It's Garry Shandling's Show

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Late 1980s comedy on Showtime which turned No Fourth Wall into an art form. Comedian Garry Shandling played comedian Garry Shandling, who not only knew he lived inside a sitcom, but had a studio audience "inside" his house. (Sometimes their presence there waiting for him would surprise him when he first came out of his bedroom in the morning.) Garry's visitors, friends and neighbors, while not possessing studio audiences of their own, were all aware of his, and everyone made a point of addressing the audience at some point in the show.

The entire point of the show, around which almost all of its plots revolved, was deconstructing, subverting and inverting all the standard tropes of broadcast television sitcoms. Shandling would later use this same method to skewer late night television with The Larry Sanders Show.

Tropes used in It's Garry Shandling's Show include:

• As Himself: This was the premise, but in-universe Garry referred to himself as The Danza.
• Christmas Episode
• Deconstructor Fleet: Once the Sit Com tropes had generally been mined out Guest Stars from classic programs and political figures allows exploration of tropes ranging from Musicals to health movies.
• Flash Back: Courtesy of Garry's flashback booth (marked "It's Garry Shandling's Flashback Booth").
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Nancy gets amnesia (Garry: "Our first amnesia episode!") but gets her memory back using the flashback booth.
• Locked in A Freezer: With Garry commenting that he hates this trope but the nature of the show does not allow them to skip it.
• No Fourth Wall: Including Garry asking people not to shout out a secret he was trying to keep or tip off his neighbors to the surprise party he was planning.
• Opening Monologue: In keeping with No Fourth Wall
• Post Modernism
• Sit Com: Subverted
• Subverted Trope: Just about every last one of them!
• Title Theme Tune: Notable in that the No Fourth Wall nature of the show forces the cast to hear the song every week season after season. Some find it reassuring, others come to hate the bouncy little tune.
  • Also notable for its self-awareness as a theme song. For example, it starts "This is the theme to Garry's show / the theme to Garry's show / Garry called me up and asked if I could write his theme song..."
• Trope Name