Serious Business/Live-Action TV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Serious Business in Live-Action TV include:

  • Scores of TV medical dramas invoke this trope when they focus on life-or-death surgeries and rare, fatal diseases. There is much truth in this. The problem is that the shows neglect to depict the daily grunt work of the medical practice. Scrubs subverts this tendency by emphasizing that the characters spend the bulk of their time working on completely mundane and disgusting tasks, and admit that most of their patients are going to die regardless.
  • The British series Playing for Real featuring the lives of the Real Falkirk Table Football Club, who lived and breathed Subbuteo.
  • One episode of MacGyver, a Dramatic Hour Long show, had an episode open with a girl talking extensively about the horrors inflicted upon her hobby by store owners. The topic: counterfeit baseball cards. It's a good thing MacGyver is unfailingly polite, lest he tell her to just shut up.
    • The scary thing is, some baseball cards can be worth thousands of dollars. A single counterfeit baseball card can constitute fraud on par with grand theft auto.
  • In an episode of Frasier, Spelling Bees are Serious Business, complete with a Shell Shocked Senior Spell Master and a Young Cub trying to reach the top... of Spelling! The episode was devoid of the usual hijinks and focused the humor on the absurdity of the subject. One of the series' better episodes.

"SPELL HIS ASS OFF!"

"Spelling bees are serious business"
and the less formal "Spelling bees are serious shit."

    • Dan Quayle felt the full brunt of this Serious Business himself a few decades back.
    • Much of the comedy in Frasier stems from the main character and those around him blowing relatively minor things into full-blown Serious Business, but another notable trope-relevant example comes when we learn that Frasier has been keeping a collection of taped recordings of his show. When he learns that one of them is missing and is unlikely to be able to be replaced, he enters a depression which sends him into his bed for like a week. He later gets over it when he meets his 'biggest fan' who happens to have a copy of the missing show and finds him an obsessive nut who's pretty much isolated everything from his life.
    • Wine is certainly taken seriously in some episodes.
  • When Dick Clark hosted Pyramid, he made sure it was Serious Business. "I remind the audience once again, we need absolute silence, please. GO!"
  • iCarly The webcast seems to have only slightly less cultural impact than Dethklok. Sneaker manufacturers beg Carly to endorse their product. Television producers ransack the show for ideas in two separate episodes. It's watercooler discussion material, even amongst adults.
    • The entire school ridicules Freddie after Sam reveals he hasn't yet had his First Kiss, and he ends up missing school and avoiding his mom as a result of the embarrassment. [1]
    • In iFight Shelby Marx, Carly makes some joking comments about being able to "take down" an MMA fighter. Said fighter appears at her doorstep the next day, proposes an exhibition match for charity that is apparently so popular, it fills a stadium and is sold on pay-per-view. Lampshaded when the MMA announcer introduces her as "Carly Shay, who... has a web show."
  • In a weird meta-example, the British student quiz show University Challenge made national news headlines when the internet decided nobody should be allowed to be that clever. The young lady in question ended up being interviewed about her public image on national primetime breakfast news, simply because some people objected to the way she smiled (was it embarrassment? Or smugness?) when she was told she'd got a question right. University Challenge: Serious Business to everyone except those who actually play it.
    • To make it even worse, the team that young lady was on ended up being disqualified after the winning the final because it was discovered that one of the other team members had graduated partway through the competition, and the rules could therefore be interpreted to state that he was ineligible. Serious Business indeed.
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
    • In "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", Sisko's private little war against Solok turns baseball into Serious Business until Sisko finally sees the light and decides to just have fun.
    • Subverted entirely in "Move Along Home", which has Quark playing a board game brought by some race from the Gamma Quadrant. Eventually he realizes the Seriousness of the Business as his pieces represent members of the crew who have been somehow teleported into the game and are thus in mortal danger through his actions. Although he plays conservatively from then on, he eventually loses a piece; assuming the corresponding crewman to be dead, he is stunned when all the missing crew reappear completely safe at the end--and he learns that he lost. As the alien gamemaster explains, it's only a game.
  • The Adventures of Pete and Pete loves this trope played for surrealism. Smoothies, Prank Wars, people urinating in pools and the identity of the masked Ice Cream Man Mr. Tasty are all Serious Business. And Artie, the Strongest Man in the World fighting Killer Bees? Normal Background Stuff. In addition, every single adult, be they a shop teacher, an underwear inspector or a postal carrier, treats their profession with a reverence usually reserved for war heroes and cancer researchers.
  • Father Ted and the "all-priest, over-75, indoor football challenge match" against Rugged Island.
  • In Seinfeld most things were Serious Business with many episodes focusing on one or two bits of this. The Soup Nazi is a good example. His soup is so good that people are willing to put up with the authoritarian regime that is his restaurant and rejected patrons become motivated to exact revenge rather than just finding someplace else to eat.
    • In another episode, Elaine had a boyfriend who shared a name with a well-known murderer. He decided to change it, but Elaine hated every one of his suggestions because of her associations with those names.
    • Another episode had Jerry's Girl of the Week's stepmother not wanting to lose her spot on her stepdaughter's speed dial. Then the girl and her stepmother spend the rest of the episode changing their respective speed dials.
    • In another episode, Jerry discovers that his girlfriend was working for one of Jerry's former classmates who has been holding a grudge on him since a sprint in high school. They hold a rematch presided over by their high school gym teacher, and many of their old high school mates are there to watch.
    • You can't forget about the episode where after being banned from the manicure shop, Elaine manically sobs all over Manhattan, to the point where she doesn't know where she's going.
    • Never make a weird face at a doctor or "be difficult", lest you be instantly blacklisted by your medical professional and be denied medical services for the rest of your life. Even from vetenarians.
  • Many reality shows where there are groups of people competing against each other to win things like money, makeover of their house, etc. While everyone does want to win as badly as the next guy, the serious business comes into play when you got some of the competitors get drastic or act dramatic in order to have a shot at winning and act like losing doesn't exist in their dictionary. And then you have the people who say they gave up everything to be on the show (quitting their job, moving away from home, etc), not even thinking about what to do in case they don't win.
    • Averted by one contestant, who dared to have a sense of perspective when she was kicked off America's Next Top Model by not breaking into tears like she was meant to; as punishment for this, Tyra Banks subsequently went medieval on her ass.
    • In the other vein of this example, shows about things like fashion tend to be played up way more than necessary. Shows like What Not to Wear, where a person's "bad" clothing (which are rarely worse than average) and treat the woman as if she were dying from some sort of clothes cancer. And to cure this, they ridicule said person's bought possessions while throwing them out. At one point, a person featured on the show hated the hosts' advice, prompting the male host to actually leave the room for several minutes to cool off. Over clothes.
    • Take into account that clothing and how you present yourself to the world can play a big part in your self-esteem and in some cases whether or not you get a job. People will make judgments on how you look when they meet you in the street. The woman who Clinton walked out on? She was in law school and dressing like a hooker – and saw absolutely nothing wrong with this. Ask yourself this: Would you hire a woman to defend you in court or take your case who looks like she just walked in from a street corner?
      • This is a good point, but usually the people featured are people whose families don't like how they dress. Occasionally, there will be somebody who will need to look more appropriate for their job, but often, it isn't.
    • Most of the moms featured on Toddlers and Tiaras take their girls' pageants way too seriously.
  • According to the new ABC Family series, Make It or Break It, gymnastics is incredibly serious business. Yes, they're training for the Olympics, but every single detail of the gymnasts' lives is overblown for the sake of drama.
  • On The Secret Life of the American Teenager, EVERYTHING is serious business. If one character has a problem and/or something going on in their life, every other character will be talking about it to the character and with each other. It's high school gossip to ever more ridiculous levels
  • On various episodes of the CSIs: Bowling, competitive eating, a Scrabble-style word game, historical reenactment, and fashion have been shown to be deadly serious business to the people involved.
  • One day, when Michael is out of The Office, every employee spends hours debating over whether Hilary Swank is to be considered hot or not. Simple attractiveness and willingness to have sex with her are apparently not necessarily part of the equation, and an organized debate ensues, but the icing on the cake is Oscar pulling out a diagram analyzing Swank's facial symmetry.
  • The Adventures of Lano and Woodley 4:45.
  • Anything and everything that interests Justin of Wizards of Waverly Place.
    • Not to mention Alex's own Quinceañero, taken as seriously as suggested in the Real Life section of this page.
  • According to Antony Bourdain in one of the Japan-centric episodes of No Reservations, Japan's entire culture is devoted to the Art of Serious Business. Anything can be Serious Business in Japan, from Tea Ceremonies to Cherry Blossom Viewings, to Baseball (see below).
    • Also, when he visited France, he played petanque (much like bocce) with the locals, expecting them to be leisurely about the game. Instead, he discovered that they actually are fiercely competitive about it, especially since they put money on the line. Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxm_7mCpm7c
  • Everything about the local agricultural fair in All Creatures Great and Small is Serious Business, right down to the children's pet show. There's some rather nasty rumors of favoritism when James gives the blue ribbon to a goldfish.
  • Basically anything that is the subject of an episode of Pushing Daisies is extremely serious business (enough to make people commit murder over it), including but not limited to dog breeding, circus performance, and fried chicken.
  • Monica from Friends takes any, any competition as serious business.
  • Played straight by Fry and Laurie in their 'John and Peter' sketches where they treat running their health sauna in Uttoxeter as if they were running a multi-national corporation. They also inverted this trope with their 'Tony and Control' sketches in which MI 5 agents treat terrorist attacks and defections with as much emotion as they do ordering coffee.
  • Supernatural:

Castiel: (on cell phone) This isn't funny, Dean! The voice says I'm almost out of minutes!

    • Played with in another episode, where Dean yells at two fans of the Supernatural book series for not taking the job/lives of Sam and Dean seriously. Considering its his life their making light of, he is completely correct. They however assume he's merely doing this trope.
  • Often played straight in Monty Python's Flying Circus (The All-England Summarize Proust Competition) but subverted with 'The Society For Putting Things on Top of Other Things' where one member claims that they haven't put anything on top of another thing because they've decided that the whole thing's a bit silly. The chairman looks as if he's about to go beserk, and then suddenly agrees with him and decides to wind up the society.
  • Game shows generally use this trope by default, since they tend to take mundane things like auctions, Tic-Tac-Toe, and crossword puzzles and make them high energy and for high stakes. Contestants are even encouraged to act more excited than they are.
  • On Glee show choir is presented as possibly the main characters' only chance to ever feel good about themselves or do anything other than toiling away in unappreciated obscurity for the rest of their lives. The schools they compete against, though, take it really seriously.

"There is nothing ironic about show choir!"
"You can't quit Cheerios. It's blood in, blood out!"

  • How I Met Your Mother has the episode "The Best Burger in New York," where it's revealed Marshall has spent the last eight years of his life trying to find the restaurant where he once ate the best burger of his life. Though he actually takes it mildly compared to Special Guest Regis Philbin.

Marshall: It's so mucn more than "just a burger." I mean ... that first bite ... oh, what heaven that first bite is. The bun like a sesame freckled breast of an angel, resting gently on the ketchup and mustard below, flavors mingling in a seductive pas de deux. And then...a pickle! The most playful little pickle! Then a slice of tomato, a leaf of lettuce and a ... a patty of ground beef so exquisite, swirling in your mouth, breaking apart, and combining again in a fugue of sweets and savor so delightful. This is no mere sandwich of grilled meat and toasted bread, Robin. This is God, speaking to us in food.
Lily: And you got our wedding vows off the Internet.

  • Doctor Who has an example of this early on, even if it is downplayed: During Marco Polo, The Doctor wins a large chunk of the Mongol Empire from the Khan in games of backgammon.
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000: Bad movies cause psychological trauma and the Mads believe that the worst movie ever made would have the power to subjugate humanity.
  • The high school science fair in Eureka. Previous ones have taught Joe to come dressed in riot gear.

Allison: You know how Texans feel about their high school football? Child's play.

Riker: "I had no idea you had such a ritual."
Troi: "Chocolate is a serious thing."

    • In that episode, though, some real Serious Business comes about because nearly everyone on the ship gets obsessed with a video game-ish contraption... that rewards wins directly at the pleasure center of the brain, creating an addiction.
  • From Are You Being Served Everything from what sort of pen you keep in your pocket, to how you fold your handkerchief, to what sort of hat you wear on your way into the store are matters of dire consequence at Grace Brothers.
  • Firefly, "Our Mrs. Reynolds": Shepard Book suggests you do not talk at the theater unless you want to end in a very SPECIAL level of hell, one also reserved for child molesters.
  • In Family Ties, the Keaton family, especially Alex, gets this way about contests and competitions of any sort.
    • One episode has Alex and Steven become so obsessed with beating each other at Scrabble that, at the end, they sneak downstairs at night in their pajamas for "one more game. The winner gets the deed to the house."
    • In "Walking on Air," Alex, Elyse, Jennifer and Andy team up for a "Find Colonel Crackle" cereal contest. Alex soon takes charge, posting a giant map of Cleveland with potential "Colonel" sightings pinned, having his friend Skippy check the Colonel's dental records and do a hair analysis, and comandeering a newscaster's desk at Steven's TV station to call the "Crackle hotline" seconds before airtime (resulting in his being dragged off).
  • Angel and Spike had a polite discussion as to who would win in a fight, astronauts or cave men.

Wesley: You've been yelling about this for forty minutes... do the astronauts have weapons?

  • Matt and Danny on Studio 60 work on a sketch show which is basically a SNL ripoff, yet they try to play it as being of the utmost importance and a platform for social change. This is a big problem for the series as a whole since Aaron Sorkin's trademark style of political filibustering is embarrassingly misplaced in a comedy series.
    • Of course, Your Mileage May Vary since many fans think the show would be shallow and soulless without that extra dimension.
  • In Community a number of activities including Debate Class, eating Chicken Fingers ,flight simulators, and the game of pool are all taken dead seriously.
    • Losing a pen is serious business, in Annie's book. And the entire study group's, at that.
    • Paintball is such serious business to the students that both times the college tries to have a friendly game it ends up causing thousands of dollars in property damage.
    • One professor devoted his academic careers studying old sitcoms and wrote a detailed book analyzing Who's The Boss?. He is devastated when Abed disproves his main theory in front of the class. Tellingly it did not seem to be serious business to Abed.
    • The Glee club is very, very important. Regionals...
    • The show uses this so often it's practically a Running Gag; there is next to nothing that either the study group or the school in general cannot blow completely out of proportion. Someone pushing a yam off a table becomes a homicide investigation and trial, the decision over whether to make a pillow fort or a blanket fort becomes a school-wide pillow-fought civil war. And so on.
  • The competitive cooking series Iron Chef plays this up as hard as it possibly can. Particularly in the American version.
  • In one episode of Kenan and Kel, Ron Harper shows in Rigby's and everyone are excited to see him, especially the titular characters. However, he ended up slipping on a puddle of orange soda, injuring his knee. Thanks to that, all of Chicago are after Kenan and Kel.
    • Just imagine if they do that to Michael Jordan, they're dead meat.
  • The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers' premise and title characters.
  • On The Wire, the annual basketball game between the East Side and West Side drug crews is such serious business that the entire neighborhood in which it is held shuts down for the day, and the leader of one of the crews thinks nothing of paying $20,000 to hire a ringer for his team.
  • On The Cosby Show, Cliff takes petanque with Dr. Harmon very seriously.
  1. ↑ Okay, so he probably does that last one a lot anyway.
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