Boredom Montage



A character is delighted at some job or performance he's been assigned and jumps into it with a bright beaming smile.

A series of repeating short scenes show the various tasks as they go by.

But as the montage repeats, the pace of the character's work begins to slow, the music tempo falls to a crawl, the happy smile becomes a scowl and with a final *clunk* the character stops what they're doing and yells "I can't take it anymore!" or words to that effect.

The repetition of the job has finally overcome him.

Common and easy to do in animated shows since the character animations can be recycled over and over to instantly create the effect.

Often involves the character's face holding in place (and slowly changing expression) while everything else happens around it. For added hilarity points, a character may look up at the clock after boredom has set in to see that a very short amount of time has passed.

Compare Writer's Block Montage.

Film

 * In Little Shop of Horrors, after the "Skid Row" number there is a brief montage of the three employees of Mushnik's flowershop sitting around being bored to show a complete lack of business.
 * The opening number of Tangled is both this and an "I Want" Song, showing Rapunzel's frustration after being stuck in a tower for her entire life up to that point.

Western Animation

 * Dexter's Laboratory:
 * In "Space Case", after aliens kidnap Dee Dee, Dexter's newfound joy of being able to experiment without interruption gradually fades as guilt sets in.
 * "Dee Dee and the Man"; after Dexter "fires" Dee Dee, we see him repeatedly going through his routine in the lab with manic glee that gradually fades to despair when he starts to miss Dee Dee's antics.
 * SpongeBob SquarePants, "Squidville": Squidward moves into a new neighborhood where everyone has the same interests and hobbies as he does, and gradually gets sick of it.
 * Rocko's Modern Life, "Schnit-Heads": Heifer joins a sausage cult and started eating nothing but delicious sausages. At first he enjoyed it but then he get bored.
 * In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Rainbow Dash goes through one of these in "Read it and Weep" while stuck in the hospital recovering from an injury. Subverted when she glances up at a clock, showing that the montage wasn't a montage - everything we just saw happened in real time.
 * When Pinky and The Brain begin a seven-month submarine journey, Pinky doesn't take it so well. The montage could have accounted for more than half the time, but it turns out to be only 15 minutes.