Carver: It's the crazy backwards universe again— Tino: Where cats chase dogs and sitcoms are funny?
An animated series, aired in 2000, created by Doug Langdale, and ran for four seasons. It followed the lives of four friends: Deadpan Snarker Tino Tonitini, The Smart Girl Petratishkovna "Tish" Katsufrakis, Tomboy Lor MacQuarrie, and not so cool Cool Loser Carver Descartes. Oddly enough, despite having four school-age children in the main roles, the show hardly (if ever) touches on aspects of school life, since stories nearly always begin on Friday afternoon and end on Sunday evening.Staying away from broad and cartoonish plots; the show is one of the subtler among animated comedies, with much of the humor deriving from its many one-liners (and Tino's screams, of course).Noted for its surprisingly good writing, averting the Limited Wardrobe (unusual for an animated show) and for often breaking the fourth wall, with the audience being addressed directly by (usually) Tino, serving as a narrator of sorts; other characters have also taken this role, or even lampshaded it on occasion. Also had quite a set of Once an Episode recurring gags, such as the seemingly indecisive pizza place (never having the same name or theme twice), Tino's Mom serving highly questionable food, and of course "Later Days!" One other reason this show stands out is the aversion of the Adults Are Useless trope - showing that adults can be useful and still have a good show.The full series was released on DVD as a Disney Movie Club exclusive in February 2013.
Adults Are Useless: One of the few children's shows that actually averts this trope and shows that it's not always the case; Tino's mom in particular is very in touch with her kid and always knows the right things to say about whatever problem Tino is facing at the time. Likewise, the other characters' parents are shown to be reasonable authority figures in their own way, and still know about their kids.
Aesop Amnesia: More than one episode has Lor learning that she doesn't have to change herself to get the attention of her crush, Thompson. She never seems to fully pick it up despite going through the same plot two or three times. Thompson himself calls her out on it in the season 3 episode "Tutor", even referring to the previous episodes ("Makeover" and "Brain Envy", from each of the previous seasons) where Lor acted the same way:
Thompson: Lor, I'm flattered that you wanted to impress me, but we've been through this over and over. Remember when you tried the girly thing, and then the brainy thing? Lor: Vaguely...
Tish often has episodes focusing on her desperation to be mature.
Affectionate Nickname: Tish's parents affectionately call her "little sweet bean" (possibly a botched translation of the much more common "sweet pea").
Ambiguously Gay: Carver is obsessed with fashion (especially shoes), is utterly mortified when he thinks Lor might have a crush on him and it's been suggested that he tries on his sister's clothes. He also got caught buying a women's fur-lined bathing suit in one episode, and nervously explained that it was for his sister.
Amicably Divorced: Tino's parents. While Tino's dad doesn't visit very often, his relationship with his mom still seems to be friendly enough that they can have a friendly dinner now and then with her new boyfriend.
The B Grade: Subverted in "Imperfection"; Despite getting straight A's, Tish does have an overreaction — about a teacher's comment regarding her perfectionist tendencies.
Inverted in "Brain Dead". This trope usually entails the "nerd" overreacting to a low score, while his/her friends wonder what's so bad. In "Brain Dead", Tish tries to brush off her "B" grade, but her friends are hesitant to accept the fact that she didn't get an "A". This leads the group attempting to give Tish a new reputation, since she could no longer be the "nerd".
The Cameo: Jennifer Love Hewitt in "My Punky Valentine", whom the guys try to get Tino to notice so he can take his mind off of his crush on the punk girl Tasha. At the end, she even gets to say (cracking up while doing so in what might not have been a scripted moment: "Ha ha ha! I feel like such a dork...") the show's...
Also, Tish's mother frequently exclaims "Is what I say!" after her English is corrected.
Parodied with DJ Jan "The Man" Testeverde's super-annoying catchphrase "Hey, yowza, dudes!", that he ends almost every sentence with. Carver was actually amazed when Jan went a whole minute without saying it.
The Chew Toy: The unseen Chloe Montez must be the unluckiest person alive.
Continuity Nod: There are quite a few mentions of Chum Bukkit song "suffused elephant quaff winces exasperating" throughout the series. The name came from the season 1 episode "Band" when Carver tried to write a message to the band and, because of his bad handwriting, that's what they thought it said.
Crack Defeat: "Talent Show": Lor plays guitar. Bluke throws hams into the air. Bluke wins the ribbon. Go figure.
Creepy Child: Never put Carver's brother Todd and his friend Quinty together.
Also Frances, the girl who's always saying that she likes pointy things and giggling.
The Celebrity Lie: "Band", where Carver blurts out that Chum Bukkit would dedicate their upcoming show to the four of them.
Daddy's Girl: Lor, kinda. The fact that her mom is only onscreen in a handful of episodes probably helps.
Different In Every Episode: The pizza restaurant has a different theme and the museum offers a sample of a different exotic food in each episode. For that matter, so does Tino's mom, with her... bizarre cooking.
The Ditz: Lor... kind of. In "Real Fake" she takes it to the extreme when she's acting like a teen in a TV show when the gang are being filmed by a documentarist. It Makes Sense in Context.
"The Tao of Bluke" reveals that he's really just simple, rather than stupid as revealed at the episode's end when they won pizzas instead of the pool table.
Bluke: I think we won the best prize...I mean with a pizza, you can split it five ways, but how are you going to split a pool table?
Dreadful Musician: One episode has the four about to go to Carver's house when they hear his little brother screaming. Only, it turns out it's actually his big sister Penny having a singing lesson.
Drowning My Sorrows/G-Rated Drug: In the "Celebrity" episode in which Tish becomes a local celebrity, she can be seen drowning her sorrows in Chug-A-Freezes when she realizes she's not famous anymore. She even asks for another, but the man at the counter tells her he thinks she's had enough.
Dysfunctional Family: Lor's family doesn't have many personal problems or anything like that. But Lor has so many brothers that it reaches the double digits, and quite frankly she admits that she does not know how many brothers she has. That has to count for something. She has somewhere between thirteen and sixteen.
Free-Range Children: They're allowed to go everywhere in Bahia Bay on the weekends it seems. They never run into any issues where their parents specifically forbid them from going somewhere. It's possible that since they're in middle school and they rarely travel alone that their parents will think they're okay.
One episode ("Cravasse of Dreams") has them hiking for almost an entire half-day.
Five-Token Band: Black Carver, Scottish-American Lor, Eastern European Jewish Tish, and Italian-American Tino (whose family is apparently also pagan)
Flat Joy: One of the problems with Lor's Bad Bad Acting. Tish fixes it later by having Tino say she's still under the zombie curse.
Freakier Than Fiction: In the episode "Radio Drama", Tish makes the gang dress-rehearse the play, even though it's only being recorded for radio. While this is used as a Brick Joke, some radio drama producers actually do this to help get the actors into character.
Funny Foreigner: Tish's mother, whose main purpose was to mangle "kiss and make up" into "kitchen my cup", among many other English phrases.
Gamer Chick: Lor. Tish sometimes plays them as well.
Genre Savvy: Tino's mom. Lampshaded in "Vengeance":
Tino: "How do you know something's up?"
Tino's Mom: "Oh, it just seems like you always have some kind of problem by Saturday night."
Get Out: Tino combines this with Laughing Mad in "Croquembouche." When the others vote for Carver to be their spokesperson in the Foods of the World competition, Tino gets extremely jealous, and when Carver asks him if he's angry, Tino throws them all out of the house in between bouts of hysterical laughter.
In "Shoes of Destiny", this trope is taken literally, by having Tino use it as an acronym. When Carver starts describing himself as "C.A.R.P." (Cool And Radically Popular), Tino responds, "Good thing you're not Cool, Rich And Popular."
In a few episodes, it's hinted that Carver is a closeted cross-dresser. In "Never Say Diorama", when he went shopping for fur-lined bathing suits with Lor, they bump each other and everything drops out of their bags, Lor finds a women's bathing suit in her shopping bag that she didn't remember buying and Carver nervously explained "It's for my sister!". Then in "Celebrity", when he tried to help the kids give Tish a girly makeover, Tino eventually had to ask him why his closet was full of girls' clothes (again, he nervously explained that it was "for a Halloween costume").
Gibberish of Love: Tino sometimes does this when around a really pretty girl. Also, Carver struggles to speak to "The Cool Kids", although that's not due to love so much as envy.
Greek Chorus: Tino. He actually pauses the show at several points to provide commentary.
Hide And No Seek: In one episode, Tino's divorced parents need to discuss him. Tino obligingly goes upstairs. "I'll just go organize my collection of Things That Aren't My Parents Having A Private Conversation."
Unsurprisingly, so does Tino. According to Lor, he does it for at least 20 minutes.
I Ate What?: Occasionally one of the characters will eat something from the Foods of the World exhibit at the museum before it's revealed that it was made from something gross or unusual. Also, when Carver ate that 40-year-old pickle which was in Lor's savings in "Lor's Will", which became a Running Gag for that episode.
Not to mention Tino's mom's exotic dinners, which is another Running Gag for the series.
Informed Judaism: Tino is an Informed Pagan; aside from a Solstice celebration in lieu of Christmas, we don't hear anything about it.
Although it is mentioned in two separate episodes; his mother celebrates both Solstices. And the Vernal Equinox.
Tish is a straightforward example. In the Holiday special, it's mentioned that she celebrates Hanukkah, but there are no other indications throughout the series of her family's religion.
In with the In Crowd: "The Lone Wolves Club", where Tino is secretly given a series of embarrassing tests by the aforementioned club. At the end, he finds out that the club is just made up of geeks.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Carver can be pretty selfish and obsessed with being one of the popular kids, but he's a good guy at heart.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: It was a popular subtle animated show on Disney that didn't involve singing, so of course it has no DVDs to speak of and is completely forgotten by their company.
It has no VHS's either. It aired on television, randomly, up until 2008 or 2009 too.
As of 2013, the show now has a full DVD release, which you can buy IF you're American and have a Disney Movie Club membership.
Kind Hearted Simpleton: Bluke. In one episode, he happily lends Tino his shoe, no questions asked. When Tino asks him, "Don't you even want to know why?", Bluke answers, "Everybody needs shoes!"
The Lad-ette: Lor is about as close to this trope as a 12-year-old girl can get on a kid's show.
Left Hanging: "Croquembouche": so, who won the food contest anyway?
Lethal Chef: Tino's mom, though where she gets the ingredients and how she prepares them are extremely questionable, the result is at least edible, most of the time. This overlaps with the I Ate What?Running Gag as well. Lampshaded by Tino in "Vengeance" when he tries to eat a very sticky green jelly-like food which ends up sending his spoon ricocheting across the room:
Tino: I think your cooking may have military applications. Tino's mom: Watch it...
Knowing this, the kids eat several pot scrubbers assuming that they are just more of her bizarre food.
Limited Wardrobe: Amazingly, this is averted. Notable for a Western Animation cartoon. Throughout an episode, the characters' clothes change after each day begins, similar to Real Life. They avoid Unlimited Wardrobe, because they each have the same four or five outfits that they continue to wear throughout the show's run.
Despite having a full wardrobe of different clothes for each character, each had their own color scheme. Tish usually wore purple, Carver wore yellow or green, Lor usually wore grey or red, and Tino wore blue. Truth in Television, as lots of people have a favorite color that they genuinely wear a lot.
Malaproper: Tish's mom tends to do this very often. "Now why don' you kitchen my cup?" "You mean 'kiss and make up'?" "Is what I say!"
The Makeover: In the episode titled, well, "Makeover", Lor gets one when she's told that she has to do so in order to get her crush Thompson to notice her. She eventually goes back to her usual appearance, much to Thompson's relief.
Tish, in the episode where she become a local celebrity, courtesy of Carver (who apparently owns the clothes that Tish wears).
Massive Numbered Siblings: Lor has something like fourteen brothers. Even she can't track of them, in part because her parents apparently repeated some of their names two or three times.
Meaningful Name: When Tish is having an identity crisis after getting a B, she goes to get help from her parents, who reveal that every person in The Old Country receives a Meaningful Name at birth. They re-name her to Petratishkovna so she wouldn't be saddled with an identity due to her name.
It turns out her name means "girl with one nose."
There's also the minor character Dot Cardigan. No points for guessing what she wears.
Men Don't Cry: Tino is mocked in "Cry" for crying while watching Romeo and Juliet in school. Taken to ludicrous extremes when he has an Imagine Spot of himself as a girl.
Museum Of Boredom: The aforementioned "Foods of the World" exhibit. Although it's not the exhibit so much as the server's monotonous delivery; apparently the gang really likes the various foods enough to keep coming back.
Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Frances. Not only does she have an obsession with pointy objects, her laugh is enough to make this troper shudder.
Mr. Katsufrakis: One time, mishkin tubelhauser goes just little bit wrong. Is reason we had to leave Old Country.
One of the Kids: Tish's mother goes into this in "The New Girl". Justified in that she actually didn't really have a childhood.
Opposites Attract: Tino has a crush on a punk girl named Tasha in "My Punky Valentine".
Overly Narrow Superlative: In one episode, one of the yearbook superlatives is "Best Tino." The main character didn't even win it.
Pac Man Fever: Averted. In the episode "Shoes of Destiny" Lor and Tino are playing a game involving space robots fighting. The sounds match up to the movements, and when Carver shows up, the Konami pause sound even plays as the screen goes blank!
Not to mention, anyone with a keen ear can recognize the sound effects - plenty of which actually come from Super Mario Bros..
Parental Bonus: As with almost every cartoon, references most kid won't get show up in the dialogue. For example, in one episode when Tish was babysitting Carver's brother, Todd, she tries to read Oedipus Rex to him (she even described it as a story for kids of all ages).
The episode "To Be or Not to Be" sort of advertises the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Parent with New Paramour: Tino's mom dates Dixon, who often gets along with the gang. And in a rare instance for cartoons, not only did he appear in future episodes instead of just being a one-shot character, they also didn't immediately jump to the two of them going straight to marriage.
Running Gag: Many, including the indecisive pizza place, Carver's terrible penmanship, Tish's mom's broken English, Tino's mom's cooking, and the exact number of Lor's siblings, among others.
Also, the "Foods of the World" exhibit at the Anthropology Museum. They usually are completely irrelevant to the plot.
With the completely deadpan server. "Couscous - the food so nice, they named it twice."
The coach answering his door in his robe or towel in front of the gang, because he thought the girl scouts or salespeople are bothering him again.
Screams Like a Little Girl: Tino, of course. The rest of the gang calls it his "squeaky scream". Carver also has this, to some extent.
Self-Deprecating Humor: Every now and then characters lampshade how their character designs are fairly odd looking. With Tino's head being compared to a pumpkin, and Carver pointing out he resembles a pineapple. And in profile, Tino's a lollipop, and Carver's a paintbrush.
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Tish, to the extent that in the episode "To Tish", her name literally becomes synonymous with this trope.
Shout Out: Somewhat randomly, many to famous French writers & thinkers. Obviously, one of the main characters is named Carver 'Rene' Descartes; more subtle are the girl named Cheri Montaigne, and the discussion of François Rabelais in the episode where Tish tries to be more mature (which is even thematically relevant!)
Status Quo Is God: Well, to a certain extent. Each of the four main characters have their share of embarrassing moments, yet they rarely carry over into other episodes. There are some exceptions, including Lor's attempts to change to get Thompson's attention (see Aesop Amnesia). This may also explain why Mrs. Duong is pregnant for the entire series.
Suspiciously Specific Denial: From the episode "Crushin' Roulette", when Lor is interviewing the "Strings N Things" store owner:
Lor: "Question 1, are you happy with your appearance?"
Owner: "I never had plastic surgery!"
Lor: "Question 2, do you enjoy travel?"
Owner: "I do not travel! Who told you I visited former Soviet Unions?"
Lor: "Question 3, what would you do if you had a million dollars?"
Owner: "I have never been paid for espionage! You can prove nothing! Go away! We are closed!"
Take Five: "Tino's Dad": Tino's mom wished to speak with her ex and tells Tino to do "that thing upstairs." Tino's reply? "Subtle as a train wreck, Mom."
Team Mom: Tino's mother, whose advice is pretty much there to solve their problems every episode. Tish's mom also hangs out with the kids in one episode.
Theme Tune Cameo: In one episode, Tish's dad plays an instrumental version of the theme on his cello. In another, Carver can be heard singing "I'm living for the weekend" under his breath.
Ms. Tonitini: Hi, hon, Dixon and I are heading out to the movies and there's a seaweed casserole in the oven.
Tino: Drat, I wanted to ask her about —
Ms. Tonitini: — Oh, by the way, don't worry. The power will go to Lor's head and the guys will realize that it's better to think for yourself. {Tino starts picking his ear} Please get your finger out of your ear.
Tino: She is freaking me out.
Ms. Tonitini: Don't get freaked out. Kiss kiss.
The Un Reveal: The Katsufrakis family's "Old Country" in "Celebrity".
Documentary Narrator: Tish's parents, a university professor and a roller derby star, emigrated to the US from a country which our research staff was unable to determine how to pronounce. Or even locate on a map.
Twitchy Eye: Sometimes Tino gets one, most notably in "Cry" where he gives up his emotions, and the gang tries to get him angry. Lor and Carver get this when they are unable to say the word "homework" on the weekend.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Tish and Frances used to be friends...then one day, Tish went to visit Frances and she become the "I like pointy things" kid.
Mrs. Duong can't seem to go for a sentence without adding the word "help" in there somewhere.
A lot of characters seem to have a tendency for saying "Kiss kiss" before leaving.
Vindicated by History: A rare in-universe example of this trope. The characters visit an amusement park named for Nikola Tesla, who is explicitly described as a pioneer of alternating current and the inventor of radio (his rival to the claim, Marconi, is explicitly dismissed). This was one of the earliest pop culture references to Tesla, and the beginning of his Vindication, which continues to the present day.
Why Do You Keep Changing Themes?: They occasionally acknowledge that the pizza place had a different theme the previous week. Sometimes it even changes themes after just one day.
Wrench Wench: Tino's mom would sometimes be shown working on her car.
More like Saved by the Bell meets All Grown Up!; it's more akin to a young tween comedy than it is an out right kids show. Helps that they are actually in middle school.
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