Life is not easy at age 10. And Jerry can attest.
Jerry is the new kid at school and he doesn't really fit in with his classmates. The "Three Friends" (Frank, Eric and Thomas) reluctantly hang out with him...as long as he helps them with their day-to-day problems. The guys are usually joined by their girl counterparts Linda (Frank's cousin), Mimmi, and Tess.
The series was distributed by HiT Entertainment internationally. In 2005, HiT Entertainment partnered to launch PBS Kids Sprout, and The Three Friends and Jerry was made available on Sprout on Demand. (Really. Here's the original article
confirming it.) The show was a bit of an outlier there, as the rest of the shows were preschool-friendly, while Jerry was more for older kids.
The Three Friends, many Tropes...... and Jerry:
- All Just a Dream: In "Age Limit", after Jerry gets hit by a ball, he, Frank, Thomas and Eric use a machine that makes them into teenagers, until it malfunctions and it ages them into old men. It turned out to be a dream Jerry had while he was unconscious from the ball.
- All Men Are Perverts: Heck, the opening shows the Three Friends and Jerry trying to peek at Linda's panties!
- Amusing Injuries: Several people, but mostly the Three Friends and Jerry.
- Asian Buck Teeth: Mimmi.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In "Jerry's Lucky Day" , he had an unusually miserable time as of late, and he is met with his guardian angel who explains that due to Celestial Bureaucracy, he's been having an unbalanced amount of bad luck, which should begin to turn around soon. However, all the good things that happen to him over the course of the next day ends up having unpleasant consequences after his good luck was cancelled when the angel got Jerry mixed up with another Jerry. The next time the angel shows up, explaining that he was right the first time and both Jerrys was supposed to have additional good luck after all, Jerry tells to take a hike or he'll "rip your wings off!".
- Big Little Brother: Dick Priest is Vicious Oscar's younger brother and thinks it's his duty to reform him.
- Blatant Lies: Jerry has a habit of telling these often in order to try to sound cool. Most people don't buy it, but they sometimes humor him just to watch him fail to live up to them.
- British Teeth: Mostly averted, but Frank, the teacher, and Vicious Oscar all play this straight.
- Butt-Monkey: Jerry. The Three Friends can be this as well, but mostly Frank when he deserves it.
- Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them:
- The Three Friends spend much of their time together complaining about how much Jerry gets on their nerves. But when he briefly moves away in "The Move", they seem to miss him because they don't have anyone to boss around. That doesn't stop them from immediately treating Jerry like crap the moment he's back.
- Linda is annoyed by Frank's crush on her, but when his family is moving in "Veteran Rock", she'll go to great lengths to get him back....because she doesn't want to lose her Dogged Nice Guy.
- Chased Off into the Sunset: Happens to Jerry at the end of "Junior Show" and "Archeological Dig".
- Child Popstar: The Johnssons, an Affectionate Parody of Hanson.
- Cool Old Guy: The Three Friends and Jerry quickly come to the opinion that Mr. Burtwhistle is this, due to his background as a retired chemical engineer and his hobby of collecting unexploded bombs.
- Comic Trio: The Three Friends have shades of this. Frank is the loudest and usually comes up with zany schemes, Eric is somewhat dense and goes along with whatever Frank suggests, and Thomas is the Only Sane Man who gets dragged into everything whether he likes it or not.
- Continuity Nod:
- Jerry's girl-catching trap was briefly touched upon in the "Catch the Girl" episode. "Sleepwalker" expands upon this event.
- Thomas's dancing lessons in "Secret Mission" are relevant for a contest in "Dance Mania".
- In "Forbidden Fruit" Frank mentions that his cousin in the countryside showed him a medical book with pictures of naked bodies. Seems that the two did became closer after the events of "Country Cousin".
- The goat from "Camping" eats a whole sleeping bag. In "Girls Clothes", it returns and turns out it can eat clothes as well.
- In "Camping" Jerry has some toys to mess with the Three Friends, such as a squeaking toy and a fake hand. Later in "The Flea Market" they return when he's looking for stuff to donate, with the squeaking toy becoming a Diabolus ex Machina.
- Downer Ending: Things get pretty bad for the Three Friends and Jerry at the end of many episodes.
- The Dreaded: Jerry's father, the P.E. teacher, is this for many kids at the school. Even his son Jerry. Especially his son Jerry.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: The P.E. Teacher invokes the spirit of this trope whenever he's training a kid... or punishing them with exercise for something they did wrong.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first three episodes are this.
- The Friend Nobody Likes is averted, with the Three Friends in more cordial terms with Jerry, even if they don't consider him part of the gang. Later stories will play the trope straight, with the Thee Friends reluctantly hang out with Jerry as long as he helps them with their day-to-day problems. By the time Season 3 happens, the Three Friends hate Jerry, enough to avoid him.
- Jerry was more quick-witted and seemed like more of a plain Unlucky Everydude than a mistreated Nice Guy.
- Eric and Thomas had much milder, easy-going personalities, compared to the subdued lackeys they are in later episodes.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- When Jerry and his family moved to a new neighborhood in "The Move", he meets and befriends a group of kids. They look similar to the Three Friends and the Girls, only they are much, much nicer and far easier to get along with, to the point of being unchallenging. Jerry finds the whole experience very strange, and when they start to move back to town, Jerry can only mutter "weirdos" to himself.
- Despite always going along with Frank's whims, Eric and Thomas find the idea of flushing Mimmi's goldfish down the toilet in "Sewergators" to be too much. They still mock Jerry when he didn't have the heart to do it though.
- Fat Bastard: Ray Johnsson, Mimmi's father is a rich, materialistic jerk and is also very stout.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Jerry wants to be part of the Three Friends's group. Too bad he is a whiny, needy loser no one could stand to be around. It doesn't help that his schemes to help them always result in disaster.
- Gonk: Most of the adults of the series are this, but GOOD LORD Vicious Oscar and Jerry's father take the cake!
- Good Shepherd: Dick Priest genuinely cares about his community and wants to do good for others. Unfortunately for him, things usually don't go according to plan.
- I Was Quite a Looker: Vicious Oscar was once a very attractive, famous tv star, until he lost his status for failing to take a bribe from Mimmi's father.
- Jerkass: Literally everyone who is not Dick Priest or Jerry's mother qualifies, but out of all of them, Linda, Tess and Mimmi are the biggest ones.
- Jerk Jock: Jerry's father, the gym coach of the local school, is a loud, obnoxious Jerkass to both his students and his son.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Jerry can be very cruel at times, but he is usually a Nice Guy.
- Frank is a complete Jerkass, but he has a soft spot for Thomas and Eric. He also cares about Linda to an extent.
- When Frank isn't around, Thomas and Eric are friendly to Jerry, though they do lose patience with him sometimes. This is dropped in Season 3, when they hate him as much as Frank does.
- Tony might be a delinquent who has no problem bullying children, but he has his limits. Not only he's a protective boyfriend to Monica, but he apologizes after accidentally hitting Jerry with a ball in "Age Limit", even inviting him to one of his parties to make up for it. He also has a soft spot for frogs.
- Kids Are Cruel: And manipulative and greedy.
- Kissing Cousins: It's established that Linda is Frank's cousin and, for some reason, he has a crush on her.
- Mirroring Factions:
- "Martial Arts" ended with the Three Friends and Jerry getting into a fist fight, complete with a Big Ball of Violence. The Girls walk away, criticizing them for being so uncool and immature, but soon they get into an argument, which quickly devolves into their own Big Ball of Violence.
- In a more general sense, The Girls are shown to be even worse than The Three Friends. They are often portrayed as very shallow, manipulative, and will be enamored, then repulsed, by the Three Friends for very petty reasons, often contradicting what they themselves said earlier in an episode.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: It's right there on the title. Lampshaded in a short segment where Jerry asks "why can't it be "The Four Friends"? I'm a friend!" Only for Thomas to reply, "Just be glad your name is in the title!" To which Jerry protests, "But why single me out like that?"
- Never Bare Headed: Thomas never takes off his green baseball cap and when he does the camera is arranged so you never see what's under his cap.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Mimmi is often the victim of this trope by her father.
- Sadist Show: Everyone in this show is a Jerkass, a Butt-Monkey or both.
- The Scapegoat: Jerry is always blamed for any misfortune that befalls the Three Friends, whether he really is at fault or not.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Almost all episodes, but "My Friend is an Ant" takes the cake. After all of Jerry's plans to save his favorite ant from dissection fail, the ant breaks free from its prison and tries to reunite with him....only to get accidentally squashed by Jerry in his sleep.
- Token Good Teammate:
- Of the Three Friends, Eric shows some degree of sympathy to Jerry (such as showing concern when everyone thought he got hit by a thunder in "Magic Tricks"), but because he's a lackey to Frank, he doesn't involve himself.
- Tess, who has some Hidden Depths in "Pen Pal", showing she's a sweet girl who wants someone to connect with and has an innocent crush on Eric. But because she wants Linda's approval, she acts as a Beta Bitch.
- Series Continuity Error: Thomas has a fascination for ostriches in "Our Son is an Ostrich", even though he saw some in "Circus" and wasn't interested at all. However, it's possible that his fascination might have started thanks to the circus ostriches.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Jerry's father's rants are equal parts verbose and Angrish.
- Teens Are Monsters: Tony, the local thug, who makes life miserable for the Three Friends and Jerry.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Happened to Jerry a few times.
- The Three Friends trick him into dressing as Virgin Mary in "Carol Singing".
- In "Garden Party", Ray forces the Three Friends and Jerry to dress up as the statues he lost. Jerry is forced to dress as the Venus statue.
- In "Miss Jerry", he is forced to cross-dress and join a beauty contest so that the Three Friends won't show Linda the love list he wrote (with her name at the top).
