Cerebus Syndrome Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Riff: I understand the webcomic Goats is a major example, but since I've only recently started reading it, I don't feel qualified to comment officially. Anyone?

Gambrinus: I wouldn't agree about Goats fitting this trope. It moved from gag-a-day to long form, but it's still purely focused on comedy. There's nothing serious about the plot, and it's really just an excuse to tell a different kind of jokes.

Ununnilium: I'm putting the First And Ten comment back in College Roomies From Hell, since I've often heard such comments.

Ophicius: Removed Harry Potter as this is a trope about comics.

Sci Vo: I don't think that we need a different trope for when it happens in other media. It just happens to be really obvious with comics because they're serialized, and it's relatively easy for someone to start one without realizing how few gags are in his bag of tricks.

Ununnilium: Yeah. Putting it back in.

I added Goats; I've read them all and the author has actually said that moving to a story-arc-based format has been his long-time intention. Sorry don't have a link for that assertion; if I find one I'll post it. - MDCore

Ununnilium:

Night Watch is unusually dark and serious for a Discworld novel, although it has plenty of humorous moments as well. (The darkness in the book is a one-time event, though; later books return to light-hearted form.)

...what? It's no darker than The Fifth Elephant, with its assassins, intrafamilial murder, and exploding werewolf heads, or Thud!, with the attacks on Vimes's family, the suicidal fundamentalist dwarves, or the Summoning Dark.

Duckluck: That's true, the Watch books as a whole tend to be a bit darker than the rest.Men At Arms and Feet of Clay both had their fair share of murders. You could make a case for the Watch books getting more serious as they went (Guards! Guards! isn't half as serious as Night Watch and Thud!), but the same can't be said for the rest of the series.

ladyf: Can we generalize this away from comics? I think a lot of TV shows do this too (Red Dwarf springs to mind, I am sure there are many others).

Duckluck: I mentioned this before, but it seems to have been lost in The Great Crash. I think that we should merge this with First And Ten Syndrome because the only difference between them is whether the shift is done well or not, and tropes are supposed to be value neutral.

Ninjacrat: Agree.

Semi-Known Troper: I've seen far more referances to Cerebus Syndrom than First and Ten, so we should probably get rid of that article.

Duckluck: Did someone finally ax First And Ten Syndrome? If so, good job to whoever, but it might be a good idea to clean out all the red links. Plus they should probably have set up a redirect there and saved the contents here. If we're going to merge the articles, we sort of have to know what we're merging, don't we?

Ununnilium:

South Park, somewhat.

I'd disagree. It's stayed pretty much the same over time, with occasional This Is A Moral moments in the Dead Baby Comedy.

This editor will note that a multitude of different places have been given as to where the original artist "really wanted to stop and that's why it got so bad afterwards" in regards to Dragonball/Z/GT. This includes the above, but has also been cited as the end of the Frieza Saga, the end of the Androids Saga, and the end of the Cell Saga. So unless someone cites a reliably-translated interview, don't be too quick to believe you've got the One True Answer on just where the show's creator considered it to have jumped the shark.
- The reason you've heard about so many different "shark-jumping" points is because they're all true. Akira Toriyama really did want to end it after Dragon Ball, but was then convinced to continue on to Dragonball Z. The "Z" was originally meant to indicate that it would be ending soon. Then, he wanted to end it after the Frieza saga, where Goku fulfills his destiny as the Legenday Super Saiyan and dies an hero's death. Then he wanted to end it after the Cell Saga, where Goku's son Gohan surpasses him and his legacy is truly passed to the next generation. Eventually, he just put his foot down after the Buu saga and ended it once and for all.
- Actually, to clarify, the Z was something added on to the anime only, which Toriyama wasn't responsible for, to show that it had gotten Darker And Edgier. Frieza was the preplanned ending from the beginning. He never really considered it to Jump The Shark, but he just wanted it to END before it did.

Conversation In The Main Page.

Madness Combat started out as somewhat of a Gag Series as a Dead Baby Comedy. Newer episodes appear to be making much more sense, albeit still using a very dark style.

Making sense != drama. And if it was dark from the beginning...

Every Adam Sandler movie, arguably.

No. Cerebus Syndrome by definition can only apply to serial works.

Zephid: So, has Ctrl Alt Del hit this point yet? Just had a comic about miscarriage, including a giant news post about how he had this planned all along.

Large Blunt Object: I don't think so myself, but it seems quite a few people do. See Ctrl Alt Del Discussion.

Lord Seth: Is Neon Genesis Evangelion really an example? Sure, it undoubtedly cut down on the humor and got darker, but it had dark bits at the start and was serious, it just had some comic relief to go along with it. Does it belong on this page? It seems more like something that started in Cerebus Syndrome and then got more Cerebus-y as it went on.

Pro-Mole: Second on that. I can't think of NGE being a "funny series" to start with. You can maybe point a "Giant Mecha-Mind Screw" transition, but I wonder if that qualifies. It seems to be a deconstruction all along.

Charred Knight: Thirded. it takes more than Penguins, and toothpicks to make a comedy. Deleted it, especially because it used the two words thing, which I found more hilarious than anything actually in Evangelion outside of Pen Pen.

This troper's (yet) unpublished webcomic has gone through this on the planning stage. Starting as a series of short strips about characters that were thinly veiled versions of the author and his friends, it got paranormal stuff added to it to make it more interesting, resulting in it getting very much derailed from the original plot (for exaple the characters who are supposed to be students were never shown studying). Eventually the troper re-imagined it, keeping the paranormal elements but toning them down, changing the characters to better justify the plot and swithed the style to slightly longer strips. Now if only he could learn to draw better...

Tanto: Nuh-uh. We don't mind pimping your own stuff, but you have to get it out there first. "Story I might get around to writing someday" isn't enough, notability or no.

Besides, I would argue that the planning stages don't count anyway. It has to happen mid-series, or it isn't this.

Ununnilium:

Revolutionary Girl Utena starts out as a relatively light-hearted Magical Girl series and ends as a dark, surreal Mind Screw with plenty of Brother Sister Incest and Mind Rape along the way.

This I'd disagree on. The surreal elements are there from the beginning. It got somewhat darker as more of the backstory was revealed, but it stayed the same genre. And I can't really see in what sense Utena's a magical girl.

Sabre Justice: Um, about First And Ten, what actually happened?

Tanto: It was deleted. It serves no purpose, as it's just "Cerebus Syndrome, only bad", and people were constantly moving examples between the two. Distinguishing between Cerebus and First and Ten is purely subjective, so we're going with the one and letting God sort 'em out.

Sabre Justice: I mean not so much the trope, but the actual TV show? What the heck was it actually about?

Tanto: Damned if I know. American football, I can only presume.

That Other 1 Dude: I looked it up. All I know was that it was on HBO.

Mikado: Well, apparently it went from a "Woman takes over football team. Zany antics and fanservice ensue" to a serious plotline, alienating the core viewership of people who wanted to see zany antics and fanservice while at the same time not attracting a new audience because of the connotations the show had previously had.

Austin: I disagree on Metalocalypse. The second season focused LESS on the Tribunal, and until the last episode did very little to explain their motivations, nor did they take a more active role in influencing Dethklok. I'm also not seeing much character development, because the personalities of the characters vary depending on what's needed for the joke, such as in the Education episode in the first season where Skwisgar and Toki come off as smarter than normal.

Austin: While it'd be nice to get some feedback from someone who actually enjoyed the second season, I feel the example is outright wrong, so I'm moving it here. Any agreements or disagreements would be apperciated.

"Metalocalypse, as of its second season, definitely seems to be heading in this direction, with less emphasis on stand-alone episodes/meandering conversational humor, and more reliance on character development (Toki being the most notable recipient of this) and the overarching "Tribunal" storyline."

That Other 1 Dude: Goddamit, quit adding that damn Zero Punctuation joke. Tropes Are Not Bad, so were are definitely not having a page quote from a guy that's already got over twenty when he's saying it's inheritely bad, especially when it's just a Take That to a specific example.

Sapphire Forever: I have to argue about the Pink Panther example; it was always intended as a comedy. The catch was that the original focus was on a different character. Should we remove it?

tbarrie: I removed:

It should be noted that this is technically the trope namer, since Eric Burns coined the "Cerebrus Synrdome" and "First and Ten" terms in a rant about GPF, considering it to be squarely in the First and Ten category.

as it's untrue; the GPF rant in question

is quite clear that the two terms were already in use on that blog. I believe the actual first use of the terms is here

Eggie: I think that there's a real life example of Cerebus Syndrome: joke political parties. They come into the limelight supporting outrageous conventions, but quite a few of them eventually turn serious, and develop a serious political agenda. It's at this point where these parties lose their support with their joke voters.

—- Eggie: Is it just me, or does Don Quixote fall under this trope? The first book was not philosophical like the second one. The second one was in many ways more serious.

—-

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys