The Soup
| The Soup | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Created by | Jay James |
| Presented by | Joel McHale |
| Voices of | Anndi McAfee, Kelly Andrews |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 12 |
| No. of episodes | 618 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Edward Boyd K.P. Anderson Jay James Barbara Wellner Stan Evans |
| Location(s) | E! Network Studios, Burbank, California |
| Running time | 22 minutes |
| Production company(s) | E! Entertainment Television |
| Release | |
| Original network | E! |
| Original release | July 1, 2004 – December 18, 2015 |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Talk Soup |
| Related shows |
The Dish Sports Soup Web Soup Celebrity Soup The Soup Investigates |
| External links | |
| Website | |
The Soup is an American television series that aired weekly on E! from July 1, 2004 until December 18, 2015. The program was a revamped version of Talk Soup that focused on recaps of various popular culture and television moments of the week. The show was hosted by comedian Joel McHale, who provided sarcastic and satirical commentary on the various clips. On November 18, 2015, The Soup was cancelled by E! and its last episode aired December 18, 2015.
The Soup started on July 1, 2004 as the "What The...? Awards", but the name was changed to maintain name recognition with Talk Soup.
On January 9, 2013, The Soup debuted a new graphics package, including a new logo designed by Newspeak Agency.
Starting June 2, 2014, The Soup began airing live episodes. Originally only to last for one month, the program has since become a live show.
On November 18, 2015 The Soup was cancelled, the number of episodes that were to be produced was later reduced by one. A decision was made not to air the episode that had been filmed and intended to air the same day as the November 2015 Paris attacks due to multiple references to "killing Baby Hitler". As the episode was pre-filmed, it later aired on November 27, likely replacing a clip show due to it being the day after Thanksgiving.
The show features the host, Joel McHale, on a green-screened set with a screen to his right. The show is broken up into various segments that focus on themes such as reality television shows or shows on E!. McHale introduces each clip, which is then played. He then comments on the clip before moving on to the next one. There is a live audience on the show, composed of a small group of E! employees, their family and friends, along with the typical production personnel. The audience is involved in the show, laughing and cheering along with the clips.
Although the show is scripted, a large portion of it is ad-libbed.
On April 22, 2008, a blog was started for The Soup on E!'s website.
The Soup has its own cast of recurring characters. They include Mankini (a man wearing a bikini top and pants played by Dominic DeLeo, who is also a writer and producer for the show), a dancing maxipad (Tess Rafferty, a supervising producer and the only female writer on The Soup), two nerds who dress as Star Wars characters, an intern named Matt whom McHale shoots with a gun (often with the shooting sound effect purposefully played out of sync, or even played with other objects or with just fingers), Jewbacca (Chewbacca's lawyer), and "Spaghetti Cat", a cat eating spaghetti from The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. Additionally, Tom McNamara, The Soup's stage manager and former stage manager on Talk Soup, and Kelly Levy (née Andrews), the show's former announcer and a producer, have made appearances on the show, with Kelly portraying Courtney Stodden. Executive producer Edward Boyd's chihuahua Lou is used regularly in segment openings, most notably the "Clip of the Week", and elsewhere in the show. He also appeared with Joel at the show's intro, which showed them watching a different TV show each week, until the intro was changed in early 2010. The current intro juxtaposes brief clips introduced by announcer Anndi McAfee and a "reaction" by another clip, wildly out of context.
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