The Soup
The Soup is an E! Entertainment Television series. This is a revamped version of Talk Soup that focuses on recaps of various pop culture and reality show moments of the week with host and co-writer Joel McHale providing sarcastic and biting commentary on the various clips.
Format
The program was originally The What The? Awards prior to the name change, but was quickly reformatted, renamed and refocused after low ratings and unflattering comparisons to VH1's competing Best Week Ever.
The shows have some simliarites, but The Soup has managed to create its own unique niche with the one-host format and use of skits to skewer pop culture, along with the ability of the show to make fun of shows on its own network such as The Girls Next Door, Gastineau Girls and Taradise, while promoting them at the same time. This doesn't prevent The Soup from making fun of VH1's Celebreality block, which is never promoted in any way but positively on Best Week Ever.
Setting
There is no audience, as the clips are introduced by McHale on a blue screen set with a 'plasma screen' and 'window' overlooking Hollywood, but the crew will often laugh loudly at the clips and McHale's comments and cheer whenever a favorite segment/clip is shown. Also joining Joel occasionaly is a small dog named Lou, used in skits and to add a cute touch to the show, and to also make fun of Paris Hilton's lazy petkeeping habits.
Regular features/running gags
- A satirical look at Hollywood and celebrity news from the past week starts out the show, with commentary by McHale and jokes involving the subjects of the news.
- Chat Stew shows clips from various talk shows with equal comments, usually with a joke involving how self-obessed Tyra Banks is about herself on America's Next Top Model and her self-titled talk show, and something about Dr. Phil. The segment's name is a play off the show's inspiration, Talk Soup, and is introduced with a CGI Crock Pot filled with talk show logos and host heads, while a woman voices about the "stew" being "so meaty!" McHale has voiced his embarassment over the intro several times. Also regular fodder for the segment are The Tony Danza Show, Oprah, and The View.
- Cybersmack shows strange things and viral clips from the Internet (a response to VH1's Web Junk 20), such as David Hasselhoff music videos.
- The Hollywood Access Extra Inside Entertainment Report reviews the week in infotainment shows such as Access Hollywood, Entertainment Tonight, Extra and The Insider, with "Insider" host Pat O'Brien usually the target of many jokes. The intro to the segment is a mash of all the logos of the shows listed in the title.
- When news comes of a new celebrity couple, McHale will pull out the "Celebrity Hook-Up Name Generator" which will mash the two star's names to form a new one, often quite silly. (For example, Lost stars Dominic Monaghan and Evangeline Lilly's name was "Dolly Llama.")
- At the mid-point, the show will feature Reality Show Clip Time!, where clips from various reality shows are played with McHale adding comedic comments. At one point in the above, a clip will usually run from Iron Chef America where the secret ingredient is shown, the crew cheering at the way it's announced in a loud manner.
- Tales from Home Shopping, a segment where something non-sensical from QVC or HSN is shown and commented on by McHale, mostly involving Suzanne Somers' various statements on HSN.
- Most Disturbing Video of the Week, which is what the Soup staff consider to be the oddest clip that's been shown on television for the past week.
- What the Kids are Watching, showcases disturbing clips from children's shows, particulary 4Kids TV's Bratz series based on the doll line. The sequence introducing the segment with a screaming claymation child was called even more disturbing by McHale than the Chat Stew intro.
- Ad Nauseum, which looks at, then makes fun of an odd commercial, such as Kirstie Alley's Jenny Craig campaign.
- The Clip of the Week, which is what the Soup staff consider to be the best, or worst depending on the viewer's opinion, clip that's been shown on TV that past week.
- Fake polls are flashed after the end of commercial breaks, with sensical answers to start out with and a satirical majority or minority factoid at the end of the segment.
- During the commercial breaks, fake commercials are shown, such as the track listing from Kevin Federline's upcoming rap album, featuring phony track titles such as "Pope John Pao" and "Ppp Ppp Ppp".
- A new feature is the talking Gay Monkeys, which are usually dressed in costumes from recent movies, more recently they include Brokeback Mountain and Memoirs of a Geisha. These films were called "Brokeback Kong" and "Memoirs of a Geisha Kong", in a cross-promotion with King Kong.
- "Kiss my ass!" Clip - Among the many clips that have been shown, one has become a regular gag: A clip from Being Bobby Brown. The events leading up to the clip involve Bobby Brown accusing George W. Bush of being a terrorist, with Whitney Houston strongly opposing him. Bobby Brown states that he's been to prison, and that's American, which leads to the clip, which shows Whitney's reply of "Kiss My Ass". The clip has popped up in nearly every episode since it was first shown, always to a loud ovation, with McHale at one point calling it "the 'Hey Jude' of clips." On the special year-end Clipdown '05, it was named the number one clip of 2005.
- Also a regular feature are looks at the Sci-Fi Channel's original movies with McHale mocking the cheap special effects and bad acting involved.
- At one point in the 2005 season, clips and re-enactments of scenes from popular Mexican soap opera La Madrasta were featured weekly.
- A running gag where a clip of Sesame Street's Elmo on Access Hollywood or Martha is dubbed over with the Muppet reacting to something in an unexpected way; for example the Martha clip was modified in reaction to Kanye West's controversial comment about George W. Bush to be Elmo saying "George Bush doesn't care about Muppets!"
- This same treatment is given to a two-second clip of Katie Holmes saying 'Sure!' in a close-up (used to mock her indoctrination into Scientology with the monotonic sound of her voice), with McHale asking her questions that make no sense in contrast to the original interview, or are contrary to her relationship with Tom Cruise. For example in answer to the allegations Cruise bought a sonogram machine to monitor his unborn child, McHale 'asks' if she doesn't mind the child being exposed to radiation. The answer to every question asked is always 'Sure!'.
- Before the first commercial break, Entertainment Tonight's birthday segment, along with the trivia segment of various shows which end with 'the answer after the break', is parodied with some nonsense question that mocks a current celebrity, usually Paris Hilton, and an odd silhouette to disguse the celebrity's identity. The question is never answered after the break.
- In December 2005, the show began the "Paris and Nicole Debt Reduction Drive" where, to offset the cost of having The Simple Life on E!, McHale would auction off actual interview clips from the E! archives on eBay; examples include a Pauly Shore interview from an early 1990s press junket, and a Full House interview with Jodie Sweetin (Bob Saget was thrown in as a 'bonus'). In the first new episode of 2006, McHale announced it was being ended (after taking in $396.50) so they could begin the "Pass the Hat for Ryan Seacrest Fund," a similar auction to "balance the cost" of bringing Seacrest to E!