Pasila

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"A Finnish crime is badly planned, committed out of secondary motives and usually mostly an awkward experience for both the victim and the perpetrator. The job of the police is then pick up the perp from home, insult them until they break down in tears and then gradually become better people and don't screw up anymore." —Kyösti Pöysti

Pasila is a satirical Finnish animated series about the daily lives of the policemen at the Pasila precinct in Helsinki, which is what the show is named after.

The series begins as Lieutenant Kyösti Pöysti, our main character, replaces a dead officer at the precinct. He's a highly self-centered, dysfunctional individual who is always sucking on a pacifier for unknown reasons. His unruly behaviour and unconventional methods of arresting people by yelling his theories at them until they break down are often a source of ire for his boss Rauno Repomies, an old man bordering on senility who has to take medication at regular intervals or he starts rambling uncontrollably. Pöysti's colleagues include his former Police Academy classmate Neponen, an angry and macho policewoman Helga, and Pekka Routalempi, a boring desk sergeant who thinks everything is "fascinating". An annoying TV presenter Juhani Kontiovaara also keeps butting in Pöysti's business, claiming that they're best friends when Pöysti can't stand him. There are no other recurring characters, though some do occasionally show up again - Jerppe Stoltenstolten, for example, first appeared as a one-shot character in the episode "Päihdevalistajat" (Drug education) and returns again in the episodes "Anonyymit kyynikot" (Cynics Anonymous) and "Irtiotto" (Break), though he had no speaking role in the latter episode.

Pasila became hugely successful due to its hilarious characters and rapidfire humor and got a second season. The third and the fourth seasons have been finished, and with a strong sense of closure at the end of the fourth season's final episode, it remains to be seen if more will be made.

Episodes with fan-made english subtitles can be found from YouTube and there is also an official English dub of the series, known as Jefferson Anderson. So far the first two seasons have been dubbed into English.

There is a character page here.

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Tropes used in Pasila include:

• All Psychology Is Freudian: Initially subverted then later played somewhat straight: Pöysti visits several psychiatrists over the course of an episode, starting off with one belonging to an unmentioned school of psychology who only states the obvious and repeats what he says, following with a fake Jungian one that doesn't care about any of his issues and instead just wants to tell Pöysti about his own childhood, before finally getting to talk to a Freudian one who manages to help him to any degree.
• Animal Wrongs Group: The Association For Orphaned Dogs Of St.Petersburg is a minor version of this.
  • They don't do anything that could be likened to terrorism, or annoy people about their cause more than any other normal group. However, they're still more than happy to hound the police endlessly, such as the time when Pöysti stated he didn't like dogs in his attempt to apologize for giving Routalempi the order to fire a bazooka at what they thought was an empty house. In doing so, they had killed the family dog, who decided to play fetch with the live bazooka missile. Basically, the group was more opposed to the fact that Kyösti stated he didn't like them more than the accidental killing.
  • When Pöysti let an association member into his house in hopes of having sex with her when he initially met her, she quickly ended up boring him to sleep by talking about her dog the entire night. To be fair, she was hesitant to come in at first since she had other people to visit and Kyösti explicitly stated "if you come in, you can talk about dogs the entire time!" She continued talking about dogs even when he was already fast asleep, not even bothering to wake him up when the pizza he had ordered had arrived or when it was morning already, causing him to be several hours late at work both due to all the above as well as setting his cellphone to silent when Neponen kept calling him.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In one of Kontiovaara's infamous morning talk shows: "And for that reason, steer clear of drugs, booze and modern jazz."
  • Later in the same episode:

Repomies: Neponen, there are three extremely dangerous criminal organizations in Finland. The mob, the Lions Club of Riihimäki, and the parents' association of the class 3B of Hermanni Elementary School.

• • Also in another episode where Pöysti lists the crimes committed by a teen on the Internet to his father, including "defamation, inciting theft, inciting murder, threat, illegal threat, spreading around instructions for making nuclear bombs, aggrivation against an ethnic group, attempted seduction of minors and blowing raspberries at people"
  • Also in a drink menu Pöysti reads at one point: "Black Russian, Mint Black Russian, An Unemployed's Butt, Drowning Somali, Stupid Swede, Chinese Famine, Estonian Abortion and Jallu. I wonder if, as a cop, I should do something about these names?". (Jallu is cheap brandy mixed with vodka.)
  • Likewise in one of the new episodes:

Pöysti: Routalempi and Helga! Keep a constant watch on Salonius. Let us know if he does anything suspicious: digging holes, opening safety deposits, rummaging through his attic or listening techno while sober.

• • Pasila really likes this trope.

Repomies: Pöysti, there are a few groups of people in the world that you should never make angry. The right wing of the mob and the animal rights activists.

• • And another...

Pöysti: Pauli Mutikkala. Found guilty of numerous tax frauds, embezzlements and taking drinks out to the terrace after 10 PM.

• • Good heavens, again! It was literally only ten seconds into the most recent episode!

Repomies: There's a bank robbery going on on Kasarminkatu! There's hostages and guns, and a chance that bills could get wrinkled!

• • Subverted slightly in one of the newer episodes when Repomies is firing Pöysti again by listing an equal number of fitting and unfitting things:

Repomies: Return your badge, your gun, your game controller, and your key to the police ballpit!

• Assumed Win:
  • Repomies in one of the new episodes, when Pöysti accidentally (since he didn't intend Repomies to actually fall for his joke email but forgot how senile and inept with computers he is...not that the fact that there really is a Kyösti P. Mahtisonni (Mightystud) working in the institution helps things any) fools him into thinking he's won a medal Repomies has been desperate to get for at least 20 years as a revenge since Repomies forced him to do drunk patrol and stay awake for the whole night (as well as forcing everyone to paint the station, polish the tip of the flagpole with a toothbrush and conquer Petsamo back from Russians the previous year) in an attempt to make himself look better and get the said medal.
  • After Pöysti finds out Repomies is first going to kill him and then jump off a bridge and drown himself if it turns out to be a joke, he goes talk to the man responsible for giving out the medals with little success, although later he manages to catch the man drunk driving and making a deal with him about giving Repomies a medal if they didn't put him in jail for drunk driving (which he didn't honor because Pöysti didn't do the required paperwork and thus there's no proof of him being incarcerated for any lenght of time and his abused wife will back up his version of the story). When he finally finds out he hasn't been chosen to receive a medal, Repomies flips out at the ceremony, wrestling the person currently receiving a medal into the ground and stealing his medal.
  • Surprisingly enough, Pöysti actually saves the day (after quickly running away right before Repomies finds out the truth) by exposing how the person responsible for nominating the people getting the medals wastes taxpayers' money for sitting at his desk and peeling pistachio nuts days on end, just so he can stuff entire mouthfuls into his mouth as often as he wants. When people ask why they should care even if he does so, Pöysti points out that it's an activity that no normal person can freely spend as much time on as he has and there's no compareable lesser replacements available. Cue the crowd cheering when they find 6 sacks of perfectly-peeled pistachio nuts and Repomies finally getting a medal "not for any actual valid reason, but just because it fits an occasion like this", as stated by Pöysti.
• As the Good Book Says...: As a running gag in an episode: Pöysti makes up passages such as "He who shall cast the first stone shall covet for his neighbour's donkey, which is an animal rights violation, so there", "He who casts a blaming finger might poke Jesus in the eye by accident! Job 24/7!" and "Remember what the Bible says: "Blessed are those who don't cast nasty looks like that at others all the time, for they shall inherit Repomies' delightful working chair, which is now reserved for me, by the way."
• Bad Liar: Neponen is revealed to be one in an episode when he keeps standing up for Pöysti's streak of alcoholism by telling everyone the truth about what he's been doing and then attempting to change it to a bad lie afterwards.
• Bankruptcy Barrel: Worn by one of the previous victims of Pauli Mutikkala, who still insists that it's the "best barrel in the town, a friend got it for me, real pine, the only one in Finland".
• Berserk Button: Don't call Laakkonen (episode Key Player) gay or get between Raine Makkula and his music.
  • Also, don't blame media about anything in the front of Kontiovaara. He'll... well, not exactly go berserk, but he will get seriously indignant. (Considering that his usual behavior Tastes Like Diabetes and that blaming the media is about the only way to make him show any anger at all, it counts as this trope.)

Kontiovaara: What the hell are you blaming the media for? Are you menstruating or do you simply want to live in Albania? The male interviewee: Yes. Kontiovaara: Can't use this stuff. Can't use this stuff at all.

• Bilingual Bonus: The episode "Kaksvitonen" (Twenty-Fiver, a Parody Episode of Twenty Four) features two long scenes done entirely in English. Likewise, recent episode "Obama" also had quite a lot of English dialogue when the titular president showed up.
• Blah Blah Blah: Used occasionally by various characters to cut their speeches short when they feel like they've already made their point clear. Amusingly enough, Kontiovaara also uses this once while he's on the air in TV doing his usual introduction to his show, although considering it's seen from Pöysti's POV, he might just be hearing his normal introduction as this.
• Blatant Lies: A prison mole suffers an unseen "accident" where he, according to Repomies, slipped in the shower, flew into a wall, tripped on a rack of knives, bounced into the heating boiler downstairs, fell into a paper shredder, flew through a window, fell ankle-deep into some wet cement, tripped and fell into the ocean.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: A customer at a store wants to know why they're not selling a specific brand of raspberry pie anymore. The cashier replies that "Nobody bought it...plus it tasted bad...and some kids died when they ate it." He still insists on wanting to buy some afterwards.
• Brick Joke: Kyösti has one of his theories begin with the opposing religious leaders in the episode being crushed by a falling piano and being sent to Heaven when he tries to explain Repomies how religious views of the same religion can vary wildly from one person to another and thus at least some of them will ultimately be disappointed: Repomies is utterly confused why a piano would fall on both of them out of the blue, but leaves the matter be when Pöysti states that it's irrelevant. Skip to the very end of the episode, where the said people are standing next to each other outdoors, agreeing with the basic concepts of their religious views...where they're prompty crushed by an identical falling piano.
• Call Back: Season three, episode one: Pöysti has a hangover, and if you listen closely, you can at one point hear the same Phil Collins song that was used in the episode "Phil Collins Hangover" playing in the background.
  • Pöysti and Neponen also make another Call Back in season 3 towards the diamond heist in an earlier episode:

Pöysti: Is it just me or does the majority of police work consist of babysitting rampaging drunks? Neponen: Yes...or wait, we did have that case about that international diamond thief! Pöysti: Oh yeah, so we did. Although he revealed himself as the diamond thief by accident when he caused a racket in a bar while drunk and the diamonds fell out of his pocket while we were arresting him. Neponen: True...

• Cameo: The hosts from the Finnish extreme travel show Madventures appear in an episode in cartoon form, voiced by themselves.
• Camp Gay: The cleaner, fired by Aisakkala's sect in "Sect", is this to some extent: he wears a pink shirt and threatens the sect with hair spray bottles strapped to his waist (implying that he'll only empty their contents simultaneously, claiming that "there's gonna be at least some damage with this many bottles, at very least the flowers will wither!"). On the other hand, his job could hardly be any less glamorous (as opposed to stereotypical "gay" occupations, such as hairdresser or fashion designer: even Aisakkala himself thinks he's involved in a "dirty business" and that he should be "doing better things with his life", and although he was talking about the cleaner's sexual orientation, he thinks it applies to his choice of profession as well), he's not flamboyant and is in a steady relationship, so he's more Invisible to Gaydar with some superficial Camp Gay features thrown in for laughs.
  • When Repomies has to act gay for the media, he turns into this. He even develops an instant knowledge of men's hairstyling.
• Casanova: Assistant town manager Jorma Hyvärinen takes great pride in his ability to hump practically every single woman in town and makes it a point to remind everyone he meets about it as often as he can... save for Repomies' wife, whom Hyvärinen considers utterly hideous, the fact of which frustrates Repomies enough to send death threats to Hyvärinen and thus jumpstart the plot of the episode.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: Pöysti becomes one in one of the newer episodes when he manages to apprehend a pair of bank robbers with no harm to any of the hostages or bills...by rushing inside, calling the robbers out on their lack of planning which they admit, getting threathened by their guns which they DO have (which he didn't consider because as he later admits in the episode, "the problem with us smart people is that we actually think very little and we rely mostly on the fact that if we're going to do something stupid, we notice it before we do it...but we rarely actually do") and annoying them with his antics to the extent that their numerous warning shots collapse the ceiling on them but leaving everyone else unharmed. While he appreciates the free beer and beautiful women, he gets annoyed by negative articles written about him (which he tries to go out of his way to fix by talking to their writer in person) and the fact that he quickly descends to being a B-class celebrity. He manages to get out by annoucing he's going to start studying to be a nurse (after his initial plan of admitting his publicity is entirely undeserved fails, since the press just finds it touching because of his honesty), which the columnist he was hounding stated to be a guaranteed way to lose any and all media interest...but as Repomies points out, he's now an ex-celebrity, which both he and Pöysti consider to be an even worse fate.
• Chalk Outline: Repomies has one on the floor of his office for no particular reason.
• Chessmaster: The way in which Pöysti uses and abuses the rules for dole money and equal opportunity employment to sabotage the first legal brothel in Finland is simply epic.
• Collapsing Lair: Pöysti's not-that-evil-counterpart Anteroinen has a lair in his basement, which Pöysti finds by accident by stomping the floor upstairs repeatedly out of frustration. It turns into a somewhat more literal example of this when Anteroinen sets his house on fire to destroy evidence and won't let Pöysti and Neponen out until he's done explaining his grand scheme.
• Couch Gag: From Season 3 onwards. The exact object Routalempi is staring at before getting in the police car changes with each episode (it also did this once or twice during the second season), as does the pose Pöysti takes when he lands on the hood of the car.
• Crying Wolf: Referenced by Pöysti when Routalempi unsuccessfully tries to get the rest of the force to arrange a surprise birthday party for him, failing because nobody could tell his hinting apart from his normal musings:

Pöysti: You kinda suffered the same fate as that shepherd boy in that one story, the one who was always shouting "Look, here's something exciting!" to everyone, causing people to gather around, but they eventually started ignoring him since they never actually saw anything exciting. Neponen: Yes, we got that already... Pöysti: Then one day, when there was something legimately exciting to be seen, something REALLY exciting, the boy kept shouting "exciting!" to people as usual, but nobody came, and everyone missed the excitement! Routalempi: Yes, I understood the moral of the wolf tale. Pöysti: What wolf tale? Repomies: Pekka, listen... Pöysti: What's wolves got to do with this? Routalempi: I'll go to my room now...I'll sulk there... Pöysti: Did the wolf steal my inflatable boat? What?

• Department of Redundancy Department: "Mr.'s Lampela and Lampela from the Lampela & Lampela Lawyer Agency..." See also Only Six Faces below: the said Lampelas have the same as Saksalas.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Parodied from both sides of the argument: on the other hand, the main criminal running a transparent Pirate Bay Expy comes off as being fiercely possessive of his own property to the extent that he doesn't let Pöysti and Neponen to sit on his couch because it'll get too worn down, while the music industry's only solution to combat the increasing piracy is to fire all the musicians except the vocalist. The episode doesn't have the usual sense of closure seen in the rest of them with the main criminal being released at the end of the episode since there's no evidence against him and he won't divulge the location of his servers abroads, implying that both sides are wrong.
• Diegetic Switch: In episode "Brother". Neponen and Pöysti start chasing a speeding car and Pöysti puts in a cassette of chase music... which is the show's standard chase music.
• Dirty Old Man: Repomies' grandfather, who is 114 years old with a massive beard, goes around asking to touch any passing women in various inappropriate places and isn't too averse to kissing men either. To quote Repomies, "My grandfather isn't really that picky about specifics, he'll eagerly hump a calf if you throw a dress on'em".
  • Despite what's stated above, he still ends up turning away from the whorehouse described below when Pöysti tells him that they only have men available at the moment, stating "No women in here? A bad whorehouse! Sinful things going on in this brothel. Not interested in this brothel. I'll go back home then. Such a long trip, all for nothing. Shame on you. Goddamn faggots!"
• Disproportionate Retribution: One of the new episodes more or less revolves around this: Repomies asks Pöysti to mop the floor since there's not much else to do at the moment, Pöysti refuses since it's not a part of his duties. Repomies agrees, but since he already asked, Pöysti's refusal would undermine his authority. Cue Repomies forcing Pöysti to guard the entrace of the police station with a rifle until he gives in and everyone else to first run the Cooper's test until they're half-dead from exhaustion and then forcing Helga and Routalempi to do only night shifts. As Neponen was spared from Repomies' wrath (because by doing so he wanted his "abuse of discretion soar to its utmost apex"), he attempts to patch things up between them several times, but most of them devolve into Blame Games. The situation is almost resolved when Pöysti gives in and starts mopping, but because of the way Repomies attempts to mock him out loud for giving in to his demands, he realizes Pöysti'll become a superior moral victor and demands Pöysti to stop, which leads them into breaking the mop. Repomies then finally resolves the situation by pointing out that everyone else has gotten so used to the situation that they don't feel like wasting their time to help them patch things up anymore and that without their help, if they don't settle the argument here and now, Pöysti and Repomies will be quarreling about it for the rest of their lives. Pöysti agrees, but ruins any chance of a symphatetic view of him by forcing Repomies to admit the entire argument was his fault.
• Downer Ending: Parodied and played straight at the same time in the episode where Pöysti becomes a celebrity. He eventually finds he doesn't want it any more, and finally manages to make the media lose interest... only for Repomies to point out that now he is an ex-celebrity, which is even worse.
  • Played slightly more straight when Pöysti's newly found teratoma brother gets infected and ends up torn off when he's still against the idea of having it removed as described below: while he claims he doesn't miss it one bit and claims that anyone who gets emotionally attached to a clump of inanimate meat is even more emotionally handicapped than he is, the episode still ends in a mostly-serious montage of him wandering around depressed while He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother plays.
  • The latest episode, "Irtiotto" (Break) had a very Downer Ending, with Pöysti leaving on a plane for India at the end of the episode - complete with (intentionally) leaving his pacifier behind, symbolising moving on. In fact, the whole episode was quite depressing, which is unusual for this series.
• Drugs Are Bad: The main theme for one of the new episodes that culminates in each character unsuccessfully lecturing a classroom about them (Pöysti failing because he promotes alcohol as a better option for escapism, Repomies because he gets pissed off at the students throwing wads of paper at him, causing him to start swearing and throwing a whiteboard eraser back at one of them, Helga because she instantly calls a female student a slut after she asks her the generic "can you get pregnant from kissing" question and Neponen is never even considered for the task because "he supports Pöysti and is suspicious"). However, Routalempi accidentally manages to save the day by constantly getting distracted by modern school equipment while attempting to lecture the class, causing the entire class to think he's an ex-junkie (especially since the symptoms he lists for prolonged drug use are the very things he's doing at that moment, ie. short attention span and confusing speech patterns) and sign up for anti-drugs groups in fear of becoming like him.
• Dub Name Change: The English dub localised all the names except for Helga. Pöysti himself was changed to Jefferson Anderson, the same as the name of the show itself in the English dub. Neponen became Smith, and Repomies was changed to Brickman.
• Dude, Not Ironic: Pöysti's conversations with some of the more smug criminals have a tendency to take a turn for this:

Pöysti: Well then. Jeppe Salonius. You robbed a bank in the early 2000s, and got caught. The loot, totalling 1 million euros, still hasn't been found. You hid it, didn't you? Jeppe: Maybe. Pöysti: And now that you've been freed, you though you'd dig up the money and start living the high life, right? Jeppe: Maybe. Pöysti: Maybe? Is that supposed to be irony, or aren't you just sure if you can be bothered to dig it up? Jeppe: That was plain irony, pure and simple.

• Eagleland Osmosis: Several examples, including a man in drag being escorted to jail from his batchelor party alternatively complaining how "you didn't read me my rights!" and "What kind of a country is this when people are read their rights!" to Pöysti, despite him repeatedly stating that there is nothing resembling Miranda rights in Finland. After getting tired of his complaining, he finally obliges and comes up with the following: "Okay. You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent, or talk in a quiet voice. Everything you say may be used against you. Some of it will come against you on its own, while the rest will be purposefully used against you via judicial trickery. You know, being presented with a heavy bias in a really annoying manner! God bless."
• Ear Worm: In universe, Andy Suonsilmä's song Karrelle Palanut Enkeli (Burnt Cinder Angel) is this to Pöysti. YMMV, of course.
  • Repomies also describes Paatinen's rapping as this in the episode "Päihdevalistajat" (Drug education), even using those exact words (but in Finnish).
• Efficient Displacement: Repomies does this once in an early episode when he jumps through his window after claiming he saw an aythya in an attempt to keep Pöysti in the dark about a plan involving him to catch a female criminal that has been evading capture several times.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the end of the episode "Brother".

Man: Are you that guy who ran over that child? Makkonen: She survived ...at least I think she did, when I caught a glimpse of her in the rear view mirror. Man: Anyway. We're a bunch of alcoholic wife beaters and petty thieves from the bar next door who are full of moral indignation! We're going to lynch you! As a sort of a rite for passing guilt, if you will. they start beating Makkonen up* Makkonen: Bury me in my car, please?! Another man: This is a fascinating way of taking focus off my own flaws as a human being...which I have a lot of.

• Evil Plan: Reversed. The legimately threatening-sounding Mad Bomber of the episode has no such plan beyond getting some extra cash and drops his initial demand of half a million euros down to just 1000 euros and a bottle of booze as his credibility keeps taking hits and his lawyers turn out to be just a couple of random people who attended a law class once, while the other criminal of the episode who just beats people up for seemingly no reason has a stereotypically villain-looking brother who hatches elaborate plans to gather all the people in the world to Belgium and punch every single one of them in the face personally during the course of a little over 4 and a half years with the aid of a motorcycle and the biggest pot of free pesto ever made in an attempt to teach the entire world humility and thus bring about world peace.
  • A respectable number of other tropes get parodied in the same go:
  • Diabolical Mastermind: The villain-looking brother is a really, really bad wannabe.
  • Evil Counterpart, Worthy Opponent: The brother again, to Kyösti Pöysti. He even looks the same; or rather, he has a different look, but with similar components, including a long coat, something in his mouth (a cigarette) and a short frame. Of course, Pöysti doesn't agree with these points.

Anteroinen: It is too bad we are on different sides of the law, Pöysti. We are very much alike, you and I. Pöysti: No, we're totally different. Anteroinen: No we're not.

• • Well-Intentioned Extremist, Utopia Justifies the Means: See the spoilered part above.
  • Just Between You and Me: Where the plan is explained, of course.
• Exiled to the Couch: Subverted, then inverted in Orphaned Dogs. Repomies's wife likes dogs and is pissed at Repomies because of the dog shooting incident. Cue...

Repomies: My wife's angry! Do you know how nice it is to sleep on the couch? Pöysti: Yeah, I understand, but... Repomies: Because it is nice! Now, as a revenge, wife made me sleep in the bed next to her again and not on the couch! It's horrible, Pöysti! I want to go back to the couch where I have slept for twenty years!

• Exposition Break: Kyösti is a fan of these and they usually involve his current theory about the episode's criminal or a group of people central to it, often involving fitting visuals. Repomies has generally grown tired of them, doesn't want to hear any of them and invariably declares all of them to be "shitty" afterwards, even though most of Pöysti's theories end up being correct. Lampshaded when he initially objects to Kyösti doing it again in one of the newer episodes, but since he already began and they're already in process of being carried away by Flashback Effects, he has no choice but to go along with it.
• Expressive Hair: The ends of Repomies's mustache turn up when he's excited or happy.
• Expy: Juhani Kontiovaara is an extremely blatant expy of Lauri Karhuvaara, an actual Finnish morning talk show host, right down to his name and apperance.
  • Olavi Kemppainen is also a blantant expy of Matti Nykänen, previously a hugely successful skijumper whose life now revolves around yellow press and aiming for the new world record in total number of marriages, divorces and stabbings with the same woman. There's some notable differences though: Olavi is a hammer thrower, and while Matti "only" stabs (and in turn gets beaten up by) his wife and close relatives, Olavi instead beats up pretty much everyone else instead and seems to have singlehandedly wrecked several buildings in his hometown, blaming it on "a rough season". Also, unlike Matti, he actually mends his ways to an extent (as penance for being almost fooled into killing himself to get more media attention and killing another man by accident in process) when Repomies tells Pöysti to make him smarter because Pöysti claims Olavi's behaviour stems from being uncultured (which he accomplishes by taking Olavi to Rauno's summer cottage at his request and barricading him inside for a week until he reads and watches what Pöysti considers to be the modern classics of literature and film), the end result being that while he liked the books and films, philosophy made him doubt his existence, history made him realize that the world is in a constant flux and every tragedy that ends plants the seeds for the next one, classic literature made his realize that people are ultimately always alone in the world and classical movies estranged him from Western congeniality without offering anything else in return. He then claims he feels like bashing his head against a wall, which he then promptly does until he goes into a psychosis: Repomies then decides that he's unsuitable to live with people and drives him to the woods with Pöysti.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The Hero: Pöysti.
  • The Lancer: Repomies (despite being Pöysti's boss).
  • The Smart Guy: Neponen.
  • The Big Guy: Helga.
  • The Chick: Routalempi.
• 419 Scam: As is largely to be expected, Repomies falls victim to one of these soon after he's gotten excessive amounts of spam involving penis enhancement drugs and wristwatches (and obviously takes the latter as a sign that the spammers know he specifically is suffering from tardiness and impotence and spends a good part of the episode trying to convince the rest of the force of the opposite until Kyösti finally corrects him) and loses whatever little money he had left as a result. He gets desperate because he thinks that getting scammed repeatedly cost him his reputation and thus tries to end his days with a hand grenade, but before the fuse burns up, he realizes that everyone considers him senile to begin with and thus losing all his money is par the course for him and decides against suiciding afterall. He then throws the lit grenade into the landfill he had wandered into and manages to blow up the very same bag of cash that had ended up there as a mistake as a result of a botched robbery attempt the rest of the episode revolved around and remained unfound until now, causing it to rain money...which he promptly considers to be another scam due to it being "suspiciously easy money" and stating he won't fall for it yet again.
• Freudian Slippery Slope: Any conversation between Kontiovaara and Pete Makkonen, a man who's so obsessed with cars that he drives SUVs with a smaller SUV inside it and sells his house to buy another one when he wrecks both of them in a chase:

Makkonen: I just crashed my SUV, have you seen it? A Farina XL 505! It's the biggest and most impressive penis available in Finland. I mean, a car. Not a penis. Kontiovaara: Not a penis. I have a Volvo myself, it's a perfectly fine penis if I do say so myself. Makkonen: A car. Kontiovaara: Yes, a car. Makkonen: And not a penis. Kontiovaara: No, not a penis, of course not a penis. Makkonen: Neither of us has a penis. I mean, we both have a penis, but not as a means of transportation. A car.

and

Kontiovaara: Glad you could make it to the show. Can I join your club? Makkonen: Depends on the make of your penis. I mean your car. Kontiovaara: It's brand new, almost completely unused. I mean, the car is unused. My penis on the other hand...

• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Subverted in the episode "Salaviina", when Pöysti is getting hysterical over the lack of alcoholic drinks in the entire Finland and the knowledge he won't be able to get drunk that Friday.

Pöysti: When will it be possible again? When? Tell me! When will it be possible again! Repomies: Let go of me! Pöysti: Tell me! Repomies: I don't know! Now get a hold of yourself, Pöysti! (slap) Pöysti: Ow! You hit me. Why? Repomies: Because I can't drink either! God damn it!" (breaks down and sprawls crying on the floor)

• • Played more straight in another episode when Pöysti's emotional side is exposed via personal knowledge of crying people, which makes him emotional as well: he is about to start crying right outside the door of an elderly scam victim and asks Neponen to slap him. Parodied when the scam victim slaps him again for the second time to stop him from shouting in the hallway. He then repeats it inside her apartment before Neponen slaps more sense into him, leaving her confused about what just happened.
• Get Rich Quick Scheme: The speciality of Pauli Mutikkala, which he manages to scam loads of people into. All of them basically boil down to "attach a printer that prints stock market figures to an animal cage, let the animal in question tear the prints to shreds, pick up the shreds that are still legible afterwards and invest in those stocks". After he "loses" whatever money he managed to extort from his marks, he switches animals and makes excuses like "guinea pigsmice (actually guinea pigs) are stupid and timid and thus they're afraid of investing their money in high stocks" and "monkeys and guinea pigsmice are social animals and thus are afraid to make decisions that won't benefit the pack as a whole".
  • This is clearly a take on the 2003 WinCapita pyramid hoax in Finland.
• Gun Porn: In-universe: in a new episode, Repomies writes a novel that is a whopping three sentences long, and the third sentence is basically a painfully accurate description of the gun that the main character uses to kill himself.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: When Repomies finds out the media might be portraying him as gay, he goes into this mode. The effect is, of course, the opposite of what he'd like.
• Hidden Depths: In one episode Pöysti is revealed to have a soft spot for crying people when he knows them on a personal level thanks to Neponen's baby (which Neponen forced Pöysti to take on his lap) and in another episode Helga turns out to be not as much of a man-hater she's portrayed as when she participates in a sting operation involving an elderly Casanova and Routalempi further demonstrates that even his mild-manneredness has a breaking point when an Audi driver purposefully crashes through his house when Routalempi wouldn't make a police report of his neighbour badmouthing his car online and when he keeps showing up to the police station with the same demands and new excuses. He also ate the raisins off Routalempi's buns and claimed that life's not "fascinating at all". The string of reveals is lampshaded by Repomies shouting "what the hell is going on in my police station!" several times during the episode and Helga stating how "other characters are allowed have surprising depths too."
  • • The above points about Helga and Routalempi were foreshadowed in a previous episode when Routalempi decided he's gotten tired of being boring and instead of alerting someone else to chase a speeder, he confiscates a dirtbike and starts chasing him down with it with Helga sitting behind him.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Demonstrated by Pöysti when he asks one of the Karhuryhmä team members present at Puurtinen's arrest to lend him his rifle and tell what Call of Duty rifle it's the closest to and what perks it'd have. He then carefully takes aim...and manages to hit a bird sitting on a branch above instead of Puurtinen, which causes Routalempi who was protecting him to run after the feather that flew off the bird Pöysti shot, similarily to what he was doing earlier in the episode with another feather out of better things to do.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: In episode Bootleg Liquor, when the whole police station is running away from angry crowd, Repomies falls over, Pöysti goes back for him but he tells Pöysti to leave him behind, only to change his mind in a second:

Repomies: Go, leave me! Pöysti: Okay. (runs away) Repomies: Don't leave me!! Pöysti: You missed your chance!

• If You Call Before Midnight Tonight: Parodied. The presenter in an unseen informercial instead says "If you act fast, you might trip and hurt yourself, so please act at normal speed."
• In a World: Parodied: after his long-planned attempt to seduce a woman failing miserably drives Pöysti to drink, he ends up watching a new movie on a day off, but thanks to the endless stream of trailers before it, he ends up with the generic trailer voice narrating his life inside his head, much like Phil Collins-hangover described below: when it runs out of things to narrate when Pöysti sits on a couch without doing anything to make it shut up, it starts to rattle off a list of buttons on his TV remote instead.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: In the episode "For And Against".

The teenage Internet troll's father: You have the wrong man. I don't even know how to start Windows... Pöysti: No wonder. That's why it's called Windows. Hehe. wind blows in fallen leaves through the open window* Pöysti: I've got to quit with this Windows-humor.

• Inkblot Test: Seen on the wall when Pöysti visits several psychiatrists, as is to be expected. Each one of them has a more-than-vague resemblance to something obscene.
  • Also used by Mutikkala as a distraction when his marks finally catch on to his scam and aren't happy with his excuses anymore: he tells them that it's the solution to his awkward situation and that "it might not have anything to do with stock exchange, but while you're watching it very carefully and wondering if it's an elephant vase or a picture of your mother while she was young, I'll sneak the hell out of here and move to a tropical beach after changing my name. Adios friends, exile beckons!"
• Insane Troll Logic: Frequently employed by most characters in the show (and often lampshaded: when questioned about their current brand of ITL, their replies generally consist of "With logic!" and "With a very delusional person's logic!"): possibly the best example comes from the very first episode, when a gang of smugglers wants to take revenge on one of their members who's agreed to snitch on them. They decide to jump into the ocean wearing cement boots, on the logic that this'll make the snitch's life a "living hell, because he'll spend the rest of his life waiting for a revenge that never comes".
  • The way Repomies ends up picking Pöysti as his successor is a notable example of this as well: first he goes up to Routalempi and states that while he's been loyal and a hard worker for many years, he can't be the new chief because he's too spineless. (Routalempi: "Thank you...and I apologize." Repomies: "Apologize...a spineless man, apologizing for nothing"). He then walks up to Helga and states that while she's emotionless and always professional, he can't pick her either because she's a female and he's too concerned over the possibility that she might "go hysterical while you're on the rag". (Helga: "In addition to being in conflict with itself, the previous statement is also highly offensive, but I will not complain about it!") Following up by walking up to Neponen, he then states that while he's a great police officer, the most competent one out of them, Only Sane Man and that while his nomination would be otherwise a foregone conclusion, his fatal flaw is that he places far too much trust on Pöysti and a man who has any respect for Pöysti cannot possibly be the new chief. Finally, he walks up to Pöysti and states that he's irrational, easily angered, lazy and has next to no respect for the police force or their rules on a general level, but because he's the last one standing in the line and everyone else "were just as shitty", he has no other option than to make Pöysti the new chief.
• Interactive Narrator: The newest variation of Pöysti's hangover voices, this one being the result of listening to a nature documentary about bullfrogs, who then naturally switches over to narrating Pöysti's life in a similiar manner. He's far more persistent than the other varieties (mostly since nature documentaries take such a long time to make), and after half a year of putting up with him, Pöysti returns to where his current nemesis has fled to in an attempt to get rid of the voice via defeating the said nemesis and is about to give up...when the narrator decides to tell the exact address where the criminal had hidden his loot.
  • The above is foreshadowed to a degree when the narrator dispenses similiar pieces of trivia to Pöysti about things he wouldn't have known about on his own (Repomies' unique shape of skull and Routalempi's endless blabbering), although the way they mock the subjects and involve information Pöysti most likely already knew imply that the narrator is just repeating Pöysti's own opinions.
    • There's also a degree of Fridge Brilliance to the whole sudden reveal at the end in the form of another nature documentary photographer voicing his complaints to Kontiovaara early on in the episode how he got sick and tired of the animals not doing anything interesting until he gets a permission from his producers to stage a fake ending where the koalas he's been observing are suddenly eaten by sharks.
• It's Always Spring: Inverted: it's always autumn. Lampshaded several times by Kyösti: he ends one of his theories with "people are miserable, and it's an eternal autumn", and has the following exchange with Laakkonen, a depressed man who keeps breaking things:

Kyösti: Cheer up! It's a new day tomorrow! Laakkonen: No it isn't! Kyösti: Yes it is! 5th of September! Laakkonen: Shaddap!

• Jurisdiction Friction: Subverted: soon after Pöysti and Neponen arrive on the scene of a large-scale diamond heist, the Supo do so as well. They tell the police to leave the case to them, which Pöysti is actually happy for despite his usual complaints about not getting any work that matches his talents since he's depressed and doesn't feel like working in the slightest at the moment. Also parodied in the sense that the Supo representative tells them to stop arguing about jurisdictions even though Pöysti is happy about them taking over as well as Repomies later complaining to Pöysti how the police should always argue about jurisdictions with their superiors, charge in alone and take down the bad guys just like John McClane.
• May-December Romance: One of the episodes revolves around this when Pöysti falls for an elderly woman, who is the complete opposite of Repomies and tells interesting stories about her wild youth, has a sense of humor and gives Pöysti free cake and booze. Naturally, he ultimately loses out to Repomies, both because the situation is ultimately pretty awkward for them and also because she feels old when telling her stories to Pöysti, while Repomies' endless droning about his youth occasionally makes her feel young.
• Meaningful Name: Hyvärinen mentioned above: his first name is pretty much (an obscure) Finnish version of Dick.
• Metaphorgotten: Taken to the extreme level with Repomies' lines:

Repomies: And don't think about my wife naked; craving for her, secretly; in your secret dreams playing in her garden of love, tasting the apples of love. Get out of the garden – it's my garden! My apples; leave my apples alone: later we'll make apple jelly and thickly spread it on a toast.

• • One of Neponen's attempts to get Pöysti to give up his argument with Repomies described above (which actually works) more or less qualifies as this:

Neponen: If you don't give up and go now, you'll be standing outside in the freezing rain until you lose all of your toes. And you'll fall forward. And hit your face.

• Minor Injury Overreaction: A side plot in one of the early episodes: Pöysti spots a mole on his arm, freaks out and visits several doctors during work hours, which also annoys Repomies. Subverted to a degree in that his exact state of distress varies wildly depending on the type of doctor diagnoses him even though most of them claim it to be harmless: a hospital physician leaves him worried because he doesn't take Pöysti seriously as he's apparently shown the exact same mole to him twice, another one who says it's extremely serious just causes Pöysti to think there's nothing to worry about since he didn't come across as competent to him, the doctor at the private clinic does manage to calm his nerves since Pöysti thinks he's being paid to be professional and a countryside doctor further makes him feel at ease since he comes off as being "down to earth" to Pöysti. The situation is ultimately resolved when he shows the mole to a group of illegal immigrant Chinese who the police was chasing after, who then proceed to panic over it, fetch some of what Pöysti believes to be basil and rub it on his mole, causing it to fall off immediately.
  • Another episode takes a turn for Major Injury Underreaction instead: after the speeder Makkonen runs over Pöysti, it causes a previously hidden teratoma to pop up and appear on his shoulder. While he's initially freaked out, he instead calms down when he finds out the truth, starts treating the lump as an actual long-lost brother and won't have it removed even when it gets badly infected and threathens his life. The situation is resolved when he ends up being run over by Makkonen again, which tears off the teratoma, which Pöysti then instantly claims he doesn't miss one bit.
• Misplaced Wildlife: In an episode when Repomies is shown increased concern of dying without being remembered afterwards, Pöysti interrupts one of his rants about it with "Relax, you're still in good shape!". Cue Rule of Funny taking effect when Repomies points out the vulture hopping around behind him, pointing out that none of them live in Finland and then stating how his "stench of death has attracted them all the way from America!"
  • See the entry for Weirdness Censor below for a more literal example.
• Moral Dilemma: Repomies is put into one when a corrupt businessman named Tauno Muikku bribes him with a sailboat that he claims he got him to honor his nameday to make him stop investigating his other bribery allegations, which if proven true, would mean the building permit for his upcoming gigantic mall would be cancelled. He then spends 3 days sailing with Routalempi on his new boat trying to decide whether or not to accept it before ultimately crashing it into a rock, allowing him to easily dismiss its value as a bribe and resume his investigations with a clear conscience. But unfortunately for Repomies, the delay enabled the building permit to pass as well as allowing Muikku and his associates to destroy any evidence on their corruption. Repomies not giving up easily, the following exchange takes place:

Repomies: Goddamnit! Can I keep the boat regardless? Muikku: Nope, I'm gonna take it back. Repomies: Good, I didn't want it anyway, I managed to wreck it! Muikku: In that case, you're gonna pay the repairs! Repomies: GODDAAAMNIT! What a sly bastard! Scamming me that easily! Men like you keep this country running! Great fraud! Whew! Can I have another boat since I have a birthday tomorrow? Muikku: Guess what, no, you can't have one. Repomies: Wow! What a great player! Can I shake your hand? Muikku: Sure, if you pay me 100 euros. Repomies: Phew, what a great deal! You got it!

• Moral Guardians: A very specific example involving a repeat offender called Raine Makkula, who goes on a lyric-inspired rampage whenever he ends up listening the musician Andy Suonsilmä's songs (ie. for example Suonsilmä gets patriotic thanks to Finland winning the hockey world championship in 1995 and releases a Winter War-themed album, which causes Raine to burn down the outhouse of the Russian embassy and assault his neighbour's Siberian Husky because he thinks the dog is a communist) and thus Pöysti and co. attempt to stop him from listening Andy's new album and confiscate the ones he already owns. He chases them out before they manage to do either and thus the inevitable happens. However, since practically everyone identifies with Andy's lyrics and thus symphatizes with Raine's plight, they demand him to be set free (even though he personally insists on going to jail and wanting longer sentences) with Andy himself making an surprise appearance thanks to Kontiovaara. The following then takes place:

Andy: Raine, try to stay out of trouble. Raine: Stop making those albums then! Andy: You mean my music causes your fits of rage? Raine: That's how I've figured it, yeah. Andy: Dear people! To carry the responsibility for the peace of our society, I've decided I won't make any more music until its effects on the quantity of violent crimes have been researched! *applause* Raine: Don't take my music away from me, goddamnit! *punches Andy and Helga, is taken down by 2 other policemen*

• Moving the Goalposts: Done by Repomies to Pöysti when he's about to go on a vacation and Repomies' relatives end up being somehow involved with the newly legalized bordel and he tells Pöysti he can't go on his vacation until each one of them is dealt with in turn. To be fair, he's not doing it entirely to abuse his power, but whenever Pöysti deals with one of them, another one of Repomies' relatives pops up to be forced into working there, signs up to work there voluntarily or just goes to visit as a customer.
• Murder Simulator: The everpresent game Pöysti and Neponen play, giving out missions like "Johnson, the United Nations secretary is corrupt. Kill him and his family." later followed by "...and Johnson, kill the secretary's pets too. They may have learned from their master." It also doesn't seem to punish the players when they blast their way through what is implied to be a Stealth-Based Mission, only chastising them with a "Johnson, you killed everybody! Now cover it up, you sick bastard, you!"
  • Lampshaded by Pöysti when Johnson's superior tells him to waterboard someone not to interrogate them because of a crime they've committed, but because he just wants to know if they'd happen to know anything in general people might want to know like how to lead a happy life:

Pöysti: Is it just me, or have we moved to a more cynical direction from Super Mario?

• Mushroom Samba: More or less an entire episode is devoted to this, where it manifests in what Pöysti calls "Phil Collins-hangover": the specifics being that the combination of an extremely annoying person and an extreme hangover causes Pöysti to see everyone with the head of the said annoying person, and the person who initially triggered this was, you guessed it, Phil Collins.
• My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: Pöysti claimed to have experienced this when he was ran over by a speeder: he thought it was a "bad movie, I'd give 2 stars at most, and it had hardly any DVD extras"
  • Shown in more detail when Routalempi is about to be shot by Puurtinen: conviniently enough, the last segment of his flashback reminds him that Puurtinen has clapper lights in every room of his house, which helps him escape.
• Mystery of the Week: Although sometimes it's less mystery and more "annoying petty criminal of the week" or "hilariously absurd problem of the week".
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead / Dead Artists Are Better: Stretched to a breaking point in a new episode: a musician is announced to be dead and everyone save for Pöysti and the artist's brother (which naturally ends up with both of them getting in trouble) fondly reminisce his past accomplishments, even though nobody can remember any of his songs beyond his single hit and bought any of his records, and they probably wouldn't remember that one either if it wasn't being played on the radio. In fact, when it turns out that he faked his own death in a desperate attempt to make people remember him and buy at least SOME of his records so he wouldn't have to live in poverty, he's immediately labeled as a self-absorbed dickhead who deserves to be forgotten immediately.
• No Medication for Me: Repomies tries this once in an early episode, even though being medicated doesn't have any drawbacks in his case: he just wants to find out what ultimately happens if he just keeps on rambling uninhibited. Cue Repomies jumping on his desk and his closet while rambling about monkeys and gorillas and their understanding of theory and practice and space-time continuum before he finally runs out of steam and ends up lying on his couch while holding his aching head and telling himself to calm down.
  • Also the easy rationale for why he later has to retire for the space of one episode; he gets too weird, even by earlier standards, when he decides not to take his medication at all any more.
• No, You Hang Up First: During one of the very few successful relationships Kyösti has.
• Only Six Faces: Applies to most of the minor characters to varying extent: one character might end up being a member of a lynching mob in one episode and an obsessed fan of a female celebrity in another, complete with a different voice as well.
• Overly Long Gag: In an episode involving piracy, Pöysti admits he has a "HD or 2" full of downloaded movies and asks Neponen to drop him off at his appartment so he can get rid of them. He then brings out a lapful of HDs and starts tossing them into a trashbin, goes back, fetches another cardboardful of them, tosses them individually as well and finishes off by hauling out a wheelbarrowful of them.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Parodied when Routalempi manages to escape The Don Puurtinen, only to run right into him outside: he then angrily muses "This is one concept I'll never be able to understand...I mean how, you were just...you couldn't have possibly...damnit."
• Pac-Man Fever: The everpresent game is only ever played by rapidly mashing on the buttons with no stick or pad input. Then again, considering that the characters can use their cellphones by holding them in their hands, making varying facial expressions and getting the phones to push the buttons by themselves judging from the constant beeping noises, maybe this is more of a case of Invisible Anatomy.
  • Although for the credit of the makers of the show, the videogame sounds are entirely realistic and plausible.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When Helga and Routalempi are shadowing the bank robber Salonius, they have a piece of cardboard that reads "Civilian" covering the text "Police" in their police car.
• Parody Episode: The episode "25", an obvious PE of 24, right down to gratutious lampshading of being able to travel between locations several miles apart within several seconds, random minor characters having all the right clues, and an overly-violent guest interogator called Jack.
• Playing Sick: Kärsämäki abuses this to con varying types of social welfare: he claims he has arthritis, dust allergy, nickel phobia, lactose terror, ebola, severe depression and that one of his eyes is hard of hearing.
  • After that he asks if they have any jobs left. Before the receptionist can answer he replies "No? Well golly gee, that's a darn shame, I guess I'm still unemployed, better keep that welfare coming!".
• Placebotinum Effect: A reverse version of this takes place in an episode where all the liquor stores in Finland end up being closed due to the threat of poisoned booze: A researcher theorizes that the people of Finland are so used to being drunk at Friday nights that they'll attain a state resembling drunkedness at that time even if they hadn't drank any booze. Not even the researcher himself believes in it, but miraculously enough, it actually does happen at a critical moment and manages to quell the riotting masses to great effect, complete with an epic slow motion pan around the city with people stumbling around grinning drunkenly and pissing on things with Also Sprach Zarathustra playing in the background. Unfortunately the effect only lasts for a few minutes before everyone becomes instantly sober again and resumes their riotting.
• Planet of Steves / Inexplicably Identical Individuals: The Saksalas are an example of this. They all look identical, more or less wear the same kind of clothing, work in an office job and sound the same: this is lampshaded first by Repomies wondering out loud how many Saksalas there are and then later when one of them representing the record industry visits the police station due to the recent events regarding the piracy case in the episode, he's ignored completely and the characters instead start talking about Saksalas in general, the sightings of which they've turned into their own Collectible Card Game.
• Putting on My Thinking Cap: Reversed. It's called the Stupidity Association Method, and it's instead used to come up with the stupidest possible Epileptic Trees theories in situations where common sense and thinking logically fails. It more or less involves putting on a plastic bag on one's head and getting punched in the stomach/hit in the head, presumably to cause minor asphyxiation and make oneself much stupider temporarily.
• Pyromaniac: The main theme of one of the new episodes. After talking to a pyromaniac who's busy watching his kitchen burn, a pyrophiliac whose bed is on fire and who wishes to share the details of his upcoming hot night of lovemaking the next day and another pyromaniac who manages to keep setting everyone close to him on fire the moment they turn their eyes away from him despite being handcuffed and vehemently denies all of it before relenting right away, Kyösti catches main culprit (who was doing it mainly since his annoying neighbours kept hounding him endlessly about his smoking even though he tried his best to please them about it and they even considered his act of going to the nearby woods to smoke as him "purposefully fucking with them", which resulted in them beating him up) halfway through the episode but the fires just keep on spreading. Considering Repomies met a female pyromaniac investigator he instantly falls for in the beginning of the episode, it's not hard to guess the reason. In case you really can't guess, he's the one who kept setting things on fire from that point onwards while also making a clumsy attempt at trying to make them form a pattern of the investigator's face if viewed from a map.
• Rapid-Fire Comedy: A big part of the series' humour is the fast dialogue.
• Recurring Extra: A pair of cops, one short and fat and another tall and skinny. They're mostly present when the situation calls for more cops than the main cast, either because of a siege situation or just to keep the criminal apprehended while the rest of the cast talks to them. They're not named and never have any dialogue and the most emotion they convey is an occasional frustrated glance.
• Red Scare: The Murder Simulator game Pöysti plays tells him to kill President Obama "because he's a socialist". It proceeds to say, in an awkward voice, that it's absolutely not because Obama's African-American. Nope. It's because of socialism. Pöysti doesn't feel like playing the game any further from that point onward either, stating he feels his expectations for Obama's season, despite being unrealistic, are still high.
• Refuge in Audacity / Crosses the Line Twice: One of the episodes involves people promoting a new extreme diet involving eating feces, which catches on to a major degree and ultimately food companies become interested enough to start manufacturing it themselves, while also adding preservatives to it.
• Reluctant Retiree: Repomies during the previously described episode where he was deemed too senile to run the station anymore, mostly because he can't think of anything else he'd rather be doing with his time and all attempts to try out new things fail for various reasons (such as being chased off of a bingo table due to not having enough "retirement cred" at that point and getting frustrated with another old woman who kept yelling "bingo!" during every single number and screaming how she was being robbed or murdered whenever Repomies tried to correct her on the rules).
• Retirony: Nikander from the very first episode is a subject of this: he was killed on his last day of work from the stray bullets fired by Routalempi and Helga. Since Pöysti is his new replacement, his death starts off the entire story of the series.
• Rousing Speech: In "Legal Brothel" when Seppänen (later revealed to be Repomies' brother-in-law) arguments in a bar why they should go and make love to their male friends who have been employed in the brothel:

Gentlemen, platonically dear friends. Many of our friends from this bar have been employed in Pirinen's brothel. Now backdoor boys are standing in the queue to have fun on them. This must be prevented.-- We have no other option than to do to our friends what they would, in a similar situation, do to us. -- (march music starts to play) We have to go there and make love to them in a respectful and beautiful way, until the gays grow tired of queuing. So that no gay has time to get his turn. And to repeat the same thing tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. And the day after that until they get fed up and our friends are left in peace. Alright, I know this may sound raunchy. But think of this... not as much as homosexuality between friends but the Winter War. Where the Russians have been switched to gays and shooting is a bit different.

• Running Gag: Several, including but not limited to:
  • The slides, as described above. In addition to accidentally making Repomies' wife the star of them, people often tend to screw up in less disturbing ways with them, such as Pöysti using too many zeroes when describing the losses of underground economy, apparently noticing it too late and crossing them out.
  • Whenever one of the main characters appears in picture form in Kontiovaara's show, they're always doing something embarassing, like screaming with a crazed expression (Repomies), pissing against a tree or holding a bottle of beer (Pöysti).
  • The movie Amelie often ends up working its way into Pöysti's rants as one of the things he can't stand whenever he's out of a date. Another man also states at one point that watching it countless times with his girlfriend is one of the numerous sacrifices he had to make to ultimately make his girlfriend happy.
  • Pöysti never remembers Neponen's first name, which annoys him greatly, mostly because he's the only one who has any respect for Pöysti. Parodied further when Pöysti calls him Brutus in one of the new episodes for not wanting to help him fix one of Pöysti's own screwups, which he also takes offense of.
• Ruritania: Albania. It's often used as at catch-all comparision point to Finland whenever someone feels they've been wronged in a way where the country itself is the reason for it. Examples include wasting all of their money on an unprofitable business venture (Laakkonen) or media being blamed on violence (Kontiovaara).
  • Inverted when Makkonen visits Kontiovaara's show: they instead come to the conclusion that Finland isn't enough like Albania since "Albania has no speed limits".
• Sanity Ball: Bounced around something fierce. Neponen is usually the most rational one, but he's also the only one besides Pöysti himself who thinks Pöysti is a genius. Pöysti may be the sanest one in turn when cynicism is called for in the face of something stupid that people find compelling. Repomies likes to point out Pöysti's problems and denials to the point that he sometimes has to admit them, only to immediately throw the ball at his head and start talking complete nonsense. Routalempi is usually shown as pretty useless and clueless, but he's also probably the happiest person around in contrast to everyone else's attitude problems. And so on.
• Sarcastic Confession: When Pöysti is told the information about his current nemesis he couldn't have found on his own via a narrator in his head that lead to his arrest, the following takes place:

Jusu: Absolutely wonderful job, my arch nemesis Pöysti. I admit it, that's exactly where the loot is. But before we go, do me a favor and tell me what kind of an ingenious method you used to figure out my perfect plan? Pöysti: Well, let's just say that I got completely shitfaced and a voice in my head told me where it is. Jusu: Ah, Pöysti's famous brand of modest sarcasm. So wonderful.

• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: More or less the main concept behind an episode: Repomies sends the force after Helga's aging father after he's been bragging about posessing tons of weapons without a license, but mostly because he wants him to feel important even though Repomies knows he doesn't possess any causing him to barricade himself inside his home along with several of his friends, old flames and army buddies and call more to his aid as the situation progresses. The situation is ultimately resolved when Kyösti tells them that Kontiovaara is present at the location because Routalempi leaked information about the case to him and is willing to take suggestions on what should be shown on TV, give out autographs and touch their warts: they then proceed to surround Kontiovaara and force him to flee on top of his car, complaining about how the lady in a detergent commercial always uses the same shirt ("because they don't reshoot commercials every time they show them"), pestering him about tasting his lunch ("fine, eat it then" "this tastes like shit...human shit") and insisting that the channel's weather girl is a whore.
  • Also a part of another episode, where the criminal in question alternately encourages and discourages the elderly to act like this via his lectures in an overelaborate scheme to kidnap them to his farm for what initially seems like cheap labor, but is later revealed to be for the sole reason of making them drink different brands of coffee, writing down their reactions and selling them over to the coffee companies for big bucks: allegedly the elderly never answer any polls because they all share the paranoia of "being sent to Siberia".
• Self-Made Man: What the businessmen that keep getting suckered by the scammer Pauli Mutikkala consider themselves to be according to one of Pöysti's theories: they don't care as much about losing their cash as they do about not coming off as smart and business-savvy and thus refuse to report him to the police because that'd mean they'd admit they would've made an error in judgment, instead of being able to cling on to the vain hope that the money they gave the scammer would eventually turn out profit. Even the previously mentioned victim dressed up in Bankruptcy Barrel agrees to instantly cancel his report when Pauli claims he's come a long way since the previous scam (which involved wombats fighting over Sunday newspaper's stock market exchange pages) if Pauli accepts him into his new system.
• Sexy Secretary: In the second episode, Repomies's cell phone suddenly rings and a sensual woman's voice says: "Time to take your meds". Repomies comments this with: "My secretary's taking care of me". The secretary has never been seen or referred to ever again, though, so apparently the writers decided to drop the character.
• Shout-Out: In addition to the ones linked elsewhere on this page, here's a good number of more minor ones:
  • The leader of the bank robbers in an early episode is referred to as Jaska Jokunen, the Finnish name for Charlie Brown.
  • A teenaged internet Troll uses the alias TeenageMutantNinjaHitler95 and has a poster of Lordi hanging on his wall.
    • One of Pöysti's old friends has a poster for A Clockwork Orange on his wall as well.
  • One of the things Pöysti makes the other characters do when he's temporarily made the new police chief is and abusing his power is making them say "Purple monkey dishwasher" in Finnish, a reference to the end result of a "broken telephone" game in Simpsons.
  • When Repomies accidentally kicks a chair into a suspect's head as described below, he apologizes and asks if he wants some Jaffa: instead of it being a nonsensical reference to Stargate (which would make sense on some level considering this is Repomies we're talking about), it's referring to the unproven urban legend about a Finnish orange lemonade called Jaffa being able to relieve stomach pain...which wouldn't help much even if it were true, considering the suspect was hit in the head.
    • Jack Jofa's last name is a reference to Jack Bauer's last name, which he is an obvious parody of: both Jofa and Bauer are manufacturers of sporting equipment.
  • In the episode where Pöysti had to kick beggars and street performers out of the Esplanade Park, he asks a street performer to play the guitar chords of "Paranoid" while Pöysti sang along.
  • In a new episode, Repomies blabbers about "Rauno's juice party ending nastily when the Black Angel takes him". This is a reference to the well-known (inside Finland, that is) Finnish musician Tuomari Nurmio and his song Musta enkeli ("Black Angel").
  • Also from the same episode:

Pöysti: Pekka, with all due respect, my age crisis is worse. It's worse than anyone's! Well, maybe excluding Benjamin Button.

• • In season 3, episode 7, Pöysti mocks bank robbers for their lack of preparation and makes a reference to Ocean's Eleven while doing so.
  • In one of the new episodes, Pöysti complains about the "newest Bond movie" to the ticket vendor of the movie theatre. The said vendor looks and sounds a lot like the Squeaky Voiced Teen in The Simpsons and is also working at the same job SVT's been seen in.
  • One of Kontiovaara's greetings is "Long time no logo", referring to the well-known anti-branding book published in 2000.
  • The scennario involving Salonius fooling the Pasila policemen into digging through his forest to find nonexistent loot just so that he can easily get his field ploughed through in the process is more or less identical to the one in a well-known joke involving a woman whose letter to her husband who's accused of robbery in jail involves her lamenting over how her field needs to be ploughed but she doesn't have the strenght for it, to which the husband replies that she should leave the field alone since that's where he hid his loot, knowing that the wardens read his letters.
  • The entrance of the main building of Finnish National Association Of Football is guarded by a pair of stormtroopers.
    • When Pöysti meets a group of prostitutes in the same episode with one of them acting as a spokesperson and the rest of them just agreeing what she says with an exclamation of "Ni!" (short Finnish form of "Yeah!"), he collectively calls them "The whores who say Ni!" when he tells them to enter the police van.
  • One of Pöysti's Dream Sequences is a blantant reference to Casablanca.
  • Episode "Non, je ne regrette rien" is an episode-long Shout-Out to Inception and films of M. Night Shyamalan, starting with Repomies having a four-fold Dream Within a Dream, continues with him thinking he's a delusional dead man thinking he's alive and and talking to houseplants, and concludes with a Mandatory Twist Ending ( It Was actually Pöysti's All Just a Dream, as suggested earlier in the episode. Also in the same episode: a Straw Critic by the name of Peter von Scnabb with a passing resemblance to Roger Ebert.
• Side Effects Include: When Repomies keeps switching medication, one of the noticeable side effects is that he forgets instantly why he was yelling at Pöysti once he takes few of the said pills and when Pöysti reminds him what he was just talking about, Repomies starts praising what a good job he's doing. Another thankfully unseen effect is mentioned when Repomies states he's bought cheap bootleg drugs from Estonia and continues to mention how "they were much cheaper and work just as well as the normal kind, although as a side effect, I grew breasts...on my back".
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: It's probably possible to go further towards the cynical end than this, but that doesn't happen often. Summary: Nobody's life goes anywhere, though they're usually in denial about it, almost anything anyone does is a meaningless waste of time, and Finland is full of self-pitying, violent alcoholics.
• So Bad It's Good: In-universe; Kyösti goes on at length about this trope during one of his many failed dates: it mostly involves his interest towards "shitty B-movies" such as Plan 9 from Outer Space and trying to make microwave bacon-chocolate-tofuweiner-marmelade-risotto his friend got him from Japan for himself and his current girlfriend for dinner just because the concept of it is So Bad It's Good.
• Sorry, I'm Gay: The mayor of Kemppainen's hometown had to resort to this (mostly because of Pöysti's suggestion about it being the best option) when Kemppainen took offense to the fact that he happened to know where his wife was, immediately assuming he was stalking her and having sex with her and then further took offense since he assumed the mayor thought she was ugly when he kept denying that he wanted anything to do with her.
• Stalker Shrine: More or less the entire house of the stalker described below is filled with pictures of whoever he's currently obsessed with. He also forbids anyone else to touch any of the said pictures, claiming they're alive and has a nasty habit of creating things like a replica of Princess Diana's deathmask, a bust of Bill Cosby and a boquet of artificial flowers...out of his own boogers, ear wax and backhair and dandruff, respectively.
• Stalker with a Crush: One episode has the Pasila policemen going after one of these named Sami Raunio, who is so delusional that he takes specific articles of clothing as signs that he and his target were meant for each other. (This is actually something like Truth in Television, but probably Flanderized here.) Their method of dealing with him involves letting the stalker move in with his targets and telling the targets to act as unglamorous as possible. This only proves necessary for the first target though, as Juhani dispels his illusions with a simple greeting and Kyösti himself makes him lose interest by being his own uncaring self and thus not caring about the stalker being in his home beyond the initial surprise at his presense, causing the stalker to stop stalking him because there's no challenge in it.
• Take a Number: The book author Unto Vilske in one of the new episodes says this to Pöysti both when he wants to thank Unto for changing his worldview for the better with his book and when he expresses disappointment on how little he cares about his readers. Both times around it's just not a phrase: he actually has a queue system set up both inside and outside of his house for both of such purposes.
• Tempting Fate: When Repomies chastises Pöysti for accidentally telling Routalempi to shoot the dog in Orphaned Dogs.

Repomies: They [The animal rights activists] will make our lives a hell when they hear about this! Pöysti: Oh, nonsense. Besides, how would they ever get to hear of this? (switches on the TV) Kontiovaara on TV: Good morning. Last night there was a siege situation in Jakomäki. Casualties were avoided, but unfortunately the family dog died when the police rushed in. Ah, goddamnit, we here on morning TV are absolutely broken about this.

• Talking to Himself: The regular voice cast only contains four actors, so collisions happen. In particular, all the female roles are voiced by a single woman. There are some guest voices but they're mostly an exception.
• The Alcoholic: Thanks to his efforts to get the hangover-induced movie trailer voice inside his head to shut up by taking a shot of booze every hour since he thinks he'll go insane if he has to put up with it until it his hangover passes, Pöysti ends up getting fired again when he keeps doing it right in front of Repomies. However, once Repomies realizes that this technically makes him an alcoholic (even though Pöysti only did it due to the circumstances), he shows unending sympathy toward Pöysti for having such a manly problem and gets a group of criminals to surrender and the girl Pöysti had currently fallen for to first date him and then quickly dump him by exaggerating about his situation to outsiders.
• The Coconut Effect: In a recent episode, when money starts raining from the sky, all the notes are green even though the euro bank notes have a wide range of colors. Also a case of Eagleland Osmosis.
  • To be fair, the robbery was stated to have taken place 8 years ago, which would mean the money in question was minted somewhere between 2001-2003, making it possible that they were 100 markka bills (which were indeed green and overall very common) as they weren't yielded until 2002.
• The Don: Parodied with Lasse "The Darkness" Puurtinen, who hires the recently-fired Routalempi to be his new right-hand man for saving his new restaurant's opening with a Swiss army knife he got as a going-away present. He keeps telling Routalempi how he doesn't tolerate failure and how he has few people who he can trust despite spelling out the Fridge Logic associated with his rash and impulsive actions in the same sentence.
• The Faceless: Lampshaded in an episode where everyone gets mad at Pöysti for not feigning interest towards the dead musican described above: as he's walking towards his car in a parking garage, a shadowed man in a Conspicuous Trenchcoat starts following him, scaring him and causing him to lose his car keys in a sewer grate. Still shadowed thanks to his car's headlights, the man then tosses a card to Pöysti with an address on it and tells him to be there tomorrow, but as he starts to leave, he awkwardly asks Pöysti to turn away when he enters his car since his indoor light would reveal his face and he wants to remain mysterious even though Pöysti'll see him the next day anyway.
• The Fundamentalist: One of the new episodes revolves around one who's been kicked out of normal Christian church for wanting to blindly follow the Old Testament and not wanting to wed anyone ("there's "homo" in homo sapiens as well!") and who's set up his own sect. While he's mostly portrayed as being stereotypical and being unable to give valid reasons for the generic questions (such as "in addition to not tolerating homosexuals, the Old Testament also says that all adulterers must be stoned, so why aren't you doing that as well", especially since the said founder of the sect himself has had his previous wife take a divorce from him since he was seen flirting with a cashier...which he obviously explains away by stating "I was weak and fell for the Devil's temptation"), Pöysti also gives them minor credit for actually manning up and setting up their own sect instead of just giving weak denials and apologizing endlessly about issues like homosexual marriage, like the less-annoying modern Christians in the episode do.
• The Fun in Funeral: The funeral of Nikander mentioned above. Repomies speculates how happy Nikander must've been to have been killed on his last day of work "with no days wasted", how lucky he must've been for not dying on spot and instead being given ample time to "reminisce the highlights of his life on his way to the hospital" and how he most likely took great solace in the fact that "he wasn't shot by a dirty junkie or a crazed madman, but two of his fellow officers he knew and trusted". He then mentions how Nikander will be laid rest to the "bosom of the Earth" and then starts rambling about bosoms, Helga states she's sorry shooting him by accident but then states "if you had shot us by accident, we'd be here instead, that's how life goes", and Pöysti being late, he starts his speech via a cellphone speakerphone.
• The Ghost: Repomies' wife: this is mostly a relief to the audience, as she is often described as hideously ugly and to the misfortune of the other characters, she often ends up being shown naked on holiday slides due to Repomies' consistent inability to keep his slides in order when holding speeches to the rest of the force.
• The Mole: Pöysti signs up to be one in a prison, which ends up working out nicely for him despite his small stature, pacifier and high-pitched voice, mostly because he can come up with colorful threats for everyone who gets in his way, his overpowering ego and the theory that "if a guy much smaller than you threathens you in an overelaborate way, they must have an ace up their sleeve." He also meets another mole in the prison, which he tells his identity to and tells him to go along with his plan when he's forced to smash his hand with a hammer, but since the mole is a slave of his habits, he rats Pöysti out almost immediately, getting both of them in trouble.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch: After witnessing what he deems to be great argument where a man and a woman argue whether it's ethical to send Finnish children to the streets Sao Paolo so they can learn to play football better and the woman asks why they can't send them to France as well to make them into great mimes and artists which the man agrees with, Kontiovaara excitedly voices his approval and follows up with "This is daytime television, bitches!".
• Torture Always Works, Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Initially parodied, then played straight, then finally subverted: Repomies starts off with just kicking the initial suspect's shins, stating that he isn't sadistic enough to do anything worse, and when he kicks the chair out of frustration and it rebounds off a wall into the suspect, he starts apologizing profusely. After the initial suspect is found to be not guilty and the guilty suspect is brought in, Repomies attempts the shin-kicking method again and gets an address out of him, at which point Pöysti points out that he just made up the said information just to make Repomies stop. When Repomies doesn't believe him, he then demonstrates by making up yet another address and starts beating the suspect's head in with a chair until he agrees that his address is the correct one. When the situation switches over to Jack Bauer Jofa Interrogation Technique, he threathens to move on to powertools and frozen beavers, which seems to visibly shake the suspect, but before he can spill any actual info, his lawyer barges in and anesthetizes him to the point that he's immune to all and any pain. With Jack's methods rendered useless, Pöysti accidentally talks the criminal into agreeing to spill his guts if Jack and Repomies have sex: as he says, "the government has fucked me up the ass, and now I want to see the government being fucked up the ass!". Before any sex takes place though, the criminal is disgusted enough to just spill the guts anyway...but before he does, Routalempi manages to save the day anyway.
• The Tropeless Tale: Pöysti's description of what his novel is going to be like consists almost entirely of negations of both sides of just about every axis of description. Naturally, it doesn't amount to anything.
• Troubled Fetal Position: Kyösti when in Phil Collins hangover.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: In-universe: Embodied in Reetta Ruusu, whose idea of interpretive dance consists of titles such as "Vagina-dialogue", "The three rooms of manic depression" and "A placenta-eating bourgeoisie humiliates Jeanne D'arc's lesbian twin sister", while the shows themselves consist of lots of wandering around the stage torturing oneself in lots of imaginative ways. Reetta herself is violent and abusive and surprisingly strong despite her less-than-imposing physique, being able to beat up most anyone who insults her performances and apparently able to turn guns into ploughshares at a moment's notice. She also abuses her dancers by denying them any food or drink before the show, stating that giving them any "weakens their body language", causing many of them to die of exhaustion in the middle of one: apparently she has also died several times during her performances, but has always ended up being revived soon afterwards in some way through a stroke of luck and something electric that ends up working as a Magical Defibrillator. Finally, her idea of improving acoustics mainly involves blowing up large chunks of whatever building she currently happens to perform in.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Pöysti, when he ends up being promoted as the new chief due to Repomies' Insane Troll Logic described above. He claims Routalempi, Helga and Neponen are fighting against his authority when they point out he's the only one who did the very things he implies them to be guilty of (such as complaining about the quality of leadership, ignoring orders and watching TV at work) and tells them to solve the entire underground economy, drug trade and Lake Bodom murders each by their own and expects them to be done by the next day, his main reasoning for his demands being "If you want to chase after bicycle thieves and rampaging drunks, go somewhere else, over here we only solve major stuff!". He also hires a sculpturor to make a statue of him in a toga with olive branches on his head, and stands on chairs while holding speeches to appear taller. His reign of terror is cut short when the facts are pointed out to him and he agrees to discuss things over with the other 3 as he was suggested, at which point they declare him as a weak leader, tie him up and hoist him up to the flagpole.
• Unfortunate Names: A girl named Homo-Petteri: the first part being obvious and named so because "homo is latin for 'human'", but the second part being a common male name with no explanation given.
• Unusual Euphemism: With some A Worldwide Punomenon in episode 25.

Repomies: (showing a slide) Here's the City of Helsinki. Pöysti: That's your wife naked in a garden swing. Repomies: What? Goddamnit! Holiday slides! But, under these special, terrorism-related circumstances, it will have to do. It's my naked wife, but you'll imagine that it's the City of Helsinki. But don't look at her Front Töölö!

• • Front Töölö is a district of Helsinki. Back Töölö also exists. Töölö doesn't mean anything obscene (it doesn't mean anything much), but the word sounds like it could.
• Verbal Tic: The bordel owner Pirinen constantly adds "like so" to everything he says.
• Weirdness Censor: For whatever reason, a plastic surgery clinic has an entire dead, decapitated whale right outside its entrance, the nearest body of water is over a mile away and whales are rarely if ever seen anywhere near Helsinki. Nobody notices it or comments on it in any way.
• You Can Panic Now: An episode concerning bootlegged booze with poison in it eventually culminated in forbidding all alcohol from entire Finland. The interviewee's response for Kontiovaara's question of whether they could panic now - "Take a fuckin' guess", sounds funnier in Finnish - doubles as a Crowning Moment of Funny.
• YouTube Poop: The show is a common subject for the Finnish versions of them, mostly because of its inheritent funniness and swearing which already exists in the show.