Basic Trope: An episode has a character require a tonsillectomy.
- Straight: In an episode of the kids' cartoon Alice and Friends, the protagonist, a little girl named Alice, has a sore throat which turns out to be tonsillitis. She's nervous to get surgery but her dad, Bob, promises her all the ice cream she can eat. When she wakes up, however, her throat is too sore for her to eat ice cream.
- Exaggerated: The entire cast gets tonsillitis.
- Downplayed: Alice's tonsillitis is a subplot.
- Justified:
- The show is set in the '90's or before, when tonsillectomies were more common.
- Alice has been getting tonsillitis a lot, which is still a common reason for tonsillectomies now.
- Inverted:
- Alice, for some reason, has an episode focusing on her getting her tonsils reattached.
- Alice wants to have her tonsils taken out despite being healthy because she doesn't want to risk an infection. Bob persuades her not to have the operation by giving her ice cream as payment for her compliance.
- Subverted: Alice has a sore throat and the doctor says she has tonsillitis, but just gives her medicine.
- Double Subverted: The medicine doesn't work, requiring Alice to get the surgery anyway.
- Parodied: The "all the ice cream you can eat" line is parodied by having Bob promise Alice something that corresponds to her personality (e.g. "All the crosswords you can solve" or "All the video games you can play".
- Zigzagged: Alice keeps having sore throats, but it's kept ambiguous until the last scene whether her tonsils will need to be removed.
- Averted: Alice's tonsils stay right where they are.
- Enforced:
- The writer had tonsillitis when she was a little girl, and so "little girl needs a tonsillectomy" is a plot device she's familiar with.
- The writers had writer's block and decided to pull a stock plot out of a hat.
- The show is meant to teach kids about different medical situations, so naturally there'd be one for tonsillitis.
- Lampshaded: "So I guess you'll promise me all the ice cream I can eat now, but what's the use? They never want to eat it anyway."
- Invoked:
- Exploited:
- Defied:
- Discussed: "Will I be needing my tonsils out?"
- Conversed: "Blah blah blah... they need their tonsils removed... promise of all the ice cream they could eat... seen it a million times."
- Implied: Alice is said to need surgery and is heard coughing.
- Deconstructed:
- Reconstructed:
- Played for Laughs: Alice, a talkative kid, is afraid of getting her tonsils removed because she's afraid the doctors will accidentally take out her vocal cords instead.
- Played for Drama: Complications arise during or after the operation, and Alice dies. Because it's such a routine and low-risk procedure, Bob never even thought that was a possibility, and is absolutely devastated.
- Played for Horror: A freaky parasite has attached itself to Alice's tonsils, and if not removed promptly, she could turn into a Plague Zombie.
Back to The Tonsillitis Episode.
