The Soup

"The Soup on E!: They watch TV, so you don't have to."

First, there was Talk Soup with Greg Kinnear (and various other hosts after him: John Henson, Hal Sparks, and Aisha Tyler), which mainly focused on making fun of talk shows. That ended in 2002 when most of the companies airing the talk shows stopped providing clips. Apparently, they thought it was giving them a bad name. These shows were unsurprisingly gone after a couple of years.

Then, in 2004, E! aired The What The? Awards which was quickly changed to The Soup with host Joel McHale. They even acknowledged the original Talk Soup with the segment "Chat Stew".

Regular characters on The Soup included Mankini (a man wearing a bikini), a dancing maxipad, two Star Wars nerds, Matt the Intern (who Joel always ends shooting), and Lou the chihuahua. Regular segments include "Chicks, Man", "Reality Show Clip Time!", "Let's Take Some E!", "Oprah's Vajayjay", "Gay Shows", "What the Kids Are Watching", "Clippos Magnificos", and the "Clip of the Week", the last of which is the only true remaining bit from Talk Soup. It doesn't take itself too at all seriously.

Several spinoffs have been launched on the majority of Comcast's other cable channels since 2008:

  • E! sister channel Style had The Dish, hosted by Danielle Fishel, that gave special attention to the feminine side of pop culture: fashion, weddings, interior design, etc. Segments included "Clip Closet", "Daylight Cravings", "Here Come the Brides", and a closing "Freak of the Week". Canceled in March 2011, though—likely due to ratings issues and the NBC/Comcast merger making it verboten for Style to make fun of Bravo and Oxygen's programming now that they're all sister networks.
  • Sports channel Versus had Sports Soup, hosted by Matt Iseman from Clean House. Segments included "The Great Outdoors", "Covering the Coverage", and "5 Star Clip". The Woobie of the franchise because of Versus pre-empting it often due to sports coverage and ESPN and the regional sports networks clamping down on fair use of their clips in a comedic sense; depended towards the end more on themed 'blooper' shows and cameos from sports celebrities such as Chad Ochocinco. Done after January 2011 as a result of NBC Sports taking control and rebranding Versus as a serious ESPN competitor under the new name of NBC Sports Network. (Sister network Golf Channel never bothered with a Soup spin-off since they're in Orlando far away from Los Angeles, and golf is just plain Serious Business.)
  • In 2009 G4 got into the act with Web Soup hosted by Chris Hardwick, which takes on online videos—segments include "Operators Are Standing By", "This Week in Fail", "Please Please Please For The Love Of God Don't Try This At Home", and "The Greatest Web Video Ever [1]". Was the first Soup show with their third season to have an actual physical set with screens and backgrounds, though it's just the E! News set with a studio audience stuck where Ryan Seacrest usually stands. The program was ended after its third season when Hardwick departed G4 to focus on projects for Nerdist, his online network of podcast and internet video programming.
  • Since 2011, the Latinamerican feeds of E! have released local version of the show, all of them called La Sopa and usually limited to the local regional feed. The first one was the Mexican one, hosted by Mexican comedian and former reality show star Eduardo Videgaray, then the Colombian version, hosted first by Alejandro Riaño and then by Diego Camargo, and in 2013 the Venezuelan version hosted by Led Varela. As of 2016 only the Mexican version remains.

Viewers in the UK who can't view the show (which should be very few of you, considering this show goes out on E! UK as well), should consider it to be a cattier version of Harry Hills TV Burp. Or Americans who can't view the show might think of it as Mystery Science Theater 3000 meets Hollywood gossip.

After 11 years, The Soup was cancelled, the Grand Finale airing on Decermber 18, 2015

Tropes used in The Soup include:
  • Ax Crazy: Joel isn't above to shoot interns and kidnapcelebrities for the show
  • Biting the Hand Humor: "Let's Take Some E!"
    • Lots of Ryan Seacrest jokes.
      • LOTS of Ryan Seacrest jokes.
    • And now with NBC and Comcast merged, it has started with a description of anal alcohol intake from Law and Order Special Victims Unit turned into a fake The More You Know PSA.
    • The Latinamerican versions take a step further: they don't only have the section for mocking E! shows, they all have a section to specifically mock the shows about the Kardashian family, appropriately called "Es tan Kardashian!" ("It's so Kardashian")
  • Butt Monkey: Matt.
  • Catch Phrase: Quite a few at this point.
    • "Give me some!" ("Let's Take Some E!")
    • "Chicks, man."
    • "So meaty!" ("Chat Stew")
    • "AROOOOOOOOOO!" ("Clip of the Week")
    • "Dance Your Ass Off continues to be the biggest exploitation of fat people since X."
    • "It's Reality Show Clip Time!"
      • Joel will occasionally play with this one a bit. Variations on this include Joel whispering it, silently mouthing it, just letting out one long yell or random excited gibberish, and "By the power of Greyskull, I have the power!"
    • "On the newest episode of (insert phrase that insults Hugh Hefner) with Hugh Hefner.." for The Girls Next Door. Often mined as a source of Black Comedy; for example, "On the latest episode of 'beep, beep, beeeeeep' with Hugh Hefner..."
      • "I'm a boat captain." Usually said at the end of the bit involving Hefner while showing a picture of him bearing a boat captain's hat he's often seen wearing.
    • From The Dish: "I read!" ("Cover Stories")
    • And a whole bunch for news about celebrities...
      • "It's Miley!" ("Miley Cyrus News")
      • "It's a felony!" (Which referred to then-16-year-old Miley dating a 20-year-old.)
      • "It's Alive!" (regarding the fake Miley death video)
      • "Ugh...It's Madonna..." ("Madonna News")
      • "It's Lindsey." ("Lindsay Lohan News", done in a lesbian heavy-smoker-sounding voice)
      • "It's Britney, bitch!" ("Britney Spears News", using a sound-bite from Spears)
      • "It's McCain!" ("Election News")
      • *heavy breathing* ("Mel Gibson News")
      • "Bring it." ("Charlie Sheen News" using a sound-bite of Sheen.)
      • "Sanjaya..." (American Idol news for season six, whispered sensually.)
      • "Stacey..." (A short-lived replacement when Sanjaya was voted off.)
  • Chroma Key: The main "set" for each show. As such the show can also come from other exotic locales when Joel has another project to do such as...St. Louis (when he was shooting The Informant!), Austin, Texas (filming Spy Kids 4 at Robert Rodriguez's greenscreen complex) and New York City (doing press and upfronts for Community). However these shows can be notable for being the least funny due to the regular crew not being in tow, Joel only able to get writer and director input via Skype and basically winging it alone, and a different sound and tenor to the audience, who is usually just either rounded up at random or in the St. Louis case, was taped at a PBS station with a crowd of confused station employees and donating members who wondered why a guy was making Paris Hilton jokes in front of a green screen instead of cooking or teaching adults how to get their GED.
    • Also, these "location shoots" are obviously Lampshaded on air as the chroma key will never show a glimmer of local flavor and always will show the regular L.A. background.
    • This setup also allows Joel to do the show most every week (besides a few off weeks where a Clip Show is put in the can in advance), and as such the show has only had a few weeks where it didn't premiere a new episode, fresh or clip, in the last six years, with one of the most prominent examples being the lack of a show on the day of the Kate/William royal wedding.
      • Counting the eleven years of Talk Soup, this was pretty much the same,[2] the longest stretch of time without new episodes was between the mid-2002 sudden cancellation and the mid-2004 premiere of Joel's first episode.
  • Couch Gag: For a while it had the most literal example next to Trope Namer The Simpsons - during the opening sequence, Joel and Lou are on a couch watching a clip from/related to a big media event of the previous week.
  • Deadpan Snarker: The hosts.
  • Distaff Counterpart: The Dish, both in the host and the focus on programs made to appeal to women.
  • Dueling Shows: VH1's Best Week Ever (it was vanquished in series form after a disastrous retooling into a Soup clone that removed all the heart and soul of the show, but the website's still going strong. But it has come back as a segment in the Friday episode of Jump Start Live).
    • The spinoff Web Soup has its own dueling show in Comedy Central's Tosh.0.
      • Which in turn isn't a fair fight; Web Soup airs on G4 which is usually on a higher digital-only tier than basic-cable Comedy Central.
      • Web Soup's done well, however, as Hardwick's brand of foolish yet energetic snarkery provides a great alternative to Tosh's Deadpan.
    • Current TV aired a similar show called infoMania, which covers the week in pop culture with segments that are very similar to The Soup's.
  • Foreign Remake: the different versions of La Sopa for the E! Latin America feeds.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: A commercial advertising the show's move to Wednesday nights featured Joel McHale talking with a child dressed for a Toddlers and Tiaras-style beauty pageant. There was a 34 displayed on her sash.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Pacific Northwesterners will recognize Joel McHale from his Almost Live ! days.
  • Hurricane of Euphemisms: Anytime clips from Alaska Gold Rush are shown. Notably, Joel doesn't even make any jokes: he just plays the clips (albeit out of context) and the viewer's dirty mind does the rest.
    • Also happens in the clips from Hillbilly Handfishin and the clips from Man Woman Wild (it doesn't help that the star of the latter is named Myke Hawke).
  • I Read That As: MTV's Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins used a logo where a mountain formed the I in "Ruins". Joel called it "The Runs".
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Joel will often snicker and then say "...sorry" when he's made a particularly snarky joke, sometimes even 'kissing' the image of the person he was mocking (especially if they've made a guest-appearance on the show before).
  • Limited Wardrobe: Joel almost always appears in a suit with a light shirt and a skinny tie. Sometimes he doesn't wear the tie.
  • Kayfabe: Joel's frequent mocking of "reality" TV shows like The Hills or Brooke Knows Best.
  • Mythology Gag: Should Talk Soup be mentioned, the famous spoon background will likely appear.
  • N-Word Privileges: After an especially misogynistic joke, a subtle reminder will often be dropped that the head writer is a woman.
    • One example involved a clip of a woman from the reality show Pregnant in Heels who was hesitant about having sex while pregnant. Joel's response: "Well, you're not pregnant in your mouth." He then brought out the woman that wrote the joke who proceeded to deliver the original version, "in the butt".
  • Overly Long Gag
  • Product Placement: Parodied when people show up to plug their DVD collections or new seasons of their TV series. Got recursive with Joel's[3] plugging of Community, starring Joel McHale, Thursdays on NBC.
    • When his fellow castmembers of Community started showing up following the news that Community was being put on hiatus, they all (jokingly) laid into Joel for not doing anything to promote the show on The Soup.
  • Put on a Bus: Lou the chihuahua hadn't been seen for over half a year in 2009, then returned at the end of the first half of 2009's Top 40 Clips show, eating a Howlin' Hound "Heart Yum", made with only the finest of human hearts.
  • Railfan: Clips from I Love Toy Trains are snarked with references to the stereotypes you'll see on the trope page.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Lou.
  • The Rival: Currently, Wendy Williams (with a little bit of UST).
    • At one point, Keith Olbermann. (Though theirs was much more good-natured.) Tyra Banks is a much more subtle example. As it has been mentioned in passing on the show that she sent them a Cease & Desist letter to get them to stop showing clips of her talk show and America's Next Top Model. Joel's reply: "No."
      • Most of the time, Joel doesn't even have to say anything about the Tyra clips, proving how stupid she makes herself look.
        • Case in the point, the episode where they showed the clip of her announcement that she was going to write a novel. Joel just stood there and cracked up. Heh.
  • Running Gag: Several, such as referring to contestants on VH1's dating shows as whores, or a euphemism thereof. Sometimes they make jokes about STDs.
    • They also will have several Running Gags that last for a month or two, usually involving a person from a clip photoshopped to pop up on screen and say a line. These have included American Idol contestant Danny Noriega cattily saying "Some people weren't liking it!" and Spencer Pratt from The Hills saying (with narmful bad acting) "That's the problem..." in a hushed voice, a clip of Whitney Houston from her reality show yelling "KISS MY ASS!" and a clip of Kate Gosselin wearing a goofy pink hat with a popcorn bowl on top calling in a high pitched voice "COME AND GET YER POP-CORN!" The current favorite seems to be a drunk woman saying "dunk-a doo ball". These are usually retired so that they don't get too old, although the more popular ones will often resurface after a bit.
    • There's also Matt the Intern being shot and "screaming like a girl."
    • Ryan Seacrest's height and having too many jobs is also a subject of repeated gags.
    • "CHICKEN TETRAZZINI!"
    • "Stay out of it, Nick Lachey!"
    • Let's not forget how much of a pussy Aaron Carter is.
    • Joel's continuing dislike of the "My Stories" intro music, which initially was more reminiscent of radio dramas than soap operas. ("...That I used to watch in the 1920s!") Now the music they play is whatever weird song they can get their hands on.
      • They have recently settled into just using the original music or Bomani Armah's "Read A Book".
    • Killing the blond girl at the end of every season finale of The Hills.
    • During Paris Hilton's My New BFF's run, Joel came up with a different thing the acronym could stand for each time it was featured, including "Beefy Frosting Flinger", "Bulimia Fan Fiction", and "Bffff...."
    • Playing Jeffrey Osborne's "On The Wings Of Love" whenever introing clips from said season of The Bachelor. Joel always tries to get them to stop because "the song is too sincere!" Osborne eventually made an appearance hawking Jeffrey Osborne's Wings Of Love chicken restaurants.
    • Joel's Hugh Hefner: "I'm a boat captain!"
    • From Fantasia's show: "Girl, please!"
    • From The Fashion Show contestant Calvin Tran: "Oh here go hell come."
    • Clips including Lou in some way (like the 'dogs playing poker' intro) are usually followed by Joel claiming it took 9 hours to film.
    • "Glory hole", when referring ot Alaska Gold Rush.
    • "Random celebrity, what are you doing here?"
    • "GREG KELLY , unlikely voice of reason, GREG KELLY, your logic is a-pleasin', GREG KELLYYYY!"
    • In La Sopa Mexico, Eduardo Videgaray can't avoid to point out the machismo, the tons of innuendo, and all the Unfortunate Implications present in the show Acábatelo!, along with its host Ernesto Chavana particular brand of "humor".
  • Screams Like a Little Girl: Matt, whenever Joel shoots him.
  • Self-Deprecation: Usually involving the phrase "basic cable clip show".
  • Sitcom Arch Nemesis: Joel McHale/Ryan Seacrest. A hilarious, long-running and rare Real Life example.
    • Ryan Seacrest lacks Joel's snarky sense of humor and ends up saying vaguely insulting, rather stupid things. Sometimes they end up sounding vaguely sexual, too. That's Seacrest for ya.
      • Supposedly, the two are friends in real life and it's more play fighting. Though you'd never know that from the way it's represented on the show.
  • Spin-Off: The Dish, Sports Soup, and Web Soup.
  • Special Guest: At least one per week these days in an appearance both brief and tongue-in-cheek. Two, John Henson and Aisha Tyler, were former Talk Soup hosts who appeared on separate occasions and didn't miss the chance to needle Joel, and a third former host, Hal Sparks appeared on Web Soup to do the same to Chris.

Donald Glover: It's like Fight Club, only you're too much of a pussy to actually fight somebody.

  • Spiritual Successor: To Talk Soup.
  • Studio Audience: The off-screen crew serves as this.
    • As does the actual studio audience, which is usually comprised of friends and family of people who work or intern at E!, Style, or G4. It's a small studio though, so it's a small audience.
  • Take That: Basically the show's premise in regard to all bad television.
  • Testosterone Poisoning: The intro to Gay Shows.
    • Camp Gay: What the Gay Shows segment covers.
  • Through His Stomach: A woman on Maury accuses another of luring away her man by cooking him "CHICKEN TETRAZZINI!" The Soup turned this into one of their running gags, and the segment was the Clip of the Year for 2009.
  • Trans-Atlantic Equivalent: E! UK ran a British version called Celebrity Soup (one of the channel's few locally-produced series) hosted by Iain Lee. Suffice to say that completely missing what makes something work is not exclusively an American trait; started in 2005, binned in 2006.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The segment "What the Kids Are Watching" deserves special mention for focusing on children's show clips that range in content from this to Have a Gay Old Time to potential Nightmare Fuel.
    • Best example? Joel discovering anime—he showed a clip from Dai Mahou Touge, which is certainly not in any way a kid's show. It's easy to make that mistake, though.
  • Viewers Are Goldfish: For a time the exact same episode ran twice in an hour on Friday nights, likely due to E! unable to find a companion show for it to follow (yet, many people happily sat and watch it twice), but then the equally snarky Joan Rivers' Fashion Police established itself as "The Sandwich" to The Soup.
  1. ↑ this week
  2. ↑ including when they went from a four day, half-hour daily and a one hour weekly to a half hour weekly format, to which it remains.
  3. ↑ and some of his castmates, like Yvette Nicole Brown and Alison Brie
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