A typical issue of '' Mad'' magazine will include at least one full parody of a popular movie or television show. The titles are changed to create a play on words; for instance, ''

The Addams Family ''The Addams Family'' is a fictional family created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. They originally appeared in a series of 150 unrelated single-panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in ''The New Yorker'' over ...

'' became ''The Adnauseum Family''. The character names are generally switched in the same fashion. These articles typically cover five pages or more, and are presented as a sequential storyline with caricatures and word balloons. The opening page or two-page splash usually consists of the cast of the show introducing themselves directly to the reader; in some parodies, the writers sometimes attempt to circumvent this convention by presenting the characters without such direct exposition. Many parodies end with the abrupt ''

deus ex machina ''Deus ex machina'' ( , ; plural: ''dei ex machina''; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function ...

'' appearance of outside characters or pop culture figures who are similar in nature to the movie or TV series being parodied, or who comment satirically on the theme. For example, Dr. Phil arrives to counsel the '' Desperate Housewives'', or the cast of ''

Sex and the City ''Sex and the City'' is an American romantic comedy-drama television series created by Darren Star for HBO. An adaptation of Candace Bushnell's newspaper column and 1996 book anthology of the same name, the series premiered in the United Stat ...

'' show up as the new hookers on '' Deadwood''. The parodies frequently make comedic use of the

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

breaking character In theatre (especially in the illusionistic Western tradition), breaking character occurs when an actor ceases to maintain the illusion that they are identical with the character they are portraying. This is a more acceptable occurrence while in ...

, and

meta-reference Meta-reference is a special type of self-reference that can occur in all media or media artifacts, for instance literature, film, painting, TV series, comic strips, or video games. It includes all references to, or comments on, a specific medium, ...

s. Within an ostensibly self-contained storyline, the characters may refer to the technical aspects of filmmaking, the publicity, hype, or box office surrounding their project, their own past roles, any clichés being used, and so on. Several show business stars have been quoted to the effect that the moment when they knew they'd finally "made it" was when they saw themselves thus depicted in the pages of ''Mad''. The following list of all the TV show spoofs in ''

Mad Magazine Mad, mad, or MAD may refer to: Geography * Mad (village), a village in the Dunajská Streda District of Slovakia * Mád, a village in Hungary * Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, by IATA airport code * Mad River (disambiguation), several ...

'' is ordered by the decades in which they were produced.

TV shows spoofs list

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

References

External links

The Mad Cover Site's list of television parodies.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mad's Tv Shows Spoofs Lists of television series * Parodies of television shows