Refuge in Audacity/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
* Megan from ''[[Drake and Josh]]'', who gets away with ''everything'', never receiving anything but rewards for her horribly contemptible behavior. Many viewers no longer/never found this funny and [[
* ''[[The X
** [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] now that Jesse has his own show, Conspiracy Theory, with Jesse Ventura, since it has him trying to find the truth behind conspiracy theories. Irony at it's finest.
** The parody book ''The Extra-Terrestrial's Guide to the X-Files'', written as an instructional manual for aliens newly arrived on Earth, suggested this as a convenient way to discredit witnesses. "No really, after they abducted me and did their tests, the aliens stood together, sang some Broadway showtunes, forced me to drink a bottle of bourbon, and then dumped me on the side of the road beside a strip club!"
* Subverted in an episode of ''[[
* Everything [[Psych
* ''[[
* An episode of ''[[The Drew Carey Show]]'' has Mimi making Drew late for work {{spoiler|by getting a cowboy to tie him up. Just as planned, Drew's boss doesn't even consider believing his excuse. To be fair, he initially suspects his British colleague as well; it's only when Mimi imitates the cowboy's "Ma'am" that he finds the real truth.}}
* ''[[
** Don't forget the sprig of celery on his lapel!
** The entire premise of the TARDIS cloaking system seems to work on the fact that most people, when presented with a large blue police box incongruously parked in the middle of a major tourist attraction or thoroughfare, will simply ignore it.
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** And when you land said blue box in the middle of the Oval Office, and then while having a small army of Secret Service agents train their guns on you, what do you do? You sit in the President's chair and start barking orders like you own the place. [[Running Gag|And demand a Fez]].
** As of "Let's Kill Hitler", River Song ''owns'' this freaking trope thanks to this immortal line:
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* ''[[Absolute Power (
* In one episode of ''[[Father Ted]]'', Ted has to kick Bishop Brennan up the arse as a forfeit sent by Dick Byrne. however, if he does so, Bishop Brennan will most certainly send Ted to a parish even worse than Craggy Island. Eventually, Dougal suggests that Ted could get away with kicking him {{spoiler|''if he kicked him, then acted like nothing had happened, as Bishop Brennan wouldn't think that Ted would ever do anything like that, as he is so afraid of him. Photographic evidence as big as a house, however, leads to Teds downfall''}}.
* In ''[[Legend of the Seeker]]'', Cara is forced to impersonate a princess in the episode "Princess." The court she's visiting has a strict rule that any woman addressing the Margrave speak in rhyming couplets. Further, she's in a competition with another woman to win the Margrave's charms; notably, she doesn't ''have'' to win, but her competitiveness starts getting the better of her early on. About half way through, though, she stops trying to win on the Margrave's terms, and plays by her own, starting by composing a whole poem about torturing a slave to death, then following up by shooting a man-eating beast in the face and eating its raw liver while wearing a pink, frilly dress. Naturally, it works.
* In ''[[
* Everything that comes out of Sue Sylvester's mouth in ''[[
** The fact that [[Straw Man Has a Point]] is in full effect makes for some of the most surreal dialog ever to grace Public Television. Case in point:
{{quote|
* A lot of auditioners for ''Britain's Got Talent'', ''America's Got Talent'', and so on try for this... some even succeed. Memorably:
{{quote|
* ''[[Fawlty Towers]]'' is quite often like this -- Basil Fawlty, a hotel owner, gets away with a ''lot'' of what he says/does to his guests because he is ''so'' offensive that he either a) cows people into not complaining or b) they don't quite believe what they just heard -- but at one point the Major has a line which is described elsewhere on this wiki as: "So jaw-droppingly offensive, and delivered with such ''panache'' that you can't help but die laughing." Censored for appalling racist slurs:
{{quote|
** The episode "Basil the Rat" uses this trope in the literal sense. The rat they've been trying to hide from the health inspector all episode long gets into a box of biscuits and is offered to the inspector as an after-meal snack. Basil very calmly asks the inspector "would you care for rat?" This actually seems to work, as the inspector doesn't respond, Basil acts as though he'd simply declined a biscuit, and the inspector goes into a [[Deer in
* Alec Hardison on ''[[
* [[House (TV series)|Hi, I'm Dr. House.]]
{{quote|
** Then there was the time he shot a corpse.
** Early on in the series ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' wants to continue a diagnosis that everybody but he ruled out. He was on the bad side of almost every main character at the time (more so than usual), and each and every one of them violently objected to continuing the diagnosis testing. After Cuddy makes it violently clear to the entire staff to not let House perform tests on the patient, he takes a unauthorized sample anyway and proceeds to just walk over and ask a lab staffer to run those exact tests on that same sample. House saying nothing of the sample's origins, the staff member just assumes that the unmarked sample can't possibly be the patient's (it's early in the series), and performs the tests anyway. House later has the sample reports on a clip board, so it's assumed the staff member just reported back to him afterwards, and is to this day still completely oblivious.
** House uses this trope ''all the time''. For instance, how do you stop a surgery that's going to cause irreparable (probably fatal) damage to the patient? Simple. Spit on the surgeon.
* A Venezuelan [[Soap Opera|Telenovela]] author managed to get his newest soap titled "¡Viva la Pepa!" (a phrase which in Spanish can be interpreted as either a reference to lazy characters or a genuine admiration for [[Freud Was Right|a certain part of the female anatomy]]) by claiming that the "Pepa" in the title referred to the three main heroines, all with names derived from "Josefa" who all took variants of the unusual diminutive "Pepa" (itself a female variant of the usual shortening "Pepe" for men named José) as nicknames. However, there ''is'' a reason, at least in Venezuela, about ''why'' very few women would take those particular nicknames... <ref>"Viva la Pepa" is also a reference to the 1812 Spanish Constitution, the first one; the shout was popular among liberals, but later became pejorative.</ref>
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* ''[[Life On Mars]]'':
** Gene asks his DS Ray Carling to arrest the landlord of a bar so they can use the bar for a stakeout, telling Ray to 'make something up'.
{{quote|
:: Ray gets a round of applause from the whole of CID.
** This little gem (among many):
{{quote|
'''[[Only Sane Man|Sam]]''': ... Think you might have missed out the Jews. }}
* ''[[Top Gear]]'' had an episode where the trio competed in driving challenges with their German counterparts (the hosts of the German show ''D Motor'') in Belgium. Clarkson said the BBC had told them not bring up [[World War Two|the war]]. During the course of the film, they proceed to make at least a dozen references to said war, including arriving in two-seat Spitfires, having an Axis v. Allies drag races (with Clarkson cracking a joke about the Italian car switching sides mid-race) and having ''633 Squadron'' as background music. ''Twice''.
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** Clarkson had a ''car'' pull this on ''him''. A challenge issued by the producers required the trio to drive from Switzerland to Northern England on ''one'' tank of gas, a distance of about 750 miles, essentially an exercise in hypermiling. Hammond and May chose cars that were already extremely fuel-efficient. Clarkson showed up in a ''Jaguar''. While May and Hammond practiced hypermiling as much as possible, Clarkson declared the challenge impossible and set out carefully to manage his fuel consumption so he would run out of fuel close to his home (so he could spend that evening with his family). Despite the fact that he should have run out of gas after four hundred miles, Clarkson not only ''made it'' to the finish line, ''he even beat May to it and could won easily had he not tried to lose early on''. He doesn't believe it to this day.
*** The really audacious part is that, after he made it, they examined the fuel system of the car and determined he had another ''100 miles'' or so worth of fuel left!
** Also, the V8 powered blender. That is, a blender powered by a ''[[Cool Car|Corvette's]] V8 engine!'' Clarkson uses it [https://web.archive.org/web/20090227120157/http://www.topgear.com/us/videos/more/jeremys-very-manly-v8 to create "a manly smoothie"]. Ingredients: raw beef (with bone!), chillies, Bovril, a ''lot'' of Tabasco, and a ''brick'' for added bite.
*** And James May ''drinks it!''
{{quote|
** Clarkson seems to be resigned to the fact that people will be offended no matter what he says, so he just goes for the funny.
{{quote|
'''May''': So I suppose every summer it goes off and sort of stays in the countryside somewhere and is... touched inappropriately.
'''Clarkson''': No, no James. That's the Skoda Catholic Church. }}
* ''[[
* ''[[Father Ted]]'' has the episode "Kicking Bishop Brennan up the Arse". Due to a bet Father Ted has to do exactly that, and eventually Dougal suggests this plan: Kick him, then pretend ''nothing happened'', because the bishop would never believe he would dare do it. The bishop spends the next several hours in a state of near catatonic shock before realizing what happened and storming out of the Vatican and back to Craggy Island, at which point Ted still manages to convince him that he must have imagined it. Until he sees the giant photograph of Ted doing it that he had drunkenly commissioned.
* In the ''[[
* ''[[Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!]]'' can sometimes be almost nothing ''but'' this trope.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Victorious]]'': "Robarazzi" runs on this, between Robbie's shootings of the group in unique situations that lead others to believe bizarre things about them (such as Andre having a ketchup problem). And then there's the sub-plot with Cat's addiction to the Sky Store catalog. When her Snowbee splatters fake, toxic snow all over the group's food, Tori's only reaction is, "So...what made you buy a machine that poisons people's lunches?" Most of the other things she purchases through Sky Store are met with similar responses.
* ''[[Brass Eye]]'' is a show that runs almost purely on this trope. In any other show, the interviewers likely would have laughed the production out, but Chris Morris and his team somehow managed to convince several major British celebrities and political members to read off ridiculously absurd facts and lines (simply by paying them an appearance fee), under the guise that it's part of a documentary series. The outrage from the celebrities and the (hypocritical) UK newspapers were just the icing on the cake.
** Speaking of "cake", when you invent a fake narcotic, give it an unlikely name, persuade celebrities to read out factsheets on camera including such facts as it is a made-up drug (meaning it's made from chemicals, not plants), then that is not quite enough. What do you do? Persuade a politician to actually ask a question about this made-up drug in Parliament and be immortalised in legislative history.
** "It works on a part of the brain known as "[[William Shatner|Shatner's]] Bassoon" ... A boy was knocked over by a car because he thought he had a week to cross the road."
* In one ''highly'' memorable episode of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway
{{quote|
'''Wayne Brady:''' "I'm falling!" (pinches imaginary boobs so they inflate and bounce off the ground)
'''Drew Carey:''' "We can do that, but whatever you do, don't [[Sound Effect Bleep|[BLEEP]]]ing make fun of Hitler."<br />
'''Wayne Brady:''' *immediately re-enacts the scene in fake German, complete with inflating boobs* <br />
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'''Drew Carey (sarcastically):''' "I love that, let's make fun of the Native Americans all we want, who gives a [[Sound Effect Bleep|[BLEEP]]] about them." }}
** Another episode once had a Party Quirks game where Colin was investigating whether people were really the sex they claimed to be. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OeQdSJ6stY This] happened. He'd probably have gotten written up for sexual harassment if it wasn't so incredibly blatant. As it turned out, everybody involved thought it was awesome.
* ''[[
** The only sensible reception to his hanging up on Director Vance during the Weatherman episode is something along the lines of "This man has balls of cold steel."
** In the season three episode "Jeopardy" the team must rescue Director Shepard who has been kidnapped by a drug dealer demanding the return of his brother, who NCIS is supposed to have in custody. Unfortunately, the brother was inadvertently killed by Ziva earlier on. Their solution? Dress the corpse, slap a pair of sunglasses on him, and tape his hands so he appears to be driving while Tony hides and drives with his hands. And it works.
* ''[[
** This show also has [[Refuge in Audacity]] in the form of crossing the line twice (and sometimes more than that). On the episode, "Errr," Titus walks in on Erin's niece Amy trying to kill herself by swallowing pills and drinking some vodka. After holding her upside down to shake the pills out of her, Titus goes to yell at her...not just for trying to kill herself, but for stealing the vodka and pills out of his dad's earthquake kit.
* ''[[Star Trek
** Played straight in "Emissary" when Sisko claimed the station was heavily armed to scare away a Kardasian attack force. It worked, and the station turned out to be armed with sensor-deceiving illusions. Later inverted in "The Way of the Warrior" when a Klingon attack force is given a similar warning, and the commanders assume that it's an attempt to intimidate them into leaving backed by more illusions. Unfortunately, they forgot that Sisko knows enough about Klingons to know you can't bluff one with a mere threat of violence. He's not bluffing. It goes POORLY for the Klingons.
* ''[[
* ''[[
** As early as "The [[Train Job]]", Mal's [[Crowning Moment of Funny|hilarious]] subversion of a [[Mook]]'s attempt to [[The Last Thing You Ever See]].
{{quote|
** Mal, sitting on a rock. In the desert. Naked. And that's the ''beginning'' of the episode. Getting there (via flashback) is even ''more'' interesting!
** River in "Objects In Space". So, you've got a [[Bounty Hunter]] sneaking onto the ship and threatening your crew. You do the last thing ''anyone'' expects: you use your [[Psychic Powers]] to ''[[Spaceship Girl|merge with the ship]]'', read the bounty hunter's mind and screw with his head and completely flip over everyone's perceptions regarding reality. Then, just when he starts to realize that maybe you're feeding him a line of bullshit about the entire thing to screw with him, you let slip a single word that makes him realize that you ''hijacked his ship right out from under him''. The sheer audacity of the repeated mindscrews and flipping the tables on the hijacker is enough to turn him from a confident predator to a nervous wreck, but the real kicker comes afterward, when, despite being in total control, River ''surrenders'', and the desperate bounty hunter is so off-guard that he just takes ''this'' sudden swerve by the crazy psychic ninja-girl at face value, which leads him right into your ambush.
* In the ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' Season 4 episode "Monster Movie," which is a hilarious [[Affectionate Parody]] of old monster movies, the [[Shape Shifter]] does this by turning into various old [[B
** In another episode, the boys are in a mental hospital and break into the morgue. When they're caught, Dean drops his pants, throws his hands into the air and jubilantly yells "Pudding!"
* Captain John Hart in ''[[
* Everything John Safran does tries to invoke this trope: whether it succeeds or not depends on your point of view. In chronological order, he tried to join the KKK (he's Jewish), he went door-knocking to preach atheism in Salt Lake City, was exorcised on national television, helped donate Palestinian sperm to an Israeli fertility clinic and donated his own (Jewish) sperm to a Palestinian fertility clinic, dug up his mother's grave in order to perform a Kabbalah ritual, and fake married a bin Laden to see how his family would react to him marrying a non-Jew.
* On the sixth-season finale of ''[[Survivor]]'', Jeff took the votes for the winner, went down to the shore and got on a jet ski. Then he's seen riding the jet ski past a freighter on the open ocean, then riding it up to Manhattan, where the reunion was about to be held. There's no WAY anyone actually believed he crossed the ocean on a jet ski, but that was the whole point. It was so audacious the audience couldn't help but love it.
* ''[[
* ''[[Boston Legal]]'' Nearly every episode features the audacious antics of [[Bunny Ears Lawyer|Allan Shore]] and [[William Shatner|Denny Crane]]. The latter of the two has come very close to having his name taken off the door because of his hi-jinx, despite being a founding partner, while the former wins most of his (usually unconventional) cases by "pulling a rabbit out of a hat" (Denny's "life advice"). As explained in-universe by Mr. Shore, "the conventional ones won't have me".
* Though they never actually sent it, here's the word-for-word text of a letter ''[[The Young Ones]]'' [[Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup|wrote collectively]], to persuade Neil's bank manager to give him an extension on his overdraft:
{{quote|
Give me some more money, you bastard.
May the seed of your loins be fruitful in the belly of your woman,
Neil" }}
* The crew of the Liberator in ''[[
* From an episode of ''[[Homicide: Life
{{quote|
* ''[[
** The problem is, they take it ''so'' far that they just don't know where to stop, and [[Dude, Not Funny|things sometimes get ugly really quickly]]. The absolute nadir had to be the late '90s, when we were "treated" to skits like "A Bear Ate His Parents." It's [[Exactly What It Says
** Then there was the "cobra" skit from season 23 (1997-1998), which must have gotten NBC a crapload of hate mail. It's all about a family of [[Evil Albino|creepy albino]] cobras (and yes, [[Red Eyes, Take Warning|they have red eyes]]) slithering their way onto a plane full of tourists bound for Hawaii and slowly biting and poisoning every single one. Textbook [[Black Comedy]] played for all it's worth - but there's more. The snakes also bite the pilot, causing him to imagine psychedelic visions like a [[Magical Native American]] who orders him to crash the plane - which he does. The ending of the skit is pure [[Nightmare Fuel]], with the aircraft smashing to the ground in a colossal inferno and the leader of the albino cobras (a female cobra, and [[Subverted Innocence|with an "innocent" girl voice]] that makes her all the ''more'' freaky) standing against the backdrop of the hellish flames and taunting and laughing at the audience. Brrrrr. If you weren't afraid of snakes before....
*** Doesn't help that years later (eight years, to be exact), the premise of snakes attacking airline passengers would [[Snakes
* ''[[
** Deliberately invoked by Vice Dean Laybourne when he kidnaps Troy to try to convince him to become an air conditioning repairman - he has an astronaut making paninis and black hitler in the room so that nobody will believe the kidnapped students if they try to tell anyone what happened.
* A defense attorney in ''[[Law
{{quote|
'''Judge Stein:''' Either you are a brilliant strategist, Mr. Feinman, or you are the biggest jackass ever to set foot in my courtroom. }}
* While ''[[True Blood]]'' plays with this trope on any given episode, what stands out is the season four finale, which doubled as a [[Halloween Episode]]. Arlene's daughter Lisa, who's like ''ten'', dresses as a pregnant tramp--baby bump, [[Jail Bait]] outfit, and five gallons of makeup--because she loves MTV's ''[[Teen Mom]]''. Arlene's response was "[[Don't Ask]]".
* ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' had many moments like this - most notably by Graham Chapman, who [[
* The ''[[Haven]]'' 1st Season episode "The Trial of Audrey Parker", in which Audrey and Duke, unarmed, defeat two armed men, one of whom could read minds, by having Duke do outrageous things - such as stripping to his underwear and lamenting that he'd never done the Electric Boogaloo - all directed behind the scenes by Audrey. The poor psychic finally went crazy trying to predict what Duke was going to do next, and Duke and Audrey defeated them easily.
* ''[[Round the Twist]]'' is an Australian kids' show that was almost banned at the time of its premiere because it contained a lot of things deemed [[Harmful to Minors]], such as death, nudity (including references to genitalia), underwear, incest ([[Kissing Under the Influence]]), mild sex references (a lot of the stories have to do with supernatural female characters in search of a human male to be an unwilling groom and one episode -- "Lucky Lips" -- centered on a magic tube of lipstick that attracts females... and not just human females, either), and your typical gross-out humor staples (body odor, [[Toilet Humor]] [both urination and defecation] and plenty of vomit). It still got away with it, and became one of the most iconic and successful children's programs ever made in Australia.
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