Series / The Weather

Nobody escapes the Weather.

The Weather is a series produced by Wham City in 2019, and broadcast by [adult swim] for their online stream. It's a comedy sketch show with an interactive format, each episode themed around a specific type of weather- such as "Sunny", "Cloudy", and "Slightly Too Hot".

A Spiritual Successor to The Cry of Mann, The Weather was uploaded to [adult swim]'s channel every Thursday night, and viewers could call in and speak to the characters. The cast of Wham City star, and on occasion, one of their friends will act as a guest-star for the episode.

Hilarity Ensues, with callers tossed into situations they don't understand, surreal scenes, and a whole lot of green-screen. It also contains scenes from other Wham City videos, like Johnny Bubble and AB95- Albany Launch Event, adding to the surreal and disjointed feeling.

Watch it here.

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Tropes present in The Weather:

A-K

• Abusive Parents: The Dystopian-future cop states that they aren't used to thinking, because their parents would punish them if they thought.
• Agent Mulder: The cop played by Ben is the only one to initially think the identical, murdered butlers are clones of each other, and is both shocked and glad to hear that the caller-cop agrees with their theory, as everyone else assumed he was going crazy.
• Animate Inanimate Object: Sentient objects on this show include a water-bottle, a pair of miniature statues, and a piano. All of which can speak English and interact with others.
• Anvil on Head: One skit has Robby standing under where a talking piano is going to fall...and it's invoked, as this is what Robby's character wants to have happen, and he and the piano get real excited over finally doing it correctly. Ultimately subverted, as the scene changes before the actual collision occurs.
• Black Comedy:
  • A woman is dying in a car accident...only to have her doctor be utterly incompetent and uninterested in helping her. As she begs for help, the doctor continues to do nothing- the most helpful thing she does is tell her to have more self-confidence.
  • One skit had Cricket act as a Bound and Gagged Damsel in Distress, trapped in a car's trunk. The caller was a passerby who just happened to be standing inches away from her, who could very easily reach in and untie her, but instead did nothing of help because he couldn't understand her pleas for him to do anything.
  • "James" the hunter came across a very talkative owl while on a walk, who insisted on telling a long story about a bathtub mishap. At the end of this story, James promptly said goodbye... and then blew her head off with his gun.
  • Seven innocent men were brutally murdered, and the police have no leads on who might have killed them. Sounds scary, until you throw in the details of the men all being identical butlers killed in ridiculous and impossible ways, and the two cops coming to the conclusion that they're all actually clones.
  • In "Snow", there's a recurring cowboy character with a talking horse, both venturing through the snow as things get colder. The last time we see them... the horse has been killed, and the cowboy, seemingly now insane, has crawled inside of its bleeding stomach for warmth, and stays there the entire time.
  • Both "Thunderstorm" and "Snow" features a creepy man speaking to a child, separated only by a glass. It'd be scary, if the child-playing-callers didn't act so unfazed and cheerful when speaking to a clearly malicious Alan, even playing a game with him.
  • In "Tornado":
    • The short-film "Hey Girl", where a woman enjoys herself at a guest-less bridal shower, and receives increasingly dramatic and fearful calls from her friends, who ended up kidnapped and murdered by some men they trusted to give them a ride. Instead of helping them, she just makes margaritas, decorates a cake, and takes selfies.
    • In a The Wizard of Oz-themed segment, Alan talks to a bunch of cute animals, as played by callers. Their conversations get increasingly dark, with the pig claiming to eat bacon, Alan admitting to drowning his brother while smiling all the way, and every animal getting tossed into the raging tornado in the background. All while quirky music plays, and both Alan and the callers laugh at everything being said.
    • At the end of an Interspecies Adoption plot involving human parents and a tornado, the parents release the tornado into the wild, and cheerfully discuss how the school principal the tornado tossed out a window "just woke up", and how the mother's failed bakery isn't a big deal since everyone in the town had Celiac Disease, anyway. They then gush about how big and destructive the tornado will be.
  • In "Spooky Fog":
    • Apparently, dogs go to Heaven...but remain dead. Despite being in Heaven. Their deceased owners get to go and see their dog's corpse, because only humans are alive in Heaven.
    • A prisoner is about to be executed in the electric chair...but is taking it pretty well, insists on their final words being "We live in a society", and then admit they didn't even do the crime they were going to be killed for!
    • A group of rich people start getting murdered one-by-one, supposedly by a butler. However, they also spend the whole time just speculating and bickering about who the killer is, and barely seem fazed when their friends get murdered- even admitting that Cricket's character was being annoying, anyway.
  • In "Fire", Alan once again plays the Dorothy character, this time with the barn on fire. He rescues the animals from the barn...and then tosses them onto the burning ground, gleefully admitting he's still murdering them...while acting very perverted. As the quirky music keeps playing.
• Black Comedy Cannibalism:
  • Downplayed; In the The Wizard of Oz-themed segment of "Tornado", Alan talks to a pig, played by a caller, who claims to enjoy eating bacon, which he finds funny enough to laugh at, but also sick enough to toss the pig into the twister.
  • According to "Why Do We Bury People?", it used to be accepted practice to just serve a deceased family-member as a grand meal.
• Boom, Headshot!: "James" the hunter kills the talkative owl by shooting it in the head, accompanied with a shot of the owl's blown-off head.
• Born During a Storm: One of the "Thunderstorm" sketches involves a baby being born in a Screaming Birth, as the elements rage outside.
• Bound and Gagged: One skit sees Cricket tied up and gagged in the trunk of a car. An open trunk, so that the character played by the caller can see her. She begs him to do literally anything to help, but due to the tape on her mouth, he can't hear her.
• Braving the Blizzard: "Snow", naturally, has many characters forced to endure the raging snowstorm. A post-man was stuck freezing in the cold while his customer sat inside monologuing, and a cowboy and their horse went on a journey in the cold that resulted in the cowboy killing the horse for warmth.
• The Butler Did It: Implied in a "Spooky Fog" skit; A group of four, snooty, rich characters get invited to a mysterious mansion. One by one, they get murdered, until only the Butler is left. The Butler is then put on trial for these murders, and the murders in a previous episode... but is declared "not guilty" by the jury.
• Burn the Witch!: "Fire" has a scene involving a woman being burned by some pilgrims, who refer to her as a "thing". It's never outright stated that the character is a witch, but judging by the setting and characters, it's heavily implied.
• Captain Obvious: The transitional blurbs give a lot of "helpful" information, such as "A tornado is bigger and stronger than any one person", "When a thunderstorm is born, it's wet and makes a bang", and "If the sun is up in the sky, then you know it's day."
• Casual Danger Dialogue: A running joke in the episode "Tornado" is that the cast and callers all hold casual conversations...while a tornado is raging around them, destroying their property, or threatening to kill them. This happens again in "Fire", where half of the time, the scenery is burning down, but they don't seem to notice or care.
• Continuity Creep: The series was, at first, a bunch of self-contained skits vaguely related to the weather mentioned in the title. Then, characters would start to show up multiple times, such as the statue in the forest, or Cricket's bear character. By "Slightly Too Hot", the continuity is at full force, with the episode not only being chock-full of references to previous episodes, but also containing a cast full of characters from those episodes. Everyone who wasn't a Wham City member was a returning character, whether just in the background or as a person involved with the court case. The case, by the way, was over the Butler murders from the second episode.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Downplayed; at the end of "Fire", Ben and Cricket were both killed by the erupting volcano that'd been in the background of their scenes, and Ben's hand is burning in the lava...but his cellphone is not only not melting, but it's still working, too.
• Conveyor Belt of Doom: One "Spooky Fog" skit involves a caller strapped to a wooden board with a slow-moving rotary saw. The saw continues creeping forward until they are gorily sliced in half on screen.
• Courtroom Episode: In "Slightly Too Hot", the Butler from "Spooky Fog" was on trial for the murders, both in that episode and in "Cloudy". The entirety of the episode, save a single "Funny Hikes" sketch, was dedicated to the trial- and Hilarity Ensued, with Ben as the judge, Alan and Robby as lawyers, and the rest of the court being made up of returning caller-characters!
• Cowboy: "Snow" had a cowboy character venturing through the snow with their horse.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In-Universe, Alan tells a ghost that he finds the circumstances of their death pretty funny, even if the ghost is bummed out, simply because people falling in wells is less common than it used to be, and people splashing around in water is funny.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: When his caller fails to come deliver chips and cups to his party within twenty minutes, Robby calls him "scum of the Earth" and threatens to pull their fingers and toes off with his teeth.
• Deadpan Snarker: One skit had a real sarcastic caller, who had to put up with Robby's antics:
  Robby: I just don't want any letters. From anyone.
  Caller: ...You don't want any mail?
  (later)
  Robby: This isn't my letter.
  Caller: I know. I'm Dan.
• Description Cut: A variant occurs in "Hey Girl". After being told not to drink all the tequila before the bridal shower starts, the scene immediately changes to the main character making some margaritas.
• Deus ex Nukina: Played With, and Played for Drama; to stop a tornado, the government decided the best plan would be to nuke the thing. Cricket and the caller both agree it's a stupid plan, and neither want to do it, but Cricket insists it's necessary anyway- it's their job, after all.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Alan claimed his little brother tattled on him. When asked what he did about it, his caller said he'd have tossed his brother out on the street- which was apparently still too lenient for Alan, as he chose to drown his brother.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Robby and his wife brilliantly name their adopted tornado child "Tornado".
• Eiffel Tower Effect: When Ben proposes to a caller in one sketch, they are standing on a ledge with the Eiffel Tower in the distance, just to prove that they are, in fact, in Paris.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Downplayed; after the mountain meets a friendly cloud, played by a caller, another group of clouds show up to bully him. When the caller-cloud joins in, the mountain gets sad, saying he thought the two of them were "building rapport".
• Fake Shemp: Alan Resnick is the only Wham City member to not appear in Episode 2. However, at the very end, he's seen in the audience watching a caller's speech with the others...as an immobile stock-image photo-shopped in, rather than actually being present.
• Gang of Bullies: A trio of storm-clouds come to harass the shy, socially anxious mountain and the mountain's caller, also a cloud. They laugh at him and claim they're at the "loser convention", call him "the king of losers", and generally act like jerks. The caller-cloud joins in, too.
• Gaslighting: Discussed; Cricket says she'll "break up with 'her'", and her caller encourages her to do so, because her partner was apparently gaslighting her this whole time. It's never elaborated upon, but Cricket admits he's right and that she just needs to be brave and get out of the relationship.
• GIS Syndrome: Everything from backgrounds, to objects, to characters, are just Google stock-images. The Wham City members are green-screened into the scene, either with their full-bodies or just their faces, and the callers take on immobile clip-art characters with moving faces.
• Halloween Episode: "Spooky Fog", in addition to being broadcast on Halloween night, involved a lot of Halloween-themed sketches, including ghosts, vampires, and murder.
• Hostile Hitchhiker: Of the "Harmful to Hitchhikers" variety, the segment "Hey Girl" involves a woman alone at a bridal shower being repeatedly called by her friends. Over the course of the story, her friend's party bus breaks down, and they're picked up by some seemingly kind men with a dog...only to be taken to a weird house and murdered.
• Innocent Innuendo: Played With during the scene of Alan dying of thirst in the desert. His caller manifests as a water-bottle mere inches away from him, and he spends the whole time begging for the caller to "come into his mouth", because he just needed her "inside him". Naturally, the caller was quite confused and caught-off-guard by this.
• Interspecies Adoption: Played for Laughs; A recurring plot in "Tornado" features a married couple finding an adopting... a speaking tornado. He gets his own room, goes to school, gets grounded...all while being a tornado that inadvertently trashes his room and gets in trouble for tossing other students in the air, with his parents struggling to discipline him. They eventually release him, realizing a tornado can't live a human life.
• It Always Rains at Funerals: The "Thunderstorms" episode opens with, what else, everyone attending a funeral in the rain.

L-Z

• Large Ham: The host for the "AB 95" tech demonstration spends the scene yelling, chanting, pounding on the floor, and even uses a random Precision F-Strike against the audience. He then invites the technicians on stage and they all dance quite ham-ily, before fawning over a PC.
• Last Request: When Alan realizes he's going to die in the desert, he asks the caller to comfort him in his last moments with a story.
• Lights Off, Somebody Dies: In "Spooky Fog", a group of characters are invited to a mansion under mysterious circumstances. As they're all trying to figure out what's going on, the lights go out- and Alan's character is suddenly dead on the floor. This happens three more times, with the others dying one-by-one.
• Madness Mantra: After going on a dark, nihilistic rant about life and death, Robby began to repeatedly ask:
  Where is the boat? Where is the boat? Where is the boat?
• Misplaced Wildlife: Played for Laughs; among the animals Alan talks to on his implicitly-midwestern farm is a Dikdik, alongside animals like a puppy and a rabbit.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Played With; A caller is strung up to the electric-chair, and the cast prepares to kill them, even sending him off with a prayer and asking for his last words... before asking if he was actually guilty of the crime. He casually states that he was innocent, and they decide they probably shouldn't actually kill him.
• A Molten Date with Death: One recurring skit in "Fire" involves a couple talking while near a volcano. The last time we see them, they've both drowned in lava, leaving only the man's arm and his still-working cellphone.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One caller, playing a miniature statue on a windowsill, notes that everyone out on the lawn was lying face-down on the ground, before getting on with the skit.
  • In "Slightly Too Hot", while being interrogated by Robby on the witness stand, "Paul" tells him to "Just take a Claridryl and give it a rest".
• Nerd Glasses: Every computer technician in the "AB 95" segment dressed in stereotypical nerdy-attire, complete with all of them having large, dorky glasses.
• No Fourth Wall: While most episodes avert this, and have the cast playing characters who aren't aware of the fourth wall, "Just Look Outside" features a sick Ben, Alan, and Robby just trying to watch Aquaman (2018)...while reading comments, responding in-chat, and directly discussing the episode itself. They even discuss the fact that they aren't taking callers, claiming that the phones aren't working, explaining why they can't just do skits like normal.
• Ominous Fog: The theme of "Spooky Fog" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: A series of spooky scenes, each one accompanied by a layer of thick, creepy fog.
• Ouija Board: Parodied in one skit; a group of friends play with the game, correctly point out that the game is just made of plastic and yet somehow is capable of summoning spirits, and end up immediately contacting a Friendly Ghost who just happened to come packaged with the game.
• Parental Hypocrisy: The adoptive parents of the tornado complain that he trashed his bedroom and wrote "BUTT" on the wall. When the tornado argues that he learned it from his mother, who trashed her room and wrote "BUTTT" on the wall, they just shoot him down for trying to talk about their issues.
• Pet the Dog: Though the clouds were huge jerks, they did at least promise "the new guy" that if he stuck with them, they'd make sure he'd get through his social anxiety and have a smooth time.
• Phony Psychic: A caller takes up this position in "Spooky Fog"; Ben turns to them for advice with his misfortune life, and they not only give him terrible advice, but they also refuse to let him see his cards, continually charge him extra money under the guise of the session running too-long, and encourage him to blow his non-existent money on his church, as well.
• Pilot: A proof-of-concept called Earth Universe served as the pilot, which only featured Ben.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: At the end of the The Wizard of Oz segments in "Tornado" and "Fire", Alan, revealed to be a murderer and manipulator, talks to Toto- who is the only caller with red eyes rather than white, along with a deep voice. They've apparently been the one to convince Alan that everyone else is crazy, and it's implied that this is more-or-less a crazy Alan thinking he's talking to a demon dog.
• Romantic Rain: In "Thunderstorms", a man proposes to his girlfriend in the middle of a rainstorm, which neither seem to mind.
• Sanity Slippage: Implied to be the case with the cowboy in "Snow". Over the course of three scenes, they're seen in the snow with their horse, trying to survive the elements. By the third scene, they've killed the horse and have crawled inside of it for warmth, and end up gushing to a wolf about how they love the wolf so much, they'd kill themselves and mail him their organs. Out of love.
• Scratchy-Voiced Senior: In one skit, Robby plays a rambling old man, and puts on a much scratchier voice than his usual one while in the role.
• Screaming Birth: One skit features a pregnant woman (played by Alan) in the midst of giving birth, and shrieking all the way. The doctor and baby are also screaming.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: One subplot in "Tornado" involves a pair of scientists forced to detonate a nuke, in order to destroy a tornado. They both have a tearful discussion over the implications before agreeing not to do it...which gets one of them killed. The government official holding the gun tells the remaining scientist they really want him to press the button... to which the scientist ends up agreeing to.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: A good number of the skits devolve into meaningless conversations, but one particular skit is notable for having two of these conversations happening at the same time. A scene is playing of a vampire and their lover talking...only for it to be revealed as a film two other characters are watching. As the vampire and their lover ramble on about things like apples for a long while, the audience have their own conversation about holidays and the media, all of it pretty random and tangential.
• Shout-Out: "Tornado" contains a scene that references The Wizard of Oz, with Alan as a young, twin-braided farm-girl with a dog in a basket, talking happily about their life on their farm while a tornado destroys said farm in the distance.
• Sibling Murder: Alan drowned his little brother for the crime of tattling on him.
• Sick Episode: "Just Look Outside" involves a very sick Alan, Robby and Ben trying to watch a Chinese bootleg of Aquaman (2018).
• Sinking Ship Scenario: A sinking ship, damaged and drowning in a nasty storm, is the setting of one of the skits. The captain, played by Cricket, spends the entire time ordering the caller to climb the mizzenmast and send a flare, while also openly admitting everyone on the ship is going to die. Despite this, she was focused on trying.
• Shut Up and Save Me!: Cricket is injured in a car-accident and is on the ground bleeding. The doctor, played by a caller...is on the phone. She begs the doctor to do something to help her... and they still do nothing, only telling her to be more confident in herself.
• Snowlem: Subverted. Alan attempts to build himself a friend made of snow, and assumes it'll talk, on the basis that everything in that world seems to be able to come to life. But the snowman never does come to life- it just gets destroyed by the sudden appearance of a talking tornado.
• Species-Specific Afterlife: Played With; Apparently, dogs do go to Heaven with humans...but aren't actually allowed there. Thus, they remain dead in Heaven, even as their deceased owners are alive.
• Stay with Me Until I Die: Played for Laughs when Alan is dying in the desert. His buddy, a talking vulture played by a caller, is asked to stay and to comfort him in his time of death with a story. The story...isn't all that great, and Alan dies annoyed and frustrated more than anything.
• Stripped to the Bone: After a nuclear cloud rolls by, Alan and his dog, lying motionless on the grass after a tornado, get reduced to nothing more than skeletons.
• Stylistic Suck: One segment features three Robby Rackleffs at a restaurant. The background is blatant green-screen of an ever-changing stock photo, to the point where the characters are outright pixellated when they move; objects they interact with are clip-art images, and the dialogue is stilted and awkward. Even the background noise is done poorly, being distorted and repetitious. And it was oh-so intentional, giving the whole thing a surreal, unnatural vibe.
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: The "Robby the conquistador" sketches has Robby speaking with swelling music in the background...which goes silent every time the caller speaks up.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Implied in one scene. Cricket stands at the edge of a skyscraper's roof, asking her caller deep questions about what makes him tick and what the meaning of life is. It all plays like someone stopping a suicidal woman from jumping, with Cricket sounding almost on the verge of tears...while the caller just answers her questions like they were in a casual conversation.
• Take That!: A good chunk of the Ouija Board sketch in "Spooky Fog" is dedicated to the characters joking about and making fun of Donald Trump. The cast is, of course, not his biggest fan.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: This line, courtesy of Conquistador Robby:
  I was having a terrible day, I can not even begin to tell you about it! But here is the thing, as soon as I came across you, I knew that the day was a lot better! (...) I'm having a great day now!
• The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: The end of the "Spooky Fog" episode has Alan speaking to his own (upside-down) reflection. The reflection is played by a caller, and they have a conversation, become friends, and contemplate murder together.
• Throw the Book at Them: One skit involves the cops investigating some murders. The fifth man murdered was killed with books. Books used as stabbing tools piercing and stuck his body.
• Under the Mistletoe: In "Snow", Robby spends an entire skit under the mistletoe with a caller, making nothing but grunts, sighs and kissing noises, trying to get their kiss as the caller just keeps talking.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Alan, according to one skit, has just had a terrible, terrible life, suffering abuse and misfortune at every turn and genuinely hating himself and others for it. His reflection convinces him that they should go out and kill the people who hurt him with anything they have on them, to which Alan agrees.
• Would Hurt a Child: Implied in a recurring scenario, where Alan plays a creepy man talking to a child, separated only behind a window, with the implication being that he was going to do...something to that "Little Man".
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: In the last sketch of "Spooky Fog", Alan spends the whole time insulting himself for being, according to himself, stupid, smelly, ugly, and generally misfortune. The caller, playing his reflection, works to convince him that he's better than that, and makes it clear that, at the very least, ''they'' don't hate him.