Yes Minister: Difference between revisions

'''Annie''': You haven't got one.

'''Jim''': That's what you think. *''Turns, opens a red box''* Who said nothing good ever came out of Whitehall?}}

* [[Expospeak Gag]]: Humphrey's overly long speeches are a hallmark of the series.

* [[Eye Take]]: Humphrey's reaction whenever Hacker has a particularly ambitious, unexpected, and ill-advised idea.

* [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]]: Sir Humphrey's (and occasionally Bernard's) preferred method of communication.

* [[Sleazy Politician]]: Averted! For all his attempts to win popularity in the most self-serving and underhanded ways imaginable — including weaseling<ref>No, not "Weiseling".</ref> his way into Number 10 — Jim Hacker comes off as more pathetic than despicable, and as Annie notes, he's a "[[wikipedia:Whisky priest|whisky priest]]" who's still got his moral compass about him even as he tucks it away, grits his teeth, and ignores it.

* [[Status Quo Is God]]: Subverted, in that while Hacker never really achieves much and the things that he does achieve are so inconsequential that you can understand why they're never mentioned again, this all has a specific cause -- namely Sir Humphrey and the Civil Service's constant stymieing of Hacker's attempts to push reforms through.

** Occasionally he achieves something noteworthy — the database safeguards he manages to get into action at the end of the episode "Big Brother" appear to be the basis of the Data Protection Act 1984 (albeit the episode was made in 1980, so the law's passage would have taken a while, and most of the work was done by his predecessor). Hacker's "computer security guidelines" are mentioned in passing in connection with the previous Prime Minister's memoirs in "Official Secrets."