History Series / ShermansShowcase

The heavily serialized anthology series follows the [[ShowWithinAShow Show Within a Show Within a Show]], a parody of SoulTrain, Solid Gold, Midnight Special, Solid Bronze, and other American music/variety series. It's host, Sherman [=McDaniels=], guides segments with a big personality, as he does his best to both exhibit top, usually African-American acts through the decades, starting on July 1st, 1972.

* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Quincy Jones is depicted as the wise, master EGOT, even though he's never actually earned an Oscar in his career; rather, holding a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award instead.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Duane Eddy was a real artist during the prime Berry Gordy involvement era, but he never actually worked for Creator/{{Motown}} Records.

* NonLinearEdit: During the Venice Pier Futbol performance, the band grabs random potted plants and playfully rage smashes them to the ground. The video slows as they throw downward and there's a cut to seeing the floor where the plants hit. Though there are some pot pieces in the background, its clear if you can focus for the two seconds that the plants in this shot have no pot casings; they're just the plants.

* {{Corpsing}}: Diallo Riddle as Dutch Sheppherd during the "Over there and over there" portion of "Everybody’s Ballin".

* TrashTheSet: The Venice Pier Futbol Club Anthem sketch starts off as a normal stage performance. Technically, the only thing on *set* they destroy is a bowl of popcorn on a podium, but 20 seconds later, they've roamed off the set and [[UpToEleven begin trashing the entire studio]].

* AsHimself: Morris Day, Common, Curt Menefee, Creator/ColleenCamp, Ray Parker Jr., Ray J.

* {{Expy}}: Subverted. On the one hand, Prince is dead and therefore couldn't have possibly played himself. On the other hand, the entire episode about Charade, quite patently obviously meant to portray Prince is narrated by [[Music/PrincesAssociates Morris Day]]. Being that Morris Day was essentially a real life expy employee of Prince himself, its ambiguous whether Prince could have been persuaded to do the episode himself.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Sherman's Dancers rarely individually play into plots, but every episode we're treated to character descriptions.

* FatSuit: The one that Salahuddin wears to portray Fat Freddy Payne is painfully obvious.

* PaperThinDisguise: Fat Freddy Payne is so painfully obviously just an older, fatter Fast Freddy Payne, rather than the tribute artist that he claims to be, that after the first verse of his performance of Running, Sherman's Dancers can't help themselves from calling him out on it.