Tropedia

  • Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
  • All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
  • All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.

READ MORE

Tropedia
Register
Advertisement
Farm-Fresh balanceYMMVTransmit blueRadarWikEd fancyquotesQuotes • (Emoticon happyFunnyHeartHeartwarmingSilk award star gold 3Awesome) • RefridgeratorFridgeGroupCharactersScript editFanfic RecsSkull0Nightmare FuelRsz 1rsz 2rsz 1shout-out iconShout OutMagnifierPlotGota iconoTear JerkerBug-silkHeadscratchersHelpTriviaWMGFilmRoll-smallRecapRainbowHo YayPhoto linkImage LinksNyan-Cat-OriginalMemesHaiku-wide-iconHaikuLaconicLibrary science symbol SourceSetting

An animated parody of the Buddy Cop Show, especially Starsky and Hutch. Features two semi-competent yet ineffective Private Detectives, John "Stroker" Strockmeyer, his partner Hoop Schwartz, and their self-aware robotic car, C.A.R.R.

Stroker (Jon Glaser) falls short as a detective mostly due to his own short-sightedness, self-involvement and greed more than bad investigative skills. He has a young son (by his Latina ex-wife), whom he loves, even if he can't quite seem to show it properly.

Hoop (Speed Levitch) is a very touchy-feely, sensitive, pacifistic sort who prefers to talk problems out rather than skip straight to the gunplay. This never works.

C.A.R.R. (Paul Christie) is essentially the opposite of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider. He's a junky old beater (not quite The Alleged Car, but past his prime), he's not too smart, and lacks any really useful gadgetry other than talking and the ability to drive himself. He listens to a lot of ultra-right-wing talk shows, since he doesn't have an FM radio. He was built by Stroker's mechanic friend "Double-Wide" (who is voiced by Curtis "Booger" Armstrong), whose odd private life is often helpful.

Finally, they are aided by the jovial, and perhaps most competent, Coroner Rick. He is often played as a Black Best Friend to quite nearly every main character.

The characters all had a good dose of Genre Savvy, though they often failed anyway, and many a Lampshade was hung on various tropes. As far as trope use in parodies goes, this show is a great example.

This show airs in the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block on Sunday night.

Canceled only after a season of 13 episodes and with no ending. But the show (As of 12/19/08) reruns on Adult Swim and on its online service, Adult Swim Video.

Tropes used in Stroker and Hoop include:
  • Attending Your Own Funeral: Though Stroker later admits that bringing his son to his own funeral was a crappy idea
  • Anti-Hero : Stroker. By contrast, however, Hoop is very kind and innocent (When not provoked into avenging his fallen comrades).
  • Autopsy Snack Time: Coroner Rick does this.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Hoop, though this does get played with in a few ways.
  • Blofeld Ploy: Double Subverted
    • Further, too much of this causes a villain to run out of henchmen for when Stroker and Hoop appear.
  • Buddy Cop Show
  • Casanova Wannabe: Stroker. And how.
  • Ceiling Cling: Subverted, the guy they're hiding from sees them immediately.
  • Chekhov's Boomerang: one episode was set in motion by the duo buying a billboard for "Stroker and Hoop, Detectvies". In a later episode the pair lampshade that they'll have anonymity against a gang who has no idea who they are. The gang leader looks up and sees the billboard still there, still misspelled. Stroker even says he forgot they had it.
  • Cliff Hanger / Left Hanging / No Ending: The final episode see Stroker, Hoop and Double Wide locked in C.A.R.R and dangling over a canyon via a giant magnet by a mysterious caller who gives them three guesses to name who he is. The whole episode is mostly a clip show of the season before its revealed that their captor is a minor background character who had the same voice but kept changing his appearance due to his run ins with Stroker and Hoop and their direct or indirect actions which ruined his life. Coroner Rick manages to find out who he is and shoots him. But the captor ends up landing on the switch to the magnet which drops C.A.R.R into the canyon followed by an explosion. The show ends ambiguous of the protagonists' fate.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Ron Howard is trying to control his mind.
    • Subverted, in that Ron Howard actually was trying to control his mind.
  • Dead Baby Comedy: Coroner Rick is an in-universe example...if only to himself.
Cquote1

 "Why they always gotta land face-down like that?"

Cquote2
Cquote1

  "In these situations it's always either the corrupt mayor, a random hillbilly, or the corrupt sheriff."

Cquote2
    • It was in fact the corrupt sheriff.
    • And done again at the end of the episode as the sheriff was an identical cousin of Hoop and they wound up arresting the wrong guy. But as Stroker, Double Wide and the Sheriff are leaving, the former two notice the sheriff rubbing his hands evilly. They question this before u-turning back to the police compound to be on the safe side.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Composed of Pun Based Titles
  • I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: Lampshaded. A dying karate instructor entrusts the handle of a magic sword to Stroker's son Keith and warns that reuniting the handle with the pieces of the blade would be disastrous. Stroker asks why, if it's such a big deal, the sword wasn't destroyed completely, even suggesting flushing it down the toilet or something.
    • When the sword is reassembled, it's nothing more than an over sized flashlight. Hoop, who was fighting with the villain using the sword, noted that when the sword was broken and separated centuries ago, that people in ancient China would've seen that as amazing or terrifying.
      • Of course, when you shine the light on the dead...
  • Instant Sedation: Parodied. A camera guy gets hit in the head and falls down unconscious. After Stroker tries to explain to the other crew member that this trope is what's going on, he pretends he's knocked rather than risk brain damage/death.
  • Interrupted Cooldown Hug: In "Ninja Worrier", when Hoop manages to convince Souko not to kill him after he kills her ex-boyfriends avenging Stroker's (fake) death, but Stroker ends up shooting her, causing her to fall into power lines and eventually get run over.
  • Logic Bomb: Stroker notices a particularly devastating flaw in the cannibal cult's logic.
Cquote1

 Cultists: Eat a human, be a human, eat a human, be a human...

Stroker: So wait, your philosophy is you are what you eat, right?

Cult Leader: Yes.

Stroker: So, if I eat a hamburger, then I'm a hamburger, right?

Cult Leader: Yes.

Stroker: And then...if you eat me, you're hamburgers too, right?

Cult Leader: ...

Cquote2
Cquote1

  Stroker: (wakes up alone) Oh crap. (notices Hoop is actually in the bed with him) Oh crap! (notices he has stitches where his kidney should be) Crapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrapcrap...

Cquote2
Cquote1

  C.A.R.R.: "On Dashiell, on Danzig, on Randolph, on Blitzkrieg, on other non-copyrighted names!"

Cquote2

See Also:

  • The Adult Swim Stroker and Hoop website
  • The Stroker and Hoop Fan website
Advertisement