History Series / Coupling

* DramaQueen: Steve with his hipochondria and his passionate speeches about everyday annoyances.

* StraightMan: Susan and Steve.

-->--'''Steve''', "The Man With Two Legs"

* TheFunInFuneral: The "Giggle Loop"; also the memorable "Will you three stop playing ''ReservoirDogs''?" As well as Jane's very snarky (living) aunt.

* {{Powerwalk}}: Parodied in "Sex, Death and Nudity": "Stop playing ''ReservoirDogs''!"

* CloudCuckoolander: Jane and Patrick both have their moments. Sally also has shades of these whenever she's obsessing over her appearance.
** ''Everyone'' in the group.

** Oliver also has Doctor Who merchandise in his bookshop, and when going to a dinner with the gang in "Bed Time", wears a sweater reading "Bring Back Doctor Who" on the back.
*** Which became hilarious in hindsight after Creator/StevenMoffat started working for Series/DoctorWho.

* TheWindyCity: The setting of the U.S. version

''Coupling'' was a British SitCom from 2000 to 2004 about a circle of friends and their complicated sex lives. Written by StevenMoffat, produced by his wife Sue Vertue, and based very loosely on their early relationship. (The WordOfGod is that Steve and Susan went on to make a sitcom about their lives, and Steve is now working on "[[Series/DoctorWho some old kids show they recently pulled out of mothballs]]".)

*** Which became hilarious in hindsight after StevenMoffat started working for Series/DoctorWho.

* RealSongThemeTune: ''Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps''

The central cast of three male and three female characters inevitably invited comparisons with ''{{Friends}}'' and led to a certain amount of disappointment among some viewers when it wasn't in fact much like ''Friends'' at all (although some of the parallels you can draw between each respective SixStudentClique is pretty astounding.) This comparison, along with the short-lived American remake, were {{Lampshaded}} in series 4 during the episode "Nightlines", when Steve states that their lives are not "an American sitcom" (the comparisons were being made because the remake came right around the time ''Friends'' was winding down, and people were hoping to make lighting strike twice.)

The central cast of three male and three female characters inevitably invited comparisons with ''{{Friends}}'' and led to a certain amount of disappointment among some viewers when it wasn't in fact much like ''Friends'' at all. This comparison, along with the short-lived American remake, were {{Lampshaded}} in series 4 during the episode "Nightlines", when Steve states that their lives are not "an American sitcom".

* KavorkaMan: Patrick, though it's a fine line between this and TheCasanova. A lot of it really depends on the viewers personal opinion of Ben Miles.

* KavorkaMan: Patrick, though it's a fine line between this and TheCasanova.

'''Steve:''' (''exasperated'') Oh, because it's got naked women in it! Look, I like naked women! I'm a bloke, we're supposed to like them, we're born like that! We like naked women as soon as we're pulled out of one! Halfway down the birth canal, we're already enjoying the view! Look, it is the four pillars of the male heterosexual psyche; we like: naked women, stockings, lesbians and Sean Connery best as James Bond, because that is what being a boy is! And if you don't like it darling, join a film collective! I want to spend the rest of my life with the woman at the end of that table there (''gestures at Susan'') but that does not stop me wanting to see several thousand more naked bottoms before I die! Because that's what being a bloke is! When man invented fire, he didn't say, "Hey, let's cook!" He said, "Great! Now we can see naked bottoms in the dark!" As soon as Caxton invented the printing press, we were using it to make pictures of, hey, naked bottoms! We've turned the Internet into an enormous international database of... naked bottoms! So, you see, the story of male achievement through the ages, feeble though it may have been, has been the story of our struggle to get a better look at your bottoms. Frankly, girls, I'm not sure how insulted you really ought to be.

* HappyPlace: When Susan tries to talk to her birth partner Sally about the possibility of the doctors having to make "an incision", we cut to Sally sipping champagne in a white room, looking serene as a string quartet play Theatre/MadameButterfly. Susan's voice calling her then starts to fade in, then the scene cuts back to Susan shaking her awake. "Sorry... I went to my safe place."

* WakingNonSequitur: In "Circus of the Epidurals", it turns out that Sally's coping mechanism involves her sipping champagne while a quartet plays ''Madame Butterfly'' nearby. When Susan convinces her to be a "birth partner", she learns that an incision "downriver" may be required to facilitate the birth, and Susan tasks her with "monitoring the damage". When she is forced to consider the idea of a clueless man looking at a woman's private parts, much less one with a scalpel, her "safe place" is intruded on by a huge knife tearing through a chair, and she snaps out of it screaming, "Mummy, I'll be good!"

* CharacterFilibuster: Steve, about [[OnceAnEpisode Once A Series]] - topics include pornography, the pointlessness of cushions, and [[HappyPlace the sanctity of the toilet]].

'''Steve:''' (''exasperated'') Oh, because it's got naked women in it! Look, I like naked women! I'm a bloke, we're supposed to like them, we're born like that! We like naked women as soon as we're pulled out of one! Halfway down the birth canal, we're already enjoying the view! Look, it is the four pillars of the male heterosexual psyche, we like: naked women, stockings, lesbians and Sean Connery best as James Bond, because that is what being a boy is, and if you don't like it darling, join a film collective! I want to spend the rest of my life with the woman at the end of that table there (''gestures at Susan'') but that does not stop me wanting to see several thousand more naked bottoms before I die! Because that's what being a bloke is! When man invented fire, he didn't say, "Hey, let's cook!" He said, "Great! Now we can see naked bottoms in the dark!" As soon as Caxton invented the printing press, we were using it to make pictures of, hey, naked bottoms! We're turned the Internet into an enormous international database of... naked bottoms! So, you see, the story of male achievement through the ages, feebler though it may have been, has been the story of our struggle to get a better look at your bottoms. Frankly, girls, I'm not sure how insulted you ought to be.

--> '''Susan:''' Okay. You know what's really getting me mad? My boyfriend, my fiancé, the man who, against all my better judgment, I actually love, chatted up a woman in a bar. And on the very same day, the very same day, I chatted up a man. Do you see? Do you get it? I'm equally at fault. How can I ever forgive him for that? Well, of course, I'm not going to forgive him, because men, and I don't mean to generalize, are crap! They're the human race's only failed gender! Who needs them? And why are they so difficult to keep hold of? Do you think they realize, that were it not for the genetic imperative to populate the earth, they wouldn't get a date? That's one hell of an inducement: "No pressure, girls, but shag one of these or it's curtains for all humankind!" That's harassment! But you know what? Do you know what's even more crap than men? ''We'' are more crap than men! All those stupid books you guys have, and... and these magazines! A hundred pages of "men are useless bastards" and an article about why you should wake him up with a blowjob! Am I alone in spotting the inconsistency here? And these places! (''referring to the salon'') Because, for God's sake, don't let them see what we really look like! Just let them enjoy the results, don't let them see how it all happens!\\

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Unsurprisingly invoked often, given the nature of the show.

* AGodAmI: Jane has a strange moment like this in "Faithless".

* HairTodayGoneTomorrow: Jeff is clean-shaven in the present, but in a flashback to about two years earlier he has a goatee and shorter hair. He also has 5000 fewer synonyms for 'breasts' in his collection.

* SplashOfColor: Jane has a black-and-white {{flashback}} to the first time she saw James, in which he's driving a bright red, very phallic convertible into a very tight parking space. FreudWasRight.

* OneDialogueTwoConversations: Sally with Patrick's GirlOfTheWeek Jennifer - Sally thinks Jennifer was fooling around with Jeff, but that she's aware that Sally is in love with Patrick. Jennifer thinks Sally is a lesbian and is coming on to her.

** Moffat ''loves'' this trope. There's dozens of little tidbits in this and other scribblings that rely on OneDialogueTwoConversations; here it's used to cement the FawltyTowersPlot.

* '''Patrick Maitland''': A laid-back casanova who ''does'' have his heart in the right place on occasion. He is also very well-endowed (a "tripod", apparently). Although he's not too bright, he has his serious moments.

* '''Oliver Morris''': The final series' replacement of Jeff. Owns a fantasy/sci-fi store and is worse with the opposite gender than the rest of the cast combined.

** She makes a very mean-spirited one in "Gotcha", in response to Jane seemingly implying that she's better at turning Steve on than her. Even ''the audience'' reacts at her retort:

\\

* ClusterFBomb: Sally's reaction to [[spoiler: discovering Patrick's engagement ring]].
** Followed by PrecisionFStrike when Patrick explains who he was going to propose to, come the right romantic moment.

'''Patrick:''' Is that a yes?

** She makes a very snarky one in "Gotcha", in response to Jane seemingly implying that she's better at turning Steve on than her. Even ''the audience'' reacts at her retort:

* BiTheWay: Jane mentions early in the show that she's bisexual, and mentions it often, but Susan thinks [[BaitAndSwitchLesbians she isn't bisexual at all]]. At one point she claims that being bi means she can go out with gay men, and simply won't believe the gay man in question when he tries to [[IncrediblyLamePun put her straight]]. However, when Susan later snogs her in order to turn on Steve, Jane is very obviously affected by it.

'''Sally:''' Now listen to this, Patrick, this is the voice of an oppressed minority!

* EverythingSoundsSexierInFrench: In one episode, it's mentioned that Susan has a bad weakness for an Aussie accent. According to Sally, when they were visiting Australia, they always knew it was time to leave town when a new bar was named after her.

* HappyPlace: When Susan tries to talk to her birth partner Sally about the possibility of the doctors having to make "an incision", we cut to Sally sipping champagne in a WhiteRoom, looking serene as a string quartet play Theatre/MadameButterfly. Then cut back to Susan shaking her awake. "Sorry... I went to my safe place."

** Happens twice in "My Best Friend's Bottom":

'''Steve:''' I thought it was about having a lot of convicts.\\

* SpitTake: Both the women and the men when Jane/Oliver tells them Jane and Oliver were taking a stroll toward Oliver's apartment and Jane asked: "Can I come up?"

* UnexpectedPositive: In the season 3 finale, Sally buys three pregnancy tests because she doesn't know what a negative test looks like and asks Susan and Jane to take one each.

** In "Size Matters", Jeff rambles on about celebrities hooking up together because men and women who fantasize about them get together first. At the end of the episode, when Susan sleeps with Steve, the scene cuts to Angus Deayton and Mariella Frostrup meeting each other, being the objects of both Susan's and Steve's fantasies respectively.

* LoudOfWar: From "Her Best Friend's Bottom":
--> '''Sally:''' I hate having sex at home. I've got a listening flatmate.\\
'''Jane:''' Oh no, I hate those. Do you have to be really quiet for her?\\
'''Sally:''' No. I have to be really loud, we're very competitive.

* RealPersonCameo: Mariella Frostrup and Angus Deayton appear in a weird, possibly imaginary sequence in "Size Matters"; Mariella appears in a later episode ("My Dinner in Hell") for real. Later, Mariella reappears in another dream of Steve's in "Split".

'''Steve:''' Jeff, please...\