Squids, broken gravity, and New Jersey.
A common episode plot in shows is one where the main character is kicked out of their house. Maybe they couldn't afford rent, maybe their roommate kicked them out because the two of them can't comfortably live together, maybe the house was burned down in a House Fire, maybe the character has decided it's Time to Move, maybe they wanted some new scenery.
Cue the House-Hunting Montage!
These often show as the person needing a new house exploring different ones with either a friend or a realtor. Expect all the houses to have some kind of deal breaker, except the last one. Occasionally the montage will show the character trying to live there for a few minutes, with the place proving to be perfect in all ways, except for one "tiny" flaw that makes the place a nightmare to live in.
In comedic shows, the character might actually be happy with the last house, which is revealed to be somehow identical to their old one. Most often, however, the character will instead learn their lesson and resolve to stop doing whatever got them kicked out in the first place, then move back into their old home. It's very rare that this will ever result in a permanent location change, and writers will often do anything to get the character home, even if it means just having the character in their old house again in the next installment with no explanation.
Compare and contrast with Hard-Work Montage (if finding a new suitable house proves to be a difficult task), Creation Sequence (if the character decides to build a house rather than look for a pre-existing one), and Terrible Interviewees Montage (for when the montage is about terrible employees instead of terrible houses).
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Crayon Shin-chan, the Nohara family is looking for a temporary house in various estate agencies after losing their house in a gas accident, but they are unable to move due to finding the prices too expensive or are kicked out due to the landlords being annoyed at Shinnosuke, Micchi and Yoshirin antics. The family ultimately decides to move to Matazuresou.
- Stretch out a house hunting montage into an entire show and you get Dragon Goes House-Hunting, wherein a wimpy dragon named Letty gets kicked out of his home and searches for the perfect place to live with the help of an elf named Dearia, who is the greatest real estate expert in the world. In flashbacks it is revealed that Dearia previously helped another dragon named Varney with searching for the perfect home, which ended up taking 100 years. Varney's hunt for a home started with them going around attacking various fortresses to see if they could find one sturdy enough to a dragon as powerful as Varney to live in.
Fan Works
- A sub-plot of Discworld fic Hyperemesis Gravidarum by A.A. Pessimal, concerns the quest of Assassins' Guilds resident teacher Emmanuelle de Lapoignard to find a house. A resident teacher at the Guild School, she has become pregnant and has to move out of her tied accomodation there. She only has a few months to get fixed up with a new place before the baby arrives. She discovers that estate agents in Ankh-Morpork are aware of concepts like honesty and truthful descriptions. They just don't bother with them.
- In The Price of Flight, Captain Olga Romanoff, on top of her other responsibilities, is moving house and dealing with builders. She therefore needs an evening drink more than usually.
Films — Live-Action
- In short film Lieberman in Love, Joe goes on a house hunting montage with Karen the realtor—not because he wants a house, but because he really likes spending time with Karen the pretty realtor. In the montage he repeatedly says "no" to house after house, because he's stalling.
Live-Action TV
- Early episodes of Angel establish that Cordelia is now living in an apartment that's an absolute dump, and she eventually breaks and starts looking for a new one. She goes through a few places, including one with a sleazy-looking landlord who makes a point of telling her he can get into her apartment himself, and a communal apartment that's pretty much a cot surrounded by a curtain amongst a bunch of filthy hippies. When she finally gives in to Doyle's offer to use his contacts, he ends up delivering her a perfect apartment at an amazingly low price (because it turns out to be haunted).
- Birds of a Feather: In "Three Up, Two Down", Sharon and Tracey need to find a new house after they are forced to rent out their old house in order to stay financially stable, prompting a house-hunt. Most of the houses however are only seen in the context of Tracey declining to move into them. The exceptions are the first house (rejected for being too squeaky, having loose floorboards, and smelling funny) and the last house (a house that is seemingly perfect until the girls find that their new neighbor there looks and acts a lot like current Nosy Neighbour Dorien). They eventually move into the first house seen in the montage.
- Ghosts (UK): A brief one is shown in "Getting Out" after Alison and Mike decides to sell off Button House to a hotel chain. The major issue is that Alison can see ghosts, so the few houses we do see are mainly rejected because she would have to live with the ghosts who live there. The issue is resolved when a mass grave of plague victims is discovered under Button House, leading to the hotel chain withdrawing their offer.
- Doctor Who: The episode "Knock Knock" starts with a brief one, as Bill and her friend Shireen search for a new place to room together. They reject a place with too few doors and a house next to a cement factory before settling on the seemingly ideal house that is the episode's main setting.
Web Animation
- In the Eddsworld animation "The End (Part 2)", Tom deserts the gang out of frustration over Tord's return. A montage of him house-hunting is shown; he goes through an unlivably cramped apartment, an evil house where the landlord sics rabid dogs on him, a house next to an airport, a little old lady's house where the landlord sics rabid dogs on him, a cardboard house that collapses when he knocks on it, a space house that sics rabid dogs on him, a haunted house, a house on fire, a haunted house on fire, and a house with a bunch of "beware of dog" signs that sics rabid canaries on him before finally ending up in a cardboard box in an alley with a mad hobo and his rat puppets for neighbors.
Western Animation
- Adventure Time: In "Evicted!", Marceline reveals she owns Finn and Jake's treehouse and kicks them out, prompting them to go house hunting. The houses they find are all occupied. One "house" they create even turns out to be actively using a living creature as one of the "walls".
- Dug Days uses a brief one as part of its intro, showing Carl and Dug trying to find a new house after selling The Spirit of Adventure. Carl vetoes the first because of its style, Dug the second because it's crawling with cats, both the third because it's a wreck before they agree on the fourth.
- Futurama: In "I, Roommate" Bender and Fry are convinced by Leela to seek a new house when Bender's closet-sized apartment is too small for the both of them. The montage shows an underwater house, which gets attacked by a giant squid, a Relativity
house, which proves too impractical to navigate, and finally a seemingly perfect apartment, which is in New Jersey.
Fry: Not one place even remotely livable! - Harley Quinn: Harley and Co go on a lair-hunt after they get evicted from Ivy's apartment. The Volcano Lair doesn't really fit her brand, the Underground Lair doesn't have a great location, she just can't find one she likes. Ultimately, she winds up moving into an abandoned (but still fully functional) mall after Ivy's former landlord mistakes them for being dead and tries to dispose of their bodies there.
- Mr. Bean: In "Homeless", Mr.Bean is kicked out by his landlady, forcing him to go house-hunting. The first one has him appalled when he is given exotic food, the second one forbids stuffed items (like his beloved Teddy), the third one had him be forced to live with pigs, and the fourth one was a fake house (with only the front walls having been put up). He is eventually welcomed back into his old house at the end.
- Phineas and Ferb: One of Doofenshmirtz's multiple-tragic backstories show him on one of these when he goes house-hunting in Danville. Due to his ridiculously small budget, he's only able to afford very small properties until he gets shown the future site of his evil headquarters, a large purple building better known as Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated. Then he learns it's so cheap because it's right next to a noisy lighthouse, with every ship in the harbor keeping him up all night long. Naturally, he decides to use his latest -inator to deal with the problem.
- The Simpsons:
- In "Realty Bites", Marge becomes a real estate agent, yet repeatedly fails to sell houses due to her being too honest about the houses' lack of quality. Her boss warns her that she will be fired unless she sells a house soon, yet she still cannot manage to lie to the Flanders family. When they see the final house, which unbeknownst to them was the location of a mass homicide, Marge finally manages to lie and they agree to buy it.
- In "Lisa's First Word", Homer and Marge recount the story of when Lisa was born. Part of having a second child meant needing a larger house, and so they went house-hunting in the rat's nest area: A series of houses all beyond their prime.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In "Unreal Estate", Squidward convinces SpongeBob that the latter is allergic to his own house, and acts as a realtor trying to get the fry cook to move out. He shows him a banana house, a pepper house, and a chicken parmesan hero house. All of them play a variant of the show's introduction, and highlight said house's issues. SpongeBob promptly rejects all three of them.
- In "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost", Squidward demands SpongeBob and Patrick carry him to a suitable location. The first spot is too hot, the second is too wet, and the third is too loose, Lautrec.
- One of the vignettes in "Truth or Square" details how SpongeBob became Squidward's neighbor. The houses he is shown consist of an old boot, a fishbowl (with a castle) and a toilet.
