Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / The Tom Green Show

Go To

  • Crosses the Line Twice: More like "So many times, we've lost count". Just countless skits where Tom would take an absurd premise (or even just a perfectly ordinary premise) and just make it more and more vile and disturbing.
  • Cult Classic: To many Generation Yers (and some Xers) who grew up with the show and watching it on MTV, among with the likes of other cult classics such as Daria and The Sifl and Olly Show.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Glenn Humplik, the show's resident Chew Toy. Ruining Glenn's day was a Running Gag for Tom, and it'd be almost cruel if Glenn didn't maintain a certain aw-shucks likability through it all.
    • Phil Giroux, Tom's other best friend, was also well-liked by fans. Although initially looked at as the amiable Only Sane Man, his eventually discovered quirks (especially his constant laughter) made him a Not So Above It All Cloudcuckoolander along with his friends, making him even more liked. Some fans even believe that his not being included in the 2003 revival show is what led to its failure.
    • Then you have Tom's parents, Richard and Mary Jane Green, who have been putting up with Tom much longer than any of his friends or random strangers. The fact that they are such normal people makes their inclusion in the show even more surreal and appreciated.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The line "My bum is on the cheese, my bum is on the cheese! / And if I get lucky, I'll get a disease!" from "Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)" becomes a bit less humorous when you realize he did get a disease around that area: testicular cancer. Tom couldn't resist pointing this out on the cancer special, saying "Well, I got lucky." Related was one episode where Tom poses for the covers of a fictitious magazine called "Sickly Man Magazine". One cover even has him lying next to a toilet.
  • Heartwarming Moments:
    • A lot from the Cancer Special, but one in particular is Glenn honoring Tom's request to dress as a fire-fighter when he wakes up from the surgery. Through the drugs Tom manages to croak out "I wanted three firemen, dammit."
    • The Monica Lewinsky special, in an odd way. Lewinsky was in the midst of being involved in one of the biggest scandals of the 1990s, and the victim of constant jokes on TV, for her sexual promiscuity and fuller figure. And suddenly, here she is with Tom Green, who's completely ignoring all of that to spend days hanging out with her to find fabric in Ottawa, so she could make a handbag. It's stupid, it's classic Tom Green-subversion and the Anti-Climax pissed off the news media. And yet, Monica, in the worst time of her life, looks happy doing all this foolishness with Tom, whom she has good chemistry with, and she clearly appreciates just being plain old Monica again for a while.
  • Iron Woobie: Poor Glenn took years of mockery on this show for no good reason other than Tom's own whimsy.
  • Nausea Fuel: All over the place, but perhaps the worst was the show's "mascot," Racky The Raccoon. Aside from the aforementioned Mike Bullard incident, he also shoved a cell phone into the animal and made an audience member fish it out. He later sawed the carcass up under the guise of doing a magic trick. Anytime Racky The Raccoon appears, expect to hear awful retching from Glenn, who's never more of an Audience Surrogate than this.
  • Parody Displacement: These days, "The Bum Bum Song" is probably better known from Eminem's parody of it on "The Real Slim Shady", where he cites it as an example of the kind of trashy music that gets airplay while parents wonder where their kids learned about sex.
    "My bum is on your lips! My bum is on your lips! And if I'm lucky, you might just give it a little kiss!" And that's the message that we deliver to little kids, and expect them not to know what a woman's clitoris is! Of course they're gonna know what intercourse is by the time they hit fourth grade, they've got the Discovery Channel, don't they?
  • Squick: We'll be charitable and only list one of the most infamous examples - actually filming Tom's cancer surgery and broadcasting it. Glenn's horrified reaction in the studio mirrored that of audiences.

Top