Running gags

From Drawn Together Wiki

Like most television comedies and comedic film series, Drawn Together has a number of running gags it makes regular use of throughout the series. Many of these gags are parodies of various clichés from film and television; frequently, Drawn Together will even parody its own gags.

For running gags specific to individual characters, see that character's individual article.

Contents 1 Verbal jokes 2 Visuals 3 Music and sound effects 4 Themes

[edit] Verbal jokes

• After one character says something extremely obvious, another will respond with a drawn-out "Duuuuuhhhh!", during which the character's face and mouth will take on the appearance of a donkey. This gag debuted in "Clara's Dirty Little Secret", and was used most prominently in "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special" and "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist", in the latter of which Toot holds the "Duuuuuhhhh" for about fifteen seconds after Foxxy concedes that she was right about the competition.
  • In a similar gag, a character will demonstrate ignorance by suddenly displaying a horse-like face with a severe overbite. Often, these effects are accompanied by the character drooling or making a braying sound.

• After a pun or corny joke, the show will cut to an island native with a drum kit who plays the classic sting (i.e., 'ba-dum-bum . . . kshhhh') of two beats and a cymbal hit to signify the "humor" the character is trying to create. This joke began in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II", the episode in which the island natives were introduced. This character has come to be known as "Rim-Shot Guy."

• Several episodes feature an offscreen voice yelling disparaging remarks at the characters. The voice is that of creator Matt Silverstein, and would seem to be the producers' way of directly criticizing their own characters. This gag was first used at the end of "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine", when Captain Hero is told that he sucks following his fixed fight. In the DVD version of "Spelling Applebee's", the man is removed by security after booing a particularly cheesy line.

• During moments of exasperation, a character will often say, "Oh, fuck me!" This was first used by Clara in "The Other Cousin"; it was later used by Xandir in "Xandir and Tim, Sitting in a Tree" and "Freaks & Greeks".

[edit] Visuals

• Several episodes use a piece of stock footage known as "The Monkey Man", which comes from the 1925 film version of The Lost World. It is often inserted into scenes where a character is supposed to be thinking deeply, or during moments of tension. It was first used in the episode "The Other Cousin". The Monkey Man clip made frequent appearances throughout the first two seasons, but it was not until the season finale that the clip was featured in a Season Three episode.

• When there is a shocking disturbance of some sort, such as a character coming to a horrible realization about something, he or she will scream, and the scene will cut to a long shot of the house, where a large flock of birds will suddenly fly away from the house in an extremely agitated fashion. This is parodied in "A Tale of Two Cows" when the birds are shown to have been released from a truck when Wooldoor accidentally shot the trucker.

• On more than one occasion the show has used a grotesque up-close oil painting of a character's personal appearance or hygiene with a sound of a foghorn in the background. For example, when Toot places Xandir's gold ring between her cleavage in "Gay Bash", Xandir hesitates because her chest is hideous in appearance. In "Super Nanny", Captain Hero reveals that he has eaten all his vegetables and opens his mouth to prove it. A similar closeup is shown of Wooldoor going through puberty in "Clum Babies". Jokes like this are commonly used on The Ren and Stimpy Show and SpongeBob SquarePants.
  • In "A Tale of Two Cows", Foxxy uses grotesque, undoctored photographs to explain why animation and live action don't go together, citing obviously false images of her feet and teeth. The foghorn sound does not accompany these images. Both of the photographs are running gags in themselves; the feet and teeth previously appeared in "Hot Tub" and "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist", respectively. The teeth would appear a third time in "The Drawn Together Clip Show".

• Totoro (from Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro) has appeared in the background as an extra on four separate occasions. In "Foxxy vs. the Board of Education", he is one of the students taking the SAT with Ling-Ling. In "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special", he is one of the Japanese businessmen during the role-playing exercise. In "Freaks & Greeks", he is a guest at the wedding of Toot and Jun-Jee. Finally, he plays piano during Ling-Ling song in "American Idol Parody Clip Show".

• Throughout the series, there have been several instances of housemates taking on transgender characteristics. These moments are completely non-canon and are simply intended to be humorous.
  • In the episodes "The Other Cousin" and "N.R.A.y RAY", Toot is shown with a penile erection.
  • In "Captain Hero's Marriage Pact" and "Spelling Applebee's", Foxxy Love is shown with fully developed beard stubble. In "The Lemon-AIDS Walk", Foxxy grows a full beard and develops testicles when she takes steroids.
  • In "Gay Bash", it is implied Xandir has tested positive to a pregnancy test. Later, in "Unrestrainable Trainable", he is shown in the confessional breastfeeding a baby that he presumably gave birth to.
  • In "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine", a pregnant Captain Hero is denied an abortion while throwing the "Hero vs. Wade" fight (a pun on Roe v. Wade), and moments later is shown with the baby that presumably resulted from the situation. He is also seen with a baby in his womb after being shocked by Toot's force field at the beginning of "Spelling Applebee's".
  • In "Captain Girl" and "Xandir and Tim, Sitting in a Tree", Wooldoor is shown with large fake breasts.

• Like many animated shows, Drawn Together frequently reuses the same background characters over and over again for the purposes of saving money. Of the many characters they have recycled in such a fashion, two particular figures are worth pointing out.
  

  

  The star of many episodes.
  • A thin man with wavy hair and glasses has appeared in several episodes. His first appearance is in "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine" when he shushes Foxxy Love as she talks back to the characters in a movie. He next appears in "Super Nanny" as the man taking photos at the DMV. He would also make cameo appearances in "Xandir and Tim, Sitting in a Tree" (as a face in the crowd), in "Spelling Applebee's" (as an audience member at a spelling bee),and in "Lost in Parking Space, Part One" (as a man Foxxy runs into at the mall). To date he has only made one appearance with dialogue, that appearance coming in "N.R.A.y RAY" as an employee of the Museum of Tolerance; his voice is provided by Jess Harnell.
  • Another character who has made multiple appearances on the show is a brown-haired woman who wears white earrings, a maroon shirt, pink pants, and white shoes. Like the man with glasses, she makes her first appearance in "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine", where she can be seen as one of the casino patrons. In each of her next two appearances, she meets a violent death by gunshot: in "The Lemon-AIDS Walk" as the woman shot by the security guard, and in "Wooldoor Sockbat's Giggle-Wiggle Funny Tickle Non-Traditional Progressive Multicultural Roundtable!" as the woman Captain Hero uses as the Hero Shield. She appears twice in "Spelling Applebee's", first as one of the people in the crowd at the unveiling ceremony for Foxxy's statue, and later as a member of the audience during Foxxy's big match. Next, she appears in "Unrestrainable Trainable" as the woman who has her filter changed by Hero's son; her voice here is provided by Tara Strong. Finally, she appears in "N.R.A.y RAY" as the jury forewoman at Foxxy's trial; her voice in this instance is provided by Cree Summer.

[edit] Music and sound effects

• In moments of happiness, the show very often uses the classic song "An die Freude" ("Ode to Joy"), familiar to listeners as part of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah has also made multiple appearances in this type of situation. Often the situation is not as happy as it seems. When Farmer Al Falfa recovers his memory in "Clum Babies", he is able to remember the death of his wife, as well as his being abused in a nursing home and abandoned by those close to him; however, he does not seem disturbed by these realizations.

• The song "I Wanted You To Know" is often played during poignant moments. The song is performed by Brooke Ramel, and originally appeared on her 2000 album Make Tomorrow Up. Ramel's original recording is used in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist", "Little Orphan Hero", and "A Tale of Two Cows". In "N.R.A.y RAY", Toot sings the song, while Spanky sings it in "American Idol Parody Clip Show".

• The song "Amazing Grace" often plays in the background whenever a character is making a speech of some sort. It was first used in "Dirty Pranking No. 2".

• The show often uses the sound effect of cats screaming during a commotion of some kind. It was first used in "Hot Tub" during the "catfight" between Foxxy and Clara, and is generally employed whenever characters fight, or when something gets thrown, smashed, or blown up.

• Every time something mildly surprising happens, there is always a quick, dramatic "dun-dun" tone. This is common throughout many of the episodes, especially those of Season 2. Sometimes, during an especially surprising or climactic moment, a more drawn out "dun-dun-dunnnn" tone plays followed by the background turning red and the camera slowly zooming in. Both of these gags come from old-time radio dramas, which always punctuated sudden story twists with dramatic music cues. The latter gag is parodied in "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine" when Spanky Ham plays the tone on a tape recorder he has with him, and in "Alzheimer's That Ends Well" when Toot sings the phrase.

• When a character delivers a moral of some sort, the screen will briefly freeze while a children's show-type musical cue plays. This is a parody of TV public service announcements, particularly NBC's "The More You Know" series. It was first done in "Requiem for a Reality Show" where the musical cue was accompanied by a caption reading "What You Already Know". Future instances of the gag would eliminate the caption and just play the musical cue. The caption returns in "Alzheimer's That Ends Well" in a segment called "The More You Don't Know When To", and even uses the NBC spots' star background.

• Several episodes feature the Wilhelm scream, a stock sound effect that has become a noted Hollywood in-joke, having appeared in many films over the years. It can be heard in "Dirty Pranking No. 2" when the alien robots blast people at the zoo, in "The Lemon-AIDS Walk" when Captain Hero takes steroids, in "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special" during the barroom brawl, and in "The Drawn Together Clip Show" when the Jew Producer opens fire on the audience.

[edit] Themes

• The Star Wars movies are parodied in a large number of episodes.

• There are numerous jokes involving/about Judaism, as creators Dave Jeser and Matt Silverstein are both Jewish. Similarly, there are many anti-Semitic jokes as well, jokes which serve as both self-deprecating humor, and as a satirical way of making fun of bigoted attitudes against Jews.
  • In addition to the usual references to Jewish stereotypes, there are frequent references to the more arcane aspects of Judaism which are quite obscure to the non-Jewish viewer. For instance, in "A Tale of Two Cows", Captain Hero leads the housemates in Sabbath rituals, and in "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special", Toot, role-playing as Xandir's father, recites the Mourner's Kaddish. After Wooldoor appears to die in "The One Wherein There Is a Big Twist, Part II", his birthdate is given as a Hebrew year.
  • On a few occasions, after something very strange and inexplicable is brought up---for example, Captain Hero claiming to have once married a Filipino transvestite in Albany---a character will mention that "That was one crazy Yom Kippur."

• Similar to Family Guy, Drawn Together will occasionally do a random cutaway gag about something only tangentially related to what is happening in the episode. Examples:
  • In "The Other Cousin", when Clara becomes annoyed with Foxxy, she says, "I should have killed her when I had the chance." The show then cuts to Foxxy dangling from a cliff over a river of lava screaming at Clara, "Give me yo' hand!", to which Clara responds, "First, give me the ring!" This a reference to both The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Disney's Aladdin.
  • When the housemates decide to start a suicide hotline, Foxxy claims they'll only get bored with it, reminding them of what happened when they decided to adopt some pit bulls. Foxxy then states she ended up having to find the dogs a home with the Muppet Babies, upon which the scene cuts to Kermit and Gonzo being viciously mauled by said dogs.

• A running theme on the show is that the characters will often learn a moral, but not the moral they should be learning; for example, in "Ghostesses in the Slot Machine", Captain Hero endangers the lives of thousands in order to win rigged bets, but all he is able to learn from the experience is that Indians shouldn't have casinos. In "Unrestrainable Trainable", Clara force feeds Wooldoor an entire bottle of drain cleaner- a situation which comes back to haunt her when the drain gets clogged and she has no way to unstop it.

Drawn Together
Characters
Captain Hero • Foxxy Love • Ling-Ling • Princess Clara • Spanky Ham • Toot Braunstein • Wooldoor Sockbat • Xandir Minor and recurring characters
Episodes
Season One: 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 Season Two: 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12 • 13 • 14 • 15 • 16 • 17 • 18 • 19 • 20 • 21 • 22 Season Three: 23 • 24 • 25 • 26 • 27 • 28 • 29 • 30 • 31 • 32 • 33 • 34 • 35 • 36
Gags
Running gags • Housemate deaths • Fourth wall breaks • Censored/Uncensored Game
Cast and creators
Dave Jeser • Matt Silverstein • Adam Carolla • Jess Harnell • Abbey McBride • Jack Plotnick • Tara Strong • Cree Summer • James Arnold Taylor