The IT Crowd: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"I'm told my father was particularly proud of the IT department, run by a [[Plucky Office Girl|dynamic go-getter]], a [[Genius Ditz|genius]], and a [[My Friends and Zoidberg|man from Ireland]]."''|'''Douglas Reynholm''', ''The IT Crowd'' }}

 

 

The series debuted in 2006 and is still ongoing. It focuses on the team of Roy (Chris O'Dowd), the surly and slovenly comic book fan; Moss (Richard Ayoade), a naive, innocently tactless and stereotypically geeky mother's boy; and the new manager Jen (Katherine Parkinson), a twitchy career-woman who, despite her complete lack of technical understanding and computer know-how, ''almost'' possesses a valuable ability the two geeks sorely lack -- social skills.

* [[Black and Nerdy]]: Moss.

* [[Black Comedy Rape]]

** Friendface! ''Friendface!'' '''''FRIENDFACE!'''''

** Cuke from the same episode. "It's like heaven in a can!" (oddly enough, later episodes just referenced Coke instead of Cuke).

* [[Catch Phrase]]:

** For Roy: "Hello, IT, have you tried turning it off and on again?" - [[Lampshaded]] in "Bad Boys", when he realises that he says it a lot and starts worrying that it might be a catchphrase.

* [[Catchphrase Interruptus]]:

** "Hello, IT, have you tried turn- oh I'm sick of saying that..."

** "Have you tried sticking it up your arse?" {{spoiler|(Accidentally said by Roy to his own mother.)}}

* [[Ceiling Cling]]

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: At least one per episode, it's hard to find one where a comment or event will not return later to catastrophically affect the plotline. Bonus points for Douglas randomly looking into a drawer he never opened before and finding his grandfather's service revolver in it, making it a literal example of the trope.

* [[Chew Bubblegum]]: Naturally, Moss gets to say a suitably geeky variant.

* [[Chew Toy]] / [[Butt Monkey]]: Roy, who's arguably the most notoriously unlucky of the cast, qualifies as either of these, depending on how sympathetically he's portrayed in any of the episodes.

* [[Church of Happyology]]: Beth Gaga Shaggy and the Spaceologists, whose opposition to the massage industry parallels Scientology's hate of psychiatry. The show's [[V for Vendetta|Guy Fawkes mask]] is very prominently shown throughout the episode, [[Image Boards|of course]].

** Jen shouts a string of mostly profanity at a Japanese executive after he stomps on her injured foot by mistake. The executive is confused for a bit . . . until his interpreter begins to [[Crowning Moment of Funny|repeat the tirade for him in Japanese]]. [[Played for Laughs]] even more in that all the cursing by Jen was bleeped out - to the characters and not just the audience, as it is revealed one of Denholm's subordinates was slamming a big red "Profanity Button" on the wall at every cuss word. Denholm follows this up by immediately turning to Jen and shouting "You fucked up!" at her, which the subordinate is too late to bleep out.

** And in Series 2, Roy's outburst at Denholm's funeral when his phone vibrates so violently that he thinks he's having a heart attack.

* [[Disability As an Excuse For Jerkassery]]:

** In "The Work Outing", Roy pretends to be disabled in order to cover up a series of lies.

** Also in "Italian for Beginners", Moss [[Not Really a Birth Scene|giving birth]] to an iPhone.

* [[Double Standard Rape Male On Male]]: Jen summarily dismisses the trauma of Roy having his butt kissed by a masseur and Moss being kissed against his will by Douglas.

* [[Embarrassing Cover Up]]

* [[Embarrassing Middle Name]]: Richmond ''Felicity'' Avenal.

* [[Establishing Character Moment]]: Douglas Reynholm makes his grand entrance by gatecrashing his father's funeral, screaming out loud in fake emotional pain, starting a fight with the priest and chatting up Jen.

* [[Even Nerds Have Standards]]:

** Roy telling the widow that he is sorry and to move on.

** A flashback in Richmond's introductory episode shows Richmond attending Reynholm's father's funeral in full makeup (Reminiscent of [[Alice Cooper (Music)|Alice Cooper]]) and giving Reynholm's elderly mother a [[Cradle of Filth]] album to cheer her up

* [[Gag Sub]]: The official DVDs of the show have an option for 'l33t' subtitles, which vary from [[Leet Lingo]] to ROT13 to Base-64 encoding depending on the episode.

* [[Geek|Geeks]] and [[Nerds]]. Standard ones.

* [[Hacker Cave]]: the office basement where the IT department is located.

** Subverted, as most of the equipment is simply being stored there and is not in use or working in any way.

** ''[[Overly Long Gag|TEAM, TEAM, TEAM, TEAM, TEAM, TEAM, TEAM, TEAM...]]''

** Expanded upon even more in this series of phone conversations:

"Hello, security? Everyone on floor 4 is '''fired'''. Escort them from the premises. And do it as a ''team''. Remember, you're a ''team'' and if you can't act as a ''team'', you're '''fired''' too."<br />

"Dom, get on to recruitment. Get them to look for a security team that can work as a ''team''. They may have to escort the current security team from the building for not acting like a '''team'''." }}

* [[Have You Tried Rebooting|Have You Tried Turning It Off And On Again?]]: or, [[Expospeak Gag|if you prefer]], Have You Tried Forcing An Unexpected Reboot?

* [[Ho Yay]]: More often than you'd think. Roy and Moss even kiss, ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV6IBGsMsWQ twice.]''

** Roy manages to snag dates, hook-ups and even relationships with some seriously hot, model-calibre women throughout the series, despite his dead-end job, scruffy appearance and geeky demeanour. However, his relationships never last.

* [[Large Ham]]: Both Reynholms. '''''[[Incoming Ham|"FATHERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!"]]''''' Douglas comes across extremely unintelligent and oafish at first, but becomes more eccentric like his father in series 4.

* [[Last Het Romance]]: Jen to a guy with mysterious sexuality.

* [[Left the Background Music On]]: Twice in "The Haunting of Bill Crouse" Moss seems to have a dramatic epiphany accompanied by a '''DUN-DUN-DUUUN!''', only for the music to turn out to be his mobile phone's ringtone.

* [[Living Emotional Crutch]]: Jen. Roy and Moss fall apart when she's not around.

* [[The Loins Sleep Tonight]]: Roy suffers this when he can't get some disturbing images out of his mind.

* [[Love Potion]]: Subverted, in that the "potion" is actually just Rohypnol, and lampshaded in [[The Previously]] on a later episode, where the narrators point out that Rohypnol doesn't cause arousal - just tiredness. Pre-lampshaded (and possibly making the later example a [[Hypocrisy Nod]]) when Moss asked Jen if she was drinking it because she was having trouble sleeping.

{{quote| '''Roy:''' What was that name, was it Ju''lie'' or Ju''dy''?<br />

'''Moss:''' Yes. One of those. }}

* [[Pop Cultural Osmosis Failure]]: A ''rare'' case of Moss getting a sci-fi reference wrong. When Roy suggests skipping off work after a suspicious package prevents him and Moss from returning to the office, Moss becomes excited at the thought of doing somehting he'd always dreamed off, like an exciting adventure and that it's "like taking the blue pill in the Matrix." The exciting adventure would in fact be the ''red'' pill, while the blue (which puts you back asleep inside the illusion) would rather be simply waiting patiently to return to work like a good employee.

* [[Power Walk]]: Moss introducing Roy to the 8+ club.

* [[Public Exposure]]: In the third season finale, the company decide to do a sexy calendar to raise money for a charity for the "boss-eyed". Roy's original attempt to use the ladies from Floor 7 is stopped by Jen, the attempt to do grannies fails and the "geek" calendar produces unattractive male geeks, instead of the [[Tina Fey]] sort.

* [[Put On a Bus]]: Richmond, after filming clashed with the tour of ''[[The Mighty Boosh]]''. Would be [[Brother Chuck]] were it not for one throwaway reference. He got scurvy, apparently.

** [[The Bus Came Back]]: He returned for the series 4 finale.

* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: Douglas' fight with his transgender girlfriend, which takes the [[Unfortunate Implications]] inherent in a man beating up a transwoman and turns it into a knuckle down action movie brawl in which both smash up a laboratory in an effort to completely knock the shit out of each other.

* [[Reset Button]]: If it wasn't for Richmond's later appearances, "The Red Door" would be a textbook example. Jen finds Richmond in a room off the IT office, to where he had been banished from the office mainstream a few years before. She encourages him to rejoin the office; Reynholm reinstates him, then capriciously changes his mind and sends him back to IT. Moss has taken Jen's suggestion to clean the basement's window and let the daylight in, which makes Richmond retreat back behind the red door.

** Moss' appearance as a guest on a [[BBC]] current affairs program, inspired by [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4774429.stm Guy Goma].

** The German Cannibal was inspired by the case of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes Armin Meiwes].

* [[RPG Episode]]: Very surprisingly given the the setting but the one time an [[Role Playing Game|RPG]] is a major plot element it is an old fashioned 'pencil and dice' [[Tabletop Game]] (implied to be ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' itself) rather than a computer game.

** The packaging for the limited edition Season 1-4 DVD boxset is designed to look like an RPG rulebook.

{{quote| '''Prime''': "The first rule of ''Street Countdown'' is... that you really must try to tell as many people as possible about it! It’s a rather fun game and the more people we tell about it, the better."}}

* [[Rule of Funny]]: When it comes to Jen's towering ignorance about computers.

** There's a poster of the [[Flying Spaghetti Monster]] on the wall somewhere behind Moss' desk.

* [[Slow Clap]]: Moss starts one in response to Roy's impassioned speech at the end of ''Something Happened'' in Series 4.

** Jen also displays some qualities from this trope, being neither quite as competent, upwardly mobile or deserving of being such as she seems to believe she is. It [[Acquired Situational Narcissism|particularly kicks in]] after she wins Employee Of The Month in "The Speech", however.

* [[Snap Back]]: The cliffhanger of Series 1 (which even ended with "[[To Be Continued]]...") was never continued in Series 2.

* [[Sophisticated As Hell]]: "Jorg... such fire! I am too tired for revolution. And we've walked f***ing miles!"

* [[Sound Effect Bleep]]: Subverted mercilessly. A character's vitriolic tirade is full of bleeped-out swear words... then Denholm congratulates an employee on "being so quick on the Profanity Buzzer", which we see is a labelled button mounted on Denholm's wall. Later in the episode, another F-bomb is dropped, and the employee is a second too late on the buzzer.

* [[Stage Magician]]: Jen breaks up with her driving instructor boyfriend because of his uncanny resemblance to a stage magician, looking like an expy of David Blaine.

* [[Stand in Portrait]]: Moss and Roy do this, not to hide a person behind a picture frame, but to ''[[Refuge in Audacity|hide a fire behind a monitor frame]]''.

* [[Video Wills]]: Denholm.

* [[Wall Crawl]]: Richmond occasionally does this. He has magic goth powers or something.

** Douglas has a [[Star Trek]] inspired sex-tape.

* [[What Exactly Is His Job]]: Richmond has no idea what his job is. He learned the pattern of blinking lights on the servers, but he doesn't know what any of it ''means'', and pretty much everybody had forgotten he was even ''there'' aside from Roy and Moss who did everything they could to prevent him from leaving his room to depress everyone.

{{quote| '''Jen:''' [[Catapult Nightmare|MOSS!!]]}}

* [[Wicked Cultured]]