Series / The Amanda Show

Amanda, please!

The Amanda Show was an All That Spin-Off starring Amanda Bynes that ran from 1999 to 2002. It was a sketch comedy created by Dan Schneider, starring Amanda and helped to build the careers of Drake Bell and Josh Peck. A Running Gag revolved around a super fan of the show Penelope Taynt constantly trying to break into the studio to meet Amanda. As Penelope was played by Amanda herself, you can guess how successful she was.

The show's Amanda Please website—designed in-universe by Penelope—notably stayed on the web for nearly 15 years, even after the show was long since cancelled, but it was sadly taken off in 2015 as part of a rehaul of Nickelodeon's website. Thankfully, that's why we have the Wayback Machine.

Recurring sketches include:

• Judge Trudy: A 13-year-old judge who often has to sort out settlements between children or teenagers against adults, and she always sides with the young. Her childish bailiff then carries out her humiliating punishments. Then she brings in the dancing lobsters.
• The Girls' Room: 3 aggressive girls and Debbie (who keeps saying she likes eggs) run events in the girls bathroom at their school. Debbie's popularity among viewers eclipsed that of The Girls Room sketch itself.
• Penelope Taynt: An obsessive fan who's always trying to meet Amanda and promotes the website Amanda Please! This sketch mostly serves as commercial promotion of www.amandaplease.com
• Blockblister: An (illegal) video store run by an Eastern European family parodying Blockbuster (the real-life store was referenced) and many people thinking the store is Blockbuster come in to buy a movie, only to realize that it's just a cheap invokedNo Budget rip-off with the video store workers replacing all the actors. Then cue the angry backlash they get from customers who proceed to scream at them to go to hell.
• A Hillbilly Moment: Two hillbillies share knock-knock jokes with each other, which always end with the boy hillbilly getting hit with an object related to said joke.
• Dooper: A bizarre line of restaurants that sell inedible foods (e.g. "mucus pukus" ice cream; "Try it. Snot bad!"). One sketch details that they're able to stay open because the town's local health inspector is a moron, who simply pulled a Do Wrong, Right on a spider infestation in the ice cream Dooper sketch.
• Moody's Point: A parody of teen dramas and soap operas by satirizing just how emotionally exaggerated they can be. Dan Schneider tried to launch this sketch as its own series (a spin-off of a spin-off?)
  "It's the party in that special part of your heart that makes the party of life the part that you never really part with".

  —Moody's Dad
• Totally Kyle: A laid-back hippie surfer telling mundane stories often saying "One time", "uh" or "um", "it was all", "like" and "totally" that don't come off much as surprises.
• Melody and Thad: Two singers are booked to perform at a certain venue, only for them to sing rather insulting and gross songs (e.g. "One time I ate in the restaurant; the food was disgusting and bad. The spaghetti had fungus; the rats were humongous, and the waitress threw up on my Dad"...).
• Stranded: A parody of Survivor where a group of contestants (usually consisting of characters from other sketches) must remain in a certain location the longest in order to win the grand prize.
• Mr. Gullible: A funny-looking short man with weirdly protruding teeth and who often gets taken advantage of by people (usually high school students) for his conventional mind and gullibility.
• Mr. Oldman: Some old fat guy who gets prank called by the same girl. He's also very gullible. Almost every sketch opens with him screaming that he hates children.
• Tony Pajamas: A teen Italian mob boss (parodying The Sopranos) with his portly assistant Paulie. He has an overly sexualized girlfriend, Candy, who often gets into trouble at school such as cheating on an exam.
• When _____s Attack: A parody of "When Animals Attack" that shows people getting mauled by hula girls, cheerleaders, old ladies or The Brady Bunch.
• The Dare Show: Sharon and her brother Toby host a show out of their attic where they take any dare sent by their viewers. This usually results in them backing out before the darer calls them chicken, causing them to do the dare as intended.
• Crazy Courtney: A weird girl with goofy looking teeth who annoys people, talks unusual and usually yells "MA-HA!".
• So You Wanna Win $5: A game show parodying Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? that asks very easy questions to really, ''really'' stupid contestants where you can only win $5.
• Marcy Stimple: Some crazy, hyperactive woman dressed up like a little girl who appears to have ADHD and/or maybe even mental retardation.
• Commercials: Commercials that help kids get out of doing homework, going to school or listening to their parents and teachers, or getting to eat very bizarre and incredibly unhealthy foods.
• The Lucklesses: A whole family of Butt-Monkeys.
• The Klutzes: A clumsy family that cannot avoid breaking things.

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Examples of tropes found on The Amanda Show, please!:

• Accidental Marriage: In one episode, Amanda got forced to marry an audience member who she promised can have anything he wanted. Money and marriage to Amanda came in mind. Amanda didn't seem too upset over getting forced to marry him, just shocked that she's much older than him.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Despite frequently getting hit on the head by the subject of whatever Knock-Knock joke that his sister, Lulu Mae is telling, Eenis will usually tell her that it's still a good joke.
• Adults Are Useless: A tradition of Dan Schneider shows. The adults are so stupid that even the children and teenagers vastly outsmart them in even the simplest tasks.
• Alpha Bitch: Amber of The Girls Room is this, as when she found out that she didn't win prom queen, she had the girl who did win get a swirly.
• Ambiguously Bi: Penelope borders on being a Stalker with a Crush in how she obsesses over every aspect of Amanda, but she finds a boyfriend in Trevor (who still incorporates Penelope's obsession into their relationship).
• Animated Credits Opening: Each episode of the first season began with a cartoon in which Amanda grows dissatisfied with current TV programming (which differed with every episode), so she goes to Nickelodeon Studios to start her own show.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Penelope is sometimes joined by her younger brother, Preston, who usually bugs her to make him a sandwich.
• Art Shift: A bizarre recurring claymation sketch, whilst everything else is live action.
• Artistic Licence – Biology: Played for Laughs in a claymation sketch where Amanda first has to get milk for her fudge brownie batter. She summons a cow to milk there on the spot, and when being told she needs chocolate milk, summons a 'chocolate cow' instead.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: Defendants tend to do this upon seeing that Judge Trudy is only 13.
  Defendant: Uh, wait! Excuse me! You're the judge?
  Judge Trudy: No, I'm a bowl of fruit.
• Babysitter from Hell: Amanda once played a babysitter in her teens who acts like a juvenile, cries and throws tantrums easily and demands being fed ice cream directly by spoon.
• Bad "Bad Acting": All of the Blockblister movies have terrible, wooden acting as performed by the staff of Blockblister.
• Badly Battered Babysitter:
  • Inverted in one skit with Amanda babysitting two children—and the babysitter is a massive woman child who terrorises the children with her babyish antics. The children try but fail to babysit her instead. They end up locking her in the closet and stealing their mom's car keys to go catch a movie likely by one handling the wheel and the other doing pedals.
  • A Blockblister skit featured a babysitter bringing an Enfant Terrible to the store. The child is so furious with the movie that she fires the babysitter—who reacts by jumping for joy.
• Birds of a Feather: Mutual Brainless Beauties Kyle and Debbie hooked up in one sketch.
• Bland-Name Product: Lampshaded in the Blockblister sketches—where the video store sold knock-offs of famous movies. (They were able to get away with it since at the time Nickelodeon and the real Blockbuster were both owned by Viacom.)
• Brother–Sister Incest: Implied several times, but here takes the cake in "Stranded" where Eenis is a contestant:
  [to Amber]: Gosh, you're purtier than my sister!
• The Bully: Judge Trudy, who has her jury throw things (usually garbage) at the defendants, before fining them huge penalties of money; the defendants inevitably can't pay the fine, so instead Trudy assigns a randomly humiliating punishment on them, such as unleashing wild animals or deranged psychotic people on them.
• But Not Too White: For a prom night skit on "The Girls' Room", Debbie tries to get a tan at a tanning salon—and shows up sun burned.
• Butt-Monkey: Mr. Gullible, Mr. Oldman, Misty Raines, Penelope Taynt, Eenis, the hosts of the Dare Show, the Klutzes and the Lucklesses.
• The Cameo:
  • Josh Server and Kenan Thompson show up at the beginning of the first episode, complete with an instrumental version of All That's theme playing during their entrance, to wish Amanda good luck with her new show.
  • Maureen McCormick in Moody's Point as Moody's Mom, who's been stuck in a runaway hot air balloon for six years.
• Cargo Envy: "I could have been a wall to be leaned upon by Amanda, BUT NO! I HAD TO BE PENELOPE!"
• Character Catchphrase:
  Debbie: I like eggs!
  Gnocchi Blokey: This movie better!
  Blini and Biscotti Blokey: Much better!
  Mr. Oldman: You have the wrong number!!!
  Penelope: I am Penelope Taynt, Amanda's number one fan, please!
  Misty: You're so hurtful!
  Misty: What's that supposed to mean?!
  Mr. Gullible: Really?!
  Nurse Zelda: Holy bagoda!
  Judge Trudy: Court dismissed! Bring in the dancing lobsters!
  Any variation of Judge Trudy giving a Big "SHUT UP!" to the defendant.
  Crazy Courtney: MAAHAA!
  • Penelope also has "I MUST meet Amanda!" and "I have my own Amanda website you know: www.amandaplease.com!"
    • Less obviously, she repeats "You're wasting my life!" and "Why do it?" a lot.
  • "Whoop-de-doo!" and "Not a problem!" from The Klutzes.
• The Chew Toy: A whole family of them, the Lucklesses.
• Chez Restaurant: Chez Klutz.
• Child Hater: Mr. Oldman is always screaming that he hates children that they're always mean to him.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Several characters throughout the sketches, but Debbie from "The Girls' Room" takes it up to eleven.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: In the opening Amanda greets the actors she is hiring by ripping their clothes off and forcing their costumes on them.
• Comically Small Bribe: The security guard won't let a person in for a sack of diamonds, but he will for a slice of pizza.
• Company Cross References: One episode has Amanda reading fan mail. She starts the letter with "Dear Amanda...", to which the audience replies with "Thaaaaat's me!", referencing the "Dear Ashley" segments of All That which always began with Ashley starting off her letters with "Dear Ashley... thaaaaaat's me!" Amanda catches on to the reference and says "Wrong show, guys."
• Complexity Addiction: An audience member asks Amanda to open his soda by using her voice to shatter the glass. Amanda tries - and shatters several other things - but doesn't get the bottle open. The boy is shocked when she suggests simply taking the lid off.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: This occurred at the end of every "Judge Trudy" skit, when Trudy would rule in favor of the child plaintiff and sentence the hapless adult defendant to something odd, which the bailiff would immediately carry out.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: The proprietors of ____-Dooper, who make and sell disgusting variations of different food items.
• Couch Gag: The clips that appeared on Amanda's television during the first season's intro varied per episode.
• Crack Defeat: Parodied when Amanda hosts a talent show. The first two 'talents' are balancing a hat on their head and pouring salt on a hard-boiled egg—while the third is a genuinely impressive gymnastics routine. The gymnastics gets the lowest audience score.
• Creator Cameo:
  • Dan Schneider plays in a recurring skit as Mr. Oldman, a grumpy elderly who is constantly prank-called.
  • Andrew Hill Newman (one of the writers on the show) played Mr. Gullible in Season 2.
• Creepy Doll: Rock-A-Bye Ralph, a scary doll who talks non-stop in a creepy high-pitched voice. The little girl is so scared of it she feeds it to her dog, invokedbut he continues to talk from inside the dog's stomach.
  "Just close your eyes and sleep, sleep, sleep!"

  —Rock-A-Bye Ralph
• Dead Line News: The segment called When ______s Attack (sometimes hula girls, The Brady Bunch, etc). They would watch the clips of people being attacked and then at the end the subject would attack the newscaster.
• Deranged Animation: The aforemention claymation skits during Season 1.
• Designated Heroinvoked: Ask the Procrastinator to solve a crisis, and she'll do so...eventually!
• Didn't Think This Through: The producers of the first episode of "Stranded." They create a game show in which the last person to exit a car in the middle of a parking lot in Oklahoma will win a million dollars... which they left in the trunk of said car. And they also left the keys in the ignition. Needless to say, when Judge Trudy and the Bailiff, the final contestants, realize this, they immediately hijack the car and prize money for a day in Vegas.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In one Cold Open, Amanda is napping before the show starts, and Drake convinces Josh that the two of them should do the opening bit themselves. When they go out, a few audience members immediately assume that they're trying to take over the show and lead everyone in the auditorium in beating the guys up.
• Disrupting the Theater: In a Courtney sketch, Courtney sits next to a boy at the movie theater and annoys him to no end. She blows her nose and puts the tissue in his hand, cuts his hair, tries to feed him yogurt, tries to pick his nose, paints his face, and gives him a wedgie that pulls his underwear right out of his pants. The boy leaves, and Courtney's date takes his seat so they can watch the movie together.
• Do Wrong, Right:
  • In Judge Trudy sketches. One sketch has kids throw potatoes at the defendant and she complains. Trudy then orders the kids to switch from potatoes to squashes. And in another sketch, kids were pelting the plaintiff's aunt with garbage because that plaintiff was ordered by her mother to kiss her aunt goodnight. Trudy objects to this, and states they instead direct their garbage at her mother for carrying out the order, not the aunt.
  • In the cold open for the Season 2 finale, Drake and Josh are getting beaten up by the audience for not putting out Amanda on the set and trying to open the show themselves. Amanda wakes up just in time and tells the audience members that they can't beat Drake and Josh up onstage..."If you wanna beat them up, take it outside." Guess what the outcome is.
• The Ditz: Kyle from the "Totally Kyle" sketches whose stories didn't even have much substance. There's also Debbie and Mr. Gullible. In one Girls Room sketch, Kyle and Debbie made out.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Tony Pajamas sketches often ended with the "Al Dente Brothers" pulling up to wherever Tony was and attacking him by hurling food into the building (in one case, jelly-filled doughnuts). It was clearly meant to be a kid-friendly version of drive-by shootings from Mafia movies and television, completely with overly dramatic music and everyone acting like getting hit with pastry was the equivalent of death.
• Dope Slap: Several episodes feature skits involving pseudo-mobster Tony Pajamas (Drake Bell) and his lacky, Paulie (Josh Peck), would frequently say or do something stupid, get hit and ask, "What was that for?!" To which Tony would reply, "For bein' an idiot!" which Paulie would accept with an "Okay."
• Dumb Blonde: Kyle of "Totally Kyle" is a big ditz with long blonde hair.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first season had an animated opening, strange claymation skits and a slightly different set.
• Efficient Displacement: At the end of the Courtney skit where she chases her piano teacher out of the house, her teacher runs through the door and leaves a perfectly shaped hole in the door.
• Enemy Mine:
  • One episode-spanning Penelope sketch had Penelope teaming up with Josh: if he introduces her to Amanda, she'll make Drake "disappear" and allow Josh to take over all of his sketches (which leads to an Imagine Spot with Josh as characters like Kyle, Ennis the Hillbilly, and Tony Pajamas). Though Josh initially agrees, he ultimately can't bring himself to do it and saves Drake instead.
  • One "Girls' Room" sketch has Amber competing with hated rival Danielle Spencer for the position of class president. When they both learn that a new kid named Jamie is also running, they agree to team up to take "her" down...only for Sheila to reveal that Jamie is actually an extremely handsome teenage guy. Amber and Danielle quickly agree to drop out of the race and support Jamie instead.
• Epic Fail: The reason the first "Stranded" ended with no winner: the producers put the money in the trunk, and the keys in the ignition. Judge Trudy and the Bailiff realize this after 8 weeks and steal the car to spend the day in Vegas together.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Well, extremely biased judge more than evil, but her Bailiff is the only adult Judge Trudy treats with any respect, probably because he's as immature as her. Best demonstrated in the "Stranded" sketch, where instead of betraying each other they take the keys of the car and go to Vegas after realizing the prize money was in the trunk.
• Everybody Has Standards:
  • Judge Trudy, who is known for her Kangaroo Court, has a three word rebuttal when Tony Pajamas's asks about how hard he'd be punished for stealing a kid's bicycle: "You disgust me".
  • Other than the above example, Trudy usually hilariously subverts this, such as angrily stopping people from throwing potatoes at the defendant, only to then declare that it's perfectly fine if they throw squash instead.
  • Trudy's baliff, while he usually indulges in carrying out very cruel punishments that Trudy enacts upon the defendants she finds guilty, couldn't let Trudy assault Debbie in the "Stranded" sketch.
• Exact Words: In one Cold Open, Amanda is asleep, and Drake convinces Josh that they should try to do the intro themselves for the day. Unfortunately, the audience members assume that they're trying to take over the show and rush the stage to kick the stuffing out of them. After a few minutes, Amanda wakes up and tells everyone that they can't just brutally beat Drake and Josh up onstage...by which she means they need to beat them up outside. The mob drags the boys away while Amanda does a proper introduction.
• Extremely Short Intro Sequence: Its intro in the second and third seasons is 15 seconds, which was especially short in the 1990s.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Penelope's attempts to meet Amanda always end in failure, no matter how close she comes to succeeding.
• Fight for the Last Bite: One skit shows Drake and Josh quarreling, and getting into a physical fight, over the last piece of some jumbo shrimp.
• Funny Foreigner: Gnocchi, Blini, and Biscotti of the Blockblister sketches, with their funny accents and odd ways.
• Gag Haircut: The mother of "The Dare Show" was dared to shave her head, which of course she did after being called chicken.
• Garrulous Growth: In one sketch, Amanda is on a date with a boy who has a large pimple on his forehead. She has a disturbing claymation fantasy about chiselling it off of his face, and it becomes sentient; she fights it and then falls in love with it.
• Gender-Blender Name: A "Girl's Room" skit uses this as its punchline. Amber is running for class president and she's trying to scare off all the girls who are running against her. When she learns that a new kid named "Jamie" is running, she demands to meet her. However, when it turns out that Jamie is a handsome boy, Amber and her Girl Posse all decide to vote for him.
• Genre Savvy: The producers of Stranded become this in the second iteration of the show. In the first instance, the contestants were forced to stay in a car in a parking lot in Oklahoma for a million-dollar prize, but the producers left the cash in the trunk of the vehicle and the keys in the ignition, allowing Judge Trudy and the Bailiff to steal both for a day in Las Vegas. In the second version, the contestants are instead stuck in a bathtub, with the prize money dangling from the ceiling a few feet away—meaning that anyone who tries to take the money would have to leave the tub to do it, thus immediately disqualifying them.
• Girl Posse: The hosts of "The Girls' Room:" Amber, Tammy, Sheila, and Debbie.
• Greens Precede Sweets: Amanda and her friend who's invited over for dinner are both told by Amanda's parents to eat all their vegetables or no dessert. Therefore, they buy Sugar Veggies (pure sugar that looks just like broccoli but still tastes like sugar) to replace the real broccoli (which they hid from her parents by distracting them with the lie that there's chipmunks).
• Half-Witted Hillbilly: Both characters, as well as the entire premise of, "A Hillbilly Moment."
• Hanging Judge: Parodied with Judge Trudy, who inevitably finds the adult figures in her courtroom guilty of "crimes" like asking their children to take baths or kiss a relative. Her punishments ranged from exorbitant damages paid to being locked in a confined space with sick people for two weeks.
• Hope Spot: Most of the Dooper sketches would have the last recipe offered actually taste good and seemingly not contain disgusting ingredients...only for the food in question to end up being the most dangerous of all. Examples include "cookies and dynamite" in Ice Cream Dooper (which makes the person who eat it explode), a "refrigerator crunch" snack from Cookie Dooper (which somehow triggers an actual fridge to fall from the ceiling and crush whoever eats it), and "Lincoln Punch" in Souper Dooper (which summons Abraham Lincoln himself to punch the customer in the face).
• Hot Guy, Ugly Wife: Crazy Courtney is revealed to have a very handsome boyfriend that adores her and has similar personality traits.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • A crucial component of Judge Trudy sketches, where kids complain about punishments their parents inflicted on them even though they did something bad to their parents first.
  • In a Blockblister sketch, one overweight woman complained about the exercise video she rented. The video showed the 2 kids simply sitting on chairs repeating over and over "Sit up! and "Lie down!" while eating a pepperoni pizza. After the video ends, the kids fat shame her.
• I Ate WHAT?!: The Dooper sketches involve this, where people come to buy food and sometimes enjoy it before being told all the disgusting ingredients they're actually eating.
• It Tastes Like Feet: All of the disgusting foods at the Dooper restaurants, which taste as bad as expected considering their awful ingredients.
• Jumping Out of a Cake: In the "Girl's Room" sketch for Amber's birthday, Josh plays a firefighter who does this. He then attempts a toned-down striptease for Amber but just gets a swirlie.
• Kangaroo Court: No matter how clearly guilty the kids are, how the kids will readily admit to the crime, or how disproportionately light the punishments they're suing the adults over was compared to their crime, Trudy will always rule in favor of the kids and sentence the adults.
• Kavorka Girl: Crazy Courtney. She's crude, gross, loud, uncouth, childish, homely, dresses Grandma-like, and tends to use terms like "Ma-Ha!" when she's not driving someone nuts. She's also very popular amongst her peers and in one sketch, has a handsome boyfriend.
• Kids Are Cruel: Because of the show's (playful) anti-adult bias towards parents and teachers, the kids are jokingly portrayed as being cruel monsters who still get away with their actions.
• Lampshade Hanging: The host of "So You Wanna Win 5 Dollars" asks "Who picks the people?" after being fed up with the contestant's antics.
• Like Father, Like Son: Totally Kyle one time got an F on a book report because it was all about donuts. His teacher called in his parents, and she's repulsed that Kyle's parents act just like him, and that his dad wrote the report, not Kyle. Then, Kyle's grandparents arrive as well and they also follow this trope.
  • There's also the kids' mom on "The Dare Show".
• Literal-Minded: The family of Meet the Literals sketch, as implied by their names.
• Logging onto the Fourth Wall: Penelope promotes her amandaplease.com website whenever she appears on the show, even showing off some of its features. This was a real website, indeed stylized as Penelope's fanpage, with bonus clips, quizzes, and blogs related to the show. It remained intact for many years after the show's end before redirecting to the Nick website around the mid-2010s.
• Loony Fan: Penelope Taynt, Amanda's number one fan, please; down to making the official Amanda website.
• Made from Real Girl Scouts: Weenie Dooper has two instances: a footlong hot dog (made with meat from an actual human foot) and a veggie dog (made with real veggies... and real dog).
• Made of Explodium: "Snap-Crackle-KABOOM!," a breakfast cereal that explodes after the milk is added. Just listen to the jingle: "Pour the cereal in, add some milk, leave room! Then you listen for the snap and the crackle and...KABOOM!"
• Manchild: The Baliff (on "Judge Trudy"). He's very childish and acts like a little boy.
  • "The Big Babysitter", a one-time sketch, featured Amanda as a teenager who initially acts very professional, only to start acting like a bratty child herself as soon as the parents leave, forcing her charges to take care of this Psychopathic Womanchild.
• Manipulative Bitch: Crazy Courtney, who tends to play up her annoying and gross habits as a means to an end—for example, in one sketch she torments a kid sitting next to her in a movie theater until he runs off...at which point she calls up her boyfriend so that he can sit in said kid's seat with her.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The protagonist of Moody's Point is named "Moody". Her emotions frequently shift and she's usually melancholy.
  • There is also Mr. Oldman who is well, a cranky old man!
  • And there's the recurring families with last names that match their personalities—The Simians (who are half-ape), The Lucklesses (who have terrible luck), The Extremes (who overreact to everything), The Klutzes (who are inhumanly clumsy) and The Literals (who take everything literally).
  • And don't forget Mr. Gullible, the gullible substitute teacher.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: The raison d'etre of Nurse Zelda—who gives the Heimlich to a girl who just coughed, feeds pudding on a drip to a boy with a papercut and brings out the heart paddles for a sneezer.
• Missed Her By That Much: This frequently occurred whenever Preston was involved in Penelope's schemes. In one sketch, Preston and his friends bother Penelope to make them sandwiches, and when she finally does, Amanda herself shows up at the door to ask for directions. In another, the two are sneaking backstage; when Penelope leaves the scene, Amanda walks up to where she was standing.
• The Mockbuster: All of Blockblister's movies are low-budget knockoffs of actual movies which their staff always claim to be "MUCH BETTER!!" Carrying such awful titles as "George in the Jungle", "Austin Powders", "Stuart Lipple", "The F-Men", and "The Wizard of Voz".
• Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Sharon and Toby of "The Dare Show" refuse disguisting, painful, or humiliating dares until the darer starts calling them chicken, coward, yellow belly, etc., then they do it just to prove they aren't, and immediately regret it. Their mom is the same.
• No Indoor Voice: Judge Trudy yells almost everything she says. Ironically, she often yells at other people to shut their yap.
• No Wrong Answers Except That One: Amanda receives what appears to be an extremely harsh criticism of her show. When the audience is offended on her behalf, she defends the critic with, "Everyone can say what they think." One audience member takes this as a cue to announce "I think the Russians ate the moon!" to which Amanda responds "Except that guy."
• Oh, No... Not Again!: In the "Jerky Dooper" sketch, Amanda gave a policeman a jerky that turned out to be Alien Abduction Jerky. Two aliens pop up and snatch him while prepping on lax gloves to which the policeman pleads this trope's name.
• Once an Episode: After the intro, Amanda would greet her audience by exclaiming, "My name's Amanda," then sharing a random, usually made-up fact about herself. Amanda also closed each episode by saying, "Okay, that's our show!" and informing the viewers she "gotta go" do something random and ridiculous.
• Painful Rhyme: Some of Billy's rhymes in the "Gifted Class" sketch fall under this ("His gift is super-rhyming." "Yeah! I do it all the time...ing."). It's lampshaded by the other students.
• Parental Bonus: The father and son in the "Wrestleburgs" sketch were modeled after wrestlers Goldust and The Blue Blazer, respectively.
• Parody:
  • Many of the sketches, such as Judge Trudy, So You Want To Win Five Dollars, etc. There's one Survivor parody called Stranded, which is a good example. The last one to leave the set location (a bathtub in North Dakota, a parked car in Oklahoma, etc.) wins the prize. The latter ultimately goes Off the Rails when the two remaining contestants (Judge Trudy and the Bailiff) realize that the keys are in the ignition and they've got a million dollars in the trunk.
  Trudy: I'm thinkin' Vegas?
  Bailiff: Hit it, Judge!
• Parody Commercial: This show loves this trope. Popper Pants, The Boost... cereal with baby animals in every box...
• Pet the Dog: One Judge Trudy skit involves a girl suing her mother for sending her to her room for refusing to kiss her aunt. When the aunt stands up, the audience starts throwing trash at her like normal. In perhaps the only moment of kindness she shows to an adult who isn't her baliff, Judge Trudy tells them to stop, since the aunt wasn't the one who punished the girl, her mother was. And indeed, the aunt is left alone for the remainder of the show.
• Police Are Useless: Varies per sketch, but the show depicts a number of police officers to be incompetent.
  • Barney, Amanda's fat, slovenly lazy security guard, was the most frequent example. His love for food sometimes gets exploited by Penelope who Barney refuses to allow to break into Amanda's private room. One time when Drake ordered a pizza but it came with thick crust instead of thin, Amanda asked Barney to flatten out the crust. Barney sits on the crust (making it perfectly thin-crust) but proceeds to lock himself with the pizza in his booth and eat it all up as Drake angrily screams for his pizza back.
  • Also in a sketch that involves 2 teens eating up a family's food supply after fooling the family 3 times consecutively using disguises of firefighters, repairmen and astronauts, a pair of cops come up to the family warning them about the teens. The family mistakes for the cops to be the teens again, and when the dad starts roughly handling the cops, the cops decide to just arrest the family - allowing the teens to infiltrate the now empty house and eat up the food.
  • In one Lucklesses sketch, after the daughter gets her money stolen by a burglar, a police officer apprehends that burglar quickly but the burglar gets away from his grasp. The officer does try returning the money, but the burglar re-stole it and ran off. The officer continues to sugarcoat it some more that nobody got hurt, but the burglar returns just to smack the dad. Speechless, the officer leaves in defeat or to go catch the burglar again.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: One episode consisted entirely of Moody's Point sketches, apparently to set up a spin-off starring Moody.
• Produce Pelting: The adult defendants in Judge Trudy frequently get hit with food or trash from everybody else in the courtroom.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: People call the mobster Tony Pajamas "Tony Pa-JAM-uhs". He's quick to correct them with "Pa-JAH-muhs!"
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Frequently parodied on Judge Trudy. For example, in one case the crowd begins throwing garbage at the defendant and Judge Trudy immediately tells the crowd to stop, saying that no garbage will be thrown in her courtroom unless she allows it. Then, after a brief pause, she tells the crowd that they may now throw garbage at the defendant.
• Rhymes on a Dime: In the "Gifted Class" sketch, Josh Peck's character Billy has the metahuman ability of "super-rhyming." He responds to everything he hears in verse:
  Lisa: Reggie's a super-burper.
  Billy: When I kiss a girl, I slurp 'er!
  Lisa: You're giving us a pop quiz?
  Billy: If you spill a soda, you have to...mop...fizz.
• Ridiculously Long Phone Number: In the When _______s Attack segment; the number is "1 (500) I-Just-Saw-_______s-Attack-Some-Person-and-Now-I'm-Calling-This-Number-to-Report-What-I-Saw."
• Rule of Cute: "Mammal-Os", a parody commercial about a cereal with a prize in every box. What is the prize, you may ask? A live baby mammal. It's as adorable (and hilarious) as it sounds.
• Rule of Funny: Amanda fell asleep in a cold open after eating too much, and then Drake and Josh were supposed to wake her up but instead they tried introducing the show themselves. The audience (who did not expect nor want them to take over) charges at them with baseball bats, shovels and pitchforks. Yup, they just had those with them even before they knew Drake and Josh were going to do the show.
• Running Gag: Many, but the dancing lobsters is one and for some reason jokes about eggs (common especially with Debbie).
• Satiating Sandwich: Preston always wants his sister—and Amanda, in at least one instance—to make him a sandwich.
• Serious Business: The clerk from the video store in one of the "Moody's Point" sketch, who becomes angered if a video has not been rewound or returned on time.
  Clerk: This tape hasn't been rewound.
  Customer: So, I forgot.
  Clerk: What if you forgot to breathe? Then you'd be dead.
• Shout-Out:
  • Crazy Courtney was watching an episode of Sniz & Fondue, a sketch on another Nick sketch comedy.
  • One of the opening sketches had Amanda reading a fan letter.
  Amanda: Dear Amanda...
  Audience: "Thaaaaaaaat's me!"
  Amanda: Wrong show, guys.
• Signs of Disrepair: In one episode, it was "The Manda Show" because Penelope had stolen an A from the studio's neon sign.
• Sit Comic: Amanda Bynes, the show's hostess.
• Slapstick: The female characters get plenty of slapstick dished their way. A girl even gets punched in the face for comedy in The Literals sketch.
• Small Name, Big Ego: The "Blockblister" people, who insist that their Stylistic Suck "movies" are better! Much better!
• Smelly Skunk: A commercial has Amanda and her friends play a game of hot potato with a skunk, appropriately called "Pass the Skunk".
• Soap Within a Show: "Moody's Point", the hilarious over-the-top teen soap opera parody.
• Spin-Off: Not directly, but one of Nickelodeon's most successful live-action shows, Drake & Josh, was created as a vehicle for two of The Amanda Show's stars, invokedDrake Bell and Josh Peck. The Amanda Show itself is also a spin-off, of All That.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Actually more of a Spotlight Stealing Skit. When Moody's Point was added, the episodes basically consisted of one sketch...then the rest of the episode dedicated to Moody's Point, with maybe a short sketch like Mr. Oldman put in if the episode didn't run long enough. Granted, it was pretty funny and very well written; but it seemed almost like the episodes were centered around "Moody's Point".
• Stalker without a Crush: Officially, Penelope is just a huge Amanda fangirl who really, really wanted to meet her.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Penelope with the son of the set's security guard. He's a trainee for his dad so his job is to keep Penelope out, but the two fall in love when they discover one thing they have in common: They both love Amanda.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: One "Girls' Room" sketch saw Amber, Sheila, Tammy, and Debbie hosting a talent competition. Kyle (of "Totally Kyle") shows up and displays his talent of long, meandering, pointless stories. Debbie, who's just as ditzy as Kyle, is immediately smitten, and the two bond over their shared love of eggs. When Sheila goes to give Kyle a swirlie, Debbie asks if she can do it herself...only to start vigorously making out with Kyle in the stall.
• Studio Audience: Unusually for a sketch comedy show, the audience consists of actors. If their antics during the opening sketches doesn't make it obvious, notice that no one visibly laughs whenever the Laugh Track plays.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: An example of this, when a boy in a classroom full of superpowered kids had the power of super rhyming.
  Teacher: All right, that's it, you're outta this class!
  Student: Oh no, my dad's gonna kick my—
  Teacher: Be quiet!
• Sweet Tooth: Two girls one time replaced the broccoli their mother gave them with "Sugar Veggies", which look like vegetables but are actually pure sugar. And why do that? Because if they don't eat their veggies, they don't get dessert!
• Super Gullible: Whenever someone tells Mr. Gullible the substitute teacher an obvious lie, he would ask them "Really?" and then he will believe the lie as long as everyone who's in on the lie agrees it's true.
• Surfer Dude: Kyle of Totally Kyle, a ditz who speaks in surfer lingo, has long blonde hair, and dresses primarily in tie-dye.
• Tattoo Sharpie: In a segment of The Dare Show, Drake Bell's character is dared to draw glasses and a mustache on himself with permanent marker. He laments several times it'll never come off.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Pizza is the most frequently depicted food on the show.
  • Debbie likes her eggs.
  • Kyle's (and his parents') is donuts.
  • While there were several phony commercials on the show, the most commonly parodied food was breakfast cereal: Meatloaf Crunch (exactly what it sounds like), Mammal-Os (which came with the free prize of adorable baby animals), and Snap-Crackle-KABOOM! (no points for guessing what that did).
• Trauma Button: Parodied when a teacher just offhandedly mentions the word "mother" around Moody and later when Spalding gives Moody a balloon as a present. Both remind her of her Missing Mom who went in a hot-air balloon, never came back, and is still up in that balloon.
• Troll: Courtney is weird, but she's being deliberately annoying the crap out of other people just so they'd go away such as getting rid of a theatre patron to clear up the seat for her boyfriend, becoming class president by scaring away her only rival and also there's the "Stranded" competition.
• True Companions: Judge Trudy and the Bailiff—it's also a case of Only Friend for the former, as Judge Trudy doesn't seem to like (or even tolerate) anyone else. It's exemplified in the first "Stranded" sketch: the last remaining contestant in a car in a parking lot in Oklahoma will win a million dollar prize. When Judge Trudy and the Bailiff end up as the final two, the Bailiff realizes that the cash is in the trunk of the car...and the keys are in the ignition. Rather than betray each other, they immediately team up to swipe the vehicle and zoom off to Vegas to split the prize together.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Not so much any main characters, but in the song Melody and Thad sing offensively to the new blonde and pretty bride and her neanderthal-esque groom...
• The Unreveal: We never found out who the real Moody was... because the show got invokedScrewed by the Network, and Schneider never got a chance to think about who it would be.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: One Penelope sketch has her sending Barney all the way to Beijing through a trap door. Upon landing in a random family's house, he brushes himself off, confirms that he's in China, and immediately asks what they're eating—despite the fact that he just fell through the center of the Earth. The family themselves also get in on this trope: they're only momentarily shocked at a strange American man falling through their ceiling and happily share their lunch with him.
• Verbal Tic: Penelope Taynt says hers the most, but some other characters have one.
  Email #1: "WHY DO YOU ALWAYS SAY PLEASE??????????"
  Penelope: I am asked this question a lot, please. My parents taught me to say please when you want something, and what I want is to meet Amanda, please. Why do YOU use so many question marks, please???????
• Wham Line: Played for Laughs in "A Poem by Mother Caboose", wherein Mother Caboose's poem gets a sudden shift in mood from saccharine to Refuge in Audacity with just one line.
  Mother Caboose: She lived by the shore in a quaint little hut,
  With a smile on her face and a SORE ON HER BUTT.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: In the one-time "Gifted Class" sketch, Josh Peck's character has the power of "super-rhyming." It's exactly as useless as it sounds: not only is he unable to turn it off, he's forced to babble nonsense just to create couplets with whatever the last person said ("Why are you all snickering?" "At least we're not bickering!").
• Wondrous Ladies Room: Inverted on The Amanda Show. When the girls in the "The Girls' Room" sketch have to broadcast from the boys' room, their Cloudcuckoolander is intrigued by the "waterfall machines".
• Worst Aid: Nurse Zelda reacts to paper cuts and coughs and goes over the top with treatments that do more harm to students than good.
• Wrestling Family: The Wrestleburgs, as the name would imply.
• Wrong Bathroom Incident: In the recurring "girls' room" sketch, one episode sees them unable to use their normal venue due to a burst pipe, so they have to use the boys' room instead. Debbie, the dimwit of the bunch, becomes obsessed and jealous of the boys' "waterfall machine" (urinal).
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Penelope, whenever she would get close to meeting Amanda, always gets the chance taken away at the last second.
• You Can Say That Again: A Running Gag with The Literals.

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"Court dismissed! Break out the dancing lobsters!"

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