YMMV / Documentary Now!

• Awesome Music: Fred Armisen's music for Gentle and Soft and Final Transmission, based on The Eagles and Talking Heads respectively, are remarkably good pastiches that hold up well on their own as music.
  • Every song from Co-Op: the Musical counts as this. "Holiday Party (I Did A Little Cocaine Tonight)" was nominated for an Emmy.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The climax of Mr. Runner-Up involves an unexpected twist at an Oscar ceremony not too dissimilar to the 2017 Best Picture mix-up. Couple that with Faye Dunaway's cameo and archive footage of Warren Beatty presenting Best Picture in 1974, and the episode gains another layer of irony.
• Poor Man's Substitute: Averted. The creators originally threw around Helen Mirren's name as an example of the type of person they wanted as a host, then they thought to actually ask her and were stunned when she said yes (she's hosted Saturday Night Live and is a big fan of Portlandia).
• Signature Song: "Catalina Breeze" was this for Blue Jean Committee in Gentle and Soft.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Blue Jean Committee's "Catalina Breeze" is sort of a cocktail of a bunch of Soft Rock hits from The '70s: "Tequila Sunrise" by The Eagles, "Ventura Highway" by America, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" by Steely Dan, "With Your Love" by Jefferson Starship, "Midnight at the Oasis" by Maria Muldaur, and "Moonlight Feels Right" by Starbuck.
  • Test Pattern's songs in Final Transmission all have analogues to Talking Heads (and solo David Byrne) songs in varying degrees. "Save Time for Me" also sounds a bit like Heart's "All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You", and "I.O.U. 7 Cents" sounds like a broad pastiche of Tom Waits.
  • The songs in Co-op are all take-offs of songs from Company, with "Holiday Party" ("Getting Married Today"), "My Home Court" ("Another Hundred People"), and "I Gotta Go" ("The Ladies Who Lunch") being the most direct parodies.
• Tear Jerker: Surprisingly for a show consisting of over-the-top parodies, the ending of Gentle and Soft qualifies. The two founding members of the band meet up at their induction into the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame having not talked for decades... and then after an awkward conversation backstage, the two realize they have drifted even further apart since then and go back to their lives. Additionally, whereas Gene at least seems genuinely happy playing his songs at a small Chicago bar, every time the older version of Clark is shown, despite being successful, he seems to harbor a feeling of emptiness, emphasized when the ending shows a wide shot of him alone in his giant mansion staring off into nothing while Gene's solo cover of Catalina Breeze plays in the background.