I regret not getting to see The Naked Gun when the comedy hit theaters earlier this year, but I did finally watch it streaming with my Paramount+ subscription, and while there were some great laughs throughout the movie, there was one specific joke that had me laughing out loud, mostly because it seemed to come out of nowhere. I’m talking about the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/TiVo scene. And that’s as vague as I’ll be before putting a mild spoiler warning here.
If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest doing that before reading further, as the joke is undoubtedly going to be funnier if you watch it than my description of it will be.
The scene features Liam Neeson’s Frank Drebin Jr. discovering that his love interest, Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson), failed to honor his request not to hook his TiVo DVR up to the internet. Why? Because he had a collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes saved on there that were set to expire if the device was put online. If you weren’t around or using a DVR back in the aughts, this was a thing TiVo did to save space (unless you adjusted the settings to save the recording).
Frank loaned Beth the DVR so that she could watch the show and finally start to get his references. Since Beth plugged the TiVo into the internet, the episodes are all gone. As Frank laments just before confirming it:
No musical special. No Xander. No Spike. No Cordelia Chase. No Daniel ‘Oz’ Osbourne. No Willow-meets-her-doppelgänger episode. Nothing.
And make no mistake, Liam Neeson doesn’t phone his character’s devastation in (which is a good thing, as I’d fear for the wellbeing of that phone). Just consider some of Liam Neeson’s best movies for a second (Taken, Batman Begins, Schindler’s List). You don’t cast an Oscar-nominated actor in a major role if you don’t want top-level intensity when a scene calls for it, which is exactly what Neeson delivers here. Also, major points to Pamela Anderson for how well she plays off Neeson in this scene, looking legitimately contrite, if occasionally perplexed the whole time.
My inner 2000s-self appreciates the fact that this movie not only showed Buffy some love, including references to two of the best episodes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but also love for the TiVo era of watching TV, complete with visuals and sound effects as Frank navigated the menu in search of his episodes. Apparently, Frank either isn’t aware that all of those Buffy episodes can easily be watched on repeat with a DVD box set or a Hulu subscription, or he just likes Buffy on DVR the same way I can only assume he prefers listening to the Black-Eyed Peas on an iPod, rather than Spotify.
The Director Stands By This Joke Even Though It’s Polarizing
As it turns out, director Akiva Shaffer pushed to keep the joke in the movie. When speaking with Slashfilm, he praises Neeson’s performance in the scene, but also notes that at one point Neeson was skeptical about the joke, saying:
I had to tell Liam, ‘No, I know that one doesn’t. It only plays for half the audience.’ It’s just my favorite, and I like that we don’t explain it.
Shaffer went on to talk about how, after having spent so much time going through every second of the movie, this is the one joke that still makes him laugh, though he knows it’s polarizing:
That joke still makes me laugh every time, and it was always polarizing. Half the audience would be like, ‘Do not touch it. It’s the best joke in the movie,’ and half the audience would be like, ‘Get that out of here. I don’t even have a clue what that was.’ But I have to admit, it was self-indulgent. I know.
Granted, I’m on the get-the-joke side of things this time, but I’ve been on the other side of the audience plenty of times with other movies, so I can understand what he’s saying. Regardless, I’m glad it stayed in the movie, because it really came out of nowhere, and I love that the scene goes on for much longer than it probably needs to. This couple only just recently came through a dramatic romantic sequence involving a threesome with a jealous, murderous snowman, so it’s even funnier to me that a dispute as mundane as expired episodes on a TiVo could cause a rift in their love story.