Whitney
NBC Sitcom on which Whitney Cummings plays a character named Whitney Cummings. Her boyfriend Alex (Chris D'Elia) is her Straight Man. Their other friends are The Cutie Lily (Zoe Lister-Jones), her sensitive/suave boyfriend Neal (Thirty Rock's Maulik Pancholy), slutty Bottle Fairy Roxanne (Rhea Seehorn), and Casanova Wannabe Mark (Dan O'Brien). Most of the characters have specific jobs, but this is the sort of show where it doesn't matter what they are.
Tropes used in Whitney include:
- Beta Couple: Lily and Neal.
- Bi the Way: Neal comes out near the end of season 1.
- Bottle Fairy/Really Gets Around: Put these tropes together to get Roxanne's entire personality
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: "Whitney is taped in front of a live Studio Audience -- you heard me."
- Caught with Your Pants Down: Alex is caught in the act by Whitney, who later rants about it to their friends. This causes a certain amount of friction between the couple.
- Christmas Episode
- Closet Key: Neal realizes he's bisexual after he breaks up with Lily and meets a cute guy at work.
- The Danza
- Deadpan Snarker: Whitney is the queen of this, and Alex comes in at a close second.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Roxanne's Freudian Excuse/Backstory is that her husband cheated on her and they are now divorced.
- Engineered Public Confession: Whitney wants to prove Alex uses a condescending tone when he argues with her, so she gets Mark to set up a security camera in their apartment and tries to provoke Alex into using his condescending tone.
- Fingore: Alex tosses Whitney into bed, and she accidentally bounces off and hits the ground hard. They think she's okay...until they and the audience sees her ring finger bent sideways.
- Friends Rent Control: Lampshaded in the aforementioned episode with the camera in Whitney's apartment. As her friends watch on a monitor:
 |
Lily: I'm loving this show already. So real. |
 |
- Mars and Venus Gender Contrast
- The Other Marty: The pilot was originally filmed with Beverly D'Angelo playing Whitney's mother. Before it aired, she got replaced by Jane Kaczmarek.
- Sit Comic
- Slap Slap Kiss: Mark tris to invoke this with Roxanne, because that's the kind of thing that happens in movies. It doesn't work.
- The Windy City
- Women Are Wiser: Inverted. Alex is, for the most part, Whitney's Straight Man.
- Zany Scheme: Whitney often comes up with these. Alex is Genre Savvy enough to come up with Counter Zanys when they're targeted at him.