Line #5 YMMV/TheKingOfQueens


1	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The show's theme song "Baby All My Life I Will Be Driving Home To You" by Billy Vera and the Beaters.
2	** Especially the instrumental version of it that played over the credits during seasons 2 and 3. Unfortunately, a rather forgettable instrumental piece played over the credits instead starting in season 4.
3	** "Fight the power! We gotta fight the powers that be!"
4	** "Doug and Carrie, Doug and Carrie, Doug and Carrie... ''Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, Arthur''"
5	** "Doug and Pizza, Doug and Pizza, Doug and Pizza..."
6	** The "Margy" song.
7	** "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)".
8	* AssPull: In the final story arc of the series, we find out that Carrie had a lifelong dream of living in a Manhattan high-rise and was always bitter that she and Doug wound up living in Queens. This was never mentioned before despite the fact that Doug said it was something she talked about all the time. It also totally contradicts the plot of "Dougie Houser," where Carrie was the one who wanted to buy the Queens house while Doug wanted to live somewhere else.
9	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: "Horizontal Hold" ends with a cryptic scene that implies Deacon and Spence may have been sleeping together. It is never brought up again, but it is never explained either.
10	** The B-plot of "Home Cheapo" ends with Arthur ostensibly making a sexual pass at Spence. Much like the above scene mentioned, it is PlayedForLaughs and never mentioned or referred to again.
11	* ClicheStorm: A given when the two leads are the stereotypical "dumb husband and nagging wife" played completely straight.
12	* DesignatedHero: It can sometimes be hard to root for Carrie, Doug and Arthur who are occasionally exaggerated [[Series/{{Seinfeld}} Seinfeldian]] levels of JerkAss.
13	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Spencer & Danny are considered the best characters on the series due to their solid chemistry and being the few characters on the series with least jerkass traits.
14	* EsotericHappyEnding: While Doug and Carrie did work things out in the series finale, it is a bit unsettling that [[spoiler:Carrie was willing to sacrifice her marriage for an apartment. One has to wonder how much she really loves Doug if living in Manhattan was more important to her than living with him.]]
15	* FanficFuel: It's stated in "Fat City" that the women in Carrie's family all get really fat later on in life, and it's suggested Carrie may one day get fatter than Doug himself. While she does get fatter in season 6, she never becomes that fat. A good idea for a fanfic would be to show her becoming fat like the other women in her family and growing to accept it.
16	* HarsherInHindsight:
17	** One episode (aired in 1999) featured Doug and Carrie investing Doug's Christmas bonus in a dot-com start-up, then panicking as the stock went up and down. TheTag of the show is the company being shut down because the CEO was accused of fraud. All of this was PlayedForLaughs. The next year the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_com_bubble "dot-com bubble"]] burst, causing this story to become depressingly plausible.
18	** The 1998 pilot episode had a scene where Doug’s friends discuss whether they would sleep with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. The current image of Hillary as a 70-year-old former presidential candidate makes the dialogue slightly awkward and out of place. Could be HilariousInHindsight depending on your perspective.
19	** "Sight Gag" may be a bit more difficult to watch now that the risks and side effects of laser eye surgery have been closely scrutinized and are better known to the general public.
20	** In "Dark Meet", Arthur is portrayed as being crazy and paranoid for warning Doug that his job as a delivery man might get taken over by a machine. Fast forward to current day, as the advent of package carrying drones and self driving trucks are leaving many delivery men fearing that their employment could be at risk.
21	** "Pregnant Pause" ends with Carrie's pregnancy turning into a miscarriage, which crushes her and Doug's newfound enthusiasm for becoming parents. The series ends with them do getting their wish of having kids of their own, only for it to have an EsotericHappyEnding.
22	** In the episode "Mammary Lane," Carrie's intense discomfort at being constantly groped by her boss's young son is played for laughs. Her struggle to cope with the situation is exacerbated by Doug's misguided defense of the boy, and then Doug trying to force a kiss on Carrie to make himself look better in front of another woman. Carrie's harassment is likened to Spence's difficulties with his [=TiVO=], which seems to be calling him gay.
23	* HilariousInHindsight:
24	** The episode "Frigid Heirs" has Doug mentioning that Arthur thinks the former can control a TV remote with his voice. In the [[TheNewTens 2010's]], companies like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Logitech Harmony Elite made this sort of technology widely available; in other words, [[TheCuckoolanderWasRight Arthur might've really been on to something]].
25	** In the season 6 episode "Affidavit Justice", Doug pretends he is a lawyer so he can be part of Carrie's law firm's softball team. Carrie thinks he can't play a lawyer, but [[Film/PaulBlartMallCop he can play a mall cop]].
26	** The episode 'Pour Judgment': Arthur is running for president of the senior center. The current president's name: George Barksdale. Barksdale is the last name of the BigBad of the first three seasons of ''Series/TheWire''.
27	** At one point in "Hartford Wailer", [[Music/HueyLewisAndTheNews Huey Lewis]] calls Spence a rat. Spence is played by Creator/PattonOswalt, who would [[WesternAnimation/{{Ratatouille}} eventually play a rat]].
28	** Spence's interests in sci-fi, gaming, and general indie culture are portrayed as nerdy and awkward, and the rest of the group frequently makes fun of this. These subcultures would go on to gain massive followings in the 2010s and 20s in online spaces, making Spence look much less pathetic than he is portrayed.
29	* HoYay:
30	** Arthur helping Spence prepare for the job interview.
31	** Doug and Deacon have their share. Especially during the episode where they were trapped inside a truck.
32	** Spence and Danny is the poster child of this. To the point that it's even acknowledged in-universe. At one point they end up taking their underwear off under the bed covers in an escalating dare (long story) and then realize they may have crossed a line.
33	*** The pair's final scene of the series seems to imply that the two were more than friends, given that Danny had to dump his girlfriend in order to move back in with Spence.
34	* InformedWrongness: Doug is portrayed as cold-hearted in "Life Sentence" for wanting to put Arthur in a retirement home if Carrie were to die. But given that [[ScrewPolitenessImASenior Arthur is quite a handful under the best of circumstances]], having that responsibility in addition to being newly widowed would be quite a burden on Doug. Presuming also that Arthur has no close relatives or extended family, it follows that Doug would also be handling the entire situation alone in addition to working full-time. The decision definitely warranted more discussion than Carrie was willing to give it.
35	* JerkassWoobie: Deacon, especially when Kelly left him.
36	** Arthur often acts like a SpoiledBrat {{Manchild}} but, his dad was a compulsive gambler who frequently kept the family poor because of his habit, and [[ParentalFavoritism doted on his half-brother Skitch]] over him. When Arthur & Skitch reconnect in "Queens'Bro Bridge," he turns out to be a BitchInSheepsClothing and proceeds to frequently belittle and insult his brother at every opportunity.
37	* JustHereForGodzilla: Even many people who didn't care for the show tuned in at the prospect of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara working together again after ending their professional partnership decades earlier to save their marriage.
38	* MemeticMutation: [[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/667/767/d3c.jpg A publicity still]] of Kevin James taken for the show took off as a reaction image in September 2023 on account of James' relaxed, smirking expression.
39	* NightmareFuel: Doug getting stalked and terrorized by a crazed ice cream man in one episode. The ending reveals he makes a profit by selling his truck to people and terrorizing them with his second ice cream truck pretending to be a rival until they are so afraid that they pay him to take the truck back.
40	* RetroactiveRecognition: The eye patch guy from "Thanks, Man" (see StrawmanHasAPoint below) is a pre ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'' Nick Offerman.
41	** [[Series/TheBigBangTheory Mrs. Wolowitz]] turns up in "Ice Cubed."
42	* SeasonalRot: The series shifts to a DarkerAndEdgier tone beginning in Season 6, as Doug and Carrie's characters start to succumb to flanderization. Carrie starts to become more spiteful and mean-spirited, while Doug gets stupider and more deceitful toward Carrie. It is justified in that Carrie lost her job at the law firm midway through the season, and it's implied that the new lack of income was quite hard on the Heffernans. By Season 7 the Heffernans' marriage sinks to AwfulWeddedLife levels, with both characters [[TookALevelInCynic Taking a Level in Cynic]].
43	** By season 8 it really started kicking in, with increasingly nonsense plots and heavy use of gimmicks & guest stars when the show pointedly avoided those early on. Kevin James stated after the finale that the main reason they ended the show was that there were no more plots to explore or stories to write. Given the ridiculousness of some of Season 9's storylines (such as Doug adopting a pet chicken and Arthur wanting braces), it's hard to argue that point.
44	* ShipTease: In the episode, "Missing Links", between Holly and [[spoiler: Deacon]]. As this was [[spoiler: during the time when Deacon and Kelly were split up]] the writers may have just been testing it out. Either way, it doesn't lead to anything.
45	* SoOkayItsAverage: The basic feel around the show in general. While it was viewed as likeably funny and watchable in it's prime it was seemingly content in being nothing more than that, and there were plenty who saw it as just a blue-collar rehash of ''Series/EverybodyLovesRaymond'' with a more shameless use of the UglyGuyHotWife OfficialCouple.
46	* StrawmanHasAPoint:
47	** Carrie is treated as an unreasonable bitch for not allowing a stranger with an eyepatch into her home on Thanksgiving. Then, when she does let him in, he locks everyone out and robs them.
48	*** The one problem with this episode, that's hilarious otherwise, is that even for her, Carrie seemed so unreasonably mean about it. Obviously, the humor is her being right in the end, but had he been an "angel unawares," her attitude was terrible. Oh, and let's not forget more physical and verbal abuse of Doug.
49	** Doug's father could come across as miserly and judgmental in "S'Poor House," but he was absolutely right about one thing: there is no way a couple with no kids and two reasonably good jobs between them shouldn't be able to come up with $12,000 for an emergency.
50	* TearJerker: In "Pregnant Pause" [[spoiler: Carrie revealing to Doug that she had a miscarriage and then quietly breaking down in tears, made worse by the fact that Doug and Carrie were just starting to get used to the idea of being parents]].
51	** Paternal Affairs ends with Arthur heartbroken, and Doug comforting him.
52	** Arthur being treated like crap by his half-brother after the two reunited, you actually feel bad for the guy.
53	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot:
54	** Carrie deciding to go back to school could have been a major turning point for her character and given the show a major series-long plot arc that could've helped fill up many A-plots and B-plots throughout the show's run and given both her and Doug more positive CharacterDevelopment, but after that one episode, her time at college is barely mentioned again with no information about when or why she dropped out.
55	** Doug and Carrie's relationship was on the rocks during the later seasons, with the show's last season implying how loveless their marriage became over the years, leading up to the couple's separation in the finale. A much better ending would be that sometimes a relationship just couldn't work itself out and it's for the best that they end things on an amicable note. Leaving their future open for the viewers' interpretation.
56	* UnintentionallySympathetic: Holly's severe misfortune during her late return (broke, pregnant, and abandoned by her husband) is played thoroughly for laughs but comes across as just plain [[KickTheDog cruel]] more than anything else and makes her one the biggest [[TheWoobie woobies on the show.]]
57	* ValuesDissonance:
58	** Any subplot that involves Deacon being concerned about his oldest son being gay and his attempts in "curing him" of that, or comical subplots about characters acting effeminate or not stereotypically "manly", come across as much more uncomfortable and mean-spirited these days even if they're often played for light comedy. Any time the show uses "gay" as an insult also applies to this.
59	** Spencer still living with his mother as a fully-grown adult was taken as something abnormal and often played off as a joke of his extreme arrested development and/or a creepy UsefulNotes/OedipusComplex. These days, with both the late 2000s/early 2010s Great Recession and the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic wiping away a lot of opportunities, as well as many jobs whose wages are not keeping up with the skyrocketing cost-of-living (''especially'' in New York City), his arrangement is far from uncommon.
60	** When Deacon hires Spence to babysit in "Friender Bender," Doug asks, "Why can't you get a hot 16-year-old girl to babysit like normal people?" Twenty years ago when the episode aired, this was a throwaway line PlayedForLaughs. Today, the line comes across as gross and ephebophilic.

Context YMMV / TheKingOfQueens