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• Truth In Television

"Spare the snark, spoil the networks."

A TV recapping/discussion site featuring very snarky commentary.

If you believe some TV shows are so good that they must never be made fun of, TWoP is not for you. However, if you recognize that even your favorite show has much which is deserving of mockery, you'll like TWoP. There is a school of former readers who felt that TWOP has, itself, Jumped the Shark after being sold to NBC (who runs it under the Bravo brand name), causing the site to quickly lose its teeth.

There is another group that says it jumped years earlier when it started actively hating the shows it recapped, arbitrarily deciding that certain shows now sucked, and behaving almost maliciously towards said programs. The site (or, at least, several of its key contributors) is also rather notorious for being unusually thin-skinned about criticism of itself (which, given the mission statement of the site, is a bit ironic).

The site's forums are notable for requiring posters to conform to standard written English. All-caps, no-caps, or textspeak will get a poster warned or banned. Flames and "talking about the boards on the boards" are prohibited. Coupled with the above-noted reputation for being thin-skinned regarding criticism, this last rule especially has led to many accusations (fair or otherwise) of over-draconian, unfair and less-than-ethical moderating.

Formerly known as Mighty Big TV. Read it here.

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Tropes:

• Accentuate the Negative: The entire purpose of the site is to review and discuss TV shows in as snarky a fashion as possible, so naturally this is going to result in a fair bit of focussing on the bad bits over the good bits. Depending on the reviewer and the show, however, this can sometimes tip into outright negativity.
• All Crimes Are Equal: Their penchant for fashion policing. A few of the recappers obsessively note instances of actors wearing (in their view) tacky costumes, regardless of whether the character in question is intended to have bad fashion sense.
• Caustic Critic: The recappers.
• Fauxlosophic Narration: Jacob, whose 30-page recaps can go on for pages and pages about philosophy and symbolism and literature without once mentioning the actual show he is recapping.
• Fauxtivational Poster: they have a thread for these on their recreational forum which must be one of the prime places to find it on the 'Net
• Grammar Nazi: The moderators.
  • The recappers once suffered from this. Unavoidable when your webmaster and her friends are all ivy-league English majors.
• I Reject Your Reality: Lampshaded in the Buffy/Angel reviews. Strega chooses to believe Spike is off causing mayhem in some foreign nation, unaware that he's replaced by some dull lookalike named Brad.
  • In one Charmed recap, Demian refers to Chris's female sex partner as a man because he insists that Chris is gay.
• In Joke / Memetic Mutation: numerous
• Inherently Funny Words: Flounce.
• The Man Is Sticking It To The Man: How do they manage to remain ruthless when they are owned by Bravo and, since the takeover, choose to spork mostly NBC Universal-produced properties?
• Portmanteau: "Porquettishly"
• Precision F-Strike: Strega usually avoids gratuitous swearing, but she loathed [[Angel Fred]] and extreme sappiness. Both of those things were exemplified by "Mr. Feigenbaum," Fred's stuffed bunny, which Strega thought was designed purely to make her extra cute and sympathetic. Paraphrased slightly:
  "I really hate that fucking rabbit."
• Real Life Writes the Plot: TWoP's forum is legendary for causing Aaron Sorkin to rip his hair out and base an entire episode around eviscerating the site and their perceived ill-treatment of him.
• Running Gag: The majestic TWoP Tower offices!
  • Hands on the puppet!
  • Ganya or death!
  • The David Boreanaz quote of the day.
  • Adding fake nicknames to the cast of Dawson's Creek every week.
  • Dawson Leary as a closet homosexual who lusts for co-star John Wesley Shipp.
• Shout Out: Played for Laughs. Any line of dialogue which includes a name or reference to something the recapper is known for (no matter how obscure) is jokingly declared a "Shout out."
  • Demian has at least two from Charmed- in one episode, Piper said 'Fricking ever-useless Elders!' ('ever-useless Elders' was one of his catch phrases when recapping) and in another, the entire episode revolved around a Darklighter named Damien who was trying to kill Leo (Demian's least favourite character). He was overjoyed.
  • Supernatural featured a gay couple named Demian and Barnes.
• Spork: What the recaps are for.
• Suckiness Is Painful: Sars resigning from the Dawson's Creek recaps in its final season, pleading concern for her stomach lining.
  • Sara M resigning from doing House recaps.
  • In a recap much shorter than his usual, Jacob Clifton dumped reviewing Doctor Who midway through Series 6, because he preferred Russell T. Davies' mythic arcs to Moffat's interlocking puzzle plots, and objected to the characterization of Eleven and Amy.

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