Tom Goes to the Mayor

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Tom Goes to the Mayor is an animated comedy show on Adult Swim by Tim Heidecker and Eric Warheim, the creative team behind Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!! The show revolves around Tom Peters, resident of Jefferton, and Jefferton's Mayor. Nearly all of the show's plots revolved around an idea Tom wanted to implement for the city of Jefferton, or for seeking help with the Mayor, whom he considers a friend, for personal problems. However, the Mayor has other plans, whether intentional or not, and usually things don't work out for poor Tom Peters.

Tom Goes to the Mayor was unique for its animation style - instead of using more traditional methods, pictures of live actors would be taken, and then be filtered through Photoshop to look like mimeographs. These "mimeographs" would then be "animated" in what was in effect about a frame every two seconds. All other objects and backgrounds were typically animated using stock clip-art, and shows within the show would be live-action.

Lasted about 30 or so episodes before Tim & Eric decided to go for Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! instead, though some elements and characters were essentially transferred to the new show, such as Channel 5's "Married News Team" and various skits. The Awesome Show episode "Pepperoni" opened with a live-action mini-sketch based on Tom Goes to the Mayor.

Tropes used in Tom Goes to the Mayor include:


  • Ambiguously Gay: The Mayor
  • Art Shift: Any character seen on television is done in live action.
  • Big Bad: Joy Peters
  • Big Eater: Joy Peters
  • The Ditz: Joy's Boys
  • Dogged Nice Guy: Tom. The dude's such a doormat.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: The Mayor, and one of the reasons Tom's ideas go awry.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Tom: the universe just hates him.
  • The Eeyore: Joy Peters
  • Failure Is the Only Option: As said above Tom's goals never really seem to come to fruition.
  • Fat Bastard: Tom's wife Joy.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: the entire "Porkin' with the Peters" scene, which resulted in a TV-MA rating without showing anything the name implies on-screen.
  • Gonk: Joy and her sons, to a ridiculous extent.
  • Henpecked Husband: Tom.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Joy Peters in "Rebirth" and "Zoo Trouble".
  • Infant Immortality: Averted when the Mayor had the park completely covered with bear traps, causing the deaths of many children. Ironically, a bear that happens to come by remains unharmed.
    • And averted again with the death of Tom's stepson from an overdose of Puddin's brand pudding.
  • Ink Suit Actor: Because the animation technique involves filtering photographs of the actors, all characters inevitably look like the actors voicing them.
    • With the exception of Joy, who is voiced by Stephanie Courtney but played by Michael Q. Schmidt.
  • Jerkass: The Mayor, along with most of the residents of Jefferton.
    • Gibbons is possibly the only person who can rival the Mayor in that regards.
  • Karma Houdini: Anyone who isn't Tom.
  • Man Child: The Mayor
  • Negative Continuity: Each episode is apparently the first time Tom and the Mayor are meeting.
    • Lampshaded in an episode wherein both reminisce to past times, Tom thinks back to events of past episodes and the mayor thinks back to only a few minutes prior.
  • Once Per Episode: Every time Tom mentions his plans to improve Jefferton, someone will respond with an expression of disdain or disgust.
  • Only Sane Man: Poor Tom...
  • Permanent Elected Official: The Mayor of course.
    • With a very brief interlude from interim mayor Zynx.
  • Quarter Hour Short
  • Serious Business: Anything the Mayor gets involved in gets an automatic Serious Business upgrade.
  • Severely Specialized Store: This was a common gag; Tom opened a store called "Big Cups", which only sold big cups. There was also a store that just sold bear traps.
    • And that bear trap store was inexplicably located next door to another bear trap store. The mayor seems to be the only client to keep them both in business.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Despite Thaum Pieders Tump Eaters Tom Peters being such a simple, obvious name, it will get inexplicably misspelled at every single occasion shown onscreen.
    • A rare aversion occurs with the giant 200 dollar check from the Mayor to sponsor "Pipe Camp". There's a high probability that it's spelled correctly because the Mayor wanted to be sure to frame Tom for providing tobacco to kids when the police inevitably cracked down on the camp.
  • Suck E. Cheese's: This is what Tom's historical-themed restaurant project becomes after he slumps into a coma for several weeks and the Mayor's nephew turns it into the "WW Laserz" fast-food joint.
  • Too Dumb to Live: The Mayor, roughly. No matter how dangerous most of the plans are (usually due to his meddling) he'll go through with them regardless--pretty much wrecking Jefferton, or dooming the town to destruction.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: One episode has Tom trying to do this to his estranged father. Course thanks to the Mayor, it only leaves their relationship worse off than before.
  • You Meddling Kids: Tom and the Mayor do this as they expose the city zoo's competing attraction, Bernie Fusterillio's Real Live Animal Experience. As they expose him in a Scooby Doo style Dramatic Unmask, the conclusion turns into a Gambit Pileup of successive costume reveals.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Tom_Goes_to_the_Mayor?oldid=973871"