Series / Yes, Dear

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Yes, Dear is a sitcom set in Los Angeles that ran on CBS from 2000 to 2006.

Greg (Anthony Clark) and Kim Warner (Jean Louisa Kelly), together with their offspring (Sammy; their daughter, Emily, joins the cast mid-series) led a well-to-do, if uptight and isolated, life, the latter of which started to change when Kim's sister and her husband, Christine (Liza Snyder) and Jimmy Hughes (Mike O'Malley), came knocking on the Warners' house door (with their own children, Dominic and Logan, in tow) asking for shelter. In stark contrast to the lifestyle of the Warners, the Hughes' attitude is far more outgoing and laid-back. Much of the show deals with issues relating to marriage, family, work and/or sex.

Despite the generic nature of the series, the show had a distinct postmodern feel, especially in later seasons. Breaking the Fourth Wall and Gainax Endings were common, and a handful of episodes featured ending tag scenes with the actors breaking character.

This show provides examples of:

• Abuse of Return Policy: After Christine buys a new television set for her bedroom in the episode "Who's On First?", Jimmy follows suit by charging other expensive luxury items to her credit card also. When Christine is outraged, Jimmy tells her that they don't have to pay the credit card company for 30 days, and can return their stuff in 29 days as long as they keep their boxes and receipts. In The Tag, the store only provides him with store credit (in the amount of $15,487.00), so he has to trade his store credit for cash from customers who are about to make their purchases.
• Accidental Proposal: Turns out Greg's "proposal" to Kim in the church bathroom at Jimmy and Christine's wedding was actually just a pep talk he was giving to Jimmy, who was having cold feet. Kim was in the bathroom stall at the time and neither Greg nor Jimmy knew she was in there, while Kim didn't know Jimmy was there since he left without saying anything, so she assumed Greg was talking to her. Greg was too afraid to tell her the truth since she so happily accepted the "proposal". On top of that, the last time Greg wore his tuxedo was when he proposed to his last girlfriend, who turned him down and left him so distraught that he couldn't bring himself to return the ring, which was still in the pocket, so he decided to just roll with it.
• Actually, I Am Him: When Greg decides not to attend a movie premiere, Jimmy takes his press pass and ticket and goes there. He tells someone he meets that the movie was lousy. What he doesn't know is that the person he was talking to is the movie's director, Kevin Smith (As Himself).
• Agony of the Feet: A deliberate example takes place in "Quitters Never Dance" when Jimmy asks Billy to injure his foot so he can get out of dancing on stage with Logan. At first, Billy tries to oblige by dropping a flower pot on Jimmy's foot, but Jimmy takes his foot away at the last moment. Two such failed attempts (and wasted flower pots) later, Billy asks Jimmy to give him money to buy more flower pots, only to stomp on Jimmy's foot when Jimmy's guard is down because he doesn't want to go through the same song and dance again.
• All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles: When Greg's father becomes a comic book fan, the normally prudish Kim asked, "Normal comics like for kids? Or those Japanese porno comics like Overfiend, where young women are taken against their will by demonic monsters?" Later in the episode, Greg's mother tells him he should hide his (but actually Kim's by implication) Japanese porn better.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Jimmy's dating advice to Dominic during the episode "Dominic's First Date". Christine disagrees.
• Alliterative Title: Some episode titles have this kind of arrangement: "Talk Time", "Jimmy's Jimmy", "Doctor, Doctor"^note  (this one is also a "Double, Double" Title), "Guarding Greg", "Vegas Vacation", "Hustlin' Hughes", "March Madness", "The Day of the Dolphin", and "The Radford Reshuffle".
• All Men Are Perverts: In "Kiss and Yell", Greg and Kim make lists of all the people they have kissed in their lifetime. Kim is horrified to learn that Greg has kissed 49 women while she has only kissed 7 men and calls Greg a man-whore before storming out angrily. Jimmy manages to calm her down by explaining that Greg's number is actually pathetically low. He didn't even hit 50!
  Jimmy: You can't compare a guy's number to a girl's. Men are pigs. We're always trying to get our hands on something. While you were busy saying "No, no, no!", he was busy saying "Please, please, please!"
  Kim: Well, forty-nine of them said "yes".
  Jimmy: Yeah, but he probably asked about five hundred.
  • Though if 7 kisses is average for a woman, but 49 is sub-par for a man, then either guys get most of their kisses from each other, or there's a small number of women out there kissing literally thousands of men.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Tom for Greg and Big Jimmy for Jimmy. They're always launching into some embarrassing story about their sons or prat-falling their way through scenes. It helps that they're played by Tim Conway and Jerry Van Dyke, two giants in the world of comedy.
• Annoyingly Repetitive Child: In "Arm-prins", Greg puts on a Blue's Clues DVD to distract Sammy the toddler so he can use the bathroom. As such, Sammy becomes addicted to the show and refuses to stop watching it. Greg does not have the backbone to make him stop and they end up replaying the DVD for hours.
• Audience Murmurs: In "Let's Get Jaggy With it", Greg's father is told by another actor to mouth "peas and carrots" in the background for his walk-on role in JAG. He refuses to do this because he can't help but feel that somewhere out there is a deaf person watching TV, wondering why that crazy old guy in the back is just saying "peas and carrots" over and over again.
• Back to School: Christine's Story Arc, starting from "Christine's Journey", involves her going back to college for a Bachelor's degree.
• Bad Boss: "Greg's New Assistant" has Greg hire Christine to be his new secretary. After starting the job, Christine is told horror stories by some other employees about Greg being a horrible boss who drove every one of his previous secretaries to quit due to a massive workload. It turns out that the massive workload came from Kim, who had been using Greg's secretaries to constantly run errands for her. Greg had absolutely no idea this was going on since nobody on Earth would be stupid enough to go down the Morton's Fork of either getting on the boss's wife's bad side by disobeying, or get on the boss's bad side by telling him that his wife is an unfeeling relentless taskmaster. Being Kim's sister and Greg's sister-in-law, however, Christine has less of a problem speaking up.
• Benevolent Boss: Mr. George Savitsky. For all the wacky requests and demands he asks for or makes Greg do, he's still a Reasonable Authority Figure.
• Big Eater: Jimmy.
• Book Dumb: Jimmy. Though he is bad at studying, in the everyday life he is much wiser than he seems to be.
• "Both Sides Have a Point" Remark: Subverted in "Tree Hugger". Jimmy wants to build a regulation horseshoe pit in his backyard, but doing so would require him to cut down Greg's beloved lemon tree. Greg insists Jimmy not cut the tree down, reasoning that Jimmy is indebted to him for all his help over the years. Jimmy counters that it is his house and his tree, and that he shouldn't have to ask Greg's permission to do what he wants with his own lot. While both arguments may have been valid, Greg undercuts his position by being a huge dick about the whole matter, refusing to let things go even after Jimmy concedes. Making things even worse, Greg insists Kim should stand by him in the matter despite the fact that he threw Kim under the bus during her altercation in the mall parking lot.
• Brain Bleach: During the episode "Speed Dating", Billy asks Jimmy to go on speed dating with him for moral support, a proposition that Christine refuses to approve of when Jimmy tells her over the phone — that is, until Jimmy tells her that Billy spends many dateless nights fantasizing himself with Christine, which prompts Christine to tell Jimmy to go along with Billy at once, before hanging up and throwing down her phone in disgust.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  • Early in "Mama Said Knock You Out", Greg's list of possible causes for Christine's hair falling out gets weirder and weirder, to Christine's annoyance.
    Greg: It could be something as small as an allergy or a vitamin deficiency, but you can't rule out a fungal or bacterial infection. Or it could just be the early onset of... menopause.
    Christine: Thank you, Greg. Never thought I'd be rooting for a fungal infection.
  • At the end of the episode "Headshot", Jimmy and Christine make amends with the Warner family by replacing things they broke: a blender, a laundry washer, and... Sammy.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The end of the episode "Greg's New Assistant" has Jimmy saying "How hot is that?" while looking straight at the camera.
  • The episode "Trophy Husband" involves Greg rearranging the living room furniture and having the couch facing away from the camera. Even though everyone agrees that it's better that way, it just doesn't feel right somehow...
  • At the end of one episode, two people who won a contest for a walk on role for the show are just standing in Greg's house. Jimmy explains they won a contest, and Greg tells them to step off camera so they'll be seen on wide screen.
• Breast Attack:
  • Kim accidentally does this to Mr. Savitsky's then-wife in the episode "Savitsky's Tennis Club" while playing tennis. It knocks one of her breast implants out of place.
    Mr. Savitsky: Oh, my God, Kim, you broke my wife's boob!
  • One such incident happens in Christine's boxing match against Jimmy's boss, a female security guard, in "Mama Said Knock You Out".
    Christine: Ow...she punched me in the boob. Can you do that?
    Jimmy's Boss: *annoyed* Yeah.
    Christine: Oh. [punches Jimmy's boss in the boob]
• Brick Joke: Many of episodes of the show would have The Tag serving as a callback to an earlier joke made in passing. Arguably, the funniest part of the show.
• Bumbling Dad: Jimmy and his own dad, Big Jimmy. Greg's dad, Tom, is no Albert Einstein himself.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Greg.
  • Possibly worse with Sammy. Despite the fact that he was a baby, something bad seems to happen to him each episode. He also qualifies as invokedThe Woobie.
• Celebrity Cameo:
  • Ernie Banks, Johnny Bench and Frank Robinson all turn up in the episode "Hustlin' Hughes".
  • Kevin Smith in the episode "The Premiere".
• Censorship by Spelling: In the episode "One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, Blue Fish", We get this exchange after Sammy's pet fish dies suddenly:
  Kim: Where's the fish?
  Greg: Shhh! Don't talk about the F-I-S-H!
  Kim: Oh no, is he D-E-A-D already?
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Jimmy proves himself unable to not jump into any situation that apparently warrants help in "Jimmy Saves the Day".
• Closet Key: When Greg is knocked unconscious by an electric shock, he has a dream in which the shock had killed him, and he is in the afterlife with everyone else. Christine says she lived a long life and died in a nursing home when a nurse grabbed her ass. It startled her so much she had a heart attack, but she said she liked it, and that it was possible that she was really a lesbian but never realized it.
• Compressed Vice: Greg's nasal spray addiction.
• Contractual Purity: In-Universe. Early in "House of Cards", Kim expects a babysitter to cancel her Valentine's Day Date because "Boys are only after one thing, and as soon as he finds out you're not gonna give it to him, he'll move on." When the babysitter admits that she already gave it to him, Kim hangs up the phone and says she doesn't want that woman anywhere near her child anymore.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: During the episode "The Premiere", Mr. Savitsky once tells Greg, "Warner, if you keep talking, you're going to come to work in a thong and a beef-eater hat." That shuts Greg up right away.
• Crossover:
  • In The Ticket Jimmy tries to earn money to pay off his traffic ticket by cheating on The Price Is Right.
  • In "Arm-prins" Greg tries to quiet Sammy by keeping him busy watching Blue's Clues and later in a dream sequence winds up in the show himself. Later on, Kim dreams she is in bed with Steve from Blue's Clues.
  • In Big Brother-In-law, Jimmy becomes a contestant on Big Brother, stumbling through challenges hosted by Julie Chen alongside real former houseguests.
• The Cutie: Kim is the closest, trying to understand and reconcile the family members.
• Deadpan Snarker: Greg and Christine.
• Dirty Kid: Dominic.
  • "Headshot" implies that Dominic is showing sexual interest, according to Christine's dialogue with him.
    Christine: Dominic, from now on, when you have to use the restroom at the mall: Instead of going in with me, I think it's time you start using the men's room.
    Dominic: But I love using the ladies' room.
    Christine: Yeah, which is exactly why you should start using the men's room.
  • After seeing Kim soaking wet and without bra early in "Broken by the Mold", Dominic spends the whole episode lusting over Kim, much to her discomfort.
• Disrupting the Theater: "Walk Like a Man" culminates with the Warner and Hughes families going to the movie theater. In the theater, the man behind Greg will not stop talking, so Greg retaliates by standing up to block the man's wife's view. This results in the man challenging Greg to a fight outside the theater. When Greg sees his son Sammy about to eat a candy bar with peanuts in it, Greg punches the man to rush over to Sammy, knowing that Sammy is allergic to peanuts. In The Tag, it is revealed that Sammy was fully aware of what was going on, and deliberately tried to eat the candy bar so that Greg would see what was happening, man up, and score a win.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Christine beating the shit out of Jimmy in "Mama Said Knock You Out" is Played for Laughs. Had the genders been reversed in this story, Jimmy would have promptly been arrested for assault and battery.
• Dream Sequence:
  • The ending of several episodes include this.
  • In one episode, Greg is electrocuted into unconsciousness and dreams of lying dead with everyone in the joint burial plot Don had bought as a Christmas present.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: Jimmy tries this once on Kim in "The Day of the Dolphin", only to be subverted by Kim calling Jimmy out on it with: "Jimmy, I'm not Elmer Fudd."
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the pilot, Jimmy and Christine have their own apartment and are shown visiting Kim and Greg's house for dinner. Beginning in Episode 2, the Hughes live in the Warners' guest house. This transformation is never explained on the show.
  • The pilot also portrays Kim as a struggling, overwhelmed mother who is barely keeping her head above water. In the next episode she is portrayed as competent and in charge, with Christine's parenting skills paling in comparison to her younger sister's.
• Eating Contest: In "Talk Time", Greg mentions a time he and Jimmy had a contest to see who could eat the most butter. A couple minutes later, when Kim suggests that she and Greg should do more things together, Greg scoffs at the idea and says "Oh please, Kim. I'm pretty sure I can eat more butter than you."
• Either/Or Title: The title for the first Christmas Episode is "All I Want For Christmas is My Dead Uncle's Cash, or Silent Night, Holy Crap".
• The Ending Changes Everything: Greg, after much reluctance, goes to see a psychologist along with the rest of the family. He laments a story over two bullies ruining his May–December Romance and stealing his cupcakes. The shrink deduces that Greg sees Jimmy and Christine's antics as said bullies winning over and over. He lets Greg leave so he could get some fresh air. As soon as the family leaves, his wife calls him. However, during their conversation, he realizes much to his surprise that Greg fooled him using items in his own office including the hostess cupcake he was eating. They even make fun of the limp-turned-walking part of it. (Greg's foot fell asleep when he "Lamented".)
• Even Evil Has Standards: While the intention was to get Greg to leave Kim, Brian was actually disturbed that no matter how many times he knocked Greg down he kept getting up and demanding that he take back what Brian said about Kim.
• Expendable Clone: Jimmy pitches a movie to Savitsky about a futuristic world where everybody has a clone that functions as their own personal organ donor if they ever need a transplant. Overlaps with Clones Are People, Too, since the plot involves a doctor and his wife's clone falling in love.
• Extreme Omnivore: When Greg and Jimmy end up at a party thrown by Bret Michaels of Poison, Jimmy gets to work establishing his party reputation as "the crazy guy" by loudly declaring that he will eat anything for a dollar.
• Fan Disservice: The Tag of "Jimmy Has Changed" has Kim entering the kitchen with a thick mustache as the result of taking Jimmy's andropause pills by mistake. When she's told about the mistake, she reacts with an exasperated "Oh, great!" while raising her arms in frustration, which shows her armpits full of thick hair, before she walks away.
• Freudian Couch: Lampshaded. Jimmy tells Greg that he doesn't need to see a therapist and spend time lying on a couch talking about how he feels, and Jimmy ends up telling Greg about his feelings while lying on the couch.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: One episode explores this. Jimmy is injured and Kim is pregnant, so the two of them stay home together while Greg and Christine go out together. Greg and Christine actually get along great and have a lot of fun together. Jimmy and Kim, not so much, so they pretend they can't stand each other and have a huge fake argument when Greg and Christine come home so that they can get their original hangout buddies back.
• Future Loser: Jimmy and Christine.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Kim talks to Christine in the kitchen about how great it is that the men in the family are working together and getting along. From the kitchen window, Greg, Jimmy, and the wives' dad Don are in a fight in the backyard.
  • Greg's dad locks himself in a room full of monkeys in a rain forest themed casino. Greg and Jimmy are talking about trying to find him. The entire time, the monkeys are jumping all over Greg's dad, which can be seen from the window.
  • The episode "Sorority Girl" ends with Christine and Jimmy walking down a street block after a night of partying and alcohol drinking inside a sorority house that led to them sleeping inside someone else's car by mistake, with Christine remarking that they can't do this anymore, passing a yard where, unnoticed by Christine and Jimmy, Greg is Bound and Gagged to a tree in said yard^note , the victim of sorority girls' retribution against Greg after Greg's attempt at getting Jimmy and Christine back home from the sorority house goes wrong for him and leads to the sorority pledges ambushing him before he can call the police to have the party shut down.
• Girl-on-Girl is Hot: Jimmy's standard reaction to anything involving lesbianism is to nudge the person closest to him (usually Greg), lean in, and say "How hot is that?".
• Go-Getter Girl: Kim is a mom-version, although "Greg's New Assistant" shows that the only way she was able to be "Super Mom" was that she was using Greg's work secretary as her personal errand boy/girl without his knowledge. She was such a slave-driver that she caused every one of them to quit, until he hired Christine who spoke up about this behavior.
• Gone Horribly Right: Played for Laughs with a possible overlap with A Lesson Learned Too Well in the episode "The Ring". Kim is furious upon discovering that the engagement ring Greg gives her was originally meant for another woman and absolutely refuses to accept it, forcing Greg to get another ring late in the episode. Unfortunately for Kim, Greg goes a step further by having one custom-made, with some truly over-the-top designs (e.g. the ring has an inscription on the outside with the words "Te amo, bonito muchacha"^note  ("I love you, pretty girl" in Spanish) , as a reminder that Greg and Kim took a Spanish class together during their college years) that Kim considers gaudy but is unable to refuse after the fact. Worse yet, he's going to take a picture of her wearing it and send it to her mother, the prospect of which leaves Kim with a blatant "Oh, Crap!" Smile (though Greg never seems to notice her reaction), while Christine, having witnessed the whole incident, finds it Actually Pretty Funny enough to laugh about it at one point.
• Groin Attack:
  • An example is in "Natural Born Delinquents", when Jimmy mentions how Logan once hit him in the "cherries" after he took a bite out of Logan's pudding pop. At the end of the same episode, Greg also suffers the same incident.
  • An accidental version of this happens on the episode, "Hooked on Comics", in which Greg's father, Tom, does this to himself... with a toy airplane he controls.
  • The deliberate example takes place in "I Wish That I Had Sammy's Girl", where Logan hits Greg with a water jet from the garden hose in the backyard, right between the legs.
• Guinness Episode: Jimmy is the one trying to win a record, and after many failed attempts he succeeds with "Farthest Marshmallow Nose Blow Caught in Someone Else's Mouth". He attempts to shoot it into Billy's mouth but misses. However, Dominic manages to catch it in his mouth, winning Jimmy the record.
• Gypsy Curse: When Greg gets a call from a wrong number about a dying relative who wanted to see him one last time, he manages to use it to get out of doing something he didn't want to do. Jimmy is displeased with Greg for lying about a tragedy, so he makes him actually follow through with his lie and go see the old woman. When he gets there, the old woman can't see very well and mistakes Greg for the man who the call was intended for. She then calls him a no-good bastard who has brought nothing but trouble to the family and lays one of these on him before she dies. We don't see what the effect of the curse is, but the final scene has Greg tracking down the man it was intended for and passing it on to him.
• Halloween Episode: "Halloween".
• Happily Married: More than one: Greg & Kim; Jimmy & Christine; Tom and Natalie, Greg's parents.
• Henpecked Husband: Greg, to Kim.
• Here We Go Again!: The ending of the final episode, "Should I Bring a Jacket". After the Hugheses had finally moved out and had been living in their own house for a season or so, there is a huge storm, during which their house is destroyed by a tree falling on top of it. The last scene has them back on the Warners' doorstep, asking if the guest house is still available, which mirrors the way the pilot episode starts with the Hughes family arriving at the Warners' doorstep and asking for temporary shelter.
• Hypocritical Humor: This show is full of them. Here are some examples:
  • In "A Bunch of Ice Holes", Jimmy goes to the house Kim house-sits for relaxation since the house in question has a Jacuzzi bathtub for hydro-therapeutic purposes. When Christine gathers Dominic and Logan to said house in order to have some "family time" with Jimmy in secret, Dominic asks "Isn't that wrong?", only for Christine to deflect by reminding him of that time when he spilled his juice without telling anyone else to shut him up.
  • "Mama Said Knock You Out":
    • Christine chastises Jimmy for neglecting to take their clothes to the dry-cleaner, for which Jimmy defends himself by claiming to have a bad memory, only for Greg to shred his defense by asking him about some Super Bowl match in the past that Jimmy answers with excellent accuracy.
      Greg: Okay. Your witness.
      Jimmy: Okay, so I have a very selective memory.
      Christine: Yeah, well, I wish for once it would select something important to me.
    • Christine isn't happy when she finds out Kim lies to Greg about being turned on by the sight of him working out to stir him to a more active lifestyle when everyone is at a gym, but she changes her tune and tells Greg that she finds him irresistible when he's working out and that she'd have sex with him if they were both single after Kim tells her that the Hughes family would be on their own should the comfortable life bestowed by the Warner family run out due to Greg dying prematurely from lack of exercise.
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: In one episode, Kim does not want to stop breastfeeding Sammy so that she gets to keep her large breasts and this power to go with them.
  Kim: Men see them and just go into a trance. I think I could rob a bank with these things!
• Indy Ploy: How Jimmy solves Dominic's lying problem in "Spanks, But No Spanks": He tries yelling, spanking, and bribing him with a trip to a go-kart track, but they all fail. Dominic asks if they're still going racing, and Jimmy says no. When told he promised they'd go, it suddenly occurs to Jimmy to go with I Lied and claim he deliberately set out to show Dominic how bad it feels to be lied to. It works and Dominic goes to his room to think about this, leaving Jimmy and Christine to wonder what he'll do once he figures out they always make this stuff up as they go along.
• Insane Troll Logic: As "Greg's New Assistant" illustrates, Kim was under the impression that Greg's work assistants were also for her personal use, and drove every one of them to quit because she was far more demanding than the person they were actually hired to work for. She saw absolutely no difference between her husband's work secretary and her personal errand boy/girl, and even thought she had the authority to fire them if they ever disobeyed her orders. Greg had no idea this was even going on until he hired Christine.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: Downplayed with Greg. Lack of athletic prowess or interest towards sports aside, he's very much a straight man who's Happily Married to Kim. He proves to be a good dancer in "Quitters Never Dance", though in this case it's only because his parents dropped him off to a summer camp where he learned all indoor activities, dancing included, when he was a minor.
• Ironic Echo: During the episode "Pimpin' Ain't Easy", Logan decides to be dressed only in underwear as protest to being given hand-me-down clothes once he finds out all of his clothes once belonged to Dominic. When a cop intervenes upon seeing him and Christine out in the street late in the episode, this takes place, much to Christine's chagrin:
  Officer: Ma'am, he'd better get clothed, or someone will be in jail.
  Christine: That's right, Logan. You'd better put on those hand-me-down clothes, or you're going to jail.
  Officer: Ma'am... I was referring to you.
  Logan: [Turning to Christine] You'd better buy me new clothes, or you're going to jail!
• Irrational Hatred: Christine and Kim's father Don despises Greg to the point that he cuts Greg out of family photos. This doesn't make much sense given that Greg is basically the type of guy any father would want his daughter to marry: he is successful, respectful, and provides a terrific home for his family. Don ironically prefers Jimmy, who is forever short of money and doesn't even own his own home for most of the series. It's only near the end of "A Bunch of Ice Holes" that Don starts to warm up to Greg, after Greg Grew a Spine and calls Don out for his biased attitude.
• It Will Never Catch On:
  • "When Jimmy Met Greggie", which takes place before the Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust is created, has Jimmy ponder to his friends on how there should be a way to put cheese inside Pizza crust. His friends look at him like he's some kind of Mad Scientist.
  • When Jimmy tries to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, he first tries to submit a record that he came up with himself, but gets rejected. Then he announces he's going to attempt "Farthest Marshmallow Nose Blow Caught in Someone Else's Mouth". Greg thinks this is another record Jimmy came up with and says that the book would never accept something so ridiculous, only for Jimmy to point out that he's trying to break a record that is already in the book.
• Karma Houdini: Greg spends the majority of an episode trying to prove that either Jimmy or one of Jimmy's kids broke their toilet and furiously ponders ways to punish them for what they did. When it's revealed that Sammy was actually the culprit, everything was immediately forgiven, the family had a nice Sentimental Music Cue, and they all went to the movies.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • Following a wrong phone number, Greg lies about having a dying relative in order to get out of a church function and does so in a church itself. Only Jimmy knows the truth and urges Greg to come clean. He doesn't, and it comes back to bite him in the end. Jimmy then says of God, "You sneaky little fella."
  • A more positive example happens when Jimmy saves two Jehovah's Witnesses from his own lifestyle. It's heavily implied that many of his prayers are thrown into the shredding pile in heaven. However after his good deed, they answer one of his more minor prayers as a thank you. Said prayer happens to be magically refilling an almost empty bottle of mustard. His reaction was genuine.
• Last-Second Word Swap: On an episode, Kim goes "Oh, shhhhhh...sugar." because there are kids around. One of her nephews looks up at her and says "I know what you wanted to say."
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: All of the things Greg's dad is taught about background characters in "Let's Get Jaggy With it" are used or made fun of by the actual background characters on the show, including a rule that states that actors can't be paid speaking role wages if more than six people say the same words together.
  Crowd: Assholes!
• Line-of-Sight Name: Exaggerated. Greg is pressured by his family and a group therapist to explain why he hates Jimmy and Christine so much, so he makes up a story about how he was bullied at summer camp, all from things in the therapist's office.
• Lost Love Montage: It becomes a running joke to feature Greg flashing back to some character he became friends with but lost like they were an ex-girlfriend. Common activities included doing each other's hair, riding Razor scooters, playing checkers, and playing guitar with Chicago's "Hard Habit to Break" playing throughout.
• Mama's Boy: Greg fears Sammy will become this when Kim won't stop coddling him.
• Manipulative Bastard: Greg's dad. Bumbling Dad aside, he successfully manipulated Greg and Kim into naming their newborn daughter Emily. They were being filmed for an episode of A Baby Story, and at one point, Tom gets the Confession Cam to himself and tells a sob story about his beloved deceased aunt who he always wanted to name his daughter after, but was not able to because he only had Greg. Conveniently, Greg and Kim are behind a wall eavesdropping on him. When the TV show sends them all of the footage that was cut from the episode, they find out he knew they were listening and in fact planned it that way all along. It's entirely possible that the story he told wasn't even true.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: "The Big Snip" has Jimmy going in to get a vasectomy but changing his mind at the last second because he wants to give Christine the daughter she's always wanted. The Tag for the episode features an older Jimmy and Christine "trying for that daughter again", followed by the camera zooming out to show that they now have so many sons that there is barely any room in the Warners' guest house for them all to sleep.
• Mistaken for Gay: Greg and Jimmy are mistaken as a gay couple twice. Jimmy is quite flattered by it.
• Movie-Theater Episode:
  • In "Walk Like a Man", Greg tries to prove to Sammy that he can be a Papa Wolf so that Sammy will see him more as a manly father than his wimpy older brother. At one point, the Warner and Hughes families go to the movie theater, where Greg gets into a scuffle with a talkative and much larger man and is apprehensive about fighting it out. When Greg sees Sammy about to eat a candy bar with peanuts in it, Greg punches the man to rush over to his son, knowing that Sammy is allergic to peanuts. In The Tag, it is revealed that Sammy was fully aware of what was going on, and deliberately tried to eat the candy bar so that Greg would see what was happening, man up, and score a win.
  • In "Natural Born Delinquents", the Warner and Hughes families go to the movie theater, when Dominic and Logan fight over a bag of Cheetos and spill them all over Greg's car. While Kim, Jimmy, Christine, Sammy, and Emily go see the movie and go to the arcade afterwards, Greg stays behind to discipline Dominic and Logan, telling them they can't see the movie until after they pick up the Cheetos. Dominic and Logan miss the movie and the arcade, but find much more enjoyment in torturing Greg.
• Mundane Made Awesome: With the help of Logan, Jimmy discovers Greg is working at Chuck E Cheese rather than accepting a job offer from him. What should usually be a mundane drama moment on their "Who owes who" relationship turns into a hilariously awesome search for Greg. This ends in a climactic chase between the two, the latter in a Chuck E Cheese costume while the SWAT theme plays with Greg escaping on a skateboard and Jimmy crashing a scooter.
• Mushroom Samba: Greg on nasal spray in "Jimmy Saves the Day".
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "Broken by the Mold" has Greg leaving a note that begins with this sentence: "Dear family, friends, and Jimmy".
• Nature Tinkling: In "Who's On First?", this is how the Hughes family potty-trained Dominic and Logan^note the former of whom had to learn in the snow, much to the ire of Greg, who owns the guest house and the backyard they live in. Eventually, Greg decides to try it with Sammy behind Kim's back after several unsuccessful attempts to potty-train him. Kim finds out about this and is not pleased.
• Never Bareheaded: Jimmy is rarely ever seen without some kind of cap on his head, to the point that Greg suggested that he submit his own record to the Guinness Book for "Most Time Spent Wearing a Hat" (it was rejected).
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The characters undergo some major changes to their lives over the six years of the show's run, so much so that the plot structures of Seasons 5-6 would be completely anathema to Season 1. Examples include Christine graduating from college and eventually landing a job as Greg's assistant, the Warners having a second child, the Hughes' moving out of the Warners' guest house into their own home, and Greg losing his tenured position at Radford Studios.
• Obnoxious In-Laws:
  • For Greg, it's Kim and Christine's father, Don. For Jimmy, it's their mother, Jenny. For Kim, it's Greg's mother, Natalie. That leaves Christine as the only one of the four main characters who doesn't have any problems with either her father-in-law or her mother-in-law.
  • Of course, the series itself is built on this trope - with a number of plots built around disagreements between brothers-in-law Greg and Jimmy.
• "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Kim sports one near the end of "The Ring" upon realizing that her pushing Greg to get a different ring for her ends up having Gone Horribly Right.
• Older and Wiser: Jimmy and Christine mentor Greg and Kim on how to deal with conflicts with your spouse.
• OOC Is Serious Business: Given the many disagreements between Greg and Jimmy, Greg's claim of agreeing with Jimmy's belief that All Girls Want Bad Boys in "Dominic's First Date" come off as unusual and quickly catches Kim and Christine's attention.^note  In this case, Greg cites his own personal experience where a girl he fancied took the movie tickets he gifted her and went with her sister. Apparently this incident is bad enough that Kim and Christine, in spite of their mutual disapproval in the "All Girls Want Bad Boys" belief, refrain from hurling judgment on Greg. Jimmy gets no such leniency, though.
• Parental Fashion Veto: In the episode "Pimpin' Ain't Easy", the Warner and Hughes families are about to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant, when Logan decides to protest against having to wear his older brother Dominic's hand-me-downs by wearing only his underwear. Jimmy and Christine, his parents, don't approve of this at all, and Jimmy tries to get Logan to stop by telling him that if he goes to the restaurant in his underwear, people will point, stare, and laugh at him. This doesn't faze Logan at all, and he decides to go to the restaurant in just his underwear.
• People Zoo: Jimmy wonders if fish would keep humans in air filled aquariums if they ruled the earth.
• Potty Emergency: In the episode "Arm Prins", when Kim tries to sell her titular new invention, Greg is left to babysit Sammy by himself. Because he had not gone to the bathroom in six hours and drank four iced teas during that time, he has to go to the bathroom real bad. While he goes, he occupies Sammy with a Blue's Clues VHS tape, Which of course, starts Sammy's Blue's Clues addiction for the rest of the episode.
• Primal Fear: "Sorority Girl" shows that Logan is afraid of the dark, to the point that he screams loudly if the nightlight in his room is turned off... even if he's already asleep with his eyes shut.
• Product Placement: Snapple and Frito-Lay products are often prominently displayed in kitchen scenes.
• Replacement Goldfish: Done as a gag in The Tag of "Headshot". After all four adult characters confess to having "broken" Sam, Jimmy and Christine replace Sam with an identical one and throw the "broken" Sammy out onto the curb!
• Right Behind Me: Several times, most often involving an adult making comments about his/her son or nephew, only to turn around and realize said relative is standing right behind the speaker.
• "Right Now" Montage: Before the Hughes family encounters a cop in "Pimpin' Ain't Easy", a short montage featuring Logan engaging in some Slice of Life activities — i.e. walking down the street, riding in a carousel, and playing hockey with other kids — as he's still streaking takes place, all while "The Streak" by Ray Stevens plays in the background.
• Road Trip Plot: The central premise of "Are We There Yet?" involves Jimmy, Christine, Greg, and Kim going to the Grand Canyon via a rented RV.
• Rule of Funny: There is no plausible reason why Tom, Greg's father, ends up outside a plane in flight while dressed as Superman except that it's funny and Tim Conway milks the bit for every laugh he can wring out of the studio audience.
• "Run Your Own Race" Aesop: In "Who's On First?", the Hughes family potty-trains Logan, their youngest son through Nature Tinkling. This inspires Greg to start potty training his son Sammy, since he and Logan are about the same age. However, Greg decides to do it in a more civilized way. To Greg's dismay, none of his attempts get Sammy potty-trained, while Logan is successfully potty-trained in three days. Worried that Sammy is going to end up spending the rest of his life in diapers, Greg tries to use the Hughes' method of potty-training Logan on Sammy, much to his wife Kim's disapproval. When Greg tells Kim that he was worried about Sammy falling behind Logan, Kim tells him that yes, there are going to be some kids making progress ahead of Sammy, but there are also going to be some struggling to keep up with him. She also tells him not to worry about potty-training Sammy, as Sammy will decide when he's ready to use the potty.
• Running Gag:
  • Greg's attempt at work-related humor manages to send his colleague, Mike, literally running in tears 3 times in total, always because one of Greg's jokes inadvertently reminds Mike of some relative of his who died under some accidental & tragic circumstance (for example, in one scene Greg set Mike off with a "penny squeezing" joke because Mike's wife was killed by a boa constrictor), with Mr. Savitsky explaining why Mike ran off crying before telling a distraught Greg "there's no way you could have known that." In fact, Mike is basically a running gag character, as all scenes with him being mentioned involve this.
  • The episode "Headshot" shows Sammy accidentally bumping his head 5 times. Poor kid.
  • The Lost Love Montage trope above also qualifies for this show.
• Scrabble Babble:
  • Jimmy and Kim play Scrabble. Jim tries to put an O at the end of Kim's "Cheat" to make "Cheato", only to be told by Kim that it's spelled "Cheeto", and that it can't be played anyway because it's the brand name of a snack food. Jimmy then challenges her earlier play of "ritzy".
    Kim: "Ritzy" is a word.
    Jimmy: Yeah, but it's a word about a cracker.
  • A minute or so later, after staring at his letters in silence for several seconds, he asks if "gloonge" is a word.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Greg.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Big Jimmy towards Jimmy. Jimmy on the other hand is proud of Dominic's third place trophy, but Dominic walks in while Jimmy is ranting about how Big Jimmy would have called third place "second fastest loser" and thinks Jimmy is talking about him.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Greg and Jimmy.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: The conflict between the Warners and Hugheses is kind of a mild version of this.
• Snipe Hunt: In "Won't Ask, Won't Tell", Christine finds out that Jimmy is deliberately ignoring her when he talks to Greg over the phone. Christine then teams up with Kim, tricking their husbands into picking up a non-existent lamp. When Greg and Jimmy find out that they were tricked into a wild goose chase, they go back home and leave their wives a package... that had an actual wild goose.
• Special Effect Failure: An in-universe example. When Greg records Sammy's first steps in a casino, Jimmy pays someone to swap the background with Stock Footage of a park. It looks somewhat convincing until Sammy starts walking on a lake.
• Speed Dating: The episode "Speed Dating". Billy drags Jimmy along with it due to Billy's lack of confidence, but then Greg does it when he wishes to get more matches than Jimmy to prove his own manhood, and then Greg and Jimmy try to compete over a woman who separately becomes a match for both of them...
• Spider-Sense: Jimmy, during the episode "Dominic's First Date", states that he feels a chill when, unbeknown to him, Christine realizes he had given advice she doesn't approve of (which sums up to All Girls Want Bad Boys) to Dominic. When his in-laws claim they feel nothing after he asks them whether they felt the same sensation, he thinks that he got nervous over nothing... until Christine walks in a second later to confront him.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: After Christine gets mad at Jimmy for only writing "Love, Jimmy" on his Valentine's Day card to her in "House of Cards", Kim and Greg try to fix things by saying that everyone must sit down and write something they love about their spouse. Jimmy accidentally writes down lyrics from "Livin' On a Prayer" without realizing it, which Greg berates him for. Then Christine reveals that she wrote the same thing, and the two sing the next part of the song together.
• Streaking: Logan does this in the episode "Pimpin' Ain't Easy" by dressing only in underwear as protest to being given hand-me-down clothes once he finds out all of his clothes once belonged to Dominic. It ends only after a cop intervenes (though not in Christine's favor due to said intervention ending with an Ironic Echo).
• Strongly Worded Letter: Greg and Kim write one in response to a neighbor scaring Sammy in "Halloween". It goes over as well as you'd expect.
• The Tag: Many an episode in this series would have a small segment taking place after the main plot has already been resolved, most of which featuring a Brick Joke, before the credits roll.
• Tears of Joy: Jimmy sheds a tear late in "Broken by the Mold" due to Dominic becoming obsessed with women's breasts (as evidenced when he spends the whole episode lusting over Kim after seeing her soaking wet without her bra) and Logan proving himself capable of identifying where a certain pizza comes from after one bite into the crust, a talent Jimmy also has.
  Jimmy: [on the verge of tears] My oldest son is obsessed with boobs. My youngest son has the same talent as me. It's a great day to be a dad.
• Tempting Fate:
  • The flashback episode, "When Jimmy Met Greggy", has Jimmy, Christine and Kim making comments that foreshadows the premise of the series.
    Jimmy: Oh great. Now I'm gonna have [Greg] here all weekend mooching off me. Sitting on my couch, eating all my food.
    ——
    Christine: Jimmy, you're gonna see [Greg] once in a while at holidays, alright? I mean, its not like we're all gonna move in together.
    ——
    Kim: (after Jimmy convinces her to keep dating Greg) Thanks, Jimmy. I'll think about it. Hey and thanks for letting us crash here this weekend. If I ever have my own house and you need a place to stay for the night, you are always welcome.
    Jimmy: Thanks for saying that, but I don't really like staying in other people's houses, you know. I just, uh, I just don't feel comfortable.
  • When Jimmy's Spider-Sense is activated during the episode "Dominic's First Date", he asks Greg and Kim if they sense anything wrong. When they say "no", he claims to have been nervous for nothing... only to be proven wrong when an irate Christine enters to confront Jimmy over his All Girls Want Bad Boys advice to Dominic.
    Greg: Now I feel it!
• The Thing That Would Not Leave:
  • Basically the entire premise of the show is that Jimmy and Christine have taken up permanent residence in Greg's guest house and will not leave.
  • In "Guarding Greg", the security guards are this to Greg, eating lunch and watching TV in his office.
• Toilet Training Plot: In "Who's On First?", Jimmy and Christine potty-train Logan through Nature Tinkling, which inspires Greg and Kim to start potty-training Sammy in a more civilized way. After several unsuccessful attempts while Logan is potty-trained in three days, Greg decides to potty-train Sammy Jimmy and Christine's way behind Kim's back.
• Token Minority: Roy is the token black character.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Christine and Kim.
• Took a Level in Badass: Greg does this twice. Once he punches out Goldberg and another time he punched Jimmy when he goads him. The latter was trying to get Greg to hit him.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Greg, in the later episodes. A perfect example would be "Tree Hugger".
• Tranquil Fury: After weeks of trying to get a contractor to fix a fireplace in "Gordon and Kim", Kim sees the contractor's car in someone else's driveway and vandalizes it with a tire iron while calmly whistling to herself.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Jimmy kicks Greg and his family out of his house after 4 days of eating his food and constant sex. There are several reasons that this makes Jimmy a terrible person:
  • He encouraged and had to convince Greg to engage in such behavior.
  • Greg put up with the same (possibly worse) behavior from Jimmy for years.
  • Most importantly, Jimmy owes Greg everything, without him Jimmy would be a homeless, unemployed utter failure as a human being, the quote "I've done everything short of breathing air into your lungs" comes to mind as it is entirely accurate.
  • Unfortunately The Reset Button is pushed by the next episode and it is never brought up again.
    • The main difference is, Greg turned down a great job offer in order to keep sitting around doing nothing, Jimmy was looking for a job from the moment he moved in. Still a bit of a dick move, but he had Greg's best interest at heart.
  • Jimmy accuses Christine of being this in "Christine the Spy" when she wouldn't reveal any secrets about Radford Studios' new projects to Greg and Mr. Savitsky, the two guys who provided everything for the Hugheses over the years.
• Unstoppable Rage: Played for Laughs towards the end of the "Jimmy Sponsors a Vacation" episode where Kim, having been fed up with Jimmy's antics, promptly snaps into this, knocking him down and pounding him silly.
• Valentine's Day Episode: "House of Cards" takes place from February 13-15 and the plot focuses on special romantic gestures — or lack thereof — between spouses for Valentine's Day.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Greg and Jimmy.
• Vocal Evolution: Kim's voice is deeper and more throaty in the final 2 seasons as opposed to her high-pitched whine prior to that. Christine's voice became more gravelly over time.
• Waxing Lyrical:
  • Greg teases the mullet Jimmy gets Dominic to have in "Kentucky Top Hat" by paraphrasing "Achy Breaky Heart" after asking Dominic to go to the backyard to wait for him to play ball with him, in anticipation of an argument between Jimmy and Christine.
    Greg: I just didn't think you guys should talk like that in front of him. It could break his heart. His achy break-y heart.
    [Jimmy chases Greg out of the living room in sheer annoyance]
  • The chorus lines of "Livin' On a Prayer" are in the Valentine's Day cards Jimmy and Christine give to each other in "House of Cards" — by accident, at that.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Warners' guest house is never seen or mentioned again after Jimmy and Christine move out in Season 5. Despite Greg vocalizing for years about how much he wants the guest house back, we never see what becomes of it once this is finally realized.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The episode "Couples Therapy" is a parody of The Usual Suspects, complete with the examples of "The Ending Changes Everything" and "Line-of-Sight Name" being a parody of the famous ending where it's revealed that Verbal Kint was the real Keyser Söze and made up a story based on stuff in Dave Kujan's office by revealing Greg's story about why Jimmy and Christine got on his nerves was also made up of stuff by spinning it from stuff in the psychologist's office.
• Wimp Fight: Greg and a recurring minor character fight this way.
  Greg: Welp... I beat up a short man in front of his 10-year-old son.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Greg spends one episode worrying about repeating a cycle of weak-willed fathers, so he wants to prove to Sammy that he's a Papa Wolf. While at the movie theater, Greg gets into an altercation with a much larger man and was apprehensive about fighting it out. Then he saw Sammy about to eat food he's allergic to, so Greg punched the guy out and ran over to his son. The ending, however, reveals Sammy was fully aware of what was going on and deliberately motioned towards the food so that Greg would see what was happening, man up, and score a win.