So Random! - Television Tropes & Idioms

Now with 90% less Sonny.

So Random! (2011) is a Sketch Comedy series on the Disney Channel. Technically the third season of what once was Sonny With A Chance. In that show, So Random was a Show Within a Show that the characters were stars on and snippets would be shown in between the off-set plots.

However, Demi Lovato, who played Sonny, refused to reprise her role after the second season in order to focus on her musical career and resolve some personal issues. The show was retooled and defictionalized into its own show, losing the backstage plots and becoming a full-fledged Sketch Comedy show complete with special and musical guests. Whether it stands on its own merits is up to the viewers.

So Random provides the following tropes:

Action Girl: In the Wheel of Fortune Parody, the Vanna White girl got so annoyed by Fred, that she ripped off a piece of the board, and bashed it onto Fred's head.
Vanna: You're welcome, America!
- Apparently, Strawberry Shortcake as well, in a parody segment called "Strawberry Shortbread Saves the Earth".
Adorkable: Becky, the Girl Who was Raised By *DUN DUN DUNNN* Beavers!
Affectionate Parody / Stylistic Suck: Similar to its role in Sonny With A Chance, it is a parody of All That, You Can't Do That on Television, The Amanda Show, MMC, etc. and its tone reflects that. Unfortunately, without knowing this, or with the burden of it having to stay true to its parodic nature and hold together as its own entity sans SWAC, it can come across as over the top or mediocre in its own right.
Age Inappropriate Dress: Your Daughters Closet, the only store that sells cool clothes to moms who are too old to rock them!
The Band Minus the Face: At least where the nucleus of the cast is concerned, it is basically Sonny With A Chance minus Sonny. The behind the scenes plotlines concerning Sonny have been abandoned as well.
Big Damn Movie: Parodied with Strawberry Shortbread Saves the Earth.
Beware the Nice Ones: Tantrum Girl.
Berserk Button: In the "Tantrum Girl" skits, EVERYTHING.
- Including the fact that people think she throws tantrums.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: In Miss Piggy's episode, we see her talking to Kermit on the phone. Her side of the conversation (we don't hear Kermit's) goes something like:
"Kermit, Kermit. Let me explain this again. So Random!, the Show Within a Show is now its own show. Yes, Chad's a Random now, deal with it!"
Call Back: In one of the Tantrum Girl skits, Allisyn Ashley Arm wears her Blossom Scout uniform from Sonny With A Chance.
- Glendovia, the imaginary country featured in a Sonny With A Chance episode, gets a fair mention in one sketch.
Cannot Convey Sarcasm: The eponymous character of "Possibly Sarcastic Skip", was born with a terrible disease that makes everything he says sarcastic, whether he intends it that way or not.
Captain Ersatz: One of the sketches has a cheery food-themed girl named Strawberry Shortbread. Of course, it's definitely not Strawberry Shortcake: This one avenges her friends and saves the world from extraterrestrials!
Captain Obvious: Taylor Swift in the Wheel of Fortune sketch:
Taylor: (singing) I'll spin the wheel, it'll turn clockwise.
Pat: Okay thank you Princess Obvious, now will you spin the wheel?
- Also, a literal incarnation of the trope (a captain who goes around pointing out obvious things) in one episode.
Catchphrase: "Oh, you're not going to believe this!"
- "Tell ya WUUUUUUUT!"
- "Well I don't mean to BRAG but.."
- "Angus, you know that pose drives me CRAAAAAZZYYY!"
  - "I knnnnnoooooorrrrrr!"
- "I don't play by the rules. (food item)!" (crashes into something)
- "Have you seen my shins? They're like sticks."
Dawson Casting: Tiffany Thorton, who plays Tawni, who is stated as been in her late teens, in real-life 26.
Dead Baby Comedy: The "Zombie Man" skits. One of them involves Zombie Man eating his teacher and then using her bones as a science project.
A Dog Ate My Homework: Not a dog, but a monkey took it instead. (Actually, the monkey force-fed the dog the homework). The dog did, however, eat the plane tickets.
Extreme Doormat: Subverted. The Goth girl from the Garage Band sketches acts like one, but she goes berserk at the not raging people who try to join the band.
Girl: GET OUTTA MY GARAGE! [screams several times]
Defictionalization
Do It Yourself Theme Tune: Sung by cast member Brandon Mychal Smith, titled "So Random (It's A Party In Here)".
Funny Foreigner: Angus, the Australian Supermodel.
- One sketch revolves around a guy named Oscar who got expelled, but goes back as Olaf, a transfer student from Glendovia.
Game Show Appearance: One skit had cast members as Fred, Taylor Swift and Willow Smith on Wheel of Fortune.
Getting Crap Past the Radar: In one Mr. Goodman sketch, he takes his class to an art museum. One of the paintings is a still life with fruit, which includes a melon with a slice removed, giving it a quite vaginal shape. Mr. Goodman keeps poking that very painting, in that very spot, ostensibly to point out it's a paint-by-numbers (it's not).
- Zombie Man- he eats people (off-screen). It's Played for Laughs.
Goth: The "girl in the garage band" sketches. The other band members could count, to a lesser extent.
Grammar Nazi: MC Grammar, to the point of getting beat up.
Girlfriend in Canada: Played straight and discussed in the "Learning Spanish with Reynaldo Rivera" sketch.
Hide Your Pregnancy: Presumably what's going to happen with Tiffany Thornton, since she's pregnant with her first child.
Hitler Ate Sugar: Joked with in in skit:
Announcer: You know who else said they looked good in hats? Attila the hun.
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Unusually for a Kid Com these days, averted. Episodes are named for the (usually)musical guest.
Improbably Predictable: In a school news sketch, one of the anchors keeps handing the other letters responding to his response to the previous letter. At one point, the other anchor asks "when did you find the time to write all these letters and how did you know what I was going to say?", which is replied to with a letter saying "Because you're very predictable".
Ironic Echo: In the "MC Grammar" sketch.
Rapper: You say we rhymin' bad?
MC Grammar: No, you're rhyming badly.
(Later))
Rapper #1: You wanna beat him bad?
Rapper #2: Let's beat him badly.
Lighter and Softer: The show is essentially a kid-friendly Saturday Night Live
Mad Libs Catchphrase: "Don't mean to brag, but Insert Failure Here. Hollah!"
- The Simple Country Boy has "Aint nothin' but a (Insert complicated metaphor here)" when someone thanks him for something.
- Tawni's character says this to angus in every sketch: "Oh Angus, you know (insert whatever he's doing in the sketch) drives me CRAZY!
- Mr. Goodman will occasionally shout out the name of a food and then smash into something.
Muppet Cameo: "Miss Piggy".
New Transfer Student: In one sketch, Oscar becomes the Funny Foreigner Olaf, who came from Glendovia.
Parental Bonus: A few, with shout-outs to The King's Speech (a R-rated film with a famous Cluster F-Bomb scene) and "The Most Interesting Man in the World" (an ad for beer).
Parody/Homage: MC Grammar.
Re Tool: How do you carry on without your main character? Why focus on the Show Within a Show of course.
Sentai: Parodied with one sketch that was a Take That to Nickelodeon's Supah Ninjas.
Shout Out: The Halloween episode has do's and don'ts done by a particular person who shall not be named...
- He's made a couple other appearances since then.
Sketch Comedy
Spin-Off: In fact, the show (and its promos) removed all mentioning of the original show and counts it as a "New season of So Random".
Spiritual Successor: To Nickelodeon's All That.
Stalker with a Crush: "I'm Gonna Marry Zac Feldman Show!" revolves around one. The name of the sketch is a dead ringer for it.
Take That: One sketch has Fred, Taylor Swift and Willow Smith participate in a game show, but no one can actually play because Taylor keeps singing all her answers (in a Jimmy Hart Version of the pre-chorus of "You Belong With Me"), Willow keeps flipping her weave and saying repeating everything she says at least twice, and Fred is too busy being... Well, Fred.
- The show itself seems like a parody of SNL Celebrity Jeopardy.
- Another sketch has Harry Potter struggling to understand "the real world". Even though he spent 11 years there and then some.
Tantrum Throwing: Tantrum Girl, of course.
You Wouldn't Believe Me If I Told You: There is a character who mutated this phrase into his Catchphrase, "Oh, you're not going to believe this!"
- Everything he says is true. No matter how ridiculous it is. Which makes him a Gender Flip Expy of Saturday Night Live's Penelope.