prospective buyer clearly believe there is nothing exciting about watching complete strangers buying houses and then living in them, and make no effort whatever to appear interested in making a television programme about the process. |
| 534 | --->So, to sum up, Geoff, who you don't know, has bought a house and is now living in it, having put up some shelves, and I think we can agree that that's basically a good thing. |
| 535 | ** The "Identity Killer" skit is a TakeThat to overly dramatic police procedural shows which insist on making cases that would, in RealLife, be resolved in a few days to be dragged out as long as possible. |
| 536 | ** The "Sunday Chill-Out DVD" claims it has all the establishing scenes of ITV's ''Kingdom'', but with "nothing as jolting as the plot". |
| 537 | ** Several sketches in series 3 and 4, "Late Night Dog Poker" especially, take shots at the channel ''Dave''. The "Dog Poker" sketch has the line "Rejected by the BBC, chosen by Dave", spoofing the "Chosen by Dave" slogan it adopted when its lineup was mostly wall-to-wall BBC panel games and Series/TopGear. |
| 538 | ** The "every TV show has a behind-the-scenes garden, not just ''Series/BluePeter''" sketches reveal that the only reason that ''Series/TwoPintsOfLagerAndAPacketOfCrisps'' avoided cancellation was because it had a beautiful garden that the BBC didn't want to get rid of. |
| 539 | --->'''David:''' I think if people knew how nice the ''Two Pints'' garden was, they wouldn't mind the show at all.\ |
| 540 | '''Robert:''' They'd see it as a necessary evil. |
| 541 | ** A sketch where David Mitchell plays a historian who has to be restrained because he's waving his arms too much is a parody of James Burke on Series/{{Connections}}, right down to using phrases similar to his most famous ones. |
| 542 | ** Two different sketches mock alternative medicine and quack nutritionists. In the latter, homeopathy specifically gets skewered, with the two doctors getting homeopathic beers (two drops in water) after explicitly discussing how one kills all but the most healthy patients. The nutritionists meanwhile are (unlike the alt med doctors) knowing con artists who string people along with expensive, impossible diets. |
| 543 | * ''Series/TheThinBlueLine'': |
| 544 | ** "There's a place for fatuous flippant would-be humorous inanities, and that place is on ''Series/NoelsHouseParty''." |
| 545 | ** "There is a place for smutty innuendo, Constable Kray, and that place is on ''Series/BirdsOfAFeather''." |
| 546 | * In response to being [[ExecutiveMeddling horrifically dicked around by NBC]], Creator/ConanOBrien responded by making the last episodes of ''Series/TheTonightShowWithConanOBrien'' almost nothing ''but'' Take Thats. [[http://gawker.com/5448615/the-late-night-war-reaches-its-boiling-point-all-the-clips-you-missed Just check out the clips in this Gawker article.]] |
| 547 | * Jeremy Clarkson on ''Series/TopGear'' cannot resist a Take That against Al Gore's movie ''Film/AnInconvenientTruth'' (about global warming causing the polar ice to thin) after he and co-presenter James May have successfully ''driven'' across the sea ice to the North Pole. |
| 548 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': |
| 549 | ** The entirety of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S3E20ShowdownWithRanceMcGrew Showdown with Rance McGrew]]" against [[TheWestern the TV westerns]] of the time. It also serves as a deconstruction of sorts. Serling hated the Westerns of the time, deeming them too unrealistic and predictable, and later went on to make a Western series (''Series/TheLoner'') himself. Furthermore, Rance [=McGrew=] is a parody of arrogant, conceited and temperamental actors in general. |
| 550 | ** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S4E9PrintersDevil Printer's Devil]]", Mr. Smith, who is really the Devil, tells Douglas Winter that he is not the first editor that he has helped. The writer Charles Beaumont intended this as a reference to William Randolph Hearst. |
| 551 | ** The hour long episode "The Bard" features a hack writer who, while researching a book of black magic, inadvertently brings Creator/WilliamShakespeare back from the dead, and uses him as a literal ghost writer. Serling uses this setup to parody everything about television at the time including sponsors making inane changes, and the concept of taking a half hour show and making an hour show of it, such as CBS did to ''Zone'' that season, much to Serling's dismay. |
| 552 | * ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': |
| 553 | ** In "Ye Gods", the yuppie Todd Ettinger comes to realize that the life that he leads is hollow, empty and calculated as it is all about acquiring money and possessions and he doesn't have a meaningful relationship with a woman. Cupid also twice refers to him as a "yuckie." |
| 554 | ** In "Paladin of the Lost Hour", Gaspar tells Billy Kinetta that he does not want to see a film with Creator/KarenBlack, Sandy Dennis or Creator/MerylStreep as they are always crying and their noses are always red. [[SubvertedTrope However]], he later says that he is willing to make an exception for Streep. |
| 555 | ** In "The Once and Future King", the ElvisImpersonator Gary Pitkin does not want to take his act to UsefulNotes/LasVegas as he thinks that it killed Music/ElvisPresley and it is nothing but "showgirls, sluts and sleaze." Gary then tells his manager Sandra that Vegas is good enough for Wayne Newton but not for him. |
| 556 | ** In "Joy Ride", Greg sarcastically asks Adrienne if she wants to vegetate like her mother and watch ''Series/Dynasty1981''. |
| 557 | ** In "The Girl I Married", Valerie Richman becomes irritated with the hippie version of her husband Ira and says that he is beginning to sound like something out of a rerun of ''Series/TheModSquad''. |
| 558 | * When Ronnie Barker of ''Series/TheTwoRonnies'' complained that ''Series/NotTheNineOClockNews'' was full of {{Filth}}, the ''NTNOCN'' team responded with a glorious sketch that showed what a typical ''Two Ronnies'' episode would be like if they actually ''said'' what they meant, rather than the constant {{Double Entendre}}s. The best bit? It was written by a disgruntled ''Two Ronnies'' scriptwriter. Barker wasn't amused; Ronnie Corbett ''was''. |
| 559 | [[/folder]] |
| 560 | |
| 561 | [[folder:U]] |
| 562 | * ''Series/UnbreakableKimmySchmidt'' has Jacqueline say, "If this is your idea of a joke, you belong in a Creator/WoodyAllen movie, because I'm not laughing." Given Jacqueline's questionable taste, however, this is probably a bigger dig on her. |
| 563 | * The pilot of ''Series/UnderTheDome'' does a TakeThat to the American Government. |
| 564 | -->'''Joe [=McAllister=]''': What if the Government built this thing (the Dome)?\ |
| 565 | '''Dale "''Barbie''" Barbara''': I doubt it.\ |
| 566 | '''Joe [=McAllister=]''': Why?\ |
| 567 | '''Dale "''Barbie''" Barbara''': Because it works. |
| 568 | * In contrast, it's not very hard to find Take Thats in favor of the Bush administration in ''Series/TheUnit'': |
| 569 | ** ''First Responders'': Muslim terrorists hijack a plane full of European businessmen that were looking for US investment in their countries. |
| 570 | ** ''Non-Permissive Environment'': Spanish authorities ask the Unit to assassinate a terrorist, then call the assassination off because they want to negotiate with him instead, and then try to arrest the team members when they kill him anyway. |
| 571 | ** ''The Wall'': The French Army is a bunch of asses that prefer to see a war criminal going away instead of cooperating with the Americans. |
| 572 | * ''Series/UnnaturalHistory'' took a shot at Music/TheJonasBrothers in "Curse of the Rolling Stone". The only time they're mentioned, they're [[EekAMouse hiding from a group of mice]], and one of them can clearly be heard yelling "Mommy!" |
| 573 | ** Made even more hilarious when you realize that the actor who plays Henry (Kevin Schmidt) is the older brother of Kendall Schmidt, who is one fourth of NICKELODEON'S premier boy band, and one of the stars on the show ''Series/BigTimeRush''--which is, of course, Nick's answer to JONAS. |
| 574 | * ''Series/Unreal2015'' is basically one big long TakeThat to ''Series/TheBachelor''. Chris Harrison did not appreciate it. |
| 575 | [[/folder]] |
| 576 | |
| 577 | [[folder:V]] |
| 578 | * The vampire romance ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'' made these against ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'' into an art form: |
| 579 | ** Evil vampire Damon read ''Twilight'' and [[YourVampiresSuck makes several insults about its myths]]. |
| 580 | --->'''Caroline:''' Why don't you sparkle?\ |
| 581 | '''Damon:''' Because I live in the real world, where vampires burn in the sun. |
| 582 | ** He also has a very poor opinion of ''Twilight'''s male lead, Edward Cullen, as he stated earlier on that very same episode. |
| 583 | ** There is also a subtle one where Elena's vampire boyfriend Stefan hasn't called her for a few days. |
| 584 | --->'''Elena:''' I'm not going to be one of those girls who just breaks down without a boy in her life. |
| 585 | ** Werewolves are mostly extinct except in "books and really bad movies." Another ''Twilight'' dig. WordOfGod has also said this is a reference to the Kevin Williamson movie ''Film/{{Cursed|2005}}''. |
| 586 | ** Stefan realizes Elena is watching him sleep. |
| 587 | --->'''Stefan:''' You're staring.\ |
| 588 | '''Elena:''' I'm gazing.\ |
| 589 | '''Stefan:''' It's creepy.\ |
| 590 | '''Elena:''' It's romantic. |
| 591 | * ''Series/VengeanceUnlimited'' did the episode "Critical", which, during the course of the episode, pretty much took as many lines from all the critics that bashed it and put them in the characters' mouths. Gina's rant at Chapel? Pretty much lifted straight from newspapers. |
| 592 | ** Similarly, when it was clear that the show wouldn't last the season, they named their final episode "Friends". [[Series/{{Friends}} Guess which show they were up against]] during their entire run. |
| 593 | * ''Series/VeronicaMars'' was forced by studio execs, early in its run, to include Paris Hilton as a guest star. Later in the same season, they're cracking Paris Hilton jokes. A great Take That at both Hilton and the network. |
| 594 | [[/folder]] |
| 595 | |
| 596 | [[folder:W]] |
| 597 | * Though not cocky enough to actually name specific shows, the host of ''Weird Creatures'' openly admits that most other nature programs' animal-encounter footage is staged. He occasionally pokes fun at such contrived "lucky chance encounters", as when he introduces a small lizard in extreme close-up, then has the camera pull back to reveal that it's a captive animal kept at a nature reserve (because the wild ones had proven too elusive to film that day). |
| 598 | * The "lemonlyman.com" subplot in ''Series/TheWestWing'' episode "The U.S Poet Laureate" — in which White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman stumbles upon a web-forum dedicated to him and posts on it only to be widely mocked and told he doesn't know anything about politics — is considered something a of a TakeThat to popular online community Website/TelevisionWithoutPity, and is reportedly based on ''West Wing'' creator Aaron Sorkin's experiences when posting on it. The members of the community are described as "hysterical", and the forum administrator as dictatorial and petty. |
| 599 | ** ''The West Wing'' also pretty savagely attacked Dr. Laura Schlessinger, prominent critic of homosexuality, with their own "Dr. Laura" character in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zhNiGlogQ this]] clip. |
| 600 | ** Considering the subject matter and political bias of the writer, the West Wing had fewer Take Thats than you would expect. However, Bartlett's reelection opponent is an obvious {{expy}} of George W. Bush. However, in the end he's shown to be a gracious decent if dim-witted sort. Aaron Sorkin seems incapable of writing genuinely hostile or immoral antagonists unless they're an expy for someone who's wronged him personally. |
| 601 | ** While TWW usually avoided direct potshots at government institutions, "Ways and Means" gave CJ a truly hilarious one: |
| 602 | --->'''C.J.''': Leo, we need to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us just to watch us die. We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious and thirsty for the limelight. Am I crazy or is this not a job for the U.S. House of Representatives? |
| 603 | * ''Series/WheelOfFortune'': |
| 604 | ** Host Pat Sajak is fond of Take Thats. Most of them are to the puzzle writers if they come up with something absurd like I LOVE MY PASSPORT PHOTO, or occasionally to the subject of the puzzle (for instance, saying after the puzzle I WANT MY MTV that Creator/{{MTV}} is [[NetworkDecay a network that used to show music videos]]. He also hated the short-lived Megaword category, and was quick to let everyone know. |
| 605 | ** A particularly epic one came April 29, 2013: On an episode taped in New York City, Pat hauled out a giant soft drink cup and took a drink from it, to poke fun at New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's policies against soft drink sizes. |
| 606 | * ''Series/WhoseLineIsItAnyway'': When you blend improv and network-to-network taunting, you get this: For the suggestion "trivial reasons to hold news conferences" in Scenes From A Hat, Wayne Brady said that he would announce UPN's Fall-season lineup. |
| 607 | ** As opposed to all the times they like flinging it at each other, or the host. Or at the director. A fabled Website/YouTube item shows Wayne and Brad about to sing the theme tune for a sitcom. An audience member suggested 'Cosby and Hitler'. This was rejected. During the actually-used song, Ryan (as Cosby!) throws a Nazi salute and goosestep; Colin shakes his head no. |
| 608 | * On the Creator/ComedyCentral game show ''Series/WinBenSteinsMoney'', whenever a contestant [[Series/{{Jeopardy}} phrased an answer in the form of a question]], Ben would force that contestant to wear a DunceCap for the remainder of the show. |
| 609 | * Season four of ''Series/TheWire'' features a despicable cop who completely guts the one unit in the department that's actually doing real work. His name is Marrimow, after an editor at the Baltimore Sun who producer David Simon grew to despise during his time there. |
| 610 | ** Simon then takes it one step further by introducing an unlikeable, two-faced newspaper editor in the fifth season based off of the real Marrimow: |
| 611 | --->'''James Whiting:''' I don't want some amorphous series detailing society's ills. |
| 612 | ** The police, upon finding out that drug kingpin Stringer Bell is channeling much of the drug proceeds into buying real estate after it's been laundered and become untraceable: "Stringer Bell is something worse than a drug dealer. He's a real estate developer." |
| 613 | * ''Series/WizardsOfWaverlyPlace'': |
| 614 | ** It has taken shots at ''Literature/HarryPotter'' ("great, now we're accessorizing with ugly") and ''Twilight''. |
| 615 | ** InUniverse. Harper's puppet show to Alex. |
| 616 | * ExecutiveMeddling led to an example during the first season of ''Series/WKRPInCincinnati''. CBS wanted more broad, kid-friendly comedy in the show. Producer Hugh Wilson wrote "Fish Story" to give them what they wanted while showing how wrong they were - a broad farce with silly costumes (Herb in the WKRP "carp" costume fighting the WPIG pig), pratfalls, and contrived explanations. Wilson hated the episode and wrote it under a pseudonym as the last episode in CBS' initial 13-episode order. The Take That backfired, as [[SpringtimeForHitler the episode got great ratings]], and has always been one of the fans' favorite episodes. |
| 617 | * An episode of ''Series/WonderShowzen'' had a character played by Creator/DavidCross say, "Git-r-done" right before being executed. Two other episodes had the show make fun of redneck humor with David Cross' character dressing similar to his RealLife rival Creator/LarryTheCableGuy. |
| 618 | * From VH-1's ''World Series of Pop Culture'': |
| 619 | -->'''Contestant''': I'll take "The Talented Baldwin Brothers".\ |
| 620 | '''Host''': All questions in this category are about Alec Baldwin. |
| 621 | [[/folder]] |
| 622 | |
| 623 | [[folder:X]] |
| 624 | * ''Series/TheXFiles'': |
| 625 | ** In one episode, Mulder bought pirated AlienAutopsy footage. Scully believes that it looks hokier than the Fox autopsy. Turns out it's real. |
| 626 | ** Another had them take a shot at ''Film/ForrestGump'', who at the time had just won the Oscar, when the Smoking Man twists the upbeat "Life is like a box of chocolates..." metaphor into a real downer. |
| 627 | --->'''Smoking Man:''' Life is like a box of chocolates: a cheap, thoughtless perfunctory gift no one ever asked for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. You're stuck with this undefinable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an English toffee but they're gone too fast and the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth shattering nuts. And if you're desperate enough to eat those then all you've got left is an empty box, filled with useless brown paper wrappers. |
| 628 | ** An episode featuring serial killers behaving like vampires takes a shot at religious zealots, preachers, and just about everyone who commits horrible acts by misinterpreting Literature/TheBible (And by extension, other religious doctrines). |
| 629 | --->'''Mulder:''' ''[reading a Bible passage written on the wall in blood]'' "He who eats of my flesh, and drinks of my blood, shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day." They have the same feeble literal grasp of The Bible as all those big-haired preachers do. |
| 630 | ** One episode features hidden messages on television, and Mulder comments on how television does not normally drive people to kill, "Not even Must See TV can do that to you," taking a shot at NBC. |
| 631 | ** The first episode of the series after the ''[[Film/TheXFilesFightTheFuture movie]]'' had a dim-witted skeptic recommend ''Film/MenInBlack''. |
| 632 | [[/folder]] |
| 633 | |
| 634 | [[folder:Y]] |
| 635 | * ''Series/TheYoungOnes'' aimed a number of Take Thats, notably at Terry and June (with Oh Crikey!) and at Channel 4. "Alternative lifestyle Neil? You're about as alternative as Channel 4." |
| 636 | ** Vyvyan also got in a blistering rant about ''Series/TheGoodLife''. |
| 637 | --> NO, NO, NO, NO! WE ARE NOT WATCHING THE BLOODY GOOD LIFE! BLOODY, BLOODY, BLOODY! I HATE IT! IT'S SO BLOODY NICE! FELICITY "TREACLE" KENDAL, AND RICHARD "SUGAR FLAVOURED SNOT" BRIERS! WHAT DO THEY DO KNOW? CHOCOLATE BLOODY BUTTON ADS, THAT'S WHAT! THEY'RE NOTHING BUT A COUPLE OF REACTIONARY STEREOTYPES, CONFIRMING THE MYTH THAT EVERYONE IN BRITAIN IS A LOVABLE MIDDLE CLASS ECCENTRIC, AND I! HATE! THEM! |
| 638 | [[/folder]] |
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