Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Amanda Keller, Josh Thomas, Shaun Micallef, and Charlie Pickering

Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation Australian Panel Show hosted by Australian comedian Shaun Micallef, which was broadcast from May 2009 to March 2012.

It runs for an hour, testing the pop-culture knowledge of celebrity representatives from three different cultural generations: the Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. (Although occasionally guests will represent a team but not actually be a part of that generation; guests Ian Smith and George Negus, who are actually a part of the Silent Generation, have represented the Baby Boomers).

Typically, each episode consists of six rounds with the three teams competing in various themed games with awful names. While ostensibly a point is given for each correct answer, in actuality, the points are given at Shaun's discretion. The first three rounds are the three teams pitted against each other, the fourth is each team on their own selecting a topic from "The Magic Window", the fifth is "Your Generation", wherein each team answers themed questions about their own generation (such as "Horses" or "Famous Michaels"), and the sixth round, "Endgame", involves each team having to perform some task in order to prove which generation is best (some such tasks have included "working in an office", "renovating a laundry" or "milking a cow").

Each week there are three team captains, each of them representing a generation. These three team captains are:

  • Amanda Keller (Baby Boomers): The show's token chick, which matters not one bit because she's awesome. A true Deadpan Snarker of the highest order, she's probably been on more shows across television and radio than the rest of the cast combined. Outside of the show, she's best known as the face of WSFM's morning radio show.
  • Charlie Pickering (Generation X): The show's resident smart-ass, who gets enough obscure pop trivia questions right that it makes you wonder about his priorities. Also the host of the very successful news/comedy television show The Project.
  • Josh Thomas (Generation Y): A man who is, in his own words, not very good at things, quite clumsy, not good at computer games, but quite good at talking to large groups of people about genitals. Also has his own podcast. Youngest-ever winner of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival's RAW Comedy Competition.
Tropes used in Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation include:

Josh: I never thought we had a problem, Shaun, but people keep telling me on Twitter that it's obvious you don't like me.

  • Christmas Episode: Aired on Christmas Eve and was (what else?) Christmas-themed.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Shaun. And Josh, definitely Josh.
  • Golden Snitch: End-Game is always worth exactly enough points that any of the three teams could win.
    • Although subverted, though definitely not averted, in Episode 26 wherein it was worth one million points. Which was still well and truly enough that anyone could win, but there was no "exactly" about it.
  • Got Me Doing It: Shaun Micallef accidentally copies Josh's bizarre accent.
  • Halloween Episode: Two, so far.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Some of the rounds have very silly names, such as "What's A Doodle Do?" (teams must identify logos), "Era Error" (teams must identify anachronistic items in a scene from the past), and so on.
    • Shaun delights in these whenever he can get away with it.
  • Little-Known Facts: Shaun prepares some "interesting" "facts" to share with the teams, claiming to source all of his information from Wikipedia.

Shaun: "Cheaper [paint]brush hair is sometimes called "camel hair", although it doesn't come from camels. Apparently, it comes from tourists in India who are shaved against their will."

Shaun: "Can anyone else do this?"
He starts pulling at loose flesh on his neck as the rest of the panellists join in doing the same, except for Charlie.
Charlie: "What has this show become?!"

  • Pandaing to the Audience: The game 'Panda-monium', in which photographs of historical events are presented with a key figure replaced by a man in a panda suit. The panda also appears occasionally in games, doing something such as delivering the Endgame envelope or helping set up a magic window game.
  • Panel Show
  • The Points Mean Nothing: See Golden Snitch, but also -- Shaun is extremely laissez-faire about how he awards points; Generation Y have, in the past, received 5/8s of a point for a partially-correct answer, and contestants have bartered or redistributed points at their own whims before. One episode involved Shaun giving points to himself for being polite.
  • Product Placement: I'd elaborate on this point further, but I have to go buy a Mitsubishi. Love that car.
    • Occasionally the show is also 'sponsored' by the fictional Trigganello Ping Pong Balls ("Mmm, they bounce!").
  • Running Gag: In season one, the trophy each week was something different. It may have been a soccer trophy, a "World's Best Lover" coffee mug, or the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, according to Shaun Micallef. Trophies from season two onwards were donated and included The One Ring and Karl Stefanovich's 2011 Silver Logie.
    • The mysterious ways in which the End Game envelope will make it to Shaun Micallef; it may involve ninjas, monks, pandas or -- frequently -- Shaun's pet lady-hawk Isabeau.
    • As is typical for a quiz show, the host has a phone next to him which the producers can ring him on to allow for corrections. Unlike in most, Shaun Micallef invariably hangs up the phone without answering whenever it rings.
      • This invariably happens after Shaun has made a particularly-bad pun.
      • A sub-Running Gag that often occurs during taping is when Charlie waffles on for quite a while, mainly questioning Shaun's dismissal of his answer. Shaun will pick up the phone to ask for an opinion on Charlie's argument. "Uh huh? Yeah... Okay, I'll tell him." He puts down the phone and deadpans. "He says "Go fuck yourself." Naturally, this is always edited out before broadcast.
    • That means anybody could win!
    • Enya
    • Since the second family-themed episode, references to Josh's grandmother Mona's appearance on the show, in which she was covered in sour cream.
    • Stuart the Meerkat.
    • Wogboy II.
    • Shaun Micallef quoting some 'facts' about the topic at hand he claims he got from Wikipedia, all of which are hilariously wrong.
  • Schmuck Bait: Occasionally, one of the buttons in the Magic Window is for a game called "Trust Me", worth quadruple points. It always ends with one of the team members being covered with something sticky.
  • Sophisticated As Hell: It's a popular schtick of Shaun's: he will happily talk about Shakespeare and Pokemon in the same breath, combining erudite commentary with Buffy-Speak.
  • Stock Scream: A Wilhelm scream introduces the game "Draw That Movie", among other games.
  • Timed Mission: The game "As Quick As", where Shaun asks rapid fire questions until something happens, usually steam coming out of a kettle or toast popping out of a toaster.
  • Carried by the Host: Although TAYG isn't Shaun's creation, the producers have let him have his way with the script, cast, crew and ideas for new games. It will never be TAYG without him.
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