Night Court/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In the first episode, a delivery man doesn't believe the very young-looking Harry is a judge. Harry retorts, "If I weren't the judge, could I do this?" and discharges a gag rifle that shoots seemingly-endless spring snakes over everyone else in the room. Harry then adds: "...In his office?"
  • Dan had a great one in Constitution, Part 2. Roz, who was recently diagnosed as Diabetic, has gone into shock and is hallucinating that she's a little girl again. This is made more problematic by her standing on a roof-ledge while crying about how her father used to wake her up after he got off the late-shift at work and fixed her an ice-cream cone and how she'll never be able to think about him while having ice cream ever again. After failing to talk her down and taking two punches to the face and a Groin Attack trying to grapple her, Dan finally talks Roz down by pretending to be her father and offering to fix her an ice cream cone.
  • Nearly everyone on the cast got one in It's Just A Joke - an episode in which a Politically Incorrect Comedian nicknamed "Potty-Mouth" tried to score free publicity for his act by staging a First Amendment Battle over his right to Free Speech in Harry's court with a televangelist accomplice fanning the flames of censorship to increase donations to his church. Harry winds up turning the tables by arranging for the comedian to perform his act in front of the courtroom and...
    • Christine tells the guy off and leaves after the first joke - a sexist one-liner about single mothers being sluts and welfare cheats.
    • Lizette, the mousy court stenographer whose major defining characteristic was not standing up for herself, actually stands up to the comedian and says that jokes about women being hurt aren't funny.
    • Roz's response to the quip about how the large number of African Americans in the audience suggests "they need more security around here". Actually, I AM security around here.
    • Former soldier Mac and his understated punchline to the joke "What do you call an African American man in a uniform?" A Veteran?
    • In the end Dan, who had been defending the comedian's style of humor as satire throughout the episode, finally has enough and tells the guy off when he realizes that the comedian honestly believes the backward things he is saying. This leads to a Crowning Moment of Funny and one of the few occasions when Dan was ever at a loss for words after the comedian - unable to think of any other comeback - accuses Dan of being gay.
    • Even blind vendor Jack - who was only on the show during Season 8 - got one after the comedian makes a crack about a blind man stealing his job because it was "Hire The Handicapped Week" and Jack laughs.

Comedian: (defensively) Aha! See! See! The blind guy laughed!
Jack: Yeah, I was just imagining what it must be like if you look as stupid as you sound!

    • The payoff to the scene has the Comedian arguing that Harry just pulled these people off the street and that "These people aren't real Potty-Mouth fans!" Harry retorts that these people were standing in line for tickets to his show to see what all the fuss was about, thus exposing Potty-Mouth as the money-grabbing fraud he really is.
  • In Top Judge, Harry got into a duel with a younger prankster judge. In perhaps his most Crazy Awesome moment ever, Harry won the duel after pretending to concede the fight, giving the younger judge his best silk robe (the prize he demanded if he won) and wound up trapping the younger judge partway inside a giant balloon he had rigged up to inflate by remote control, filling the courtroom.

Harry: Cleaver, you may be younger. You may be faster. You may even be smarter. But you will NEVER, EVER, be crazier ... than me."
(pulls out a pin and punctures the balloon)

    • What's better was the prank the young judge pulled on Harry. The courtroom waited for his prank to strike at the time he said would happen. When it didn't Harry called for recess... and the pounding of the gavel managed the entire bench to collapse.

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