Times they show you the 4th wall

Yes, I remember this too, I’m pretty sure we’re both thinking of this episode of Growing Pains. The synopsis reads: “Ben is punished for taking the car without asking. He dreams his life is a TV sitcom called “Meet the Seavers” and that he is really an actor named Jeremy Miller.”

Does no one remember Moonlighting?

Stranger

Someone in the fourth post did.

The opening credits and music of “Roseanne,” the camera panned all the way around the kitchen table showing the fourth wall.

The final episode of “I Married Dora,” blew the fourth wall off an airport concourse.

I think we may have seen the Forman’s living room fourth wall once (That ‘70’s Show).

In that case, Star Trek. The bridge was build what they call “wild”, so camera angles could be made from any position. One shot is taken from what would be the viewscreen, the next taken looking at the viewscreen.

The Dungeons and Dragons movie had a few shots where the “camera” starts off over a door, leaning down, to look through it upside-down, and then tilts up to follow a person as they walk through. So you end up seeing all interior walls of the room.

(I put “camera” in scare quotes because I suspect that those shots were actually CGI, but they could have been a real, physical camera)

Also, when the kids did “the circle,” the camera would typically be mounted in the center of the group and do a 360.

Much better example; I musta been high when I didn’t think of it. :crazy_face:

Another one from TBBT, when Amy gave Penny that creepy portrait of the two of them together, Penny hung it on the fourth wall. At least once or twice in the series we got to see it hanging there.

There was an episode of “Yes, Dear” where they did a bit about rearranging the furniture and every time they tried to put something along the 4th wall all the characters complained that something wasn’t right. I don’t recall if they ever actually showed any of that furniture or wall art ON the wall.

I vaguely remember an episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air where Carlton was so upset about something he ran off the set and through the studio audience.

The cheesy wood paneling in the Bundy’s living room makes sense for the time and scenario, but I just never pictured it that way (those awful curtains are perfect, though). I know there’s the wood paneling in the back area by the sliding glass door, but I guess I just imagined the bad wallpaper from the stairs went all the way around the living room.

Yeah, that viewpoint is pretty jarring.

If memory serves, the pilot episode of Cheers, or one super-early in the run, did that. It’s been years since I saw it, but I remember Coach on the phone (“Is there an Ernie Pantuso here?” “That’s you, Coach!” “Speaking!”) and there’s a sudden, jarring cut from an angle up behind the bar. I saw a rerun the pilot long after I’d started watching the show and it was a bizarre and unrepeated moment.

There’s also the final season of The Drew Carey Show, the year when ABC had cancelled the show, but the production company still had contracts to fulfil, so they shot the shows and dumped them all (two a week, maybe?) until they were done. The show had always had Special Episodes that were experimental and fourth-wall-breaking (in the usual sense of the term), but for that final stretch they also built full sets and shot a bunch of it like it was a single-camera show rather than a 3-camera sitcom.

It’s messing with my head though. The slanted window is to our left, so isn’t that bookcase where the door should be?

There is an ep of That 70s Show where Kitty takes someone on a tour of the house and it’s all from the camera’s POV. You get to see the living room from different angles and get to see that fourth wall. It’s a really nicely done scene that was aired during one of the weaker seasons of the show.

Tour of Forman House
I couldn’t embed it for some reason.

There’s been a bug in Discourse for quite a while now that makes embedding difficult. Basically, you have to add the link right at the end, and then hit the post button quickly, before it gets a chance to show the embedded video in the preview pane.

Good to know, thanks.

Easier to just close the preview pane before you write the post.

The Irish sitcom Mrs Brown’s Boys is always doing it:

As is Miranda Hart’s eponymous show on the BBC: