Living Single/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Max once ran for office using the slogan "Ride the Maverick!". It was also her college nickname.
  • Hollywood Homely: Averted very hard. A wide variety of body types and looks are on display, and all of them are presented as attractive.
  • Lady Mondegreen: Not a misheard name, but a misread one. Am I the only one who reads Max's actress's name in the opening credits as Frika Alexander instead of Erika Alexander?
  • Moral Event Horizon: Although YMMV, in one episode Regine is donating a box of clothes to charity and Max decides to take a coat out of the box and keep it. Even after she's told it was for charity, she decides to keep it, if only because it bothers Regine. What's worse, after irritating Regine with the coat to the point where Regine buys it back from her, Max reveals she actually took the entire box of clothes meant for charity just to tick Regine off. I know its Played for Laughs, but how is stealing a box of clothes you know (even after the fact) was meant for charity any different than stealing toys from a Toys For Tots bin, or taking canned goods out of a Feed The Homeless donation box?
  • Replacement Scrappy: Tripp may be considered one when Kyle left.
    • He's definitely considered The Scrappy in general, if nothing else.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Less a character example and more of an actress who played one, Erika Alexander was a late-arrival Scrappy on The Cosby Show, however despite this, she seemed to have lost her Scrappy status as Maxine Shaw on Living Single.
  • Seasonal Rot: Many fans of the show claim the 5th season suffered from this.
  • Sell Out: Some of her older fans believe Queen Latifah to be this, cashing in on her popularity as a rapper to star in a sitcom.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Season 5 had Overton and Synclaire Happily Married, and have Kyle leave the show only to be replaced by Tripp . . . both of which were not very well accepted by the older fans of the show.
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks: Inverted, if anything, Friends unintentionally copied it
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Max ends up being forcibly put on leave from her job as an attorney for giving advice to a client which ended up ending said client's engagement without talking to the law partners first, and then leaves the job because when they brought her back they don't instantly forgive her and give her all her old clients back, despite having broken their trust. We're as an audience supposed to take pity on Max because she lost her job, even though she seems to be perfectly steady financially, continues to to be an uninvited guest in the girl's home and eat all their food, and the only reason she seems to want to work is because she's bored (not that she donates her time to something worthwhile, like, say, a charity or something). Taking in to account how many hard working people living paycheck to paycheck are without jobs with the economy today, its not surprising most people don't shed a tear for Maxine Shaw, Ex-Attorney at Law.