History WesternAnimation / ThePJs

In the middle of the end of a dead-end, one-way street!"''

[[caption-width-right:248: Thurgood Stubbs and other tenants of the projects.]]

->''"Once upon a time, in the projects..."''
-->-- '''Narrator''' in the opening sequence

''[=The PJs=]'' (Short for "The Projects") is a StopMotion television sitcom created by Creator/EddieMurphy, Creator/LarryWilmore, and Steve Tompkins, and produced for Imagine Television and [[Creator/TouchstonePictures Touchstone Television]]. The show centers around Thurgood Stubbs (voiced by Murphy in the first two seasons, Phil Morris in the third season), the superintendent of a housing project in a fictional city modeled after Chicago. It is best remembered for its unique use of claymation[[note]]Courtesy of Will Vinton Studios, for which this was their SwanSong prior to their reformation as Laika.[[/note]] when most animated primetime shows still relied on hand-drawn animation.

* JustForPun: Most of the episode titles, including "[[Series/HanginWithMrCooper Hangin' with Mr. Super]]", "[[{{Cliffhanger}} Cliffhangin' with Mr. Super]]", and "[[Film/NationalLampoonsEuropeanVacation National Buffoon's European Vacation]]".

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Haiti Lady is always barefoot.

* DeepFriedWhatever: While Thurgood already loves his fried food, it's taken to a comical extreme in "He's Got To Have It", when he's trying to get his blood pressure up to qualify for a drug trial, and Muriel serves him a meal consisting of "chicken-fried steak fried chicken, beer-battered fish (no fish, extra batter), and a fried salad".

* LawofInverseFertility: Despite being married for decades and Muriel's blatant sex drive, Thurgood and Muriel have no children due to Thurgood having "lazy sperm" that causes a level of impotence according to Muriel. However, Thurgood did manage to unintentionally impregnate Muriel's sister after accidentally sleeping with her while drunk.

* PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy: Well, Jimmy's Asian, but he still fits the bill. He acts this way due to being the illegitimate son of a U.S soldier who was supposedly black, though it's revealed in season 3 that he was actually native-american.

* DeepFriedWhatever: While Thurgood already loves his fried food, it's taken to a comical extreme in "He's Got To Have It", when he's trying to get his blood pressure up to qualify for a drug trial, and Muriel serves him a meal consisting of "double-fried chicken, fried fish (no fish, extra batter), and a fried salad".

* GoldenSnitch: In the gumbo contest.

* PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy: Well, Jimmy's Asian, but he still fits the bill.

* RewindReplayRepeat: In "Operation: Gumbo Drop", Thurgood discovers that Muriel taped over his "happy tape" to film a documentary about the projects. When he realizes that the footage contains Juicy making his own Gumbo (Thurgood's main conflict in the episode), he decides to take advantage of this and use the tape to study Juicy's cooking methods.

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

** [[WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}} Fry]] is shown as missing on a milk carton. This was a response to an episode of ''Futurama'' featuring the show's TitleCard manhole cover.

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: Parodied in "The HJ's" when Thurgood shows Creator/RichardPryor's album ''Bicentennial Nigger'' to Calvin after finding it in the old projects radio station, and says they can't even say the ''name'' of the album anymore.

** In one episode, Thurgood reminds his friends that "there's no 'I' in 'friendship'".

-->-- '''Narrator''' in the opening sequence.

-->--'''Narrator''' in the opening sequence.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Thurgood can never get resources he wants/needs out of the lady behind the window at the HUD. She [[VerbalTic always ends sentences]] to him with "'''NEXT!'''" even if there’s nobody in line behind him. (There's a reason their slogan is "Keeping you in the projects for over 30 years.") The HUD Lady, however, is much nicer to Muriel.
* PoliceBrutality: Zigzagged when two cops accost Thurgood during a blizzard. They clearly ''intend'' to do this, but neither wants to get out of their warm patrol car to rough him up in the bitter cold. They instead order him, via the car’s loudspeaker, to frisk himself, slap himself around, beat himself up, and make it look like a black-on-black assault, followed by an open-mike discussion of whether that technically would make it a black-on-black assault.

** [[Film/{{Titanic|1997}} I’M KING OF THE WORLD!!!]]

* WhenEldersAttack: Florence Normandy Avery has shown time and again why you shouldn’t mess with her. She even has a gun, which Thurgood finds out the hard way.

* ProWrestlingEpisode: "Let's Get Ready To Crumble"; Thurgood reveals that he used to wrestle for the NWA back in the days before the Wrestling/{{WWE}} (still known as the World Wrestling Federation when the episode aired) rose to prominence. Not the Wrestling/NationalWrestlingAlliance, the ''Negro'' Wrestling Alliance! He ends up coming out of retirement to face The Governor, an Expy of Wrestling/JesseVentura, to decide the fate of the Projects.

* ButtMonkey: Mr. Sanchez.

* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Just about every adult in the projects sans Muriel hates Thurgood's guts.

* NWordPrivileges:
** Thurgood actually revokes Jimmy's right to it in "Red Man's Burden".
** Played with in "The [=HJs=]" when Juicy finds a copy of ''[[Creator/RichardPryor Bicentennial Nigger]]'' in the radio station, Thurgood complains that they can't even say the name of the album, let alone play it, because of "African-American pleas" while the cover itself is given some screen time completely intact.

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: In "Miracle Cleaner On 134th Street", Thurgood isn't getting that the CorruptCorporateExecutive wants him to keep his mouth shut about the addictive additive in his cleaning spray until he explicitly stated it.