Narm Charm / Live-Action TV

• Riverdale. After a certain point (which might be in the middle of the first episode for some people), the never-ending headlong rush into drama becomes impossible to take seriously and you just have to sit back and see what ridiculous situation will pop up next. For example, the third season is pretty much a self-aware version of Mazes and Monsters that everyone in-universe takes deadly seriously.
• This is the reason why Sesame Street continues to be so popular today, even among adults. Seeing humans act alongside puppets and treating them as if they're real sounds like it'd be hard to take seriously, but the puppets have so much personality (thanks in no small part to Jim Henson and his talented cast of puppeteers) and the humans go along with them so believably that you're inclined to believe it with them too. The skits are also preschool-level simple so children can understand them, but it's oddly charming to watch Patrick Stewart wondering "B? Or not a B?" or Liam Neeson emotionally counting to 20.
  • This is a staple of Muppet projects. On The Muppet Show, people not only treat puppets like they're real but are required to keep up with their comedic anarchy and mayhem. Again, the Muppets have such believable character that the guest star goes along with it with ease.
  • One of the more interesting facets of the show came in 1997-1998 with Season 29, when the producers decided to tackle an overarching season-long idea as complex as space missions, training, scientific knowledge, the unknown of science and the universe (brought down to just the level of the moon), and the very real dangers involved. And this is a children's series known only for its number counting, alphabetical teaching, shape and color recognition, social studies for children, and comedy for children from 3 to 5 years old and parents alike. In short, Slimey, Oscar's pet worm, discovers an interest in going to the Moon, trains for it, and launches with four other worms in a rocket into space, lands on the moon, and comes back, along with a few mishaps on the way, and revered celebration from the rest of the cast at the high points of the season. What makes this so work so well is that, like the fact that the actors treat the puppet characters as if they were real, the show and characters put so much seriousness and attention into the event, with simplified but similar ideas in training, preparation, and the traveling life of astronauts, as well as a realistic timescale between episodes (spanning 18 weeks). The rocket vehicle, again simplified, is somewhat realistically shaped, with all of the amenities one would find in a real spacecraft. The rocket crew encounters dangerous mishaps, the characters here on Earth experience separation anxiety and emotional longing, and there is even a ground crew mission control keeping tabs on the entire mission. Even more, the mission itself inspires not only the child characters, who form a pretend-astronaut club, but even the adult characters, who form a night-watching group that appears a few times in the season. It even brought back reporter Kermit the Frog, in his first new on-Street appearances since Jim Henson's death, and Robert MacNeil, one of PBS's anchors from The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, who had retired a few years before his guest role on the show! One can get chills at how much thought was put into the story, when really, it's worms going to the moon, and yet it still works!
• In The Flash (2014), Barry finally gets the chance to ask Eobard why he killed his mother. Eobard's cold eyes and harsh voice cancel out what would normally be a petulant line: "Because I hate you."
• Glee is the same with Brittany. Giving a friend, whose father suffered a heart attack, a report on heart attacks to show sympathy, nosing a meatball around (in heartbreak) like in Lady and the Tramp, being a high school student who still believes in Santa Claus. Only Heather Morris can make this work out.
  • Finn singing "I'll Stand By You" to a sonogram. For anyone else this would be the narmiest moment in television; but because it's Finn, big, stupid, and oh-so-sweet Finn, it's a Heartwarming Moments
  • Blaine's confession of love to Kurt could count, as the dialogue is like something from a chick flick, but the way he says it is so heartfelt that you can't help but Squee as he says it. Even the people who don't like Blaine admit that they're glad something was finally going right for Kurt.
• Many, many scenes in Stargate SG-1 containing Goa'uld, especially with O'Neill's constant Lampshade Hanging.
• Community took this to a level that is safe to call it "Narm Charm, the series". It turned paintball, pillow fight, blanket fort, and puppet-therapy into serious business and/or heartwarming moments. One of its best episodes is about a pen some character has lost in a room.
• Doctor Who is the inverse of Special Effect Failure, as noted on that very page. The cheesy effects are so loved that the new seasons deliberately keep the effects from being too polished to retain that feel. The new series seems to thrive on Narm Charm in all its forms.
  • A large portion of the Classic Who fandom has cheerfully adopted the hammiest villains and most annoying companions as their mascots.
  • The Daleks' entire existence is basically one big example:
    • The Daleks' famous "EXTERMINATE!" line is clearly Chewing the Scenery, except they usually come across as unstoppable, merciless genocidal maniacs (so much that a Cambridge University academic wrote a paper about the Daleks' Narm Charm). So that line gives more chills than snickers. Case in point: The Daleks transmit a single-word message of their famous catchphrase across the whole earth during "The Stolen Earth" and pretty much every one of the Doctor's earthbound former companions just about needs to change their pants upon hearing it and realising who it is. Including Sarah Jane Smith and a man who can't die.
    • Their voices are high-pitched, mechanical, and screechy, such that Daleks tend to scream all their lines at the top of their voices. Usually this would make a villain hard to take seriously, but with the Daleks it instead underscores the sheer, unadulterated hatred they have for everyone else, making them more unnerving.
    • The Daleks' appearance: they look like a bumpy salt shaker with a plunger for a hand and a ray gun shaped like an egg-beater. By all rights, this should make them hilarious. Instead, it enforces how utterly inhuman they are, adding to their scare factor. Not to mention that every aspect of their appearance is so iconic that nobody would ever dream of altering it in any major way.
  • The Classic Cybermen first seen in "The Tenth Planet" are pretty shoddily made, with clunky machinery attached, simple cloth masks over their heads, and human hands because the designers forgot gloves. However, a large part of the fanbase considers them superior over their more sophisticated successors because all of these weaknesses in their design just emphasize how they used to be people who operated themselves in a desperate bid to survive and puts them straight into the Uncanny Valley, making them creepier than the later Cybermen, who look just like average sci-fi Killer Robots.
  • One viewer who saw the lost story "The Macra Terror" on its first airing pointed out that the Macra prop only looks terrible due to the photo being out in the open, with a lot of bright light. In the episode, it's in a dark studio, surrounded by gas, making it (to him) utterly terrifying.
  • In his first serial, "Terror of the Autons", the Master causes someone to be smothered to death by a chair. Smothered to death by a chair. And it is awesome. And then he makes guys in ridiculous bobblehead costumes handing out daffodils terrifying. Did we mention he was using the daffodils to Take Over the World?
  • The pointless chase scene which takes up pretty much the entirety of episode two of "Planet of the Spiders", where the Doctor and John Dearth pretty much drive or fly every combustion-engine-powered vehicle known to man with the exception of locomotives and jet fighters, and which ends with the villain vanishing anyway at the end of it, is still awesome in its own right. Of course, it helps that Barry Letts wrote the sequence as a going-away gift for Pertwee, who had a deep interest in motor vehicles of all kinds and relished scenes where he could get behind the wheel.
  • The production staff can be forgiven the hideous monsters from "The Three Doctors", and Omega's scenery-chewing, as the interplay between Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton, William Hartnell and Nicholas Courtney makes up superbly for it.
  • The horrible fates of the Family of Blood. Trapped in the edge of every mirror for eternity? That's so stupid it's cool.
  • The scene where the Master kills his entire government cabinet with poison gas in "The Sound of Drums", complete with overacted death throes and the corny You're Insane! line, should not be as entertaining as it is, but we really grasp what kind of villain he is when he responds to the insanity accusation with a cheerful two thumbs up.
  • In "The End of Time", we have the Master Race. Fun to watch? Yes. Hilarious? Oh hell yes! Terrifying and dramatic? Errr... Then there's Timothy Dalton, showing the scenery no mercy as Rassilon. "I! WILL! NOT DIE!"
  • Matt Smith's tenure kicks off in fine form. Giant eyeball aliens in snowflake spaceships! So cheesy, they're awesome. Cheesesome?
• Blake's 7 was even worse. They were getting by on Doctor Who's leftover props and set pieces (sometimes after the duct tape peeled off), the acting veered wildly between awesome and awesomely stupid, the fight scenes had all the coordination and grace of roadside sobriety tests, and Snark-to-Snark Combat was the order of the day. The show's two finest characters (Avon and Servalan) were completely unrepentant Large Hams. Add the fact that it was much Darker and Edgier than any TV sci-fi until 2005, and it was glorious.
• Nearly all Tokusatsu shows (with a few exceptions such as GARO and Shin Kamen Rider) are unbelievably silly and weird, with all sorts of unrealistic tropes that are used completely shamelessly, and episodes that follow a strict formula. The People in Rubber Suits especially are a relic from another time, and frequently expose their flaws: the Fangire from Kamen Rider Kiva come to mind as something that should be ridiculous, and would be treated as such in any non-Japanese property, but somehow stuntmen in sophisticated Halloween costumes and voice actors make for compelling, amusing, cool, scary, dangerous, real characters. Stuff like that is why people like tokusatsu in the first place.
• Power Rangers (and by virtue of being the source material, Super Sentai): Silver Age comic super-weirdness and Doctor Who-style fondness of Special Effect Failure all in one package. Linkara put it best: "It's Power Rangers: it's supposed to be cheesy!"
  • Jason is the master of Narm Charm. For one example, screaming "OH MAN, HE FROZE THE ZORDS. WE'RE HISTORY!" in Lord Zedd's debut is utterly ridiculous, but it still hammers home how dire the situation is.
  • Bulk and Skull calling the people of Angel Grove to help in the final battle of Power Rangers in Space after an I Am Spartacus moment. Corny, but awesome, and - after their six years of character development - heartwarming as anything.
  • When Saban ran out of footage of Bandora from Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger to use for Rita Repulsa, they made their own. Despite Rita now being played by an American actress, she was still given a Hong Kong Dub because it had become an iconic part of the character. This also holds true in the higher-budget movie.
  • Tommy's Evil Laugh as the Green Ranger could count as well.
• Kamen Rider is a big example; if you boil the concept down to its roots, you get a man in a bug-themed super suit who rides a motorcycle and karate-kicks rubber monsters into oblivion^note Western fans have even adopted the affectionate nickname "karate bugmen" to acknowledge the franchise's goofier aspects. It's also one of Japan's biggest pop culture icons, on par with the likes of Superman and Spider-Man in the West. As mentioned above, part of the reason fans love it is precisely because the goofy aspects can belie some seriously good writing and acting.
  • Kamen Rider Decade: Many fans agree that the finishing move against the Makamou in episode 19 is perhaps the dumbest thing that has ever been on Kamen Rider.......and perhaps the most awesome thing ever as well thanks to a well-coordinated attack with The Power of Rock.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim is a sterling example of this. The stripped-down version of its plot is "street-dancing teenagers transform into fruit samurai and fight over public stages". The full version of the plot is a Cosmic Horror Story with the fate of the Earth at stake, underpinned with religious symbolism, Faustian bargains, and betrayals, and the clash between idealism, cynicism, selfishness, and fatalism. But would you expect anything less from Gen Urobuchi?
  • Kamen Rider Drive: In the penultimate episode, Gou runs angrily at a belt and kills it with an axe. On paper? Absolutely ridiculous. But since said belt contained the consciousness of Gou's abusive mad scientist father, who's the show's Big Bad and just killed Gou's friend and fellow Rider, it feels satisfying to see the asshole get what's coming to him.
    • Adding to this is the fact that said axe is super-Toyetic, with a beeping traffic signal that shouts "Wait for it!" when prepping a Finishing Move and "Go for it!" when it's ready. Banno's pathetic begging for his life is capped off by Gou declaring "It said 'go for it', didn't it?", providing a surprisingly awesome Pre-Mortem One-Liner.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid pulls this off in spades. Just the suit designs include some of the most ridiculous examples that the franchise has seen - from Super-Deformed Level 1 to a pink suit consisting of hearts or wearing a pink backpack. It presents a surprisingly good blend of all video game tropes known to men and medical drama rife with ethical and moral clashes. Similar to the suit designs' weirdness, Kuroto Dan is the runner-up for the hammiest character in the franchise. None of his Large Ham, mad laughs and god speeches are anything but hilarious.
• Speaking of toku, the Ultra Series in general. It's men in rubber suits fighting each other in a miniature set to make it look like they're 40m tall. The older series are generally more narmy than the more recent ones (look at the first iteration of the original Ultraman suit), but they're all narmy in their own way. What puts them firmly into "Charm" territory varies, but for many, it's the fun writing and characters, great monster and suit design, or just the crazy antics and interesting fights.
  • Like Star Trek, the Ultra Series is often praised by fans on both sides of the Pacific for its ability to tell stories filled with emotion (Watch Episode 23 of the original Ultraman and see what we mean) and able to deal with social issues like racism and war (Ultraseven is an excellent example) without toning them down for the kids. The fact that almost all of these stories use what we all know are just People in Rubber Suits to pull it off does not in any way detract from their effectiveness, and in some ways, make it even more awesome.
• Walker, Texas Ranger. The plots are ridiculous and the solutions are generally roundhouse kicks combined with moralizing speeches, but it's still great fun to watch.
• The Brady Bunch more or less in its entirety with some stand-outs: the "mom always said not to play ball in the house" episode, the Johnny Bravo episode, the "Time to Change" episode, the Hawaii special with Don Ho and Bobby having a nightmare about robbing his own family in the Wild West.
• In Charmed (1998), the ridiculous costumes that most supernatural beings (and frequently the sisters themselves) end up in were considered a part of the show's charm to many fans, and occasionally lampshaded.
  Phoebe: [having just been turned into a genie with flowing blonde hair] Why do I always end up in the blonde wig?!
• Star Trek: The Original Series embodies this. A stuntman crouching under a pizza has never been a more sympathetic character. And when there is appropriate contrast, even a wildly overacted scene becomes downright touching. Then there's the ridiculously over-the-top and bombastic music. Only this show could take this piece and make it the most iconic fight music in television history. Ultimately, this is the reason that even the legendarily bad episodes (like, say, "Spock's Brain") are So Bad, It's Good instead of completely unredeemable. TOS episodes that were heavy on the Narm were always entertaining. Compare actual bad episodes that are dull and full of padding, like "The Alternative Factor". People will go for "Brain and brain, what is brain?!" every time.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation occasionally runs on pure cheesiness. It's the series' outright honesty and belief in itself, and its writers' (and actors') refusal to shy away from uncomfortable subjects, which means it gets away with a lot of it — when you have characters living in a future when humans are (supposedly) a much more reasonable, understanding bunch, and got there the hard way via a couple of near-apocalypses and a lot of personal growth, then an audience can't help but appreciate their passion and dedication to their ideals, even if they are pointing about dramatically and occasionally doing flying leaps.
  • In particular, there's the episode "Chain of Command". Picard's dragged out, thick-tongued "THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS!" just wouldn't have worked in any other time or place, but given that it came at the end of one of the most horrifying demonstrations of torture and cruelty to ever be aired on daytime television... let's just say if anyone can pull it off, then Patrick Stewart can. It has been remarked that Patrick Stewart's strength as an actor is his ability to deliver bad dialogue with utter conviction.
  • On the cheerier side, we have "Captain's Holiday", a bizarre Indiana Jones-type adventure with a Ferengi in a Hawaiian shirt, two time-travelers and lots of flirting. Dear gods, the flirting. A ridiculous plot with enough cheese to make a pizza the size of a planet, saved and made golden by the fact that Captain Picard (and probably Patrick Stewart) is clearly having the time of his life.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • The much-memed line "It's a fake!",^note Pronounced more like, "It'ss a ffaaaaaaake!" which is very strangely delivered, but nevertheless somehow manages to just enhance an already genuinely great episode.
  • In another episode, "Defiant", which is pretty solid and otherwise avoids narm, there's the incredibly magnificent sight of Riker removing his fake sideburns to dramatically reveal via goatee that he's actually Tom, Will's duplicate. The episode just wouldn't be the same without it.
• While "Faith of the Heart", the theme song for Star Trek: Enterprise, is often berated for being a pop song in a franchise whose themes have usually been orchestrated (plus the very schmaltzy and somewhat overwrought lyrics), the song is an excellent articulation of the themes and messages that lie at the heart of the Star Trek franchise.
• The whole idea behind Star Trek: Discovery: The titular starship is designed to jump across space through a network of magic space fungus. Yes, that is apparently a thing. And every time she jumps, she pulls a longitudinal spin before disappearing. It seems really absurd, yet it grows on people. it probably helps that characters in the show acknowledge how bizarre the concept sounds.
  Captain Pike: [to Commander Saru] If you're telling me that this ship can skip across the universe on a highway made of mushrooms, I kinda have to go on faith.
• CSI: Miami: It may sound hilarious... but I... [puts on shades] make it cool. YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
• Angel:
  • In "Release", there's a scene where Cordelia, possessed by Jasmine, is sending telepathic messages to Angelus, using an incredibly cheesy "evil overlord" voice. Somehow, the way the scene plays out makes the voice only add to the creepiness.
  • Then there's the memorable scene from season 3's "Loyalty" where Wesley seeks out information from the Loa, an ancient, godlike spirit of knowledge with glowing red eyes and a booming voice. The Loa berates Wesley, confirms his worst fears, and delivers an incredibly ominous warning of doom to come. Oh, and the form that the Loa takes happens to be a giant, talking, hamburger-shaped drive-in speaker. Somehow, the conversation with the giant, shouting hamburger is hilarious while still being the dramatic peak of the arc.
  • The 5th season episode "Smile Time". Just.... just go watch it. You'll understand. SO much Narm that still somehow feels dramatic and emotional.
• Most speeches in Babylon 5 the series are full of Narm. On the other hand, Mira Furlan and Andreas Katsulas were such great actors, any speech delivered by Delenn or G'Kar still managed to be utterly compelling. Bruce Boxleitner, on the other hand, got away with being a Large Ham by virtue of the fact that John Sheridan was also a Large Ham.
  • Michael York also revelled in this trope in his appearance as David McIntyre a war veteran driven by grief and trauma to believe that he was King Arthur on a mission to deliver Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake. While McIntyre's insanity was never played as anything other than tragic, it was also... well... Michael York, a trained Shakespearean actor, given free rein and all the props he could eat, running around on a space station in chainmail and cutting up space thugs with a longsword. But York's utter sincerity and ability to alternate between vulnerable, empathetic and stone-cold badass just make it work.
• Batman (1966) is an exaggerated example. The Camp is kicked up to eleven, and the special guest stars (the villains) are the hammiest hams that ever hammed, yet Adam West delivers every line with a completely straight face.
• Somewhere there is a video where the creators of Lost admit to giving the character Ben Linus narmy lines because they feel that Michael Emerson can make them sound awesome. Also, from the season 6 premiere: The line: "I'm very disappointed... in all of you!" shouted by none other than Faux-Locke/The Monster after he beats the crap out of Richard while everyone watches. It's just so bizarre and creepy that the sheer silliness of the line can be ignored.
• The House episode "5 to 9" focuses on Cuddy's position as Dean of Medicine. She suffers a stressful day of fighting with medical insurers, a sociopathic medical technician, and House's antics (and getting called a "bitch" by every character possible). When the medical insurers cave and agree to her "outrageous" medical costs, she has a Big Yeah complete with the camera pulling back to show everyone in the lobby react. The rest of the episode features a montage of an abundance of good things happening to Cuddy — it comes off like a commercial for Prozac. But the events of the episode were so stressful on Cuddy, you don't mind how corny things get at the end after she fought hard for her victories.
• Little House on the Prairie features a great deal of people caught in unbridled moments of passion. On one hand, an actress expressing such outright rage at injustice that they cry while yelling for the camera can be cheesy; on the other hand, that does take a good deal of talent, and perhaps just a spark of genuine conviction.
• MST3K employed this with several scenes that make fun of shmaltz and over-the-top acting. See if you can listen to "Clown In The Sky" (6:10) without getting a tear in your eye.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is a deeply silly show pretending to be a deeply serious show. Somehow, this is still awesome.
• The A-Team could go back and forth between this trope and straight-up Narm, all within the same episode. And it's entertaining.
• The characters on Gossip Girl are prone to dream sequences which easily fall under this category, as the actors seem to be in competition over who can ham it up the most. Current trophy holder is probably Ed Westwick after his performance in Chuck's season three nightmare.
• iCarly generally plays its hammy moments 'straight'. Occasionally, they do a parody and fall from the usual webshow Narm into Narm Charm, such as Carly's delivery of a Big "NO!" from iBeat the Heat, and the teen movie parody Kelly Cooper: Terrible Movie is so over-the-top it's hilarious.
• Smallville: at least a good 30% of everything entertaining.
  • Lexmas, period.
  • Some of Chloe's more passionate declarations of love towards Clark may be slightly Narmy but still make everyone go "Awww!"
  • When Clark tells Lois, "I'm the blur!" and she tackles him in a fit of passion.
    • When it's not being outright Narm then the show as a whole can be this.
• LazyTown is ridiculously cheesy and suffers from a major case of cross-cultural weirdness, but fans can't help but love every minute of it. "YAR HAR FIDDLE DEE DEE! YOU ARE A PIRATE!" "You Are a Pirate" is so awesome that Scottish Pirate Metal band Alestorm made a cover of it.
• Fringe. Science, even the most far-out, fringiest science that ever fringed DOES NOT work that way. But it's soooo much fun. Nasty, Squicktacular fun.
• The Thick of It:
  • On paper, "COME OUT OF THE CUPBOARD HUGH..." looks ridiculous. In Malcolm's low Glaswegian growl it sounds genuinely terrifying.
  • Episode 7 of series 3, the Wham Episode in which Malcolm is sacked. Before leaving 10 Downing Street for what his enemies are sure will be the last time, he vows to them "YOU WILL SEE ME AGAIN! YOU WILL FUCKING SEE ME AGAIN!" before striding out with his long black coat flowing behind him. This should be cliched and Narmy- and in a political satire, Wrong Genre Savvy - but Malcolm, being Malcolm, renders it awesome.
• Robin Hood:
  • In the second season, during the death scene of Marian. On the one hand, the build-up involves a confusing and contrived sequence of events, and the death scene itself is drawn out to an utterly ridiculous extent in which Marian has a sword in her stomach and yet is able to carry on a completely coherent conversation for several minutes; on the other hand, Maid freaking Marian is dying and the Emotional Torque is Over Nine Thousand and no one can believe it's really happening and it's the most horrible, devastating thing that's ever happened on any Robin Hood retelling ever.
  Robin: "We have forever, my love."
  Marian: "I hope we have forever in heaven, because we didn't get enough time on earth."
  • Topped only by their Together in Death scene at the very end of the series, which echoes their parting words:
    Robin: My wife...
    Marian: Now and forever, my love.
• The creators of The Weird Al Show note in the commentaries that Brian Haley as The Hooded Avenger had the unenviable task of delivering the majority of the show's Anvilicious morals. But his Adam West style utter conviction to the part makes it work.
• Bea Arthur, in The Star Wars Holiday Special, is able to take her usual Deadpan Snarker persona and apply it to good effect during her song-and-dance sequence in the Cantina on Tatooine, though she's helped in that it's the only scene in the special that makes the least bit of sense.
• The hilarious, homoerotic, and oddly charming Long Underwear Boxing scene in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
• Watch Leonard Nimoy's In Search of.... The narration on the wild theories of all kinds of mysteries, complete with Leonard Nimoy rocking a 70's 'stache, makes this show ridiculously wonderful to watch.
• 'Allo 'Allo! is just so hammy and cheesy you can't help fall in love with it. It really tells you something that the show was popular throughout Europe despite the fact that it made fun of all of them, but it did it in such a way it was impossible to take offense at it.
• When people talk of Christmas variety specials, there's only one more likely to be brought up than The Star Wars Holiday Special — in fact, it's inevitably brought up. That special is Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas (1977), solely because of the segment in which the "White Christmas" crooner and David Bowie trade contrived banter and sing the duet "Peace on Earth"/"Little Drummer Boy". There were a lot of crazy team-ups in the Variety Show genre as a whole in its prime, but none were quite this crazy...or became so sincerely beloved, because it is a warm, well-performed song. Even in The New '10s, it's a popular radio request when the season rolls around.
• Sleepy Hollow is wall-to-wall narm charm. The majority of critics like it not despite the fact that it's stupid, silly, and completely insane, but because of it, cramming a season's worth of nonsensical plot twists and supernatural crap into 40 minutes each week.
• The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - while more recent parades have the narminess toned down, the parades from The '80s were so overblown, yet designed to light up any child's eyes - and the performers look like they're having so much fun doing it. This is just part of the reason why many people who were children back then look back fondly at the parades as adults, even in The New '10s. To prove it, check out these clips, featuring floats by Marvel Comics - with a surprise appearance by Robocop (!) - and Masters of the Universe, respectively.
  • And surprisingly, even the newer parades have a touch of narminess that wouldn't seem out of place in the mostly corporate-mandated funfest. Just check out Ariana Grande's performance in which she briefly dances with Dora the Explorer, Carly Simon sharing the stage with the Care Bears (note the clowns in the background waving teddy bears) or any appearance with the Power Rangers.
  • On that note, the parade was co-hosted from 1987 until 1997 by Willard Scott (that's him bookending the Marvel clip listed above), who in terms of his other career as a weatherman is a living, breathing incarnation of Narm Charm. Being the original Ronald McDonald might have had something to do with it.
• The climax of the second season of Penny Dreadful involves Vanessa confronting a devil-possessed doll version of herself and it speaks with her voice. Because of the writing, the eeriness of the doll, and especially because of Eva Green's performance, the scene works.
• Code Name: Diamond Head. While the entire Pilot Movie is fairly Narmish, one moment has a random jogger finding the General's body, is just goofy in her Wangst. The S.O.L. crew just giggle at her.
  Servo: (amused) Her whole family gathered around the TV to watch her on his show and that was it!
• The Masked Singer features a gaggle of celebrities dressed up in bizarre, extravagant costumes (ranging from a peacock and a raven to a unicorn and a pineapple) and singing anonymously. However, the fact that the contestants are left unrevealed until their elimination is what makes the show unique and keeps viewers hooked.
• 30 Rock has one in season 5, when Kenneth tells the story about Harold. Harold was a pig on the farm where Kenneth lived, and he became a role model of his. It's funny and silly until you find out that the reason, is because he was the only thing close that Kenneth had as a father after his real father passed away when he was a young boy, causing him a state of depression.
• Gotham is an over-the-top ham-fest whose tone careens wildly between the grittiness of The Dark Knight Trilogy, the gothic weirdness of the Tim Burton Batman films, and the camp of the 60's show. It's jaw-droppingly bizarre and when it works, it's loads of fun.
• The BBC adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia is poorly acted and extremely low-budget, with special effects that were bad even in 1988. And yes, the Beavers are played by full-sized adults in beaver suits. Yet, as this review articulates, it captures the magic of the stories much better than the Disney films.
• Cobra Kai. Eli's "Hawk" persona is pretty much Testosterone Poisoning given physical form, but, unlike most characters of the type, "Hawk" is badass enough to actually pull off all the ridiculous things he does. For example, his Victory Dance of tearing off his jacket and rolling his shoulders to make his hawk tattoo flap its wings would be completely ridiculous if anyone else did it, but he makes it work. It is also a testament to Jacob Bertrand's acting skills that in the season 1 finale he manages to deliver the line "Prepare to face the fury of the Hawk!" in a way that sounds nothing like a Chuunibyou trying too hard and everything like an actual threat.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978): A lot of the show is not scientifically sound, nor are the stories particularly new, and there's a lot of cheeriness in the remains of a civilization that has just had their homeworlds destroyed. However, there's something good to be said about a show that doesn't dip into Too Bleak, Stopped Caring territory.
  • The destruction of the Atlantia is nothing to balk at. Sure, the Colonial President chews the scenery a bit with a weeping apology to Cmdr. Adama, the sound effects and acting are something you'd see in a horror film, and the Atlantia explodes in a fireball pasted over it, but there's something so... visceral about this. The President is so wrought with grief and sorrow that makes your heart sink, there's an ugliness to the bridge of the Atlantia falling apart, and an existential horror to the depressurizing wind howling through the blasted-through bridge viewport into space, capping it off with an explosion that nearly blinds the crew, finishing with Adama just saying a quiet, horrified "Oh my God..."
  • The religious themes are over-the-top, and the crystal palace that the Viper pilots encounter later is about as close to Fluffy Cloud Heaven as it can get with a touch of a Christmas television special, but with how seriously the music, scenery, and characters treat the encounters, one gets a real sense that the characters meet are a force from a realm beyond our understanding, perhaps even from the Heaven/Hell afterlife of many religions. Plus, Patrick MacNee as Count Iblis (strongly implied to be the Devil in a humanoid form)? John Steed he is not. You do NOT want to mess with him.
• Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction: The puns and wordplay that Jonathan Frakes uses at the end of almost every segment can range from goofy to downright groan-worthy. However, not only does he deliver them with the same level of charisma as the more serious bits, the smiles he gives make it clear he's fully aware of how cheesy they are.
• Red Dwarf: The shot of the countless Ace Rimmer coffins forming a ring system around a planet is probably the single worst special effect in the entire show, but the scene, showing how many Rimmers (the original being a cowardly, neurotic kiss-ass with delusions of adequacy even on a good day) had taken up the mantle simply because the multiverse needed a hero, still manages to be incredibly poignant.

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