Mundane Made Awesome/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* In one of the episodes of the original ''[[Hawaii Five-O]]'' comes the most badass line in all of live action television. The scenario; A package, upon delivery to an influential government office exploded violently, killing one person and maiming his secretary. McGarett needs to know if the package was tampered with at any point during the journey. So he asks the courier if he fell asleep at any point, or went to the bathroom, or let the package out of his sight. After a while, the courier holds up his hand and McGarett stops asking questions. He then delivers his line; [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|"Sir. With respect. I take my duties as a courier Very. Seriously."]] You can hear the capital letters in his words. [[Badass|Bad. Ass.]] [[Mundane Made Awesome|Courier.]]

* News Promos. ''[[The Daily Show]]'' and ''[[The Colbert Report]]'' parody this mercilessly.

** And then ''The Daily Show'' brought us us ''[http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=178209&title=the-news-better-run this]''.

* ''[[iCarly]]'': During the Gibby-Nora fight scene, Gibby gets smacked into a wall. He stands up, brings his hand to his mouth, look at the blood, and... [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|takes his shirt off.]] All while epic music plays in the background.

* Fans of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' often complain that the [[Chase Scene]] music continues after the [[Chase Scene]] is over, particularly in the last few seasons of the old show, and all of the new one.

** One of the 2009 hour-long specials, "Planet of the Dead", tries to make the act of stepping on a bus tense and dramatic. Granted, it's a [[Classy Cat Burglar]] escaping the police, but she's not even ''running''. It's just a few shots of the police looking bewildered, her approaching the bus and the bus driver noticing her, set to some painfully over-the-top music.

** In the liner notes for Series 3's soundtrack, Murray Gold is quoted as saying "I always write as if it would be unthinkable for anyone not to love the episode." By his own admission, the whole '''soundtrack''' is Mundane Made Awesome.

** No it's not 'enough said'; he played football ''bloody well!''. Turns out Matt Smith once considered a football career.

* Parodied in ''[[Scrubs]]'' where an episode began with a melodramatic portrayal of Dr. Cox's four-year-old son Jack receives minor stitches on his forehead complete with epic music with Dr. Cox threatening Turk (who is doing the stitches) coldly that he better succeed. Once Turk finishes and everything is okay, Dr. Cox declared "The Surgeon lives!"

* Hilariously parodied in the "[[New World Order|nWo]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxe2tHkhNY0 Saturday] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk28owPoJ4o&feature=relmfu Night]" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePBH8P9ehGI segments] of ''WCW Saturday Night'', which would see an nWo member take on a [[Jobber]] in a five-minute match; each and every move done by the nWo member would be augmented by over-the-top special effects, replayed from at least 5 different angles, and get thunderous, deafening applause and cheers from the (nonexistent) crowd.

* The [[Title Sequence]] of ''[[Dexter]]'' shows his normal morning sequence, but filmed in a way to seem like horrific and brutal parts of a murder sequence: a blood orange is viciously sliced then viscerally disemboweled, dental floss pulled like a garotte, [[There Will Be Toilet Paper|a small cut while shaving]] has us watch the slowly spreading blood... watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utqoFsMYPKs here].

** For that matter, many TOS episodes featured people walking along corridors to rising orchestra music. Dum da DUM DUM...

* Japanese example: ''[[Iron Chef]]''. Dramatic orchestral music is used for almost all the musical cues, and the lead cameraman is apparently in love with crane shots that pan over the entire kitchen.

** They use Instant Replay on a cooking show.

** The orchestra playing dramatic music ascending into Kitchen Stadium with Masahiko Kobe in every battle he's in.

** When boxing commentator and self-admitted non-cook Kenji Fukui was first asked to commentate, he couldn't understand why they'd need him for a cooking show, or what he'd say. "The knife goes up! The knife goes down!" However, once on set he quickly realized that the frenetic action together with his frequent need to ask Yukio Hattori what the chefs were doing gave him the material he needed to keep the show going.

* Most reality TV in general. It's actually about people cooking, or living an even more empty and meaningless life than most in a house, or whose aspiration is to get to wear clothes for a living. Just putting many of those concepts on television in the first place constitutes this trope, and they don't shy away from more traditional forms of it either.

** The same goes for their "[[Private Eye Monologue|Film Noir]]" game, which is always placed in a mundane setting and usually ends up in a detective-versus-detective [[Gambit Roulette]] to accomplish an everyday or pointless task.

** Well, yeah, but that ''was'' pretty darned cool.

** In a 2010 commercial for the show, they play ''Ave Maria'' to things blowing up in slow motion.

* Two Words: [[CSI: Miami|Horatio...]][[Glasses Pull|</Glasses>]][[CSI: Miami|...Caine.]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sarYH0z948 YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!]

** [[Jim Carrey]] parodies this beautifully [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJSqkwyL1Zo here].

*** As well as the [[Supernatural (TV series)|Winchester Brothers]], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K4yioL2ngI here].

** Self-parodied by [[CSI|the original series]] in "Fight Night" -- Grissom delivers his one-liner at the end of the teaser ("And a death during a felony? ... That's murder"), and the theme music revs up, but it's cut off by Grissom's beeper. Grissom looks really annoyed, and has to look into a second case before the credits roll.

** ''...in the world.''

* A recent [[Discovery Channel]] show called ''Time Warp'' consists entirely of guys running around with high-speed cameras and filming random things, ''but very slowly''. Most things look significantly cooler when shot in 5000 FPS.

* On ''[[Smallville]]'', in a bathroom Lana Lang [[Important Haircut|cuts her hair]] three inches . . . And she's ready for the world!!!!

* Did anyone else notice Danko's surprisingly emphasized shaving scene at the beginning of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]''' "Cold Snap"?

* Anyone who thought the diabolo couldn't be awesome, obviously wasn't watching the 2009 Grand Final of ''Australia's Got Talent''; otherwise they would've seen this kid: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7iWcjnGcw8 William Campbell.]

* ''[[The Tonight Show]] with [[Conan O'Brien]]'': TWITTER TRACKER TWITTER TRACKER TWITTER TRACKER!!!!

* The ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' episode "Brief Candle" features a scene of epic mass waking-up, complete with the heroic action theme!

** Season 1 as a whole was pretty over the top with its abuse of their score, and Brief Candle is probably the worst episode in that regard. Comparing the musical score in a later season episode to Brief Candle is an interesting experience.

* An off-air example: In ''[[Dirty Sexy Money]]'', it was decided that they would discover that one of the Darling children was actually the illegitimate child of Letitia and Dutch. Dutch's legitimate son, Nick, had been romantically involved with Karen Darling. The production meeting on this one addressed the [[Brother-Sister Incest|gorilla in the room]] by writing the word "INCEST" on the board in huge letters and then dramatically X-ing it out. {{spoiler|Brian turned out to be the illegitimate one, perhaps hinted at by the fact that he himself has an illegitimate son.}}

* When the first self-righting mechanism was accidentally discovered on ''[[Robot Wars (TV series)|Robot Wars]]'', it was subject to no fewer than ''six instant replays, each from a different angle''. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=QuHnNXpWld0 Observe].

** I love that sequence! There's just something about it that I love to replay on the DVD. In fact, that series had several very good visual/musical sequences.

* On ''[[Undeclared]]'', the [[Chase Scene]] between Eric and Steven. A high-speed scooter chase is bad enough, but what propels it squarely into this trope (and [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]) is the background music. [[Mortal Kombat|MORTAL KOMBAAAAT!]]

* NBC's game show ''[[Minute to Win It]]''. You know it fits this trope when there's epic music playing complete with [[Ominous Latin Chanting]], and yet all the challenges consist of [[Sarcasm Mode|epic tasks]] like ''emptying a tissue box!'' Later episodes have eased up on this, however.

* On ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Xander gets in a fight with vampire Harmony. After threatening each other with their new and improved skills, they ... [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Funny|get in a slap fight, with hair-pulling and shin-kicking]]. In slow motion. With dramatic music. It ends in a dual headlock truce. "Okay... on three."

* ''[[Angel]]'' has Fred cleaning stuff

* ''[[Victorious]]'': At the very end of "Freak the Freak Out", Sikowitz sings Number One by Ginger Fox. And then proceeds to pay homage to ''[[Flashdance]]'' by banging on a chair while wet. His portrayer, Eric Lange, said that this has been his favorite scene on the show to shoot yet.

* ''[[The Late Late Show]]'' has no less than 4 (and counting) elaborate jingles, featuring flaming robot skeletons, lasers, a triceratops, etc. This is all for a segment where Craig reads emails and tweets.

** Incidentally, the US version of the show is absolutely drowning in this trope.

* On the Science Channel, ''Monster Bug Wars'' shows footage of various [[Real Life]] creepy-crawlies preying on one another. It backs up these miniature confrontations with ominous narration, an action-flick score (suspense chords, dramatic fight music, even somber oh-the-humanity dirges for the aftermath!) and ''sound effects'' of snarling big cats, squealing pigs, and ''[[Jurassic Park]]''-dino roars.

* TLC's "Extreme Couponing" takes people who obsessively collect and use coupons to rack up hundreds of dollars worth of food and groceries and puts them on television. Some of these people appear to be stockpiling for the apocalypse, and others are feeding half the town for pocket change. Top it off with dramatic stings, exhaustion from walking the store for hours, and stress-induced tears, and you've got a show!

* The American version of ''[[Kitchen Nightmares]]'' tends to suffer from this a lot. The narrator makes everything from reading a menu to the ethnic heritage of the owner like some Earth-shattering revelation of God and the over-the-top music only adds to this. Downright abrupt changes into dramatic music can occur at anything from verbal fights to Ramsay quickly turning his head. And if something ''really'' crazy is implied to happen, the camera may cut, go in and out of focus and jump as many as three times within two seconds. This is quite different from the British version, which is way more laid back.

* Some of the characters in ''[[Just Shoot Me]]'' played paintball in one episode. Dennis had a temporary falling out with Jack (who was on his team) after accidentally shooting him, only to redeem himself later by saving Jack from the blast of shaken up soda can as if it were a grenade, ruining his shirt and making him unable to attend a party. The scene played out as if Dennis were a soldier dying in Jack's arms.