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

^^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

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

― Nhex, Wednesday, December 3, 2014 9:49 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did they also reveal that he was a major league baseball player in Rookie of the Year?

this opens a whole new can of paradox worms

also Friends was so huge that a 90s/00s universe in which Friends doesn't exist is entirely unknowable and we can't even be certain if the human race would still exist without it.

re 30 Rock, in the final episode it was revealed to have all taken place within the immortal Kenneth's imagination as he was listening to Liz Lemon's granddaughter explain the concept for 30 Rock to him in the future, so Aniston and Schwimmer appear in it because Kenneth is just peopling it with guest appearances by stars of his beloved NBC shows of the past in his imagination

obviously

also Friends was so huge that a 90s/00s universe in which Friends doesn't exist is entirely unknowable

It's not unknowable, you can see it for over 200 episodes in Friends!

It wasn't Kenneth's imagination at the end of 30 Rock.. it was confirming the "Kenneth is immortal" gag they'd sprinkled throughout the series!

it could be both! anyway it's one way to square the casting paradox circle is all...

i get perturbed when i watch the us version of the office, because i don't get how we're seeing the footage. unlike an ordinary tv show, in which there's a mystical 4th wall that lets us peer into a different reality, everything we see on the office was shot by cameramen who exist in that alternate reality. all the footage exists in that reality. we're also not seeing the actual documentary series that was shown in that reality, ported wholesale to our reality, since that was a single season deal.

david brent from the uk version also shows up on the us version, which means both shows share the same reality. and since the respective pilot shows depict identical events, everything that happened in slough in the beginning also happened in scranton, detail by detail, and was recorded and broadcast. but nobody in that world seems to have noticed.

I think you can easily explain that away when you know that all reality/documentary shows are partially scripted.

that would have to be fully scripted, d'artagnan. such a scandal in officeworld.

I'm willing to overlook the pilot paradox since they finally addressed that there was actually a documentary being shot and involved one of the cameramen (in a subplot that I hated, but he was involved nonetheless) in the final season. Otherwise, it would have rubbed me wrong for the rest of my life.

Conversation between Gilbert Gottfried and Scott Aukerman on last week's Comedy Bang Bang is relevant to this thread (start at 26:08):
https://soundcloud.com/comedybangbang/399-gilbert-gottfried-james-adomian-anthony-atamanuik

Scene in S2E2 of the Netflix show LOVE:

"So, if on Friends, Ross references Die Hard, that means in the Friends universe, Die Hard exists as a movie, right? So then later, Bruce Willis shows up as Ross's girlfriend's dad on the show Friends, how come all the friends aren't like, Holy shit, this guy looks like Bruce Willis from the movie Die Hard."

in the friends universe, the role of john mcclane in the movie die hard is portrayed by s. epatha merkson

http://www.hopeofthefuture.net/references/lastactionhero-lahp.gif