The sappy, synthesized, clarinet-heavy music which used to play under emotional moments in sitcoms. Always appears when the characters realize
We Havent Learned Anything Yet.
Named for
the worst offender...although
Scrubs was pretty damn close. They snapped out of it though.
Examples
Live Action TV
- Linda Bloodworth-Thomason is apparently fond of playing sappy music during emotional scenes, completely undercutting the performances of her actors just so we can be absolutely sure that we should cry or go "daww" during a particular scene. This happens frequently on Designing Women and to a lesser extent on Hearts Afire.
- Scrubs featured a particular few bars of piano music so often in emotional moments that they eventually decided to hang a lampshade on this by having JD say that he always imagines this piece of music playing at emotional moments in his life. From that point on in the series, the music is mainly used in subversions of emotional moments.
- That music was featured so much that the actors themselves imagined that tune during emotional moments of their own lives.
- Full House: during every Golden Moment.
- Mind you, Full House (as well as pretty much every Sit Com in the TGIF block) tended more for light bass guitar or a synthesizer on high notes over a clarinet, but it was the late 80s/early 90s.
- Project Runway's "Auf Wiedersehn" music (give or take a clarinet).
- Arrested Development parodied this music when in season two many hints are dropped that Buster is actually Oscar's son, not George Sr's.
- Family Matters was terrible about this. Loud, soppy music actually sort of kills any emotional scenes.
- Friends had plenty of this in the episode where Ross's grandmother died. This wasn't the only problem of the episode. The grandma's moment of death was literally played for laughs and The Fun In Funeral segments hardly worked together with the sappy and fake emotional moments during which the Full House Music plays. This Troper found the whole episode of very bad taste.
- This is constantly used in Saved By The Bell. The music often seems to be the same despite the content of the scene it's playing to.
- Noted by the Nostalgia Critic, who demonstrates that the music is so bland and ambiguous it could be played to just about any plot development, good or bad.
Western Animation
- Parodied in the Family Guy episode "Holy Crap" in which Peter has a band on hand to play the Full House Music at the appropriate moment.
