Awesome Music: The song that plays during the end credits of each episode.
Creator's Pet: Karen. While she is widely considered to be the show's most popular character, she isn't always well-received by some viewers. There are few scenes where she would genuninely get punished for being horrible towards others. It doesn't help that she always seems to come out on top regardless of whether she is right or wrong in scenarios. With this in mind, she does seem to be hit with a lot of favouritism. Her actress, Ramona Marquez, has even admitted that she didn't realise how "brutal" Karen could come across at the time.
Most of "The Airport" is full of this, especially the one scene where Jake and Ben play a game where you have to name as many explosives as possible near security.
The off-screen accident involving Archie, the dog the Brockmans looked after, mauling the neighbours' guinea pigs.
Out of all of the three children of the show, Karen appears to the most popular due to her persistent questions, Literal-Minded way of thinking and odd Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant moments.
Additionally, Jake also seems to be popular with the teenage audience, mostly due to how relatable he is.
Growing the Beard: While Series 1 was already good, many viewers believed Series 2 got even better, containing strong episodes and memorable scenes, including the one where Sue kicks Angela in the buttocks.
Hilarious in Hindsight: In "K for Victory", Ben was at one point talking about the destruction of Pompeii, and muses on what it would be like to end up being mummified in an embarrassing position. Sure enough, three years later...note Okay, so that probably wasn't what it looked like, but still.
Iron Woobie: At the best of times, Sue has to juggle work with keeping the household running; her boisterous kids and well-meaning but feckless husband aren't much help. It gets worse, though, as she has to come to terms with her father's condition and watch his gradual deterioration; by the end, he doesn't even remember who she is. Despite all this, though, she never lets the stress get too much for her; she remains the rock upon which the Brockman household rests.
Jerkass Woobie: While Angela starts as easily the least sympathetic character in the show — abandoning her father after she promised she would look after him, and generally acting spiteful and vindictive toward Sue and her family — it's hard not to sympathize with her when she thinks she's finally found true love, only for her new husband, Brick, to turn out to be a manipulative, psychologically abusive sociopath who drove his last wife into an institution. She attempts to flee from him and to protect his daughter, Misty, from his cruelty, only for Brick to respond with a two-fold attack — first sending his very expensive lawyers after her, then, once she is cornered, calling her up to convince her that he can change and everything will be fine. Even after she finally breaks free from his control, her life doesn't get a great deal better, as she becomes stuck in a cycle of disastrous relationships that inevitably end in heartbreak for her.
Just Here for Godzilla: Most viewers tend to watch the show just to see what the children (particularly Karen) in the show are up to rather than the adults.
When Angela abandons her father to go back to travelling in the US.
Brick abusing Angela and threatening her via his solicitors is also pretty low, even if she is bitchy. It's revealed he locked his eldest in their room for hours at a time and had his first wife committed too.
Despite being a One-Shot Character, the policeman in the Christmas episode of 2012 for lying and abuse of power with regards of Jake. Also, "Tommo" for lying to get himself out of trouble and Jake INTO trouble.
Series 4 is usually considered to be a low point amongst with characters such as Karen and Ben getting less screen time, and how the "kids talking naturally" gag was sounding more scripted.
Series 5, which aired years later after Series 4, is also considered to be a weak series mostly because the children had grown up and how there's less improvised, but more Denser and Wackier scenes.
The 2016 Christmas special, made almost three years after Series 5 (and effectively a Reunion Show given Series 5 was meant to be the last), was meant to lead to more specials. However, it also suffered from similar complaints about the children getting too old and the show being more scripted as a result, and no more specials have been made since.
Special Effects Failure: For a show that uses very little special effects, it's often rare that you would see any sign of them being used. However, one of the last scenes in the 2011 Christmas Special had a shot of Sue looking upwards to the starry sky, and it was done through an obvious chroma key technique. To add insult to injury, the sky looked like it was ripped straight from Google Images.
Watch the first episode, and you'll see signs of this: Pete checking the traffic situation on Teletext using a CRT television set (the former becoming defunct and the latter mostly obsolescent following the digital switchover); George Bush is specifically mentioned as President of the United States and whilst both a desktop (with flatscreen monitor) and laptop computer feature prominently, there's nary a modern device like a smartphone in sight. Later episodes did this less as Technology Marches On.
A minor instance was brought up in an episode from Series 1, where Ben is heard mentioning that he wants to go on Club Penguin. At the time, the virtual online world was still up and running before its servers shut down long after that episode was aired, though unofficial servers are often still around to this day.
In a few episodes, there were various references to the then President of the United States Barack Obama. These include the scene where Karen was writing a letter to Obama and another where Jake mentioned about the one time Ben thought he spotted Obama in a supermarket. Similarly, Boris Johnson was referred to as the Mayor of London in a 2011 episode.
The Woobie: While probably everyone on this show could do with a hug from time to time, some stand out more than others:
Frank, Sue's father, suffers from Alzheimer's, and the show doesn't shy away from showing us the gradual loss of his faculties. Early on, he seems stubbornly determined to deny he has a problem, although it eventually becomes clear that he's doing so mainly because he can't stand to see his daughter worry; he's only too well aware of what is happening to him. Over time he loses more and more touch with reality, eventually forgetting who Sue even is, as well as how he and his late wife met. His elder daughter, Angela, — whom he rarely even gets to see, and misses — offered to become his full-time carer in the first season, only to run off to America when the pressure got too much for her.
Jane, the Brockmans' neighbour, went through a divorce shortly before the series began which went extremely badly, as her husband takes every opportunity to make things harder for her, bringing constant legal pressure to bear over child maintenance and the custody of their daughter Alexa (after winning a case to make sure Alexa spends Christmas with him, he then spends the holiday sending cruel taunts to Jane over text). As a result of all this, she has become, in her own words, "what happens when all the confidence gets knocked out of a person". She's become very irresponsible and unreliable, frequently leaning too much on others; she knows this, but can't help it, and when Sue brings up the issue of her repeated failures to pick up Alexa from the Brockmans' house on time, she breaks down in tears, describing herself as a bad friend and a bad mother. Her life is a series of disasters — on one occasion she accidentally leaves the bath running and ends up destroying her house; on another, while suffering from norovirus, she takes what she thinks is Imodium but is strong painkillers — which on top of the alcohol she's consumed lands her in hospital. Her attempts at rebuilding her dating life don't go much better; every relationship she has fails, usually because her boyfriends turn out to be criminals of one sort or another.
Alexa, Jane's daughter, is stuck in the middle of her parents' feuding, to the point that she has become desensitized to it; in one scene, while playing with dolls, she casually re-enacts a vicious row between the two of them, which even Karen finds disturbing. Her relationships with them aren't much better; she's constantly let down by her mother to the point that she simply assumes she always will be, and her father seems to care less about her as his child than he does about using her as a tool to hurt Jane, given the aforementioned Christmas incident.
Taylor-Jean and Misty, Angela's stepdaughters in the third and fourth seasons, turn out to have suffered for years under their tyrannical father, Brick. Taylor-Jean's mother ended up in an institution as a result of his treatment, and out of spite, he banned her name from being spoken in the house and told his children they were better off without her; her daughter tries to act like she believes this, but she can't always keep it up and has run away from home on at least one occasion. Her sister, Misty, is utterly terrified of him, having spent years being repeatedly locked in her room for hours on end, and has developed an eating disorder as a result; Angela takes pity on her and tries to escape with her, but Brick ultimately manages to drag them both back. What's worse is that, while Angela does eventually manage to break free from Brick, the kids don't, and, for all we know, are still stuck with him to this day.
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