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An Aesop: Difference between revisions
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* [[Very Special Episode]] - The show takes a more serious tone to tackle a more serious issue.
By the way, <s>in literary circles</s> [[All the Tropes Will Ruin Your Vocabulary|everywhere outside of this wiki]], '''An Aesop''' is properly known as a moral. The original Aesop was a Greek slave of the 6th century BC. A collection of allegorical tales (including "The Tortoise and the Hare", "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", and others) attributed to him have survived to the present day and are known as ''[[Aesop's Fables]]''.
Ironically, Aesop probably doesn't deserve the dubious honor of having this trope named after him. In their original forms these stories likely did ''not'' end with heavy-hitting moral [[Anvilicious|anvils]]. The listeners (for Aesop would have been an oral storyteller) were probably left to sort out the meaning for themselves; the one-liner morals (such as "slow and steady wins the race") were likely tacked on by modern compilers.
Also see: [[Central Theme]], [[And Knowing Is Half the Battle]].
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* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'': Courage and vigor is the power of humankind.
** And with great power [[Comes Great Responsibility]].
* ''[[Eureka 7]]'': Never give up on being with your [[The Power of Love|loved one]].
* ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'': In the manga. It's subtle, though: compromise your dreams with what is best for everyone. {{spoiler|Roy compromised his dream for power by vowing to use it for others, and being patient about it. May gave up her quest to restore her clan to help save another country. She got both though. Scar compromised his quest for vengeance by just preventing it from happening again in the future. Ed gave up his alchemy, and didn't get his leg back. Al rejected his body because he couldn't fight with it, and when he got it back it was incredibly weak. The only person who didn't compromise was Father. He wanted out of his flask, and didn't balance it with morality, empathy, or just settling for anything less. And he got screwed}}.
* ''[[Franken Fran]]'': Though there are exceptions, the dominant aesop to be learned is that death is not something to come back from, especially via science.
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* Spoofed in the legendary ''[[Full Metal Panic!]]'' rugby episode. At the end of the episode, Sosuke muses that violence is never the answer; Chidori [[Dope Slap|smashes him upside the head with her]] [[Paper Fan of Doom]], shouting "Don't go trying to put a neat little conclusion on this!" She's pissed because Sosuke's the one responsible for the violence in the first place, turning a team of tea-sipping pansies into violent psychopaths with [[Training From Hell]].
* ''[[Gunnm]]'' delivers an especially hard-hitting Aesop in volume five: Be a little considerate of people's feelings. Allways treat others with respect, even if you think they are cowardly, selfish jerks. You may not like the result if you don't.
* ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' shows us that [[Just Like Us|teachers are human beings too]]. They have feelings and they deserve your respect. They do care about you and are willing to help you if you let them. There ''are'' bad teachers but they are the exception and not the rule.
* ''[[The Idolmaster (anime)|THE iDOLM@STER]]'': Almost every episode gives a lesson to at least one character.
* ''[[Popotan]]'': Moving away from others is not as hard as it appears because one can still have pleasant memories of old friends, and one should learn to let go of said friends in order to move on in life. It's an overarching theme of the entire series, and Konami (the best friend of Mai, one of the protagonists) puts it into words in both the second and the final episodes.
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* ''[[Toy Story]] 2''. The toys watch Al half-crying during an Al's Toy Barn commercial on TV after losing his Woody's Roundup dolls.
{{quote|Hamm: I guess crime doesn't pay.}}
* The [[Aesop]] in ''[[
* ''[[The Wizard of Oz (film)|The Wizard of Oz]]'' (1939). After Glinda asks Dorothy what she's learned, Dorothy gives one.
{{quote|If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, l won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there I never really lost it to begin with.
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== Literature ==
* In [[How Kazir Won His Wife]], a sorcerer in the [[Framing Story]] identifies the moral of the story he tells as being "not to rely on general principles and routine mechanical methods"
* Every Oompa-Loompa song in ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'' and ''Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator'' is An Aesop in rhyming verse.
* The moral of ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'' is to live life, take the good and take the bad and remain true to yourself. There might be other lessons scattered about the book concerning [[Author Tract|not manipulating others or belief in God,]] but the big message is to take the ups and downs and keep on. It comes off as [[Bittersweet Ending|bittersweet]] mostly because of all the events that had to take place for the protagonist to come to this conclusion.
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* ''[[War and Peace]]'': There are no [[Magnificent Bastard]]s, only [[Smug Snake|bastards who think themselves magnificent]]. Told via an [[Author Filibuster|entire part]] just in case you didn't catch it in the plot.
* Subverted in the poem "Twice Times" by [[A. A. Milne|AA Milne]] about two bears, one good and one bad who then, for no apparent reason, swapped places. The poem concludes "There may be a Moral, though some say not; I think there's a moral, though I don't know what."
* ''[[Goblin Market]]'' concludes with a very obvious aesop:
{{quote|For there is no friend like a sister...
To fetch one if one goes astray,
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* The intention of the [[Afterschool Special]], usually coming about in the final act.
* Vehemently [[Averted Trope|averted]] in ''[[Seinfeld]]'' where the credo was "No hugging! No lessons! No point!"
* ''[[Strangers with Candy]]'' based its entire premise on parodied Aesops: every episode ended with Jerri learning such lessons as the usefulness of illegal steroids.
* Every episode of ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'' ever devised concludes with Earl dropping an Aesop on the viewer's head in a voiceover.
* ''[[The Weird Al Show]]'''s staff were so annoyed by the fact that they had to shove a moral down children's throats every week, they actually started each episode with the lesson to be learned written on parchment and narrated in a fancy voice. It was then torn in half to start the show.
* ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' has this in spades.
* Every episode of ''[[Scrubs]]'' ends with J.D. reciting the theme of the episode over a musical piece. Often, though not always, an Aesop.
* A great many ''[[Star Trek]]'' episodes end on an [[Aesop]], sometimes even degenerating into a minor [[Patrick Stewart Speech]]. In fact, ''every'' episode of the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' ended on an Aesop, as Roddenberry was apparently obsessed with moralizing everything in the most convoluted way.
** Subverted in ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine|Star Trek Deep Space Nine]]'' when Garak claims that the moral of The Boy Who Cried Wolf was actually "Never tell the same lie twice."
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* Not only used in virtually every episode of ''[[Hannah Montana]]'', but occasionally played with too, with Miley once asking her dad if he can't just fix the problem instead of trying to teach her a life-lesson.
* The whole concept gets parodied in a [[Running Gag]] on ''The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson''. Every episode ends with the "What Did We Learn on the Show Tonight, Craig?" segment, which ranges from a [[Spoof Aesop]] to a complete non sequitur with no relation to morals or lessons whatsoever. On at least one occasion, the "lesson" learned was a ''Spanish vocabulary word''.
* ''[[Sister, Sister]]'' was full of these, ranging from the typical (such as stranger danger and the value of wise spending) to the more complex (such as Lisa dealing with her fear that she cannot compare to Ray's dead wife).
* [[Community/Recap/S1 E01 Pilot|The first episode of]] ''[[Community]]'' has Prof. Duncan attempting to impart one to Jeff about academic honesty. Jeff, however, feels strongly that community college is not the place to learn anything. Jeff's objection notwithstanding, many episodes end with speeches, tilted-head smiling people, happy music, and reconciliations.
* ''[[Home Improvement]]'' frequently had these, and they were usually delivered by the character Wilson, who would dispense advice to help the other characters with the issue of the episode.
* One episode of ''[[Boy Meets World]]'' played with the notion of the Aesop: Mister Feeny assigns Corey, Topanga, and Shawn a seemingly impossible task. After trying and failing, the [[Genre Savvy]] kids come to the conclusion that Mister Feeney was giving them a [[Secret Test of Character]] to teach them a lesson about teamwork. Unfortunately they were wrong: Mister Feeney was actually trying to teach them a lesson about never giving up, and ''wants'' them to complete their seemingly-impossible task, and so he sends them back out again.
* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' justifies this because a sizable chunk of the premise is Future!Ted lecturing his kids about his mistakes when he was young. However, they're frequently [[Spoof Aesop|spoof]], [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|family unfriendly]], [[Broken Aesop|broken]], [[Space Whale Aesop|space whale]] (i.e., "I won't bother telling you not to fight, but don't fight with Uncle Marshall. He's insane."), [[Lost Aesop|lost]], lampshaded [[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]], or otherwise humorously subverted, usually with Future Ted giving an aesop, but admitting that in real life, back when the events ''actually'' took place, he and his friends didn't learn their lesson right away. However, when one of the characters gives an aesop in the present, it's more often played straight.
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* ''[[South Park]]'' often features an Aesop at the end. Many times Kyle starts a speech by saying, "I've learned something today..." The morals are sometimes humorous - though as often as not - these speeches really are didactic.
** One of the funnier genunine spoofs of this trope was in "Super Fun Time", in which a completely nonsensical, out-of-left-field moral wound up being preached in the end by the episode's ''villain''.
** Kenny gives one of these speeches at the end of the [[Big Damn Movie]]. Because of [[The Unintelligible|his parka]], we'll never know what he learned.
** Cartman is sometimes opposed to the lesson at hand - and seems intent on disrupting the Aesop delivery.
{{quote|"Oh goddamnit, Kyle! You gave him one of your gay little speeches, didn't you?"}}
* ''[[The Tick (animation)]]'' also ended most episodes with The Tick turning to Arthur and saying "Arthur, I think we've learned a valuable lesson today," and then expounding semi-incoherently.
* ''[[The Weekenders]]'' loves Aesops. The episode "Listen Up" subverts their convention two-fold by having Carver (instead of the usual Tino) deliver it, and then having him off-center on screen and fading him out, forcing Carver to cut it short.
* The ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle]]'' segment ''Aesop and Son'' subverted not only this trope, but the fables themselves. The titular philosopher would tell a parodic version of his story, say the moral, and then Junior would chime in with a second moral, usually a pun off some element of the story.
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** At the end of the episode where Homer is an overly mean food critic. At the end after narrowly escaping their [[Disproportionate Retribution|murder plot]], he says "The important thing is I never got my comeuppance, and never will" followed by "merely" getting beaten up by all of the chefs he insulted.
* ''[[Taz-Mania]]'' often featured the characters saying at the end "What have we learned from this?", and usually concluding that they hadn't learned anything.
* The original ''[[He-Man and the Masters of the Universe|He Man and The Masters of The Universe]]'' animated series always ends with an [[Aesop]].
* ''[[Centurions]]'' always had some sort of science lesson at the end.
* Subverted in ''''[[Family Guy]]'': While Peter recovers in the hospital, Lois says, "I guess you learned an important lesson." Peter leans back smugly and says, "Nope," at which point the episode ends.
* ''[[The Proud Family]]'' had a tendency to overdo this at times, with some episodes being particularly Anvilicious(most notably the one about how [[Digital Piracy Is Evil]])
* Disney Channel's ''[[Lilo and Stitch: The Series]]'' is another one of those animated kids shows that works by rote, it's usually a [[Stock Aesops|lesson]] about the power of friendship and tolerance and honesty, to the point of being cloyingly cute.
* On ''What It's Like Being Alone'', Aesops are usually provided by one-off characters that are on the verge of death. They then die, violently.
* ''[[Jem]]'' did this in practically any episode about the Starlight Girls—one of them would do something stupid (anything from stealing to drugs) and have to have An Aesop explained to them. A few featured other characters, such as the one where Roxy got screwed over again and again because she couldn't read.
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