The heroes themselves.
Pat! Hey, Pat!What is it, old sport?
Look what I got us! A brand new TV Tropes page! Just needs a little assembly...
Let's get to it, then. Have you seen my wrench, dear friend?
Not since we've used it to pry the fish from the drinks machine, I haven't.
Oh, pity. How do we open the crate then?
Goodness me, you wanted to open it with a wrench? We've got a perfectly good carjack!
Right. So here we go... Whoopsie daisies!
Worry not, I'll drill it open! Wrrooom!
Hey! There's a huge hole in our page now...
We interrupt the show, since any more self-demonstration would be injurious to the servers. Pat and Mat are two lovably bumbling Czech guys, made of plasticine, which might be for the best, considering the amount of falling on their heads that inevitably occurs to them in the course of boldly improving their living conditions. Their efforts are always hilariously misapplied: if Pat and Mat are trying to make a fish tank, you'd better have your wellingtons on hand.
Also, we made up the opening dialogue, since the cartoon has none - except in the Netherlands, where they were given voices, which was such a success, that they continued in a speaking form there ever since (even leading to live shows from the 2010s onwards).
The duo have an official channel
on YouTube (containing episodes from 2009-onward), and other episodes can be found on many other channels.
Pat and Mat have been messing about with these tropes:
- All for Nothing: A lot of their projects end up that way either completely undoing their work or negating all the effort to achieve their goal. A few notable examples:
- Covering a goulash stained wall with new wallpaper only to splatter it with goulash again right after.
- Painting a room only to have a burned dinner in the stove cover everything in soot.
- Retrieving a key from the gutter only to have it fall down the same gutter again right after.
- Spending significant time and effort to get a bottle cap back to screw a soda bottle shut only to use all the soda washing away ashes in an effort to find the cap.
- At times also subverted as while their efforts for the original goal went to waste they find a way to turn their disastrous outcome into something positive.
- All There in the Manual: Not in a manual per say, but in a 1999 DVD by aiF, there exists a bonus "Filmography" section that, among other things, contains surprisingly detailed bios for both of the boys, detailing their childhoods and rise to fame, as well as favorite things like foods and tools.
- Amusing Injuries: They should both be in comas, given how often Pat and Mat hit their heads. Instead they just shake it off and get on with the mayhem.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Many of the boys' contraptions qualify under this, such as a window-repairing conveyor belt or a large, hand-powered musical device.
- Character Catchphrase: In the Dutch dubbed version of the show, Buurman en Buurman, the boys will often exclaim "A je to!"note after accomplishing the day's task, or completing an integral step in it. At some point this piece of Czech was abandoned, but brought back when it was recognised as an iconic phrase.
- Cloudcuckoolander: The best place for a fish pond? In the living room! How to unglue stamps from envelopes? In the washing machine!
- Diet Episode: The Slim Figure episode, in a rare self-motivated example. After a hefty lunch, the duo sit down stuffed, only to find some conveniently-placed fitness magazines on their coffee table. After a good look at their guts, they decide to cobble up their own gym equipment made of various household items, to rather mixed results. What ultimately dooms their plan is their secret midnight snacking, which negates all their hard work.
- Disaster Dominoes: Pretty much every episode begins with a minor inconvenience the boys want to solve, and ends in a glorious disaster, brought upon by their efforts. Including the efforts to fix the smaller disasters they caused on the way.
- D.I.Y. Disaster: The drinks machine might have been faulty to begin with, although after all this tossing about, anyone would shoot paper cups.
- Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project: Connecting the washing machine, making a fish tank, fixing the faucet...
- Doom It Yourself: The series.
- Duct Tape for Everything: Not every episode, but it has been used on leaking pipes and such.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The early episodes of the show (from 1979 to 1985) had Mat wearing a gray sweater as opposed to his much more iconic red one. This was due to the Communist government deeming the duo's shirt colors as a tasteless jab at tense Soviet-Chinese relations at the time. Also of note were the fact that Pat & Mat had no names yet, and the characters had (very limited) facial expression changes, something that would be phased out by 1989.
- The very first episode, Kuťáci (Tinkers), does feature the unaltered shirt colors (which in turn got the censors involved in the first place), but has much more vibrant array of expressions for the characters, and depicts Pat and Mat without their beloved hats. The soundtrack also plays non-stop on loop.
- Facepalm: Frequently, when one gets Amusing Injuries and the other gets a "bright" idea.
- Face Plant: Frequent result of trying to move crates upstairs.
- "Friends" Rent Control: They don't seem to do much besides tinkering and still move to progressively nicer houses at least twice in the series.
- There is a very subtle hint (very easy to miss) in Rocking Chair; Mat arrives home and throws his briefcase onto the hook.
- Other episodes, such as Winegrowers and Strawberries, have Pat and Mat working in crop gardens, cultivating fruits, suggesting they may have this as a source of income.
- Genius Ditz: While the duo's ideas are often ill-conceived due to a lack of foresight and common sense, when the going gets tough it's shown they can indeed makes some pretty ingenious (if overly specific) inventions.
- Laborious Laziness: Pat and Mat seem to be prone to this. Often, a lot of their inventions are made to streamline the labor process of an overly specific task.
- In Paving Bricks, the duo construct a conveyor belt to deliver paving stones from the truck to their backyard, but it ends up damaging the stones due to a lack of safe, drop-off.
- Painting the Windows (Natírají okna) has Pat and Mat build a similar conveyor belt that has various arms that paints, sands, and replaces glass on the windows. It ends similarly.
- Stairs has this as its focal point—the pair try to make moving books from one room to another quicker by using a rope and carriage, boards and skis, and yet another conveyor belt (using a carpet, no less!). Unlike the previous attempts of using the conveyor system, however, this one actually succeeds.
- Limited Wardrobe: Each has a pair of trousers, a sweater and a hat.
- MacGyvering: Subverted. These two have the can-do attitude and boxes upon boxes of tools, but no common sense, lest of all mechanical aptitude.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: In all versions except the Netherlands and South Korean versions, where the characters are dubbed, to varying degrees of quality.
- Averted with the episode Playing Cards, which features David Nykl and Peter Alton portraying both Pat and Mat respectively.
- The dubbed versions occasionally provide an Adaptational Angst Upgrade: In the episode "Door", Pat has locked himself out of his house. After repeated failure to get him back in, he breaks down crying. In Dutch, Pat exclaims: "If I can't get into my own house, I don't want to live anymore!"
- Averted with the episode Playing Cards
- Minimalist Cast: The only two characters that appear in the episodes are often Pat, Mat, and nobody else.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Like catching a cap for a bottle, parking a car to a garage, or making strawberry preserves.
- The Pollyanna: Pat and Mat, natch. Very rarely do the duo get angry or sad, usually opting to keep on smiling while striving towards their goals, no matter how unlikely their success is.
- The Pratfall: Yet another obstinate crate...
- Rube Goldberg Device: Whenever something has to be transported, Pat and Mat will do it in the most hilariously complicated way available.
- Squashed Flat: In Rocking Chair, Pat suffers this after Mat is sent flying through the door after being flung out of a makeshift rocking chair, rebounds into some power lines, and crashes back in. Thankfully, Mat has a bike pump on him and revives Pat.
- Strictly Formula: Some home improvement is needed/wanted, so the boys get to it. Hilarity Ensues.
