Live-Action TV / Buffy Speak

Buffy Speak in live-action TV.

A guy buying flowers at the 2008 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
BBC Presenter: What have you got there?
Guy: I've got a pink fluffy-thing, and a red flowery-thing.

30 Rock does this on occasion:
Billy Bush: Tomorrow night on America's Kidz Got Singing the judge becomes the opposite of the judge. [Beat] C'mon guys, a little effort.
Duff from Ace of Cakes on "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" describes the contents of his favorite pie:
"It's like a creamy, vinegary... thing. I dunno, he'll tell you about it."
From The Almighty Johnsons episode "Folkmoot" (it may help to know that "thing" is Norse for "council"):
Olaf: A thing is like a small thing, Folkmoot's like a bigger thing, it's not to be taken lightly, it's a big thing thing where important things are decided.
Becker, from the title character: "Quit hovering over me like... help me out, what hovers?"
Black Books: In "The Blackout" Bernard recounts having gone out to buy some "fizzy-good-make-feel-nice" for his hangover (aka Alka-Seltzer).
Blackadder the Third used this once to good effect, since the Blackadders are known for their razor-sharp wits, and because even without a decent metaphor, he still says it with confidence. As he says to Prince George regarding the causes of a threatened peasant revolution, "Disease and deprivation stalk our land like... two giant stalking things."
- An extended example from Blackadder the Third:
  Blackadder: Now; Baldrick, where's the manuscript?
  Baldrick: You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?
  Blackadder: Yes, Baldrick — the manuscript belonging to Dr. Johnson.
  Baldrick: You mean the baity fellow in the black coat who just left?
  Blackadder: Yes, Baldrick — Dr. Johnson.
  Baldrick: So you're asking where the big papery thing tied up with string belonging to the baity fellow in the black coat who just left is.
  Blackadder: Yes, Baldrick, I am, and if you don't answer, then the booted bony thing with five toes at the end of my leg will soon connect sharply with the soft dangly collection of objects in your trousers. For the last time, Baldrick: Where is Dr. Johnson's manuscript?
  Baldrick: On the fire.
  Blackadder: On the *what*?
  Baldrick: The hot orangy thing under the stony mantlepiece.
- Also, Melchett in Blackadder II: "You twist and turn like a... twisty, turny thing!".
- Blackadder again, in II: "The grave opens before me like... a big hole in the ground."
- In II, when Captain Rum accuses Queenie's courtiers of all being lapdogs to a slip of a girl, Blackadder replies "Better a lapdog to a slip of a girl than a... git."
- Blackadder combining this with Dissimile and ending with an inverted Metaphorgotten: "We're about as similar as two completely dissimilar things in a pod."
Bones had a rare example of a character known for Spock Speak reverting to Buffy Speak. In the ninth season episode "The Sense in the Sacrifice", Booth kissed Brennan breathless after she declared her absolute faith in him and his instincts. Her response combined Buffy Speak with I Need to Go Iron My Dog; "I have to go...do...scientific things to catch a serial killer."
On Boy Meets World, the one-man play that Eric writes contains the line, "The hot wind howled, like a kind of howling... hot... windy thing."
Obviously, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Interestingly, it's never referred to as "Buffy-speak" in the show, but in "I Only Have Eyes For You", Giles refers to it as "Xander-Speak".
- Lampshaded by Buffy herself once.
  Buffy: All of the Hellmouth's energy is trying to escape from that one little spot, and it's getting all...
  Principal Wood: Focus-ey.
  Buffy: Careful! Starting to speak like me now.
- Spoofed when we hear a quote from Giles's first diary entry as Watcher.
  Her abuse of the English language is such that I understand only every other sentence.
- Spoofed again when Riley has to explain that 'buffy' is not an example of this trope, but a girl's name.
- Also lampshaded by Spike. See Quotes.
- In one episode Buffy called E-Mail "E-Letters".
The teenagers of Caprica occasionally talk like this. Not terribly surprising, given that several members of the Buffy creative team were also involved in Caprica (particularly Jane Espenson, who was showrunner for the second half of the show's lone season and co-wrote the finale).
On Charmed:
- Paige's power of Telekinetic Orbing required her to call objects by name. In the episode "Hyde School Reunion", she doesn't know what to call a demonic acid substance but successfully orbs it back to the demon by calling it "Icky stuff!". In another episode, "A Wrong Day's Journey into Right", she does the same thing using "Weapon... thingy!".
  Piper: Icky stuff?
  Paige: It worked.
- In an apparent Actor Allusion, the second Seer (played by Charisma Carpenter) does a lot of this.
  Seer: Okay. You want to stop with the gross flesh-peely talk?
Community: Britta is upset that Annie is bringing in more money than her to help with the Gulf crisis, so she dresses a little slutty and starts acting perky.
Britta: Hi, I need you to give me money to help save the pelicans, because they're, like, feathery and pelicany and stuff!
- "Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism" has Annie, who's moved in with Abed and Troy, accidentally destroying Abed's limited-edition DVD of The Dark Knight. When Annie tries to shift the blame by claiming the apartment was robbed of the now-missing disc, Abed speculates that the landlord did it; and Troy (who knows what really happened) responds, "Ooooh, let's not jump to thing-doing!"
- "Contemporary Impressionists" had an example of the "Intelligent thought expressed unintelligently" variation:
  Jeff: Someone tell Britta what an analogy is.
  Britta: I know what it is, it's like a thought... with another thought's... hat on...
- The Dean's threat to put Jeff's picture on a Greendale poster unless he convinces Troy to join the football team: "You know, I just realized, we should send these out to local businesses. Law firms, lawyer... companies, legal... gatherings..."
- Then there is Chang.
  She was all dame. Legs that went all the way to the bottom of her torso.
  Let her go, like a lobster claw letting go of a small balloon for lobsters.
  A matchbook... Something about it seemed cluey.
  - Yes, those are all from the same episode, "Competitive Ecology".
- Then there's the two-parter where Troy builds a blanket fort and Abed builds a pillow fort and they go to war over it. Troy calls his blanket fort "The Legit Republic of Blanketsburg".
Coupling: In the last episode of the third series, Sally is convinced she's pregnant, so she, Jane, and Susan take tests (they're controls). She comes out of a stall screaming "It's so blue! And liney! It's a blue line of blue lineyness!" She's holding all three...

CSI: NY, of all shows, even gets in on it once in a while.
- In "Rain," Mac and Stella are examining a burned victim on the street outside a bank.
  Stella: There's something gooey here on his face.
  Mac: Gooey. That's a nice forensic word; we should use it more often.
- Adam attempts Techno Babble when Jo recruits him to trick a suspect by impersonating a polygraph examiner, but it morphs into Buffy Speak when he refers to the needle as "the pen thingy."
Doc Martin: Martin tells PC Penhale that his brother is displaying some of the symptoms of Huntington's disease. Penhale has a panic attack and Martin shuts him up by agreeing to give him a blood test. Penhale says of his blood that "Oh no! It looks Huntington-y!"
Doctor Who:
- In "The Time Monster", the Doctor uses a time-sensor to detect disturbances in the time-field caused by the Master's TARDIS. Jo christens it a "TARDIS sniffer-outer".
- From "The Stones of Blood":
  The Fourth Doctor: Yes, pow, pow, pow's a technical expression, Professor, it means that all the microcircuitry will fuse into one great euh! of molten metal.
- Ace McShane explains Dalek politics:
  Ace: It's simple, isn't it? Renegade Daleks are blobs; Imperial Daleks are bionic blobs with bits added. You can tell that Daleks are really into racial purity. So one lot of Daleks reckon the other lot of blobs are too different. They're mutants, not pure in their blobbiness.
- In "Battlefield", the Doctor frightens off a group of knights who think he's Merlin by proclaiming "Go now, before I unleash a terrible something on you!"
- "The End of the World": After the Doctor "upgrades" Rose's mobile, she asks what he did to it, to which he replies "a little bit of jiggery pokery." Rose then quips, "Is that a technical term, 'jiggery pokery'?"
- "School Reunion": Anthony "Giles" Head makes a blatant shoutout when he calls K-9 (a robot dog with a laser cannon) a "Shooty Dog-thing".
- "Doomsday": The weird stuff from the Void Between the Worlds is eloquently referred to as... Void stuff.
- "Blink":
  - The episode's most famous quote:
    "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff. It got away from me, yeah..."
  - And from the same episode:
    "This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes "ding" when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at thirty paces."
- "Planet of the Dead":
  Christina: How does a crystal drive a bus?
  The Doctor: In a super clever outer-spacey way.
- The Eleventh Doctor and his companions talk this way a lot:
  "I hate yogurt. It's just... stuff with bits in it."
  Rory: Aliens. Deadly aliens. Aliens of death.
  "They're blue... boring-ers!"
  "A big mining thing, love a big mining thing. Rio doesn't have a big mining thing."
  Amy: Nice... swording. (All the time blissfully unaware that she has just put a metaphorical sword through fake!Rory's fake heart.)
  "I'll do a thing."
  [When asked what he did to Apollo 11] "A clever thing."
  "Yes, it's Spacey Wacey!"
  "It's a thing, it's like a plan but with more greatness."
  "It's a thing in progress, don't question the thing."
  "A space-shippy thing! Timey-spacy!"
  [To Idris] "You're just a bitey mad lady! The TARDIS is uppy-downy stuff in a big blue box." (This from a script written by Neil Gaiman, yet)
- "Explodey-wodey".
- The War Doctor puts a fork in it in "The Day of the Doctor" when he roundly criticizes the Eleventh Doctor for using "timey wimey" and asks if he uses such language because he doesn't want to grow up. The Tenth Doctor claims he has no idea where Eleven gets this stuff.

Often happens to Jack Carter from Eureka when he has a hard time describing what the town's scientists have come up with to destroy the city this week. A typical example:
Jack Carter: I believe you have a device! That can create a wormhole, or bend time, or make you invisible... A wormholing, time-bending, invisibling device... that shields you from the mind!
Nathan Stark: Yes, he said "invisibling".
In the pilot episode of Farscape, astronaut John Crichton gets hold of his first raygun. After accidentally letting off a few shots, he decides to try threats instead. This happens a fair bit when A) John doesn't know what to call alien devices/races/things or B) John is trying to describe Earthy things to aliens.
"Don't move, or I'll fill you full of... little yellow bolts of light!"
Firefly:
- Jayne, talking about Saffron, warns Simon and River, "She'll turn you in faster than you can say... 'Don't turn me in, lady'."
- Or Wash: "And we will call it... this land!"
- Mal also seems to do it quite often. One example:
  Mal: You want to run this ship?
  Jayne: Yeah!
  Mal: Well... you can't.
And another:
Badger: You think you're better than other people!
Mal: Just the ones I'm better than.
- Another Jayne example features him explaining that looks aren't as deceiving as a low-down, dirty deceiver.
And another:
Jayne: If I wanted schoolin', I woulda gone to... school.
- River periodically slides into it, but that's more because of her madness and her inability to express her thoughts clearly due to her schizophrenia and the massive emotional and sensory overload she's experiencing due to her brain damage and Psychic Powers.
- "I have captain-ey things to do."
- Also, surprisingly, Simon when he is drunk in "Jaynestown".
  Simon: To Jayne! The box-dropping, man-ape-gone-wrong thing!
- Lampshaded in "Ariel":
  Wash: (referring to Inara having to undergo a full physical) Seems like an awful lot of trouble just to renew your license to Companion. (Beat) Can I use "Companion" as a verb?
- It's safe to say that this is a general feature of Joss Whedon's shows.
From The Forgotten episode "Railroad Jane":
Alex: I'm officially our kneecap-plastic-thingie expert!
- And earlier in the same episode, when Tyler is stopped by the police with the eponymous Railroad Jane's skull in his car:
  Tyler: I mean, what was I supposed to say? "No, officer, this isn't a skull, it's a... skull-like thing."
Frasier: "It would be hard to sleep, thinking of you in the next room all hot and... hot."
Friends: Phoebe to a certain extent:
"It's my friends. They have a... liking problem. With you. In that they don't."
- Her brother even more so (he described his love for his fiancée as "being with her is like... so much better than not being with her, y'know").
Lorelai on Gilmore Girls: "Oh, I can't stop drinking the coffee. I stop drinking the coffee, I stop doing the standing and walking and the words-putting-into-sentence-doing."
Marshall, Ted, and Lily often fall into this mode of speaking on How I Met Your Mother, particularly when Robin and Barney aren't around. Stands to reason, as Alyson Hannigan is a Buffy alumn and the show creators are huge Joss Whedon fans.
- Deliberately used in an attempt at bowdlerisation. It didn't end well:
  Robin: So, we go to the, uh place. And then that guy asks about that thing with the stuff that I told you about at that place that time. Long story short — events transpired.
  Marshall: You and the guy from the mayor's office did it in the UN building under the desk of the ambassador from Zaire? Nice.
Hustle: "Sometimes a bloke has to stand up for... what he stands for."
From the TV version of Jeeves and Wooster:
Bertie: When you have been a little longer in my employ you will come to understand that all my chums rely heavily on your employer's wisdom and knowledge of human nature in the conduct of their affairs. Not to mention my organisational powers, and just plain... thingness!
In the pilot of Just Cause:
Alex: When I was in prison, I developed a gut for reading people.
Whit: Your prison gut is going to get me disbarred.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: John's intro to a piece on a Kansas sex-toy auction: "Kansas. It's a land that's synonymous with me Googling 'Kansas' 20 minutes ago to see if it's synonymous with anything."
Beaver and, to a lesser extent, Wally in Leave It to Beaver. This is what distinguished the show from, say, The Donna Reed Show where the children spoke like they were in a Neil Simon play.
From the Legend of the Seeker episode "Sanctuary" comes the line, "That swindler's as blind as ... something ... that can't see well." It's entirely plausible that the Midlands don't have bats. Also, it's possible that halfway through the sentence he remembered that bats actually have excellent eyesight.
Lost: Hurley, frequently.
Sawyer: What's your problem, Jumbotron?
Hurley: Shut up! Red... neck... man.
- Sawyer uses its "X-thingy" variant, especially with the nicknames, making it "X-chick/X-guy" :
  "She talked to that guy... Bruce-Lee-from-the-freighter."
  "That's broken-nose-man's girl."
- The "Steal-The-Kid-Off-The-Raft project", the "I-m-an-Other-You-re-an-Other reunion", the "Blow-Up-Everything-That-Can-Get-Us-Off-The-Island tour", ...
The Mandalorian: Greef Karga refers to the Child's Force powers as "the magic hand thing". Justified: That far away from New Republic space, very few people know what the Force is.
Radar from M*A*S*H is sometimes prone to this.
Radar: Sir, I was walking by and I noticed this gizmo came disconnected from the thingamabob and it wasn't dripping into the doohickey right.
BJ: You lost me with all the technical terms, Radar, but I get the picture.
- Henry, too.
  Col. Blake: I mean the talk about the, uh, what I'm supposed to talk about.
  Col. Blake: General Mitchell, it is both an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to welcome you into that which only through your kind support and generosity are we able to be standing in the middle of it.
From BBC series Me And My Monsters: "human-dad-thingy" and "mummy-human thingy".
In Merlin, the title character describes a sword as "very... swordy".
On MythBusters:
J.D. Nelson: [referring to a drum containing one million match heads] If this does go off [while we're here], then it is time to de-ass the area with the quickness.
Abby does this in the NCIS episode "Chimera" when guiding Tony in the use of complex lab equipment. Apparently, it's the only way for her to make sure that he knows what she's talking about.
NewsRadio used this trope so much that it might as well be called Jimmy Speak.
Mr. James: You're gonna be big, son. Bigger than, say, Dave, what's the name of that guy who's really big?
Dave: Andre the Giant?
Mr. James: No, No, the one who isn't dead yet.
Dave: Oh, Hulk Hogan.
Mr. James: Bingo!
- "This is on air talker person Matthew Brock"
  Mr. James: I'm going to need one of those thingies you put on your head and talk into it.
  Beth: Oh yeah, Peter Frampton Vocoder?
  Mr. James: No.
  Beth: Darth Vader space helmet?
  Mr. James: No.
  Beth: Telephone headset?
  Mr. James: That's the one.
- "I don't know, but there's something bogus in there somewhere..."
  Joe: No matter how far technology advances it's still just a bunch of wires connected to other wires.
  Beth: So what's wrong with it?
  Joe: I can't seem to find any wires...
NUMB3RS: Sometimes used when describing Charlie's equations.
Megan: Well, there's always Charlie's inequality...bounding...thing.
Colby: Maybe Charlie will be able to slap it into one of those algorithmic, geo-profiling, hot-zone hot-pocket deals.
Odd Squad has this as a frequent occurrence.
- The best way Olive can describe exactly how she feels about Soundcheck, in the episode of the same name, is with a mumbling "yee" sound that closed-captions usually describe as "mumbling like an idiot".
- In "The Jackies", Otto refers to the greater-than symbol in an equation comparing Oprah's solved cases to Orville's as an "arrow thingy".
- In "Switch Your Partner Round and Round", after Oprah takes Olive and Otto out of mind control for the first time, Olive remarks that what she and her partner witnessed was horrible. Oprah responds in kind with:
Oprah: Could've been way more horribler.
Otto: Is "horribler" even a word?
Oprah: Nope, just made it up.
- At the climax of "First Day", when Otis is giving a Rousing Speech to Olympia, he refers to the opposite of giving up as "un-gave up".
- The entire conflict of "Behind Enemy Mimes" revolves around Olympia and Otis trying to get Oprah to, in their words, not see how "mistakey" they are.
- In "Shapely University", Professor Triangle walks up to Otis, Olympia, Omaha and Olena and remarks that they're working as a team now, then asks what a good word is to describe them doing so.
Otis: Teamwork?
Professor Triangle: Really? Thought it was called, like, "friendsies" or "helpsies" or "togetherness" or something fun.
- In "Villains Always Win", after Oprah explains to Olympia and Otis what Game Show Gary's Evil Plan is.
Olympia: So I'll just win and get the gadget back. Easy-peasy!
Oprah: Not easy-peasy. Hardy-wardy.
- In "Odd in 60 Seconds", after the Utensiler's younger sister shows the Mobile Unit and Ono how she got past the marble trap in the vault:
Omar: Well, answers all of my questions!
[he takes out his Devils Tower board game]
Orla: I am still not satisfied.
Omar: Are you kidding me right now?
Orla: Have I ever kidded?
- In the final part of the Season 3 finale, "End of the Road", Brutus litters his explanation of The Shadow's Evil Plan with this.
Brutus: You'll zap your odd powers into one of those round thingies, then they'll travel through those...tube thingies, and go into that...box thingy!
Our Miss Brooks: Teenage Walter Denton, although a great one for Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, sometimes mixes advanced vocabulary, current slang and awkward phrasing. The following example is a petition he writes for the episode "Cafeteria Boycott". Note the oddball combination of 50's slang, extensive "borrowing" from the Declaration of Independence, and assorted legalese:
Walter Denton: Whereas and to wit—
Miss Brooks: That's pretty strong language, isn't it? A little on the pink side.
Harriet Conklin: Listen, Miss Brooks.
Walter Denton: When in the course of student's events, it becomes necessary to turn one's back on one's stomach, we the undersigned, exercising our constitutional right to peaceably assemble, and to form a committee to seek the redress of grievances, do hereby announce our firm intention of the Madison High School Cafeteria only to use the tables, chairs, water, napkins and toothpicks provided therein. Until such a time that the duly appointed party or parties, namely Mr. Osgood Conklin, principal, or the Board of Education, responsible for the operational bog-down that has befallen this installation, do take such action that will improve the food, lower the prices and better the service in said cafeteria. It is also recommended the person, or persons, in whom this authority is vested, immediately see that the present chef in charge of preparing the food, and without any further frippery or fanfare, chuck him the heck off the premises. Well, Miss Brooks, what do you think of it?
Miss Brooks: How much do you want for the picture rights?
Parks and Recreation:
"I have to go to the um... whizz palace. You know, the toilet... thing."
Poker Face: Charlie struggles to recall technical terms like "locker" and "trapdoor", calling the latter a "flappy door".
Heard in Power Rangers Ninja Storm, especially from Dustin. That season practically has its own language.
Dustin: I blew up the dude, and he, like... un-blew up!
From the Psych episode "If You're So Smart, Then Why Are You Dead?'':
Goddard: Wait, wasn't Hahn involved in that thing? You remember that thing?
Shockley: The thing with the other thing?
Goddard: Nonono, just the first thing, from five years ago.
QI
- When discussing the over-cautious expiration dates on cheese, it's pointed out to Stephen Fry that cheese is essentially expired already. Stephen's agreement is much to the amusement of the audience and the panel.
  Stephen: That's its point. It's the celebration of what happens when milk goes off all big time stylie.
- When asked how feet ^note are measured, Dara Obriain says they use "the slidey thing." When asked about what the measurement unit is he says "fractions of the slidey thing." ^{Actual answer}
Red Dwarf, where the characters, knowing nothing about astro-navigation or the area of space they are traveling through, often use terms like "Swirly-thing alert!" Or, on occasion, a "wibbly thing".
Kryten: Is it a wibbly thing or a swirly thing sir?
Cat: At this early stage I'd hate to commit myself and wind up looking a fool!
- The pilot is usually the Cat, who navigates space by 'smell' among other things...
- Though, once, Arnold Rimmer described somebody as "a total, total ... A word has yet to be invented to describe how totally whatever-it-is you are, but you are one. And a total, total one at that."
Happened every now and then on Robot Wars, including this from Team U.F.O:
"It's a big lifty-uppy spikey-thing, designed to cut into the bladey thing above it, and we also have a couple of bright lighty shiny things at the front, and some plucky spikey things at the back."
In Roundhouse (an early '90s Nickelodeon variety show), the character of Dad yells, "Flying out of windows like... things that fly out of windows!"
Saturday Night Live: "And you... with that hair on your head... Hair head!"
- Also characteristic of Dana Carvey's George H. W. Bush impression.
Occurs in an episode of Scrubs ("My Balancing Act"): Turk wears a nasal strip (presumably as a breathing aid to improve his bedroom performance and overcome Carla's inability to orgasm), prompting Carla to ask "Why are you wearing one of those nose breathing thingies?"
Also happens in Seinfeld: Jerry says, "I mean how can I be with someone that doesn't laugh. It's like... well it's like something!"
The normally unflappable Sherlock becomes so flustered when Moriarty straps a bomb to John, and John grabs him and tells Sherlock to run, thus proving himself willing to die for Sherlock that he can only splutter "That, uh... thing... that you, uh... that you did, that you... that you offered to do, that was, ah... good." Coming from him, it has to mean something — he was commenting on John's actual bravery, in an awkward way.
- Also occurs in "A Scandal in Belgravia", when Mycroft offers Sherlock a cigarette:
  Sherlock: Smoking indoors… isn't that… isn't that one of those… law things?
- In "The Sign of Three" after Sherlock gets drunk, his usual Sherlock Scan shows hazy double-image Buffy-speak labels (e.g. a chair is described as "sitty thing").
Smallville: When Jimmy Olsen discovers Clark's secret: "You're some kind of super... guy!"
Stargate:
- In Stargate SG-1, Colonel O'Neill sometimes talks like this, but it's not always clear whether he's doing it sincerely or for the humor value.
  O'Neill: You all know I take great pride in my title as Mr. Positive; however, we did destroy their de-Goa'ulding thing — might not they look unkindly on that?
  - Even more so the one-shot character Burke in the episode "Evolution, part 2".
    Burke: Hey, is that that thing that made that guy do that thing?
- In Stargate Atlantis the following dialogue where McKay's naming idea is turned down provides a good example of this trope:
  Lt. Ford: Gateship One, ready to go.
  Maj. Sheppard: Gateship One? A little Puddle Jumper like this?
  Lt. Ford: It's a ship, it goes through a gate. Gateship One!
  They end up naming it Puddle Jumper.
Derrick in Strangers with Candy, running out of insults for the new blind student: "Well, if it isn't Mr... no... looking at things... guy."
Supernatural:
Dean: You're the short bus... Short bus.
Sam: Our dark spots are pretty dark.
Dean: You're... Dark.

Warehouse 13, "Well I'm guessing 'the gooery'" is Claudiaspeak for the neutralizer distribution machine." Hardly surprising when you consider that Buffy writer Jane Espenson co-created Warehouse 13.
- A recent episode suggests otherwise, with "Gooery" printed in big, blocky, warehousey letters on the thing itself. Then again, Claudia IS being groomed to be the new Warehouse Caretaker. Maybe the Warehouse is adopting her speech mannerisms.
Frequently deployed by the staff of the White House on The West Wing. Especially bizarre when used by Toby, who is, after all, not only the President's chief speechwriter, but also a man with a keen enough of grasp of the language to name every punctuation mark in it off the top of his head. Prime example from Season 4's "Election Night":
Toby: You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?
- To be fair to Toby, he only slips into this when he's been frazzled by writing a big speech. The example above comes after writing the President's re-election victory speech.
- For the record, there are fourteen punctuation marks in the English language (according to The Other Wiki). Doesn't sound too bad? Well, did you make sure to include guillemets and solidus?
Whose Line Is It Anyway? dips into this trope half of the time thanks to its improvisational format. One example of this in the Improbable Mission sketch for the laundry ("The Cat!" for people who don't remember the actual task), when no one but Greg knew what a burnoose actually was:
Ryan: Fabric softener?
Colin: Well you can't have static cling! The burnoose will stick to his... [gestures to body] thing!

Xena: Warrior Princess:
- Gabrielle describing how to survive a battle when you have no fight experience.
  Gabrielle: See the pointy bits on the ends of those swordy things? Stay away from them.
- And in "Warrior... Princess":
  Diana: [impersonating Xena] Oh, this? This is... my round killing thing.
  Gabrielle: Chakram.
  Diana: Bless you.
- In "Altared States", Xena and Gabrielle call a megaphone "the loud talking thing".
The title character from Agatha Raisin does this, for example describing herself and one of her various former one-night stands as "Ships that do their shippy thing in the night."

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