When Good Shows Go Meta

A recent prevalent trend in television has been an increase in the meta-ness of shows and episodes. This is likely due to the narrowing of the gap between the creators and participants of a show and the viewers. Nowadays, actors and creators tweet at fans, read fan reaction boards, and are generally well-aware of fan opinions. Gone are the days when the only major way of responding to a writer or actor was through fan mail.

There are two main ways of being meta in a show, which I’ll term “subtle” and “overt.” Subtle tends to be when you feel like the show is winking at the audience, whereas overt is more like they’ve rented a giant billboard that says “We’re winking at you!”

The most common type of subtle meta is via casting. Chuck, for example, cast Linda Hamilton and Scott Bakula as Chuck’s parents. Both are well-known within the science-fiction community, Hamilton as Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, and Bakula as Quantum Leap’s Sam Beckett and Enterprise’s Jeffrey Archer. If you aren’t aware of these facts, you’re unlikely to be confused, but you won’t get the meta-joke. This is also often done with guest actors who were tied to the main cast in previous shows or movies; Sara Gilbert guest-starred on The Big Bang Theory as a love interest for Johnny Galecki, and they had previously been love interests on Roseanne. Alternatively, the actors can be connected in other ways, either through their personal lives (like husband and wife guest stars) or through related projects they have worked on—viewers are often amused when the Whedonverse collides, for example.

Still falling under the category of Subtle, but a little bit more in-your-face, is the throwaway line. Castle does a lot of these, making references to Nathan Fillion’s previous work on Firefly. They won’t be relevant to understanding the story, but will generally be either confusing or unfunny to people who are unaware of the connection.

In the overt category, you have the tribute. This can go anywhere from a small scene (with Castle, again, they dress Nathan Fillion as a “space cowboy” for Halloween) to a full-on tribute episode. Psych did this recently with “Dual Spires,” a tribute episode based off Twin Peaks. For those who knew and had an understanding of the basis, it was a lot more compelling.

Also under Overt, there is breaking the fourth wall. This is often done through lampshading—a way of saying, “Yes, we know we just did that. We recognize it too.” Community often winks at the audience in this way, especially through the character of Abed, who refers to everything that happens as though they were part of a TV show or movie. (“I like it. It makes every ten minutes feel like the beginning of a new scene in a TV show,” he said shortly after a scene started.)

I feel like you can’t have a conversation about Meta without talking about Supernatural. It’s poked fun of itself many times, from acknowledging the perceived sexual tension between Sam and Dean to one of its latest episodes, where they were transported to an alternate universe where they inhabited the bodies of two actors named “Jared Padalecki” and “Jensen Ackles.” All of the actors played exaggerated versions of themselves throughout. This isn’t the first time that Supernatural has done this kind of episode; it is a show that really likes to acknowledge its fans.

But at what point does it become too much? I’m actually a pretty bad judge of this—I love television and pop culture, and if a show wants to call attention to the fact that it’s a TV show or make a connection to something else, I tend to enjoy it. But the entirety of your audience is not going to have that viewpoint. Personally, I think the best rule to follow is: “Don’t let it take over the show, and don’t alienate the audience.” If your extended scene or entire episode is going to confuse the viewers who don’t get the meta-joke, or if your show is going to morph into something that’s only about the meta, don’t do it. A few meta jokes are fine, but if your show stops being about what’s going on onscreen, and becomes all about the connection between off- and onscreen, you have a problem.