Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Welcome to Red Eye. It's like Return of the Jedi, if by 'Jedi', you mean 'a mysterious rash shaped like an avocado'."

Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld is Fox News Channel's successful comedy offering, a panel discussion show hosted by former Maxim UK Editor Greg Gutfeld, along with his "repulsive Sidekick" Bill Schulz, and ombudsman "TV's" Andy Levy. It airs at 3:00 am ET Tuesday through Saturday.

The show hovers between News Parody and Faux News, and it's like The View, if The View had a decidedly pro-Camp Gay bias. Dissimile and absurdist tangents abound. Refuge in Vulgarity is sprinkled here and there, especially when introductions are given. The show features panelists and guests discussing the latest news in politics, pop culture, entertainment, business, sports, and religion.

Guests on the show are primarily composed of political pundits, stand-up comedians, musicians, authors, and attractive women, virtually every episode containing one of each (and every single episode having an attractive female panelist sitting in the chair to the far right side of the table, affectionately referred to as the Leg Chair"). Political opinions often vary amongst the guests, with the show's main trio consisting of an oddly perfect balance: Greg's a conservative, Bill's a liberal, and Andy's a Libertarian who hates conservatives and liberals. The show often takes pot-shots at everyone and everything under the sun, including Fox News itself. Despite its middle-of-the-night timeslot, the show has beaten most primetime cable news shows in the ratings, and devloped a loyal cult following.

Tropes used in Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld include:
  • Butt Monkey: Bill is the most obvious, but all 3 of the Red Eye trio gets a turn. Bill is a Butt Monkey to Greg, who is often a Butt Monkey to Andy, who is in turn the target of jokes from both Greg AND Bill.
    • Frequent guest Paul Mecurio takes the cake, however. When he's on, Greg and Andy can be just plain mean to the guy.
  • Call Back: During a Halloween episode, a zombie from Blood Manor named Rachel would silently stand right next to people as they spoke. When asked how he stayed so calm, Andy Levy responded "She was only the second scariest Rachel I ever met," a callback to former panelist Rachel Marsden.
  • Catch Phrase: Greg has "And if you disagree with me, you sir, are worse than Hitler."
    • More recently, he's been using, "If you disagree with me, then you're a racist/homophobe."
    • Andy Levy often says, "I apologize for nothing," while Gutfeld "apologizes for everything."
    • Greg often opened the Mail Time with "You write, I read..." often followed by something involving blood or awesomeness, such as "You write, I read, then I run you over in a dune buggy made of FIRE!"
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Greg Gutfeld, full stop. He's obsessed with unicorns, has a bizarre and twisted sense of humor, and is responsible for the majority of strange fake backstories for everyone. Even when appearing on other Fox News shows, he's just as bizarre as he is on Red Eye.
  • Comedic Sociopath: Greg Gutfeld. According to his jokes about himself, he is a globetrotting serial killer and molester with a cadre of captured, underaged boy slaves (who may or may not be sexual in nature) he calls "House Boys" he keeps locked in his basement, until he lets them up briefly to amuse him. That's when he's not forcing them to engage in disturbing "games" for their freedom. Also implied that they're all captured immigrants, none of them able to speak English.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Andy Levy is the Lord God Almighty of the Deadpan Snarkers. No one is safe (Democrats, Republicans, celebrities, The Black-Eyed Peas, etc.), and his snarking can be absolutely vicious. His Twitter feed is almost nothing but snark.
  • Dissimile: Often used during the into of the show, starting with "Welcome to Red Eye. It's like..."
  • Double Entendre: Greg's guest intros are these.
    • "If hilarity were a bowling alley, I'd roll my balls up and down him."
    • Often crosses over into Refuge in Vulgarity; one introduction even made Greg Proops (host of the Proops Poops segment) recoil.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: A running gag on the show, where either an image of Pinch making a goofy expression, or images of one of the main trio wearing a creepy metal mask, with subliminal messages such as "OBEY HIM" or "FEED IT" written below them, will flash on-screen for a second at random points in the show.
  • Freudian Trio: Gutfeld is The Kirk, Schulz is The McCoy, and Levy is The Spock.
  • Ignorance Is Bliss: Played straight and often exaggerated.
    • Greg believes Obama was not born in America, but in Hawaii, a "lovely little island nation."
    • Greg is utterly clueless about sports.
    • He has also boasted that the show is "built on ignorance."
  • Malaproper: Greg discussing the joy of circus penis. Hilarity Ensues as the entire studio breaks down in laughter.
  • Muppet: Another "regular panelist" is Pinch, a "puppet" that serves as the show's "New York Times Correspondent." It is a copy of the NYT with cardboard eyes and a string attached, performed by Schulz.
  • Metal Detector Checkpoint: Apparently averted during a Christmas Mail Time, when a meat cleaver was brought in. Lampshaded by Greg asking "How did this get into FOX?!"

Greg: "Seriously, someone could have sent this as a murder weapon. Like, all this stuff could have been used at a crime."
Bill: "Your DNA is all over it."
Greg: "Haha, or it will be."

  • Nightmare Face: Frequent guest Andrew W.K. pulls off an amazing one.
  • One of Us: Andy Levy is an unabashed comic book and sci-fi geek, often appearing on the show with his Sonic Screwdriver.
  • Punny Name: Several of Greg's deceased houseboys, including "Dat Ho", "Tu Hung" and "Phen Wei Park".
  • Strawman Political: Stereotypical liberalism and conservatism is often lampooned by Greg and Bill, respectively, painting certain news figures (and often each other) as this. When they actually do lapse into stereotypical partisan politics, Andy will call them on it during the Halftime Report.
  • Take That: All the time. Though Andy Levy is especially brutal.
    • Occasionally done by Greg to viewers that insult him in their fan mail.

Greg: "Also, while I have your attention, I'm doing a survey: what's it like to be lonely?"

Dan: "Finally, I don't see what the big deal is about waterboarding. I took my family to the Bahamas, we went waterboarding, it was great."
Greg: "Dan, that's boogieboarding."
Dan: "Oh." [beat] "Well, I tried to drown my children, does that count?"
 

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