YMMV / Maury

• Designated Hero: Very often, the person who was onstage first was usually seen in a sympathetic light by the studio audience no matter if the person was onstage second had probable cause to assume that person was being unfaithful or if the person themselves admitted to being unfaithful but did not admit to the full extent of their deeds, like having children by other men/women or cheating more than the times they said they did. As a result, the person who was onstage second was seen as being either cruel, a deadbeat, or paranoid and was usually booed and heckled by the audience, no matter how obnoxious, illogical, or dishonest the person onstage first may seem.
• Designated Villain: The accused fathers in some cases. While some of them tended to be genuine deadbeat assholes, the mother was occasionally shown to very promiscuous and at times were a guest on the show multiple times, giving the guy a genuine reason to deny being the father.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Motivational speaker D West was very popular with the fans and was to Maury what Sergeant Julu was to Sally. Brenda Myers Powell was also this to a little lesser extent. Both D and Brenda sought to help the wild teen girls get a reality check back when the show was massively popular in the 2000s.
• Friendly Fandoms: It's a less rowdy counterpart to The Jerry Springer Show, to the point where both are usually shown back to back. People on both shows have gotten the two confused and sometimes the audience on Maury chanted Maury's name like they do on Jerry Springer.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • During one female guest's fourth appearance, she admitted in a prior episode that she cheated on her boyfriend over 200 times after a DNA test determined he was not the father of her baby. As a result, she was ridiculed by the studio audience. A later appearance revealed that she was homeless and she was sleeping with these men in order to have a roof over her head.
  • Another female guest made a few appearances on the show to find out who the father of her son was. None of the men she brought was the father and she was ridiculed for it. In one of these appearances, she was actually in jail at the time.^note She refused to reveal why she was there. In her next appearance, she revealed that she was working as a prostitute at the time and that's why she was unsure who the father of her son was. This also explained why she was in jail during her previous appearance.
  • In 2007, a 14-year-old girl named Mylela was on the show because she was out of control. Her brother was murdered prior to her appearance on the show and during an interview with producers, Mylela told her mother off, saying, "Who cares if you lose another child? You don't." Not even a year later, Mylela was killed in a drive-by shooting. She was 15.
  • One paternity guest was crushed when she found out a man was not the father of her child and ran backstage in tears, saying that her sister was going to be mad at her. This seemed innocuous enough at first as it simply appeared that she meant that her sister would be ashamed of her because she did not know who her child's father was. In reality, the lady came back in a later episode to reveal to her sister that she slept with her man and he could be the father of her child. The sister's significant other turned out to be not the father, and the woman had appeared since that show to test more men.
• Jerkass Woobie: In cases where the woman was proven wrong on a DNA test after taunting the potential father of her child, Maury tried to invoke this with wildly varying results:
  • A particular example of this is Simone. She was homeless and slept with numerous men for shelter and her boyfriend slept with her sister and many other women, but her behavior was often so obnoxious that the audience usually felt more contempt than sympathy for her.
  • A woman named Kenyetta came on the show because her boyfriend Michael cheated on her with her cousin Emma and may have gotten them both pregnant. Emma was saying that Michael was definitely not the father of Kenyetta's baby and showed no remorse for sleeping with her cousin's boyfriend despite the fact that Kenyetta took Emma in. However, it's hard to feel sorry for Kenyetta because Michael was not the father of either of the babies. To make matters worse, Kenyetta returned again and said she only cheated on Michael one time and displayed extremely obnoxious behavior towards the second possible father. After that man was proven to be not the father, Kenyetta went into histrionics. Even worse than that, Kenyetta returned two more times for a total of four men tested for her daughter, and both times, she openly bashed the potential fathers, and both times, the DNA tests were negative. However, Kenyetta gets pushed back into Jerkass Woobie territory after she reveals that she slept with these men because she was very insecure about her weight and wanted to be loved.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "You ARE/are NOT the father!"
  • YOU DON'T KNOW ME! WHATEVER!^note WHATEVA! I DO WHAT I WANT!!!
  • "And the lie detector test determined THAT'S A LIE/you were telling THE TRUTH!"^note It's never "...determined you were telling A LIE" or "...determined THAT'S THE TRUTH", probably to make it less predictable.
  • Maury is the source of "CHICKEN TETRAZINNI!", a favorite clip on The Soup and the winner of the show's best moment of the year.
  • One of the out of control teen girls, Victoria, had her segment go viral and get millions of of viewers, spawning several memes.
  • "That's a man, Maury!" became a joke among Drag Queens when a queen was trying to look convincing as a woman but was too physically masculine to pull it off.
  • "Bring out the olives!"^note One guest was deathly afraid of olives, as they remind her of her grandfather's dead eyes at his funeral. Maury assured her that there were no olives in the studio, only to summon a stagehand with a big jar of olives.
• Narm: The phobia episodes. This is due to some of the guests having irrational fears over some of the most unlikely things.
• Retroactive Recognition: A 10-year-old HER appeared on a "Maury's Talented Kids" segment in 2007, which Povich highlighted in a episode after she won two Grammy Awards.
• The Scrappy: The studio audience, due to their nearsightedness and people viewing them as being incredibly biased towards either gender, depending on the circumstances.^note  The audience's almost robotic behavior seemed to be affected by who was onstage first and not what gender they are; they would usually view anyone who went against what the person they heard first said as a "bad person", regardless if they were male or female, as women were booed for claiming men were the fathers of their babies simply because the lady was onstage second. Many guests especially hated the audience. Some even resorted to staying hidden backstage so they wouldn't have to deal with them.
• Strawman Has a Point: Whenever the guy wasn't the father, or had a decent argument (got cheated on, kid's of a different race, etc.).
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The audience was expected to feel sorry for the female guests when they broke down after a paternity test revealed that the male guest wasn't the father of their child or children. However, it's impossible to ignore the fact that many of these women chackle unrelated men as being the cause of their pregnancies.
  • In most cases, as amusing as it may be for the studio and TV audiences, the adults involved in DNA tests were genuinely unlikable people who you don't want to envision with any type of responsibility with a child.
  • There was one case where a mom came on to prove that her deceased son was not the father of another woman's child. However, she did it in a way that would have gotten her booed if she was the second person introduced. Then, the mother of the infant came out and got violently booed. When it was revealed the deceased man was not the father, his mom poured on so much verbal abuse, it came dangerously close to a Face/Heel Double-Turn. Maury himself looked increasingly uncomfortable as the bickering went on.
• Values Dissonance: Maury stopped the "Man or Woman?" episodes as views on transgender people changed in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: The point of "Man or Woman?" episodes. 10-15 people came onstage as women, while the audience tried to guess if they were really female or male. It's quite easy when you'd seen several shows before and realize the patterns. Most of the ones that looked the most like women (usually, also with large breasts) and were dressed in the most revealing outfits were actually men, and the ones who moved and behaved awkwardly, has a large build and more makeup, were actually the women. With these facts, you would be right in your guesses most of the time.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?:
  • The times where the same couple came back time after time, and each time left the show having ended it because of the cheats, lies, or whatever. This especially applied to the abusive partner episodes, particularly when there were children involved.
  • Sholonda and her husband, full stop. Sholonda cheated on her husband with at least 17 men in one night, resulting in her getting pregnant with another man's baby, lied during her first appearance and said she cheated only one time and lied during her second appearance and said she cheated with six men, only to finally reveal the truth to her husband after all of the six men were proven to not be the father, and even then, she said that it was 14 men and not 17 like the DNA tests proved. Even after all of this, her husband still stayed with her, only to be cheated on yet again and was informed that their second child might not be his. Luckily, he was the father.
  • This was averted with Telia, however, who cheated on her husband with at least 11 men, including his cousin and a 17-year-old boy. Her husband left her after her first appearance.
• The Woobie:
  • Whenever a man broke down in tears when he found out he wasn't the biological father of his beloved child. The woman as well, because if she did cheat on her boyfriend/husband, she had to live with the guilt for the rest of her life.
  • For some, the children of the guests. Most of the guests were not people you want to imagine raising children.
  • The guests in the phobia episodes. While it could be narm-y, having a phobia is serious. It can keep you from functioning well and enjoying most common things.
  • Adult children who took a DNA test. You can see the pain they're going through due to all the drama and uncertainty.

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