Parody
Like many successful programs, This Old House has found its way into the humorist's eye on occasion. The most famous example is Tool Time, the "show-within-a-show" on the American television situation comedy Home Improvement. Tim Allen played Tim Taylor, a character inspired by Bob Vila, while Richard Karn portrayed Al Borland, a character based on Norm Abram. Bob Vila also guest starred from time to time as Tim's rival and archenemy.
Almost Live, a Seattle skit comedy show, also parodied This Old House as "This Here Place", "This Old Mansion", "This Old Yacht", "This Old Condo in Aspen", and "This New House...of Representatives". Fox's In Living Color featured an occasional bit titled "This Old Box" in which Damon Wayans played a homeless person who discussed "renovating" a large cardboard box where he lived. The Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club did a parody called "This Old Home", which featured a house made of candy. Finally, long-running sketch comedy venue Saturday Night Live has parodied This Old House from time to time, notably in 1989 with John Larroquette and again in 2004 with Liam Neeson. Another 1988 SNL sketch featured Phil Hartman hosting a fictitious PBS show called "Robot Repair." The sketch had Hartman playing a sentient robot who instructed viewers on how to repair home appliances. Out of concern that the term "Robot Repair" suggested the repair of robots and not the actual theme of the show, the robot begged the producers for a new title, only to find that with each week, the title's wording got progressively more and more confusing (e.g., "Robot Repair and You"). The poor robot's frustration finally turned to meltdown when the producers presented the show as "This Old Robot."
In the seventh season of the second series of ZOOM, there was a parody of This Old House which was known as "This Old Place". There, "Abe Norman" (a parody of Norm Abram), played by Kyle Morrow, would fix something (example: washing machine) that would never end up as it should. On one occasion, he put a gown in a washing machine and it came out as the shirt he was wearing currently.
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Famous quotes containing the word parody:
“Why does almost everything seem to me like its own parody? Why must I think that almost all, no, all the methods and conventions of art today are good for parody only?”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Pushkin’s composition is first of all and above all a phenomenon of style, and it is from this flowered rim that I have surveyed its seep of Arcadian country, the serpentine gleam of its imported brooks, the miniature blizzards imprisoned in round crystal, and the many-hued levels of literary parody blending in the melting distance.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)