Very Obscure sitcom joke question

Cafe Society
1

Ok, this is another longshot. Google was no help so I come to you folks once again:

There was a sitcom. A main character had a very strong foreign accent. Another character was named “Todd”. The joke was that the person with the accent called Todd “Toad”.

Difficulty: It was NOT “Outsourced”. It was several years before that show came out.

Part of me thinks it might have been Scrubs (The Todd) or perhaps That 70’s Show (Fez’s Accent), but neither of those sound right. YouTube and Google only give me Outsourced or, worse, Toad the Wet Sprocket for answers, which is of course not at all what I’m looking for.

Any ideas?

2

Outsourced was a movie first… no joy?

3

Was there a “Todd” in Perfect Strangers?

4

I can’t remember, but this was my first thought upon seeing the OP - I could just imagine Balkie saying that.

5

We’ve recently been watching all the episodes of That '70s Show in order. I can confirm that there was no Todd/Toad joke in any episode up to and including Season 7, Episode 3.

6

According to IMDB, no, none of the regular, recurring, or one-off characters were named Todd.

7

There is a similar joke in Season 3, Episode 24. Fez and Hyde are trying to make a buck with some counterfeit concert t-shirts. Unfortunately, Fez handled the printing, and they wound up with a box of “Tad Nugent” shirts instead of Ted Nugent shirts.

8

Give us a year or at least a range of possible years for this series.

9

Yes… perhaps that’s what the OP was thinking of?

There was a later joke with Fez’s pronunciation of proper names, where Red was trying to prep him for (what Fez believed would be) a civics test. Fez was consistently unable to pronounce the word “America” without using a very foreign-sounding alveolar flap for the <r>, which greatly irritated Red. Strangely, when Red asked Fez to pronounce “Eric”, he did so in perfect, unaccented English.

10

Suddenly Susan? There was a character named Todd, and a character (Luis) with an accent.

11

Thanks for the replies folks.

As for the questions:

Nope, sorry, pretty sure there’s no joy for the movie version of Outsourced. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it, although I could be wrong. I’ve seen a YouTube compilation of the joke from, I’m guessing the television show, and although that is the same joke, it’s not the same situation or characters as I’m remembering.

Year? I’m not entirely sure. “Fairly Recent” which in my mind means it could have been as early as 1990 (at the extreme) or as late as, say, 2009 (when broadcast TV switched to digital and I officially stopped giving a crap about it.) Realistically, I’d guess somewhere between 1995 and maybe 2002. That’s honestly as close as I can narrow it down.

It COULD have been Perfect Strangers, despite that timeline. I’m not entirely sure, although the IMDB link pretty conclusively shows that wasn’t it.

It wasn’t the “Tad” joke, from That 70’s Show. I remember that one too.

Suddenly Susan? That could have been it, although my memories of that show are quite vague. Has it been released on DVD? YouTube doesn’t have much in the way of clips, which isn’t surprising considering it wasn’t a great show by any means. Yet, I do admit to having watched it at the time. Not a big fan of Brooke Shields, but ya gotta admit she was nice to look at! q;}

For what it’s worth, I remember the two characters having a brief discussion/argument wherein Todd couldn’t get the other guy to stop saying “Toad”. This joke was probably in a single episode, although I can’t rule out the possibility of it being a running gag. “Todd!” “Toad?” “Todd!” “Toad!” “TODD!!” “Toad!”

Another possibility is that it was on an episode of Friends? Maybe Seinfeld?

Then again, maybe I just dreamed it…

12

The Christina Applegate vehicle Jesse had a lead who pronounced names with a thick accent. I remember he used to talk about another character named Roy with an odd pronunciation. Maybe there was also a Todd on that show?

13

As someone who has watched every episode of Friends about 300 times, I can tell you it’s not a Friends episode.

Here is a clue:

The cached version of this “Recast Suddenly Susan” page contains the following reader comment:

14

This is what popped in my head immediately upon reading the OP. Nestor Carbonell is the actor in question; ten years after this show I still say “Toad” in his accent in my head (and sometimes out loud) every single time I hear the name “Todd”.

15

I thought of Suddenly Susan as well. And like you, to this day, whenever I see the name “Susan”, I hear Richard—I mean Luis’s—voice in my head pronouncing it “Shooszhan”.

16

Seconded for Suddenly Susan.

“You just order this to hear me say Babaganoush, don’t you?”