Sunday Mailbag

Q: What TV parodies have you done?

A: Since last week’s question was about movie parodies, I expected this one would be next. Thanks, for the question, Ike! Again, I did do one TV parody in Cracked, which I will include in the list:

Cracked-

• The Stupranos (The Sopranos)- I wrote this one with help from cartoonist friend Jim Batts

MAD-

• #403- (Mar 01)- “Malcontent in the Muddle” (Malcolm in the Middle)
• #413- (Jan 02)- “Boston Pubic” (Boston Public)
• #414 (Feb 02)- “America’s Most Wonton” (America’s Most Wanted)
• #426 (Feb 03)- “Shlubs” (Scrubs)
• #435 (Nov 03) “Trashing Places” (Trading Spaces)
• #442 (June 04) “The O.D.” (The O.C.)
• #443 (July 04) “Weird Eye for the Queer Guise” (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy)
• #447 (Nov 04) “The Burning Mad Show” (The Bernie Mac Show)
• #449 (Jan 05) “Lewd and Disorder: Criminal Malcontent” (Law and Order: Criminal Intent)
• #450 (Feb 05) “Two and a Half Wits” (Two and a Half Men)
• #453 (May 05) “LOTS” (Lost)
• #454 (June 05) “Tedium” (Medium)
• #456 (Aug 05) “Dump My Ride” (Pimp My Ride)
• #460 (Dec 05) “Extreme Once Over- Home Repetition” (Extreme Makeover: Home Edition)
• #463 (Mar 06) “Everybody Berates Chris” (Everybody Hates Chris)
• #470 (Oct 06) “Yell’s Kitchen” (Hell’s Kitchen)
• #472 (Dec 06) “Groin’s Monotony” (Grey’s Anatomy)
• #476 (Apr 07) “TBA” (Entourage)

Once again I only listed actual parodies of TV shows, and not articles like “You can Write the Next American Idol Single” or “MAD Deconstructs TV Talk Shows: The Best Damn Sports Show Period” since they aren’t parodies in the classic sense. The parody of Entourage will be in the issue of MAD on the stands in March, but since they announced it’s inclusion in the issue currently on the stands, I think it’s safe to add it to the list in advance of publication. I’m leaving out the name of the piece just to be safe, though.

That makes 18 TV parodies since “Malcontent in the Muddle” in 2001, compared to 14 movie parodies in the same time period. Frankly those numbers surprised me. I expected the TV jobs to outnumber the movie jobs 2 to 1. I keep a running list of MAD jobs with issue numbers in a computer document just for an easy reference, but I have never really looked that closely at it as a whole. Since #442 (June 04)’s “The O.D.” (2 years 8 months), I’ve done 13 TV parodies compared to only 5 movies. Previous to that I had done more movies than TV jobs. I supposed that’s why I expected a wider difference in the two… it seems like I rarely do movies and I do TV shows all the time.

Thanks again to Ike Ledbetter for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!