Your son just crashed the car, and you haven’t taken him to the hopsital. Stop laughing.
So, I was watching a rerun of the 9/18 episode of Family Guy last night. At the end, Brian was frustrated and humiliated, and it showed. He then verbally expressed it, and everyone laughed at him.
This doesn’t really make sense as a joke, till you realize that someone would often say one final thing at the end of a sitcom/70s cartoon episode, and the whole cast would laugh and laugh as the credits began to roll. Creepy.
Well, I was just beginning to wonder, what other pieces of entertainment ended that way, with a very inappropriate scene of laughter? I am talking about both post-modern parodies, and examples from old sitcoms. I don’t simply mean the episode ending with a dumb joke, I mean the kid in the sitcom going through hell, then having the father ignore the problem and make a stupid pun about what happened. Any examples
I’m reminded of one parody of this in the first clip-show episode of The Simpsons, where Homer is sent to to the hospital after Bart shakes up a beer can. The final scene has the doctor commenting to Homer that some of Homer’s brain had to be removed in the operation. Homer, as if he has lost some of his intelligence (though did he ever had any intelligence to begin to begin with?), comments, “Me lose brain? Uh-oh.” The entire family and the doctor laugh uproariously. After a while, the doctor comments, “Oops. I forgot to turn the laughing gas off.” They all laugh again. As the credits begin, Homer comments, “Why I laugh?”
You combined the endings of two different episodes. The bit about the laughing gas was at the end of the “Last Exit to Springfield” ep when Lisa’s at the dentist getting new invisible braces that were paid for by Homer’s newly-won dental plan.
Would the Police Squad endings count? Didn’t they end with the big laughing, followed by a “freeze” of the main characters only (while wackiness ensued in the background)?
Not sure if this counts, but The Powerpuff Girls always ended with The Professor making a joke, and the narrator saying “Oh, Professor!” before the characters started laughing to the end.
Well, I was looking for the (admittedly subjective) measure of the laughter creeping the viewer out, but I want my thread to live, so yeah, from now on, the OP is canceled, and I would simply appreciate seeing posts about laughing at the end of episodes, creepy or not. No more asking "Does that count? " From now on, it all counts. Enjoy the thread, and don’t let me limit you.
There was an episode of “The Cosby Show” where the daughter (Vanessa) went to college and came back home with a 40-something year old boyfriend. I think he was the groundskeeper or something. The parents treated him like shit and told him how awful he was for preying on an 18 year old girl.
At the end of the show, it was revealed that he had money (owned a huge house or some other sign of being wealthy) and Bill Cosby makes the final joke - something like “Welcome to the family son!”
Interestingly enough, they aired a week apart from each other. I felt like I was having deja vu the first time I watched them.
In the clip show, Marge tells Homer that he was in a coma for six weeks, and everyone starts laughing, and then Marge adds on “you lost 15% of your brain” and they all keep laughing until Homer’s the only one left, and then he says “why I laugh?”
In Last Exit to Springfield, Lisa got new braces and tried to end the episode by saying “and that’s the tooth” which everybody starts laughing at, and then the dentists comments that he left the gas on.
This wasn’t exactly the END of the episode, but next season in Homer vs Patty & Selma, Homer borrows money from them, and they give him a check with sinister chuckle about how they now own him, and Homer joins in on the laughing until he’s on the floor laughing his ass off, and then Patty says “just take the check and get out of here!!”
Usually the “Snarf” (the comical side kick character) would do/say something causing all the heroes to laugh at the end.
Sometimes it would be meanspirited in a way… “Oh look Orko accidentally teleported himself into a mud bog and is going to stink for a week… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.”
Thundercats had Snarf (which is where the name comes from) a weird cat monkey, lizard.
Masters of the Universe had Orko.
MASK had that robot that turned into a scooter.
My Little Pony had a baby dragon I think.
Gi Joe didn’t have one… closest was Shipwreck and Polly. Usually if it ended like that one of the main characters would make a joke and everyone would laugh. One of the reasons why GI joe was the best cartoon ALL the characters had levels. Duke could be a bad ass leader but also flirt with Scarlet and crack a joke with Gung-ho. The rest of the shows had guys that were all one note. Anyway… hijack over…
My favorite was the one where Nordberg (played by OJ Simpson in the movies) came into the room after the freeze, realized what was going on, and kept trying out different “dramatic” poses for the freeze frame to fit in.
It’s not at the end of the episode but there’s this scene from the middle of The Simpsons episode Homer’s Barbershop Quartet:
Bart: Dad, when did you record an album?
Homer: I’m surprised you don’t remember, son. It was only eight years
ago.
Bart: Dad, thanks to television, I can’t remember what happened eight
minutes ago.
[Everyone laughs uproariously except Bart]
No, really, I can’t! It’s a serious problem.
[Everyone laughs again, and Bart finally relents and laughs too]
What are we all laughing about?
