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5 Tropes I Love, While Also Recognizing Their Awfulness

By Josh Kurp | Lists | August 1, 2012 |

By Josh Kurp | Lists | August 1, 2012 |


#1. Incredibly Lame Pun

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Who doesn’t love a good bad pun? You can put your hands down, everyone, because the following examples of Incredibly Lame Puns, via the Tropes page, are COMEDY GOLD:

Cryptkeeper: “Oh hello kiddies, you’re just in time for your driving lesson. Today we’ll be learning about scare-lell parking.”

Giles: “I’ve never actually heard of anyone attacked by a lone baseball bat before.”
Xander: “Maybe it’s a vampire bat.”

Tim: “So it wasn’t so much a Eskimo roll as a case of rolling right Inuit.”

Two more, you say? Well, if you insist:

Kermit: “You like your drums more than food?”
Animal: “They are food! Eat drums, eat cymbals!”
Kermit: “How cymbalic.”

Hello Nurse: Stay back! I’m packing a heater!
/suitcase opens up, revealing a miniature radiator
Dot: Can’t argue with that one. It’s too stupid.

That last example is from the classic Animaniacs episode, “This Pun for Hire,” a must-watch for any fan of this trope. Once I stop laughing at crappy puns, I’ll know I’m truly dead inside.

#2. Animal Reaction Shot

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Our good friends over at Film Drunk are currently looking for submissions for a “Animal Reaction Shot Supercut,” and I couldn’t be more excited. It combines two things I love — animals and reacting — into one (hopefully) seven-hour-long video. Seriously, I could watch a dog tilt her head after the female protagonist says “my life couldn’t get any more rough” and gawk at a monkey scratching his nuts in apathy for the rest of my life. One Drunkard came across this gem:

Mike Myers post-Austin Powers career is one big chihuahua head tilt.

#3. Manic Pixie Dream Girl

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Oh yeah.

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Obviously.

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Da DOY. What? I’m a 25-year-old male.

#4. Record Needle Scratch

I laugh EVERY. TIME. Do you know that scene from The Simpsons in which the one grunge-out asks the other grunge-out, “Are you being sarcastic, dude?” to which he responds, “I don’t even know anymore.” That’s me with the Record Needle Scratch (necessary audio assistance). One would assume that producers only use the sound effect in trailers to be ironic — but considering you really only hear it for films that star guys like Cuba Gooding, Jr. or Rob Schneider or a anthropomorphic money (the Record Needle Scratch is often paired with the Animal Reaction Shot), I’m not so sure. Also, movie producers are heartless monsters without a sense of sympathy or irony. But don’t let Dunston checking in distract you: the record needle scratch is 100% effective.

#5. Cloudcuckoolander

“A character with their head in the clouds. They are strangely oblivious to things that everyone else takes for granted, such as whether it is okay to turn their suitemate’s room into a landfill and board it up.” That’s an oddly specific situation, but many characters I enjoy in shows I love are considered “cloudcuckoolanders”:

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And so on. But creating a character who says whatever they want, whenever they want, feels a little cheap (or they’re on drugs); I don’t know too many people in my life who act like Cassie from Skins, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t like them much. And yet, when they’re on TV: I love ‘em. They cut through the subtext of potentially melodramatic scenes, so rather than 17 more episodes of the main characters deciding whether they’re in love or not when they clearly are, the Cloudcuckoolander will say something blunt and then everyone has sex. That I’m OK with.

Please leave your favorite hate to love (love to hate?) tropes in the comments. He’d want you to.

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