“Put him down! You can’t twirl an officer!”
–Margaret Houlihan, on MASH,* after a big Marine (Alex Karras) picks Frank up and starts spinning him around (about 1973)
“Show us how to make people quit thinking that they’re somehow justified in hurting someone–or stealing from someone–and you’ll just about put this place [the Police Department] out of business!”
–Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb), on * Dragnet, about 1968, to three young punks who have been arrested in connection with a rash of burglaries, stealing stuff to set up a Utopia on an island off the California coast
Please post your favorite lines from TV here.
“It’s a common birth defect. The doctors call it ‘anoxia’; means he didn’t get enough oxygen when he was born. Now that’s what happened to George. What’s your excuse?”
–Unnamed player, in All in the Family, about 1975, to Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), concerning the man’s retarded son, after Archie had asked “How did he get that way–when he was a baby did someone toss him up in the air and forget to catrch him?”
Any Norm entrance on Cheers. I have the board game that contains every single one of them, but I don’t want to make a mockery of the OP, so I’ll just stick with…
“Jack Frost nippin’ at your nose?”
“Yeah, now let’s get Joe Beer nipping at my liver.”
Well, shut my mouth. It’s also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.
WKRP in Cincinatti-one of their Christmas shows.
Jennifer tells everyone that she doesn’t have a tree and won’t be making a big fuss over the holiday. They all bring trees over to her house, thinking she’s feeling blue and lonely. Turns out she and a friend are traveling on Xmas Eve.
Bailey: “Where are you going?”
Jennifer: “Bethleham”
Johnny Fever: “Now that’s what you call a down home Christmas!”
“This whole discussion leaves me mortified and stupefied! It’s lewd, lacivious, salacious, outrageous. I am shocked and chagrined.” - Jackie Chiles, “Seinfeld”
From Night Court:
(Bull had been given, and botched, the job of keeping an eye on a corpse in a wheelchair)
Harry: Bull, how could you lose a dead Japanese industrialist?
Bull: He outsmarted me, sir.
(talking about a dog Harry had rescued from the streets)
Harry: I’ll admit he’s a little gamey…
Bull: Sir, a herd of wildebeest after a month-long trek across the Serengeti is ‘a little gamey.’ That dog stinks.
And the Simpsons, of course, has some of the best:
Homer: You can use statistics to prove anything! 14% of all people know that!
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
I have a huge long list of favorite Simpsons quotes, but the thread would probably collapst under their weight. So here are some of my favorite Grandpa Simpson quotes, some of which I actually use, like when the dog is napping or my husband accuses me of hating everything.
“Dogs wag their tails for hours after they die.”
“If grandpa says the dog is dead, it MUST be alive!”
“I’m old. I hate everything but Matlock.”
“Hurry! Each Matlock could be our last!”
“I used to be with it but then they changed what ‘it’ was.”
“‘A,’ he would say, then ‘B,’ ‘C’ would usually follow…”
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Well, Cher, I guess I do have an unusual memory; a few people have said it’s photographic. Incidentally, I haven’t watched a TV dramatic series since Emergency! and Rockford Files went off the air in the late 70s.
Here’s another one, from a segment of Judge Judy that aired last week: (Judge Judy is questioning a 4-year-old girl on the stand.)
Judge Judy (holding up a ballpoint pen): “If I said this was a feather, would that be the truth or a lie?”
Girl: “That would be a lie.”
Judge Judy (holding up her reading glasses): “If I said these were glasses, would that be the truth or a lie?”
Girl: “That would be the truth.”
Judge Judy: “If I said the judge–that’s me–were young and pretty, would that be the truth or a lie?”
Girl: That would be a lie." Audience roars with laughter)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer has great lines every week.
(Buffy bitching to her friend, Oz, about her roommate, Kathy)
Buffy: So then, Kathy’s like, ‘It’s share time’ and I’m like, ‘Share this!’ (mimes punches)
Oz: So either you hit her, or you did your wacky mime routine.
Buffy: Well, neither actually, but she deserved it, don’t you think?
Oz: No one deserve mime, Buffy.
“Missed me by Thaaaaat much!” (holding fingers about an inch apart)
-Maxwell Smart
“Luuuuccyy, you got some 'splaining to do…”
Ricky Ricardo (Hey, everybody knows it was Fred that made the show!)
“You want a drink?”
“You know, when I came over here to Korea, I promised my wife, no drinking, no fooling around. Yeah, I’ll take a drink. Make it a small one though… I gotta date tonight.”
MAS*H
