tv shows within tv shows: an ocd thread for jaymc and nabisco

Watched the first episode of Sherlock the other day and was momentarily weirded out by the idea of a world where Sherlock Holmes is not a famous historical literary character.

― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, June 4, 2012 8:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

had this exact thought

Watched the first episode of Sherlock the other day and was momentarily weirded out by the idea of a world where Sherlock Holmes is not a famous historical literary character.

In one of the second season episodes someone mentions that a particular Sherlock case was "straight out of a Conan Doyle novella". So presumably in the Sherlock universe Doyle still was a famous mystery writer, only he wrote about some other character(s) than Sherlock. Kinda like in the movie-universe the kid in The Last Action Hero enters, the Terminator was played by Stallone and not Arnie.

The South Park example is a completely different phenomenon called floating timeline, or comic book time.

some prime fodder for this thread here
http://www.avclub.com/articles/scenes-from-the-munchiverse-21-links-between-unexp,83368/

Awesome. I wonder if Heisler Gold ale was one of the two fictional beers I noticed on S4 of Damages -- mostly drunk by John Goodman and Dylan Baker. Couldn't make out the label. I was watching S2 of Breaking Bad around the same time, and it was kind of jolting to hear Walt enter a bar and order a Fat Tire, since you hardly ever hear anyone mention a specific real-life brand on TV.

(And esp. not a New Belgium!)

Todd VanDerWerff @tvoti
Brad Paisley exists in the Nashville universe, yet his real-life wife plays Teddy's girlfriend. So who is Alt-Brad Paisley's wife?!

Also, re Heisler beer (which I mentioned a couple of posts up): One of the things I really like about New Girl is that it makes no attempt at all to hide the fact that its beers are TV-brand. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, a recent episode actually mentioned Heisler by name.

not the first time iirc

Watched the first episode of Sherlock the other day and was momentarily weirded out by the idea of a world where Sherlock Holmes is not a famous historical literary character.

― Never translate Dutch (jaymc), Monday, June 4, 2012 8:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

had this exact thought

― goole, Tuesday, June 5, 2012 10:37 AM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno, somehow the fact that it's all british makes it seem essentially sherlockish - a different version, myth- or comic-book style.

whereas on 'elementary' they pull the trick of displacing sherlock to new york (even though he keeps referring back to his time in london assisting scotland yard) and changing watson to lucy liu as 'joan' so that whenever someone refers to sherlock, or especially when he introduces himself, the fact that it's kind of weird to us that there's a modern-type person saying that he is a legendary fictional character just gets taken up into the general weirdness of the screen character, as whatsisname acts him.

I thought of this thread the other day when we were watching House Hunters, a show Liz Lemon mentions a few times ("why can't people look past paint color?"), and the person looking for a house was Keith Powell, who plays Toofer.

Thanks to this thread Sherlock just became difficult for me to watch

taylor swift makes a cameo in season 2 of new girl as a character named elaine but earlier that season zooey deschanel is heard listening to "22" and specifically says something like "i just want to listen to taylor swift" and this bothers me and i spent like a half hour searching for this thread to post about it ok thanks

We recently rewatched all the seasons of The Nanny, and it has an overload of "celebrity paradox". First of all, it has more than one case of a celebrity (Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie O'Donnell, etc) appearing both as himself and as a fictional person without anyone noticing they look alike. With Fran's grandmother, there are recurring jokes how she reminds people of Millie from Dick van Dyke Show (she's played by Ann Morgan Guilbert, who also played Milly), and so on...

But the whole thing is taken to ridiculous extremes with Fran Descher herself. In one episode she appears as Bobbi Flekman, the character she played in This Is Spinal Tap. In this case, the resemblance between Fran Fine (the character she plays in The Nanny) and Bobbi Flekman is noticed, and Fran is able to succesfully impersonate her. Still, no one finds it a bit odd that the two woman look exactly alike.

Then, in the penultimate episode of the series, Fran Fine, the fictional character, runs into Fran Drescher, the famous actor, by chance. They have a brief discussion, and it turns out that within the universe of The Nanny Drescher is doing a series that's quite similar to The Nanny, and Fine is a fan of it! And apparently that show-within-a-show is about have its series finale (just like The Nanny was in real life), and Drescher even urges Fine to "tune in and watch it next week!". Yet no one seems to notice that Drescher looks exactly like Fine (and Flekman!), and that the events of Frescher's fictional series weirdly mirror the events of Fine's real life...

rewatched all the seasons of The Nanny?

^^Big in Finland, iirc.

It seriously was a pretty good show for the first two or three seasons! The quality drops during the second half (when the Fran/Max will-they-or-won't-they arc takes over the whole show), and the final season is pretty bad, but we needed some mindless Sunday night entertainment, and it's all on Netflix, so...

Tell us when you start rewatching "Coach". We can help you with the American football references.

Never heard of that one, is on Netflix? (Though I don't really care about sports-related shows or movies.)

I kinda teasing you (it's another cheesy sitcom from the 90s), but it does have a Dick Van Dyke connection, I'll give you that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkp7wsJc8MI

ha @ "where do you keep your Oscar?"

Obligatory jokes:

1. Tuomas spent several seasons thinking her last name was "Finn" rather than "Fine" and was feeling patriotic.
2. Show airs in Finland under the title, Hey! We're Babysitting!

Exit, pursued by Frans.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/taylorsimone/oh-mr-sheffield i'd never even heard of the nanny so i have no reaction to this besides 'too much time on ilx'.

speaking of that exactly ^ one of the things that bothers me is when characters in a sitcom wear a different outfit every single episode regardless of wealth

also something i noticed watching new girl, in which jess never wears the same outfit despite living on a teacher's wage

less believable than cartoon characters wearing the same thing every day imo

it doesn't bother me that much. i mean, a lot of episodes of sitcoms span a few days, but probably not all 7 days of the week, let alone episodes covering all 52 weeks of the year. it's pretty easy to assume they're rewearing all those outfits you only see once on the days when no televised hijinks ensue.

'sons of anarchy' (a show which features drea de matteo in a recurring role) had an episode where charlie hunnam reassures a terrified acquaintance he's met in a dark warehouse that he's not going to "do an adriana" on her.

"sons of anarchy" also has had katey segal. as herself, singing a song over a montage that her character featured prominently in.

At least in The Nanny they made a few breaking-the-fourth-wall type of jokes about how unrealistic it was for her to have so many expensive clothes, especially since being working-class was such a big part of her identity... But I guess they were still bothered by it, because they eventually had an episode where Fran explained she had a gay cousin who had managed to make it big as a fashion designer, and most of her fancy clothes were leftovers from him.

is that the episode where her cousin is Todd Oldham, playing himself?

episode 3.15: Fashion Show according to www.thenanny.com

Is Brandon Tartikoff appearing as himself on Saved by the Bell, Night Court, and ALF an example of this or am I thinking too hard?

wow brandon tartikoff was a big enough deal to make cameos on all of those shows?

god can you imagine nyc media blogs writing about brandon tartikoff in 2014

i thought it was an nbc-culture thing

yeah you are right

but even just the fact that "nbc-culture" was a thing

30 rock hasn't been off the air that long

30 rock always seemed like a throwback

just let me be nostalgic on the day that bill carter quits the ny times

We're just rewatching season 3 of Friends, and in one episode Ross mentions Magnum P.I., even though Tom Selleck played a recurring fictional character (Monica's boyfriend Richard) in the previous season. It's hard to imagine Ross wouldn't have noticed Richard looks exactly like the dude from that series, with the same moustache and all.

Though maybe in the Friends universe Magnum P.I. was played by Burt Reynolds?

then, who, may i ask, starred in Evening Shade in the Friends universe, Tuomas? use your brain!!!!!!!!!!

I don't think Evening Shade was ever referred to in Friends, so it doesn't necessarily exist in the Friends universe. IMO the "actor paradox" is a paradox only when Series X mentions another, lets call it Series Y (or Movie Y), where one of the actors in Series X played another role, since that means Series Y exists as fiction within Series X, and the characters in Series X should notice that one of them looks exactly like the famous actor in Series Y. If all the other roles the actors of Series X have ever played should also be accounted for, regardless of whether they're actually mentioned in Series X, that would mean pretty much every series is full of paradoxes. I think we can safely assume that if Series Y/Movie Y is never mentioned in Series X, then it simply doesn't exist in Series X's universe

Similarly, any celebrity that isn't mentioned in series X can't be assumed to exist within its universe. So, for example, no one in Friends tells Rachel she looks like Jennifer Aniston, because in its universe there was no hit series called Friends that made an actor called Jennifer Aniston famous. (Though sometimes the writers can do meta gags based on this, for example the Fran Drescher scene in The Nanny that I mentioned upthread.)

best example of this was in Scrubs when Janitor's past as a cop in The Fugitive was revealed, using the actual footage from him in the movie

The world in classic TV is always on reset - I mean, it's not just the TV show that doesn't exist in its own world - the world of the tv show itself doesn't exist in its own world, not as anything but a static backdrop that is. It's like they all have memory wipes every week except for certain "developments".

Nobody ever seems to have said "you know, let's NOT invite Jessica Fletcher for the weekend, you ever notice somebody gets murdered every time she shows up?" Obviously a brilliant serial killer. Did anybody on "Law & Order" ever refer to a previous case, "say, this is just like that time when....we should probably check that out!" And those shows where celebrities are always dropping in, the characters should be shown later bragging and boring their co-workers "you'll never guess who I got trapped in an elevator with." "Let me guess, a pregnant lady?" yawns the co-worker - sad, really, these delusional people...

I'm also fond of sit-coms where the characters refuse obviously advantageous promotions and life developments just in order to stay in their miserable little traps.

Trapper John M.D.: Hey, wait! You look familiar.

Runner #122: I don't think so. You know Col. Potter?

xp actually, Law and Order did that a lot! there were recurring cases and criminals who got away in previous seasons, story developments on the cops/lawyers backgrounds lives sprinkled throughout seasons (like Lenny's daughter, Munch and Cragen showing up on multiple series, the various crossovers of the Dick Wolf-a-verse that they're doing now with Chicago Hope/Fire/SVU), but it was usually kept to a minimum in L&O - no more than a few minutes per episode, compared to half-soaps like NYPD Blue

I think I only saw a lot of the early Law & Order so I shouldn't have used that as an example. How about the guy who loses to Perry Mason all the time?

As X-Files goes on, even with certain continuing plot lines developing, it becomes hard to understand how Scully could maintain her baseline skepticism, episode after episode. The writers couldn't figure out how to develop her character, or more likely didn't care.

"you know, let's NOT invite Jessica Fletcher for the weekend, you ever notice somebody gets murdered every time she shows up?" Obviously a brilliant serial killer.

oh how I longed for this to be the big reveal at the series finale