What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?/Live-Action TV

What Do You Mean These Live-Action TV Shows Weren't Made on Drugs?

In the late 1960s-early 1970s, when a lot of mainstream film and TV was going trippy, the style filtered down to kiddie entertainment. Sid and Marty Krofft Productions's works, as well as the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, are prime examples of this trope in action as a result.
While the role of drugs in the conceptualization of H.R. Pufnstuf is pretty easy to assume, the Brothers Krofft swear that it was not made on drugs, and did at one point fire a crew member for showing up stoned.
LazyTown is an excellent modern example. Its creator is a teetotaler for Pete's sake.
- ... And its message is not even "don't do drugs"; it's "don't do sugar"!
The preschool show Boohbah likewise seems like LSD in the form of a TV show.
- Such TV is merely live cartoons: cheaper.
- Some people like to leave the TV on when that show comes on "because it's trippy".
The Prisoner
Doctor Who
- Particularly the early surreal adventures The Celestial Toymaker (1966) and The Mind Robber (1968).
In the world of Tokusatsu, we have Voicelugger.
According to Monty Python Speaks, the writing team have been accused of drug-taking during the series, when aside from Graham Chapman's booze they were as sober as any 1970s British office worker. That isn't to say they never partook (the book doesn't delve that much into their personal lives), just that their writing was not informed by it.
- And it's not like with Chapman his alcoholism was his muse or anything; it was thoroughly debilitating and made him less and less productive, until by all accounts most of the reason he finally quit was so that he could play Brian properly and they wouldn't run into problems like they had filming Holy Grail, when he was constantly either drunk or suffering from withdrawal and initially couldn't do the Bridge of Death scene because his delirium tremens were too bad. The others have said that he was naturally random when writing and was responsible for many of the weirdest elements in Monty Python, but it wasn't because of the drinking.
- In Monty Python Speaks Eric Idle talks about how they kept an "office hours" work ethic, without any drugs. He openly muses how one can even the keys of their typewriter while high.
Pee-wee's Playhouse, especially the theme.
Spoofed on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. During an interview-style sketch, the interviewer (Michael Ian Black) asks them if they use drugs as inspiration for the show, as if it's some clever revelation, and Tim says they do (and calls it "marijuano").
- Word of God says they aren't high while performing or while writing (generally speaking). This isn't to say they don't smoke and don't get inspiration out of it...it's just that the actual production process is done sober. Subverted, then?
- Also, its spinoff Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule. To a slightly lesser extent.
Yo Gabba Gabba! was created by Christian Jacobs, who is Mormon. Practicing Mormons don't even ingest caffeine, let alone hallucinogenic drugs. That means that stuff like this was the product of a sober mind. Terrifying.
- Christian Jacobs is also MC Bat Commander in The Aquabats. That should explain a lot.
The Wiggles is an Australian kids show that was apparently played straight though that might be open to interpretation.
"Magic, Magic E" and the less well-known "Drop That E" were two songs from the British educational series Look and Read. Though today they both look like obvious attempts to get one past the radar, they actually have a fairly watertight alibi, as they were written almost a decade before the rave era took off.
Mr. Show parodies this trope in "Druggachusetts," a blatant take on H.R. Pufnstuf that is explicitly all about drugs. Co-creator and admitted pot-smoker David Cross has commented on how frustrated he gets when stoners assume that writers for the show were perpetually stoned, rather than simply hard-working and creative.
Bananas in Pajamas. Even the title sounds like it was made on drugs.
Mystery Science Theater 3000. Joel Hodgson in particular has been thought to be a stoner due to his sleepy eyes. Hodgson has repeated in interviews that the idea that his character was a stoner was his own fault, as he had stayed up all night the night before the taping of the pilot building the robots, and as a result, he was sleepy when they filmed it. It can be especially bad during Season 1, when the staff were working 12-hour days 7 days a week. Hodgson has also mentioned pretending to be sleepy helped him manage his stage fright, which he slowly managed to alleviate (but never get 100% over) as the show progressed.
Several creations by J.J. Abrams. Most notably Lost and Fringe.
The BBC's Robin Hood. No really. It has Robin hang-gliding from the parapets of a castle, Maid Marian practicing Tai Chi outside her house, a mangy old lion set loose on Sherwood Forest, costumes that were apparently bought at The 11th century Gap, arrows that defy physics, berets, a black Friar Tuck, hair gel, a man who throws ninja stars, a casino (complete with show-girls), and a plug in the cellar of Nottingham Castle that is somehow able to stop the flow of the River Trent.
Some people believe that Double Dare was so surreal it had to be inspired by drugs.
Green Acres had so many oddities, but everyone (except Oliver Wendell Douglas) acted like there was nothing unusual. Some examples: Arnold Ziffel, the pig that was treated (and acted like) a person; farmhand Eb, who instantly started acting like he was Oliver's son (and Lisa supported his claims) to the extent that Oliver ended up buying him a convertible and sent him to college; Ralph, the obviously female handyman who showed no feminine qualities and acted like a guy; Lisa's incredibly horrible cooking (which was so bad that she was able to make a gasket for Oliver's car out of her pancake batter); and all of the structural problems in the house, such as the hidden cellar, the phone at the top of the telephone pole, and the closet that opened out into the yard.
Charlie Brooker viciously rips into this trope in a Screenwipe episode covering children's television, in reaction to the common invocation of this trope in regard to surreal animations such as The Clangers.
A good amount of SCTV sketches seem to fall under this category, such as "Wet Nurse" and "The Vikings and the Beekeepers". The former is a parody of medical dramas featuring a nurse with comically large breasts, and the latter is... Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
The 1980s sketch show Fridays on ABC. For those who've never heard of the show, think Saturday Night Live, then move the show out to Los Angeles and add sketches where characters smoke weed, abuse prescription drugs, sniff glue, or make references to snorting cocaine, drinking alcohol, or taking Quaaludes. Not all of Fridays sketches featured characters doing drugs, but a lot had ideas that made you wonder if the writers were users themselves (or were so obsessed with being the Spiritual Successor to SNL that they simply made batshit insane sketches), like the seventeen-minute Rocky Horror Picture Show parody with John Roarke as Ronald Reagan dressed as Tim Curry's Dr. Frank N. Furter.
The Mighty Boosh: Noel Fielding and Julian Baratt have refuted this claim by saying they attempted to write on acid once, only to end up staring at a spider on the floor for six hours.
Supernatural started off as a perfectly normal show, with dark undertones and occasionally humourous episodes. And then came season 5, with giant men dressed up as the toothfairy, the characters starring in a Japanese quiz show and Paris Hilton as a pagan god.
PJ Katie's Farm, a children's show, is seriously bizarre.
Many production logos from the 60's and 70's, especially NBC's Psychedelic Peacock of Doom.
The danish The New Talkshow with Anders Lund Madsen. The show relies on Anders Lund Madsen's weirdness and Hilarity Ensues.
Magnum, P.I.: The seventh season finale—which was intended to be the Series Finale—seemed more like a hallucination than a story with an actual plot line.
The early 70s Saturday morning kid's show Make A Wish and its closing credits.
Almost everything on Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, particularly the infamous "cocktail tree".
- Unless you consider alcohol a drug, in which case? It's one helluva drug. Two words: Kwanzaa cake.
  - Speaking of cakes, how about this classic from Cake Wrecks? Or anything else done by Ms. Famulari?

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