Tucker was an American Dom Com starring Eli Marienthal, Noelle Beck, Katey Sagal, Casey Sander, Alison Lohman, and Seth Green. It only aired for one season (2000–01) on NBC, but was extremely popular in the UK, where it was featured prominently on Nickelodeon.
The show revolves around Tucker Pierce (Marienthal), a fifteen year old whose parents have just split up. He and his mother Jeannie (Beck) move in with Jeannie's sister Claire (Sagal) and her husband Jimmy (Sander), an airline pilot. Claire is prim and proper, and doesn't approve of Tucker's behavior. She also has an eccentric son of her own named Leon (Nathan Lawrence), who has a hobby of collecting human hair in jars. Tucker eventually meets the beautiful McKenna Reid (Lohman) and tries to woo her, but she's already got a boyfriend—who happens to be Seth Green.
This show provides examples of:
- Accidental Pervert: In the pilot, Tucker accidentally walks in on Claire in the bathroom. She thinks he was watching her change.
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In-universe. In the pilot episode McKenna theorises that the reason Claire told the whole congregation about Tucker apparently watching her change is secretly her bragging "someone thinks this old bag of bones is still foxy."
- Amicable Exes: Tucker's parents.
- An Aesop: Tucker learns a good one when he tries to get his parents back together. He sees his dad is happy with Debi, even if he doesn't like his new attitude.
- Another one highlights Jeannie and Claire's different parenting methods. Jeannie insists that she wants to teach Tucker to make decisions for himself, rather than to fear punishment for every wrong thing. When he skips school, she makes him promise not to do it again because "he did himself a disservice". Then when she sees him cutting Seth's hair and therefore hurting someone else, she comes down hard with the punishments.
- As Himself: Seth Green plays himself.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Tucker and Claire get a few moments like these. Notable is Claire consoling him after he finds McKenna and Seth kissing in the garden.
- Bait-and-Switch: One episode has Jeannie finding a lot of money stashed in Leon's room. He admits to spending it on junk food, firecrackers and...other stuff. The viewer at this point is led to believe it's naughty magazines. It's actually a pet octopus he visits at an aquarium.
- Batman Gambit: Tucker hopes that electing Claire chairwoman of the neighbourhood will get her to ban Seth Green from coming there, thus splitting him and McKenna up and allowing him to make his move.
- Betty and Veronica: Jeannie and Debi were these to Tucker's dad. Jeannie was the Betty, soft and sweet and a stay-at-home mother, while Debi is younger and more wild.
- Bitch Alert: Claire gets one of these. McKenna seemingly gets one as well spraying Tucker with a hose but we quickly find out she's just teasing.
- Boob-Based Gag: Claire designs t-shirts for her campaign to become chairwoman of the neighbourhood. The slogan is "The Eyes of Claire" while there are two eyes placed in a certain area...Jeannie: Claire, your boobs are staring at me.
- Brick Joke: Claire suggests a karaoke night over the phone while Jeannie is spying on Tucker talking to Debbie. After she has it out with Debbie and drags Tucker back to the car, Claire can be heard still singing through the phone.
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Broken Aesop: Tucker learns a lesson about tricking McKenna into breaking up with Seth by hiding the latter's card apologising after their fight. When going out for dinner with her, he realises that McKenna sees them Like Brother and Sister and facilitates her and Seth getting back together. So he only has his Heel Realization once he sees he can't benefit from the break-up in any way. - Cerebus Retcon: In the finale, Grandma's abuse of Claire is Played for Laughs at first but then Tucker realises how much it negatively affects Claire and tries to get the two to bond.
- The Chessmaster: Tucker shows signs of this.
- Comically Missing the Point: Jeannie and Claire talking about Tucker's t-shirt which has a bunny...Claire: "It's sucking up poop through a straw. Hardly appropriate for his first day at school".Jeannie: "Claire, the bunny is clearly smoking a cigarette. No poop, no straw"Claire: "Oh yes, much more appropriate"
- Control Freak: Claire, but she can be fun at times.
- Continuity Nod: Tucker steals one of Claire's toilet roll covers to give to McKenna as a hat. A few episodes later, Claire remarks that her last cover mysteriously vanished and she doesn't want anything happening to the new one.
- Cool Mask: Leon has one in spirit of his favorite luchador Senor Evil. Jimmy apparently has one for his arch-rival.
- Cool Old Lady: Jeannie and Claire's mother. It's then subverted when Tucker realises how demeaning she is to Claire when Claire does so much for her.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: A comical misunderstanding that would be very hard to play with the genders reversed. Tucker asks Debi for help on how to kiss. Jeannie watches them through the window and sees Debbie leaning in as if actually going to kiss him herself. While she interrupts and reads Debbie the riot act for it, and is later angrily on the phone to her husband about it, it's treated in a light-hearted way that would be hard to play if it were a twentysomething male teaching a teenage girl how to kiss. Debbie claims "I was gonna kiss the pillow" in a tone of voice that suggests obvious denial.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Debi Dixon, the beautiful bubbly glamorous and fun estate agent who Tucker's father is dating.
- Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Jeannie's waitress job. Played with in the sense that she had previously just been a home-maker.
- Feet-First Introduction: This is Debi's introduction in one episode — the camera tilts up her bare legs as she answers the door in a dressing gown.
- Gag Haircut: Happens to Tucker in the pilot as Leon cuts a chunk of his hair for his collection (while he's asleep). Tucker later gets a lock of Seth's hair.
- Girl Next Door: McKenna quite literally.
- Halloween Episode: Tucker and Claire end up catching a fever and have to be confined to the same bed. The fun starts when McKenna drops by.
- Hair Flip: McKenna does this a lot. It's even the first thing we see her doing.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: McKenna is kind and sweet, and completely oblivious to Tucker's crush on her. She's dating a celebrity and not using him at all.
- Ironic Echo Cut: Without a cut. Tucker's narration refers to Debbie as a "man-stealing she beast" just before she throws open the door, squeals his name and throws her arms around him. Tucker then thinks "what was I just saying?"
- Irony: After realising how demeaning his grandmother is to Claire, Tucker tells her off. Claire overhears the end of the speech and yells at him for being rude to Grandma not knowing he was actually defending her. The two women then bond over Claire's disciplining.
- I Call Her "Vera": Leon named his favorite pair of scissors "Annabelle".
- Just Friends: Tucker sadly realises that McKenna sees their relationship as this when he tries to split her and Seth up.
- Kids Play Matchmaker: Tucker attempts to reunite his parents in the Thanksgiving Episode. It doesn't work and he realizes that his dad is actually happy in his new relationship with Debi.
- Manchild: Tucker is horrified that his father has become this thanks to his relationship with Debi.
- Maybe Ever After: The show ended prematurely but there were several hints that McKenna could possibly feel something for Tucker. Despite unknowingly friend-zoning him in one episode, she did drop some rather interesting revelations when she had the flu. She also invited him out on a date in one episode where she was intending for them to be alone. And she does ask his Grandmother for naked baby pictures...
- Noodle Incident: One of these is the reason Tucker's father never cooks anymore. He apparently still can't straighten his arm out.
- Parental Favoritism: Claire and Jeannie's mother seems to favor Jeannie. This gets Played for Drama for both girls as Jeannie laments that their mother treats Claire like dirt, resulting in Claire taking it out on everyone else.
- Precision F-Strike: At one dinner, Leon randomly yells at Claire "Mom, will you ever get your head out of your ass!".
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Jeannie lets Debi have it when she thinks (not unreasonably) that the girl was about to make out with her teenage son."Do you have any morals at all? First you steal my husband, which was a messed-up, crappy thing to do. Now my son? What's next? You want my father's phone number?"
- Self-Deprecation: When McKenna and Seth have a falling out, she and Tucker take shots at some of his films.
- Shaking Her Hair Loose: In an Imagine Spot where Tucker's parents get back together in a faux dramatic scene, Jeannie takes the clip out of her hair and shakes it loose.
- Ship Tease: Leon surprises McKenna with mistletoe in the Christmas Episode.
- Stacy's Mom: Jeannie has this effect on the neighbourhood kids. Even Leon admits he wouldn't mind watching her change.
- Status Quo Is God: Lampshaded when one episode ends with McKenna furious with Tucker. He asks if she forgives him and she says no but then adds she will in a few days.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Claire. Jimmy and sometimes Leon get the sugar, everyone else gets the ice.
- Take a Third Option: When Claire and McKenna's mother have an election to determine the committee chairwoman, all the neighbours vote for someone else. Claire then improvises and announces it was a tie, and they both pick up the position.
- Thanksgiving Episode: Tucker invites his father Marty to the restaurant where Jeannie is working to try and get them back together, but things go awry when Marty brings along his hot new girlfriend Debi.
