Popular Media
Adult Swim's Squidbillies episode "Tween Steam" is a parody in which Rusty is used as a decoy to lure predators. 30 Rock aired an episode that showed Liz Lemon's boyfriend, Dennis Duffy, getting caught on To Catch a Predator. MADtv also has done a parody of To Catch a Predator in which the predator thinks that Chris Hansen is there for sex too.
The Howard Stern Show has frequently taken clips of reporter Chris Hansen's questions and combined them with answers from other show staffers in order to make it look like they were guilty of crimes of pedophilia (or worse). The Boondocks featured a parody of To Catch A Predator on the Season 3 episode "A Date With the Booty Warrior", which aired on June 27, 2010. In this parody, the predator, a spoof of Fleece Johnson, intentionally allowed himself to be caught. His target and victim was not the child, but Chris Hansen himself.
Robot Chicken presented a parody sketch in which the predator successfully sues Chris Hansen and NBC, ends up owning the network, and starts changing the programming to be more "predator-friendly". It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia did a parody of the show in the third season episode "Mac is a Serial Killer". The Simpsons did a parody in which Chris Hansen confronts Homer for returning used items, claiming to be from To Catch a Credit-whore. Homer runs off, only to return seconds later in order to sign a release and ask when the show will be airing.
The play Meat Puppet is a dark comedy inspired by the events that took place during the Murphy, Texas investigation of "To Catch A Predator". In the play, a reporter for the fictional news magazine show Red Letter catches a disgraced film actor soliciting a minor online. When the actor fails to meet the show's decoy in-person, the reporter convinces local authorities to arrest him in his home, live and on-air.
In the opening sequence to the 2006 Emmy Awards program, host Conan O'Brien travels through a montage of scenes based on various popular television shows of the season, including walking into a kitchen where Hansen is waiting to intercept him. The segment did not reference any sexually related material but it is hinted.
The Insane Clown Posse released a song called To Catch A Predator on their 2010 album Bang Pow Boom. In the song, Violent J raps about posing as an underage female over the internet and luring pedophiles to his house to murder them.
The Comedy Central series South Park aired an episode titled "Le Petit Tourette", in which Cartman fakes Tourette Syndrome and goes onto Chris Hansen's show. The plot culminates in a scene that centers on Hansen at the end, and uses multiple pedophiles shooting themselves as a plot device and diversionary tactic. The episode also lampooned the Louis Conradt incident, in which multiple pedophiles commit suicide after discovering they have been exposed on the show.
The 12th season Law and Order: SVU episode "Pursuit" featured a show titled "Neighborhood Predator", which operated on somewhat the same premise as To Catch a Predator.
While making fun of prank shows Tosh.0 says the greatest prank show ever (as opposed to Punk'd) was To Catch a Predator.
Read more about this topic: To Catch A Predator
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or media:
“The popular colleges of the United States are turning out more educated people with less originality and fewer geniuses than any other country.”
—Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)