Spaced/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


"Is Jabba the princess?"

  • He's Just Hiding: Mike thought his childhood pet rabbit was still living next-door.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: "...as sure as eggs is eggs and every odd number Star Trek movie is shit." Pegg later joked about fate putting him in (the eleventh) Star Trek to show he was talking out of his arse.
    • Simon Pegg wears a Dawn of the Dead T-shirt in season 2, episode 2.
    • Not to mention, the hallucination scene at the beginning of Episode 3.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Widely praised and practically worshiped by comedy nerds, a decade later the series can feel light and underwhelming to newcomers finding it via Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (especially if they're not huge fans of film able to catch many of the references). However, as one of the first shows to create a Simpsons-like cartoon reality within a live-action show, it was groundbreaking at the time, and it influenced a number of creators of American comedy to follow its example to new extremes (thus making Spaced seem shallow by comparison).
  • Tear Jerker: When Daisy confesses to Marsha that she and Tim aren't really a couple - and that everyone else knows - the look on Marsha's face is heartbreaking.
    • Particularly when she reveals that the 'couple' requirement on the ad was the result of a miscommunication between her and the man writing the advert, and she'd have been perfectly happy to have them both there anyway.
  • Unintentional Period Piece: Spaced is very definitely set in in late Nineties/TurnOfTheMillennium Britain:
    • The use of VCRs and VHS (especially noticeable for their use for porn), the knowledge of the existence of the internet but the lack of it in Tim and Daisy's flat (not yet easily affordable or worth paying for) - also, the old trope of kids getting their first porn from magazines abandoned by others.
    • The presence of mobile phones, but only as a symbol of wealth/importance/success (Duane and Damian Knox have mobiles, Tim and Daisy only use the landline in their flat or payphones, Brian only uses one whilst pretending to be a lawyer).
    • The original PlayStation with games like Tomb Raider 3 and Resident Evil 2, the Game Boy Color belonging to the paperboy.
    • The Phantom Menace came out between seasons, specifically "eighteen months ago": early on Duane, played by the same actor that voiced Darth Maul, echoes one of his few lines from the trailer; later, mention of the film is a Berserk Button for Tim.
    • The use of Polaroid cameras; little background things like Pokémon merchandise in the comic book store, with an "Ancient Mew" card clearly visible under the counter and advertisements for bands such as Coldplay and Muse playing smaller venues than they would today.
    • Daisy uses a typewriter and not a laptop.
      • Though even the typewriter she's using is an antique by the standards of the day. It's meant to show that she's really not putting much effort into being a writer. If she was she'd have a more modern electric typewriter or a word processor
    • Characters seen smoking in indoor locations (smoking in pretty much anywhere but private residences and the street was banned in the UK in 2007, certainly in pubs).
    • All the references, parodies, shout-outs and homages are from no later than 1999 (even the trailers, such as one that says "You cannot know what Spaced is...you must see it for yourself".)
    • Daisy and Tim pay £90 per week to rent a flat in North London; even by the time they were they pre-screening it for test audiences, that had become a pipe dream. In the DVD Commentary, Pegg says it got the first laugh of the series.