When someone attempts to poison someone else usualy with a laxative but they end up taking it instead.
At a more specialist level when someone uses a blowpipe and inhales instead of blows, don't think a blow pipe has ever featured without it!
Cliché sitcom jokes that really piss you off Page 4
Quote: Tom G @ December 20 2008, 9:48 PM GMTAt a more specialist level when someone uses a blowpipe and inhales instead of blows, don't think a blow pipe has ever featured without it!
To be fair, the comic potential of blowpipes is otherwise fairly limited.
I hate it when Richard Briers in The Good Life looks out of the telly.
Then tells me to go to Aldi in the nude and shout about Jesus.
Recently he's been telling me to hurt people and punishing me with head aches.
It's not funny and he's not a very nice man.
Quote: Lazzard @ December 20 2008, 5:42 PM GMTThis isn't the actual site I was talking about - but it's quite good nonetheless.
Right. Now I'm gonna sit and read for hours.
Damn, this is riveting stuff.
If you find the other address, post it as well.
I really hate it when, for example, a guy is going to dump his girlfriend and it goes something like:
Man: Julie, I think we need to talk
Julie: Oh great, I love it when we talk. You've made me so happy, I think I'd kill myself if we ever split up. So what did you want to talk about?
Man: Er, I just wanted to say...how much I love your new top
Amen to that one!
Also, I'd like to add to this list, the whole "my family are coming to stay and I totally lied about my life. Could you all please pretend for the weekend?" scenario, as witness in many UK Sitcoms including The Brittas Empire and Black Books. Just seems to be done far too often!
When someone answers the phone and are asked by another person in the room to "Tell them I'm not here" to which the person on the phone says "He said he's not here"
Quote: Paul Rimmer @ December 21 2008, 10:03 AM GMTI really hate it when, for example, a guy is going to dump his girlfriend and it goes something like:
Man: Julie, I think we need to talk
Julie: Oh great, I love it when we talk. You've made me so happy, I think I'd kill myself if we ever split up. So what did you want to talk about?
Man: Er, I just wanted to say...how much I love your new top
They did that in the latest episode of "The IT Crowd".
Quote: Lazzard @ December 20 2008, 5:42 PM GMTI found a web-site once that listed all these comedy cliches - the kind of shorthand used in various writers rooms.
It was american so referred a lot to Dick Van Dyke, Gilligan etc plus stuff like 'jumping the shark' etc etc.
But I lost the link.
Anyone know it?
http://artfulwriter.com/archives/2007/05/silence_of_the.html ?
Not it, but good, nonetheless.
Thanx
Quote: Paul Rimmer @ December 21 2008, 10:03 AM GMTI really hate it when, for example, a guy is going to dump his girlfriend and it goes something like:
Man: Julie, I think we need to talk
Julie: Oh great, I love it when we talk. You've made me so happy, I think I'd kill myself if we ever split up. So what did you want to talk about?
Man: Er, I just wanted to say...how much I love your new top
That's the Vicar Of Dibley all over, isn't it? Julie's speech sounds just like Alice.
The line, "I'm right here!" after a character is talked about negatively within earshot.
Of course the worst one of all is when two characters of the opposite sex are just about to kiss for the first time and then someone walks in/the phone rings etc and interrupts them. That must happen on every sitcom/soap/TV programme ever.
The thing about cliches is they work, that's why they've achieved cliche status.
If it's done on a show you like you'll explain it away as irony or something. I do that with Frasier.