Sit-Com Parodies

Not a real Piston-fire or a gentle whirlwind article this month... just a fun shortish one to meet my personal quota of writing I self-assign myself to do.

We are gonna look at sitcom parodies, today, which is a much harder genre to narrow down and discuss than you'd think. Since there's been over ten thousand of them since the 1950s... it's very difficult for it NOT to be a self-parody by the five thousanth one. I mean, even things like Seinfeld, hugely popular ones are in-themselves parodies of sitcoms. I think J. Seinfeld got his start parodying Soap Operas on "Soap" even.

More mundaner ones are even self parodies at this point. I think any sit-coms still on TV at this point are parodies. Ones that are still going are for-sure parodies of themselves. I find it hard to take at face value that the Roseanne show still exists without the titular character and that the titular character was written off with a very mundane drug overdose ... and the family just went on familying like nothing happened minutes after their fictional mother over dosed on drugs. This is a show that's supposed to be seen as a normal family sitcom. It's quite bizarre to really watch this show.

So, to actually start out and say you want to make a show that is a parody of sitcoms is already a difficult task. This is a hard task to declare you are making a parody of sitcoms... for you're saying that you are attempting to parody something that in-and-of-itself is already a parody of its own self. The four we are looking at today declared they were parodies of sitcoms, thus, giving themselves the daunting task of making fun of something that already by default makes fun of its own genre.

 

Our esteemed entries are:

My Mother the Car
Small Wonder
The Brady Bunch Movie
Beef House

I think the Beef entry will be shorter this time... I've written about this show now in more than one article since it came out. It's not a big reveal that I am a fan of this show.

The thing that fascinates me about all entries is that they make it clear that they are parodying a parody which makes all of them almost insanity to some degree yet since the actors act like this is totally normal like any other sitcom... it becomes slightly even more insane.

 

My Mother the Car

My Mother the Car... is a great show. I bet people who watched this in the era it was out would disagree but it is a good show.

My favorite episode of My Mother the Car, is when the Mother (who's a car by the way) is ecstatic to hear that Sonny Tufts has officially made a comeback after being maligned from Hollywood for his drunkard behavior.

Sonny was a man of ill-repute in the years prior to this guest appearance on My Mother the Car. He was doing bad stuff and phoning in his lines in films... especially in Cat-Women From the Moon where there are scenes of Sonny just mumbling and walking off set instead of delivering his lines. You may ask how these scenes were not edited out of Cat-Women From the Moon... I do not really know the answer to that... that's more of a production thing... you can't really blame Sonny for the director leaving those scenes in.

As her son reads her the paper in the garage concerning the films playing at the local drive-in, The Car, is shocked to learn Sonny Tufts is back on the scene.... for My Mother the Car... is totally infatuated with Sonny Tufts. She loves him!

Now, a lot of people, don't realize that prior to being maligned for his drunkard's behavior and previous to being a fellow of grossly ill-repute... Sonny Tufts played dashing war heroes and starry-eyed military men on the Big Screen. In the era where The Car was still alive (and a human instead of a Car)... as a younger woman back then... she was enamored with Sonny like most women were.

....but the road Sonny chose to travel down was not a bright one. His lust for the fairer sex and his out-of-control behavior ... led him to make many bad decisions after bad decisions. His glory days were far behind him and many wondered what had become of the once handsome leading man.

As The Car learns that he will be appearing in a teenage beach rock-and-roll bop-style film as the father figure character... the Car almost bursts a gasket! Her hero has returned! The entire family piles into her (The Car) and drives down to the drive-in to see this teenage bopper picture.

The weather was not on their side that fateful evening as a rain storm broke out and the drive-in had to close... but The Car was resilient... and refused to leave. In the end, The Car, with her son, daughter-in-law, grand-kids, and their dog were the only Car left in the drive-in.

....or were they?

Lo, who could it be at the back of the drive-in? Another car? Surely no one else sat through such a poor film in the bitter cold and rain on this fateful eve? Who could it be?

.....SONNY TUFTS!?!?

Yes, friends, it was he. It was Sonny Tufts. The kids eyes light up like Christmas morning, their parents are in utter amazement... the dog barks at the handsome man! Alas... the Car... she finally has met him. She's met Sonny Tufts after all these years of wishing to see this larger-than-life fellow in the flesh... there he was... right in front of her headlights. Sonny Tufts his actual self. What an episode.... what a great episode.

Other memorable episodes are the ones that feature Avery Schreiber as a vintage car collector who will stop at nothing to acquire My Mother the Car for his collection and is constantly refused by her son who does not want to sell her for any cost. Avery, thus, begins to resort to outlandish scheme after outlandish scheme to outwit the owner and seize the vehicle for his vast collections. He challenges him to a motor-car race and even goes as far as to fake his own terminal illness to guilt the sale of the vehicle. Does Avery Schreiber have no shame in show? No, he does not.

 

Small Wonder 

Small Wonder is a meticulously strange show. A robotic engineer builds a young robot girl and brings her home to his wife and son to be the newest addition to their family. It's odd... but it's played straight like nothing is amiss... which I've found is the real key for these shows to work.

I find this to be a show no one seems to remember for how good it actually was. It was the My Mother the Car of its era. There's a lot of real small things in this show that keep it from becoming redundant. It lasted for FOUR seasons! I've noticed even some of the most stalwart of 80s kids have never heard of this great show.

It works as a sitcom, a better than average one, even if the robot girl wasn't on it. The Dad, the Mom, the Son, the trio of annoying neighbors... are all good on it... PLUS the daughter is a robot! It has it all.

I'm always taken by how normal the show feels as you watch it. It's almost like a perfectly normal sitcom... even better than many of its era... and oh yeah we almost forgot... the daughter is a robot. I even think the actions of the characters on this show are MORE human and less robotic than most sitcoms of its era. They say things that are more natural to a real life environment even though we're to believe this is a crazy fantasy world with robots.

There's scenes with the "Warren" character, a Charlie Brown kid, who falls in love with the robot that are the most Peanuts-like presentation of the Peanuts in a non-cartoon form. The kids behavior on this show is more kid-like than other shows. They act like how silly dumb kids act unlike on other shows where you see kids reading Harvard Comedy School Writers lines as if they'd actually ever say or act like that in real life. Kids in real life are actually mean like Lucy in the Peanuts.

The Robot character tends to repeat the things she's just heard, like a person with echolalia... but that's actually what kids that age do in real life at that stage. They repeat whatever they hear. The robot is actually more of a kid-like kid than kids on other shows... which is strange... in that its trying to be an off-the-wall crazy show. I find the behavior of the kids on Full House to be much more bizarre than the behavior of the Robot on Small Wonder. Kids in real life are fish-out-of-water characters who do not understand the world around them and tend to just repeat things and execute half-understood behaviors of things they've seen. I find the kids on Small Wonder, both the human ones and the robot one, to be very realistically kid-like.

There was a cool game from Japan that never made it to the USA called "Wonder Project J" ... which naming this game with "Wonder" in the title makes me wonder if it was influenced by Small Wonder... maybe that show was big in Japan, who knows.

I played a translated version of this game in the early 2000s and still remember this game well. You build this robot son and just interact with him... you don't outright control the robot... you just watch him interact with his environment and give him cues, suggestions, reprimands, and rewards for his behavior. The first time I played this I didn't get all the story chapters correct ... and if you don't... your robot son dies at the end in a heroic fashion.... and even though he's a robot... and even though it's just a video game and he's not even a real robot... that game is sooo sad.

Kids in real life are sort of these unprogrammed robots who's behavior and speech are dictated by their surroundings. Both in Small Wonder and in Wonder Project J... I felt the characters to be very believable as humans... even though they were supposed to be robots.

Other than the monotone voice and machine-like behavior... I think the Robot on Small Wonder is a very believable kid. She says half-understood regurgitated sentence fragments she'd heard her brother, neighbor, or parents say. She learns bad behavior from her bratty next-door neighbor. She interacts rudely with icky boys who like her. It's surprisingly more natural behavior you'd see from a child being displayed here.

I heard they cancelled that show Caillou, which parents hated, recently. I think that show would have worked if they made that bald boy a robot. Then again... from start to finish that show is not good. Even the theme song to Caillou is not any good. I take it back... even if they made Caillou a robot child... it still would be bad.

Alright so, Small Wonder and Wonder Project J are both things I recommend.

The Brady Bunch Movie

This isn't really a TV Show... this is actually a movie. I like this movie, too.

The fun thing about this compared to the other old TV Shows turned into movies is they totally made this into an outright Brady Bunch parody instead of a reboot. It is the Brady Bunch in the current era (that it was made)... literally. The Bunch didn't age or change from the 70s... but the world around them did. The Brady's were in the year 1995 but were this bizarre time-capsuled copy of themselves... preserved like jam for decades... never changing with the times.

It's a great idea!

My favorite character in this movie was the middle-kid of the female trio set of kids... Jan. Every line, every mannerism, and every movement of this actress was funny. I think this movie is a great starting point for females who want to do comedy ... they should watch Jan in the Brady Bunch Movie.

I'm looking at the actress's IMDB page and am surprised she wasn't more famous after this. Jan Brady in The Brady Bunch Movie is a fantastic comedic performance. Utterly fantastic.

I don't remember if its in this one or the Very Brady Sequel where she absolutely LOSES her MIND over her jealousy for Marsha, has a nervous breakdown, runs away from home... and meets the original Alice (Ann B. Davis) from the original show. That's so good that part.

I love her paranoid-ass face when her full distain for Marsha finally boils over in her messed-up brain and she starts hallucinating, talking to herself, and basically snapping. This was Oscar caliber acting here.

How she walks at one point in this film is amazing. It's like a scene where she gets glasses or something and it's one of the best comedy walks of all time... Monty Python (and the Ministry of Silly Walks) would be proud.

 

If the Oscars were ever given to Truly good performances in films ... this would have gotten something. Every Jan scene is great.

I would love to have been in the writers room, people pitchin' ideas for this, and someone goes "let's make Jan Brady a paranoid schizo!" ... and then the rest of the room going... "great idea!" .. I would have loved to have been there for such an historic moment in film history.

I'm a huge Jan-Head and I love this movie. What other ones were good? I remember The Beverly Hillbillies was okay... the movie of it... but Jim Varney is in that as Jed... and believe-you-me... there is very little that Jim Varney ever touched that did not turn to gold... so it's not a big surprise to anyone that Beverly Hillbillies was good... because Jim Varney is always good. It was a BIG surprise, however, how absolutely good the Brady Bunch movie was. While we're on the topic let's work in the Brady Bunch Variety Hour too for this entry. Why not? You know? On second thought, nevermind, it's not that good.


Alright let's move on...

 

Beef House

As stated, I've already written multiple times, I think, on this show. It is the My Mother the Car and the Small Wonder of its Era... 100%.

I hope someone realizes its great and throws mucho deniro at this thing and make more of them. It is already probably ahead of Car and Wonder already and there's only like six short episodes. Then again maybe it's not the best all time as of yet.

That Sonny Tufts episode on My Mother the Car is outright wonderful. From second One to second Last it is a masterpiece. A true Master's Piece in every sense of the term. That was one of the last episodes too so it had time to work into itself and really start to brew, you know?

I'm not sure Beef House has made its full Masterpiece episode yet... it needs more shows. It does. I know they will make a Masterpiece. If it doesn't get more shows... I think either Prunes or Crab Dip is their Masterpiece episode so far.

Because Brady Bunch Movie is a movie and not a TV Show, I think it should be omitted from the final tally of rankings.

So as of right now I'd say because there's only six Beef House shows it is pound-for-pound the best show but the longevity isn't yet there. Small Wonder had the most episodes of any of the entries but I'm not sure it's necessarily a longevity thing this contest.

Why even make a rankings? I love them all. They are all winners!

Bonus Entry

In the old old old internet of the late 90s... I remember a Geocities site called "Football Dad"... I can't seem to find it on Internet Archive or anything.

It was a website about an old show... where the father of the family dies... but comes back as a football. It was such a dumb site... and it wasn't popular or anything... I don't know why I found it so funny... or even remember it. It was a good idea for a show though. This show never actually existed, of course, but if you read the "guestbook" of the site (which was an archaic version of a comments section)... you had people remembering it like it was yesterday and others who never heard of it but wanted to find it.

Football Dad. I'd watch it if it ever became a real show. It would have to be casted properly though.

Googling "Football Dad" the only thing that mentions it was this very website in 2011.

Did I dream this or something? Does anyone else recall Football Dad?


EDIT:
I have found an archive of Football Dad!:
(https://web.archive.org/web/20031219083459/http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/gilford/796/FD/index.html)