Does This Remind You of Anything?/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

** Also done in the episode "Hush". With the characters unable to speak, Buffy mimes hand gestures that are supposed to represent staking the monster of the week, but that instead resemble masturbation. The rest of the Scoobies look at Buffy as though she's gone mad, and she hastily repeats the gesture with a stake ''actually'' in her hand.

** There was also this conversation between Willow and Tara, before they started their relationship:

'''Tara:''' Oh, you don't have to explain. I've been thinking about that last spell we did all day. }}

*** In another example of "magic as sex" for this relationship, Willow and Tara are seen doing a spell together, with Willow lying back against a pillow, panting and sweaty, with the shot showing her only from the waist up. The spell is aptly called "the passage to the netherrealm".

**** [[Last-Second Word Swap|"You make me come---plete!"]]

*** Spoofed in Xander's dream in "Restless":

*** And in Dawn's diary / internal monologue in "Real Me":

*** When Angel bites Buffy in season 3, we see her crushing a helmet with one hand, as well as hearing her panting -- another example of "biting as sex" within the Buffyverse.

*** Another "biting as sex" example in the Buffyverse is during the Season 5 premiere, when Dracula shapeshifts himself into Buffy's room by turning into mist that floats in through her window (like a secret lover sneaking in), remarking on Buffy's scar from where Angel bit her, and then biting her on the other side, after which he tells her to take a taste of him. The next day, she ''really'' doesn't want anyone, especially Riley, to see her scar, like it's evidence of a shameful one-night stand.

** Vampire attacks on women look a lot like rape.

** Spike's [[Enemy Mine]] alliance with Buffy is treated like infidelity.

* ''[[Angel]]'' 2x06: Angel: "Were you in Virginia?" Wesley: "That's besides the point."

** In 2x17, "Disharmony", Harmony tries to explain to Cordelia that she's a vampire. Instead it sounds like she's coming out as a lesbian and expressing a crush on Cordelia.

** In "Spin the Bottle" amnesiac Fred thinks she may have been abducted by aliens, and rambles about how they must have done terrible things to her naked, helpless body. In response Wesley's wrist-blade pops out spontaneously.

* In ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]'', episode ''Dollhouse'', [[Brother-Sister Incest|Justin and Alex]] fight again. Then, she suddenly jumps, laughs like a little kid and hugs him tightly. The conversation goes like this:

'''Alex:''' Ow... Justin... ''[[Innocent Innuendo|You're hurting me]]''.<br />

'''Justin:''' Hmmm... Yeah... ''(he releases her)'' [[Double Entendre|I do feel better now, thank you.]] }}

** In another episode, Jerry makes a snide remark about dentists which gets him labeled an "anti-dentite". ("Next thing you know you're saying they should have their own schools!" "They ''do'' have their own schools!")

*** Later subverted in the same episode, When Jerry jokes with the Girl of the Week about dentists only to discover her non-metaphorical prejudice:

'''GotW:''' Yeah, who needs 'em? Not to mention the Blacks and the Jews. }}

** Jerry leaving his barber for his more talented relative is portrayed as an infidelity of operatic proportions, complete with several music cues from ''[[The Barber of Seville]]''.

** And, of course, the episode in which the facial/speech aftereffects of dental surgery result in Kramer being mistaken for a mentally-challenged person.

** In an episode where Elaine happened to be involved with a man who had pro-life views, Kramer had the following discussion with Poppie, the owner of a pizzeria:

'''Poppie:''' No, a pizza is a pizza the moment you stick your hands in the dough!!! }}

* In ''[[Just Shoot Me]]'', Dennis replaces Ally as Jack's bridge partner; the plot is played out as an infidelity.

*** Monica admitting to Rachel that she went [[Your Cheating Heart|shopping at Bloomingdales with Julie]]. Monica redeveloping an addiction to [[G-Rated Drug|cookies.]] Rachel and Chandler stealing cheesecakes, played off as having to commit multiple cover up murders to cover up their original crime. Chandler and Joey arguing about the care of their new "baby" chick. Joey's kidney stones needing to [[Screaming Birth|be peed out]], when Phoebe cut Monica's hair, and many, many occasions of Joey and Chandler acting like a couple, including arguments about Chandler's ex-roommate Kip and buying furniture together...

** One episode has Ross and Joey accidentally taking a nap together. It's treated like a night of drunken experimentation.

'''Ross:''' Because it's '''weird'''! }}

* ''[[The Class (TV series)|The Class]]'': Nicole and Yonk go on a diet with no red meats. Duncan brings steak sandwiches to Nicole while Yonk is out for dinner, but Yonk comes home early while they're eating them together, at which point Duncan hurries out while they make excuses to Yonk. Particularly funny because Nicole and Duncan have actually cheated together before.

* In ''[[Frasier]]'', Roz becomes a caviar junkie.

** In ''Motor Skills'' Roz got a puppy and Martin offered to give her some of Eddies old toys, and it took about forty seconds before the whole thing disintegrates into an extended metaphor of a mother and a daughter disagreeing on how to raise the grand-child.

* In the finale of ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air]]'', the normally reserved butler Geoffrey is retiring from his position as the Banks family butler, and he seems just a little too excited about his employer's announcement that he's "officially off duty." Am I the only one who is reminded of the freeing of a household slave?

** This may be a legitimate interpretation given that Geoffrey was always portrayed as resenting everything the family makes him put up with, and, more generally, American culture has always tended to feel that using a household servant comes uncomfortably close to using a slave.

** In another episode, Sally encourages Harry to join her in playing with the time-space portal, saying "c'mon, let's do it -- you know you want to". They accidentally beam in another alien from the Home Planet and are forced to take care of him. Dick berates them, remarking "thirty seconds of pleasure and a whole lifetime of responsibility". The rest of this storyline involves Sally and Harry "parenting" the new alien, who quickly starts acting like a bratty child.

** Then there's the time when Dick, while rifling through Tommy's sock drawer, discovers plastic bags full of dried green plants and learns, to his shame and disgrace, that Tommy ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0zx_SDw-EM knows how to cook.]''

* ''[[Dharma and Greg]]'' had an episode where the title characters decided that they needed "couple friends", i.e. other married couples to hang out with. They then went to the bookstore and tried to "pick up" other couples. After befriending a couple, Dharma found that couple with ''another'' couple and accused them of "cheating" on her and Greg.

** A similar thing happened in ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' when Marshall and Lily found a new couple to hang out with after Barney and Robin dumped them. It even has a [[Redemption in the Rain]] scene.

* Nick Knight's vampiric dependency on blood is treated like alcoholism in ''[[Forever Knight]]''. It's said that he could even become human again like he wanted if he could just kick the habit. At one point, he even tries a 12-step program.

* Ellen's relationship with her auditor in the 3rd season of ''[[Slings and Arrows]]'' is deliberately reminiscent of a therapist-client relationship. Up to:

** Later in the season, we see Anna on the phone with someone. "What do you mean you have to play with it?... Well, when will you be able to get it up again?... Is there anything I can do to help?" She's talking to tech support about the theatre festival's local area network.

* In ''[[Black Books]]'', Bernard and Manny have a falling out, and Manny goes to work at the bookshop next door. This is treated by both parties as if it were the break-up of a romantic relationship, with Bernard in particular reacting as if Manny had been unfaithful to him ("Go to him! Go to your fancy man! I don't need you anymore!"). Then again, there's more than a little [[Ho Yay]] between Bernard and Manny.

** There was also a first season episode where Manny gets fed up with Bernard's abuse and moves out. Fran and Bernard react like parents to a child running away from home, each blaming the other--Bernard accusing Fran of spoiling him and Fran accusing Bernard of driving him away by being mean to him. Then they go to the police to report him missing, who assume he's their son--right up until they start describing his appearance and they mention his goatee:

* On a slightly more serious note, ''[[Farscape]]'''s treatment of wormholes, usable as both a rapid long-distance travel method... and a weapon of ''horrific'' destruction. The obvious allegory is probably made most blatant in the second half of season 3's two-part episode "Into The Lion's Den"/"Wolf In Sheep's Clothing".

'''Crichton:''' It is ''[[This Is Sparta|not! Just! Science!]]'' It is ''never'' just science! It's a ''weapon''! It ''kills''! }}

* Aaaand on a more humorous note, in ''[[Farscape]]'' we have the large amount of torture, leather and sex... where you get lines like this:

** Or pretty much any scene with Scorpius when he's being tortured. The torturer ''always'' looks like they're having ''way'' too much fun, and Scorpius is continuously pleading with them to keep doing it. [[Sarcasm Mode|Yes, I'm sure that doesn't mean anything at all.]]

** Or that episode in season 3 where Talyn is... er... let's just say 'leaking' an leviathan adrenaline-filled gas, which enhances certain aspects of humanoid physiology. In essence, Crais starts threatening to shoot people if they don't give him a gun (and he doesn't seem to understand what's wrong with that request), Stark goes... more crazy (if that were even possible), and John and Aeryn get very turned on by the mist:

'''John''': ''Naughty'' mist... }}

* One episode of ''[[Malcolm in the Middle]]'' concerned Hal feeling out-of-place in a poker game because he was the only ''non-professional'' person there, and all the ''professional'' people were banding together and discriminating against him with their unique slang and culture. (They were also all {{spoiler|black}}.)

*** Also Sylar's very creepy shapeshifting into his adoptive mother (aunt by marriage) and having conversations with her, having killed her in Volume 1, disturbingly resembles [[Psycho|Hitchcock's film about a mama's boy who impersonates his mother.]]

* One episode of ''[[Scrubs]]'' has Jordan telling Dr. Cox they're not going to fight anymore now that they have a baby. Dr. Cox ends up going a little crazy because Jordan won't fight with him anymore and it plays like as if she won't have sex with him anymore. This especially shows when he tells Carla about it.

'''Carla:''' Why don't you get a hotel room? Pour some nice champagne, get in a tub, and rip each other new ones. You know, make it special. }}

** And then Dr Cox tries to pick a fight with Carla and she says, "Hey, I'm getting married!"

** Since Ted's narrating the series to his kids in the future, he occasionally censors the more adult things, but leaves the context completely unchanged. Hence the main characters' experiments with "sandwiches" in college, and the upstairs neighbours who wouldn't stop "playing the bagpipes" and Ted calling Lily a "[[Country Matters|grinch]]"

** In one episode Ted is with a date and after a series of events you get this.

And then a security guard comes to take Barney out of the theatre. }}

** In 4x19, Barney's argument with the owner of the laser tag arena is like him quitting the police force.

** It doesn't help that Chuck and Sarah are undercover as a business man and a hooker getting it on in a hotel, so the first thing the ex hears is something along the lines of "So long do you think it'll take for us to have sex?" "I don't know, maybe an hour or so." Followed by a bunch of stuff like "Move your hips forward" and "Bend the other way" when he gets stuck in the vents.

*** "Chuck vs. Phase 3" begins with him dreaming about Sarah getting turned off because he can't flash. Lester even lampshades it.

* In a Season 1 episode of ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', "Something Wicked", the [[Monster of the Week]] -- a shtriga, a witch from Albanian folklore that feeds off of human "life forces", especially those of children -- is presented like a pedophile. The kids fall into comas and no one can explain why, and the shtriga is disguised as a male doctor that is supposed to be treating the children, which is similar to how many pedophiles try to position themselves so that the children's parents trust them. It should also be noted that the shtriga works its way through families, either from oldest child to youngest or vice versa.

** In a Season 3 episode, "Fresh Blood", a lonely male vampire who wants to build a new nest of vamps lurks around nightclubs and picks out pretty blondes and tries to interest them in a new (thick, red, liquid) recreational drug (in ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' [[Our Vampires Are Different|either digestion or direct blood contact turns a person into a vampire]]). They wake up back in his basement lair and have no idea where they are or what happened to them, not unlike rape victims who were given "roofies" like rohypnol, which cause blackouts.

** Speaking of rape subtext in ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', [[Our Angels Are Different|Michael]] in the Season 5 episode "The Song Remains the Same" attempts to justify his possession of John and his intent to possess Dean as if he were a date-rapist, including claiming that his intention to avoid causing unnecessary damage while inside Dean and John makes him morally superior to Raphael who left his victim catatonic.

** Hell, pretty much all of Lucifer's dialogue with Sam in season 5 ''screams'' "rape."

'''Sam''': You'll need my consent. }}

*** And that's just the tip of the iceberg...

** The following conversation from the Season 1 episode "Shadow" is actually about Monster Hunting, but sound like they're about [[Ho Yay|something very different]] outside of context:

'''Sam:''' I don't want them to be. I'm not going to live this life forever. Dean, when this is all over, you're going to have to let me go my own way. }}

** In the Season 5 episode "Sympathy for the Devil", Dean readily forgives Sam for (inadvertently) freeing Lucifer, but [[Incest Subtext|remains righteously angry at Sam because Sam chose his demon lover Ruby over Dean]] . . . as a [[Is That What They're Calling It Now?|hunting partner.]]

* An episode of ''[[The IT Crowd]]'' revolves around Jen taking up smoking and being forced to smoke outside, where the smoking area keeps getting moved further and further away from the office, eventually forcing the smokers to walk across a motorway and bleak, wind-swept terrain. The whole thing gets treated like the smokers are a bunch of Soviet dissidents being forced into a Stalinist gulag in Siberia.

* The ''[[Star Trek TOS]]'' episode "Metamorphosis" features Zefram Cochrane being looked after by a powerful energy being. When he realises that the energy being wants a physical relationship with him, he's repulsed, but Kirk, Spock and McCoy don't see what the problem is. Given Cochrane's actual words, the episode can be read as a metaphor against homophobia, or, given the time period, possibly against opposition to interracial relationships.

'''Spock:''' Fascinating. A totally parochial attitude. }}

** Star Trek has a lot; Enterprise has one in particular that paints religious people as bigoted homophobic monsters.I

* [[Nigella Lawson]] in every one of her cookery programmes manages to make cooking sound like foreplay.

* This bit from ''[[NCIS]]'':

'''McGee''': That’s er, er, a nickname for a bundle of receptors in the firewall. That regulates the flow of energy throughout the system. See when stimulated correctly it sends waves and waves of rhythmic pulses (Gibbs can't even look at McGee at this point) waves, waves that er that hypercrank the er transfer speed, er, that digitised infor- Abby? }}

* ''[[Glee]]'': Kurt's subsequent reactions to Karofsky "taking" his first kiss strongly evoke the feel of a rape victim.

* The suntan lotion incident within the first five seconds of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_NWw3-MWUM this promo] for ''Bucket and Skinner's Epic Adventures.''

* In one episode of ''[[Boy Meets World]]'', Eric discovering his mentor Mr. Feeny tutoring another student is played like Mr. Feeny is cheating on him:

* The [[Xena: Warrior Princess]] season 5 episode "Kindred Spirits" plays up the [[Ho Yay]] by portraying Xena and Gabrielle as if they're a couple whose marriage is on the rocks because of family vs. career. Gabrielle says that "they've" never had their own home and one of the Amazons mistakenly believe they've broken up. Xena even planned to leave Gabrielle and take Eve with her.

* Happens in universe in an episode of ''[[The George Lopez Show]]''. Carmen and Jason are on the debate team and debating about the use of gas-guzzling cars. Carmen is still mad at Jason for cheating at him and talks about how (paraphrased) "America has betrayed some people's trust by going and tapping a foreign oil source that other guys have already tapped". Jason responds with the fact that he's sorry he satisfied his need for resources elsewhere.

* One episode of [[Will and Grace]] where they were arguing who should the homeless Karen stay with. They start acting like parents arguing in front of their kid.

'''Both''': No! }}

* "The Tale Of The Renegade Virus" on ''[[Are You Afraid of the Dark?]]'' features a virus with a serial port connector for a hand that tries to plug it into Simon's serial port in his hand. He's laughing all the while and Simons is screaming [[Big No]]. The scene is uncomfortably reminiscent of [[Attempted Rape]].