Round and round, the dancing laundry...
Let's lose our minds, forget the time.
Let's lose our minds, forget the time.
"Why are you watching
The washing machine?
I love entertainment
So long as it's clean."
The washing machine?
I love entertainment
So long as it's clean."
— UNIX fortune file
It's time to do laundry again. T-shirts, pants, socks, small children, underwear... Yup, Bob tosses the usual hamper all in to clean. And while the rinse cycle goes on, it's time to... Sit down and watch it. Why? Maybe Bob is a Cloudcuckoolander or even The Ditz. Maybe he sees something shiny or important swirling around inside. Maybe he's just bored. Regardless, Bob decides it's worth his time to watch the washing machine do its job.
This is a fairly Discredited Trope but can still occasionally be seen at laundromats in Real Life (if for no other reason than the fact that a full load of laundry can take about an hour to wash, and another to dry, and you have to do something to kill that time). In some cases, it can be akin to staring at a Fire of Comfort, but in water. On the other hand, it's a bit of a Coconut Effect in the way that clear-front washing machines are not very common in laundromats as they are usually much newer (and why would a laundromat owner upgrade when their '80s/'90s machines work fine?).
Almost always Played for Laughs. A subtrope of Incredibly Lame Fun.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- In Carole & Tuesday, the titular duo are inspired to come up with the song "Round and Laundry" after they spend some time doing this.
- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: Our introduction to David Martinez comes in the form of watching him watch his laundry swirl around in an automatic washing machine, before his payment card runs out of money and is declined (thereby also establishing that Night City is a Capitalist hellscape).
- Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt: Played for Horror in "Bitch Serial Killer!
" The serial killer ghost traps a victim in a washing machine filled with razors and watches it spins as she gets sliced apart.
- Occurs in Yotsuba&!, when Yotsuba is helping the Ayases clean their house. She becomes intrigued by a washer with a door on its side (her Dad's was a top loader). A little later, Yotsuba is standing and staring at the washer, thinking it fun.
Comic Strips
- In a Garfield strip while Jon and Garfield were visiting Jon's family on the farm, Jon and Doc Boy were apparently watching some kind of program, which turns out to be the laundry getting washed in the washing machine. Doc Boy says with excitement, "There goes the red sock again!"
- This◊ Mother Goose and Grimm strip showed Ralph watching what he thought was a program on the Weather Channel, when it was actually the Maytag that he was watching.
Film—Live Action
- A dramatic example in Everything Everywhere All at Once, where Joy stares at a washer filled with black clothes in her family's laundromat for no particular reason until she is interrupted by PDA from her girlfriend Becky. This is the first appearance of one of the movie's Arc Symbols, a black circle with a hole in the middle, and the scene foreshadows Joy's issues with mental health and her connection to the antagonist Jobu Tubaki, as well as the importance of Becky in helping her find meaning in her life.
- Played very much for drama in Stuart Little. Stuart gets caught up in some laundry and ends up in the front-loading washing machine. Snowbell, the cat, comments, "Why would I turn it off? It's my favorite show." Adapted from the scene in the book where Stuart gets trapped in the latched refrigerator, which Snowbell nonchalantly kicks closed.
Literature
- The Mangler has a scene where two characters talk about The Mangler... While watching a washing machine spin their clothes around.
- Elmo's Wash and Dry is a Sesame Street bath book that shows Elmo doing this at a laundromat.
- Sam the Cat: Detective: Street cat Oscar watches the machines from the laundromat window as entertainment. He considers it to be as good as television and especially likes the Soaps. Later on he walks about a tv show he saw where the police just chased a guy in circles until they all fell down and is reminded that was the rinse cycle.
- In the picture book The Forgetful Bears Help Santa, the Forgetful Bears' washing machine has two notes taped to it, one reading "Don't forget the soap" and the other reading "This is not a T.V." Despite this, Mr. Forgetful sits down on a chair and watches Santa's suit being washed, he and the other Forgetful Bears having insisted on doing this after seeing the state it was in following him coming down the chimney.
Live-Action TV
- ALF: "Help Me, Rhonda" has a scene that combines this trope with Counting Sheep; ALF has trouble falling asleep, so he decides to count how many times a stuffed sheep tumbles in the dryer.
- A sketch on The Benny Hill Show has a person watching his laundry at the laundromat, and actually switching channels somehow.
- On MythBusters when they test the myth of cooking a lasagna in a dishwasher Adam and Jamie (and Alton Brown) lower the dishwasher door and clamp a sheet of glass over the opening so they can see what's going on. Adam and Alton note how fascinating it is to see the dishwasher in operation and concede that it'd be worth the louder dishwasher noise to have a glass-front unit.
- In the first episode of The Odd Couple, Gwendolyn and Felix watch a washing machine cycle during their double date.
- Red Dwarf combined this with All Men Are Perverts. In the episode "Duct Soup", Kochanski complained that the fourth most popular activity on the ship was "going down to the laundry room and watching [her] knickers spin dry". While Kryten denied this happened, it turned out Lister and the Cat did do so.
- On Taskmaster, when the competitors were challenged to destroy a cake in the most beautiful way possible, Noel Fielding attempted this by putting his cake, plate and all, into a washing machine. Taskmaster Greg admitted that he could happily watch it spin for hours.
Music
- Neil Innes, in his solo career, provided musical interludes for Monty Python's Flying Circus, and for Eric Idle's successor series to Python, Rutland Weekend Television. One extended parody song note is called Front Loader, and the accompanying film is about a geeky student's adventures as he does his laundry. The film is ambiguous as to whether the come-on from a young woman in the launderette is "real" or Innes' inner fantasy. Either way, he is fixated on what's going on inside the machine.
- The waitress doing her laundry in The Pretenders' "Watching the Clothes" falls pretty squarely in the "just bored" camp.
- In the song la machine à laver by Belgian punk rock group René Binamé, the narrator says that he watches the washing machine when he has nothing else to do. The music is quite repetitive, aiming to evoke the circular movement of the machine.
Puppet Shows
- In a Spitting Image U.S. election special, an aide informs Ronald Reagan that he's not watching TV but the washing machine. Reagan turns a dial on it and continues watching.
Aide: Mr. President, that's still the washing machine.
Reagan: What, on both channels?
Web Animation
- Beast Boy Lone Wolf: Subverted in "Beast Boy vs. The Black Witch". Beast Boy brings his dirty suit to a laundromat, under the impression that this will happen… only for him to be teleported to the realm of the Black Witch, an Unknown Rival of his, so that she can seek revenge. By the time he's done with her, his suit isn't only good as new, it's Shrunk in the Wash because he used the wrong settings.
Web Video
- Mentioned in this Prime Video Club video as something that people might be doing to entertain themselves during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Western Animation
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Mid-Life Crustacean", watching laundry at the laundromat is one of SpongeBob and Patrick's ideas of a good time—much to the disappointment of tagalong Mr. Krabs, who was hoping for an exciting evening of debauchery to make him feel young again. Of course, since this is SpongeBob and Patrick we’re talking about, their ideas of "fun" don’t exactly match up with what Mr. Krabs is expecting.
- In one Mr. Magoo cartoon, Magoo thinks the washing machine is a TV and that the long johns sloshing inside is some guy swimming the English Channel.
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy starts a two-part wishing episode off with Billy watching the washing machine, wishing he could be "in the show too". At the episode Grim uses the last wish to wish that they had never found the wishing skull sending us back to that same scene, except Mandy asks Billy if he wants to be on TV and then throws him into the washer, which keeps them from finding the skull.
- Happens in Family Guy, with Peter watching the laundry being washed like a tv show. He even talks about Meg's shirt having an affair with Chris's socks and "how fun it is to watch rich people be naughty".
- In a much later episode, this is apparently how Lois entertains herself during housework. If a certain shirt goes around three times in view, she gets to have a diet Coke.
- The Rugrats episode "Wash/Dry Story" had the babies taken to the laundromat. Not only did they think the washing machines were TVs, they thought it was the best programme ever.
- Justified in "Down to Earth" from Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-Lot. The mother of the boy that Funshine Bear is helping, Jake, tossed him in with the laundry, believing him to be a plush toy. Fortunately, this won't harm Funshine because he isn't a normal bear, something that he assures Jake of before actually going into the washing machine. At dinner, Jake has a bad case of the giggles because from his seat at the dinner table, he has a view of Funshine's antics in the washing machine— wearing goggles and a snorkel, as well as a bathing cap and scrubbing as if he's taking a bath.
- Parodied on The Simpsons on "King-Size Homer". While Homer was working from home due to his hyper-obesity, one of the packages in the mail contained FREE FABRIC SOFTENER! Immediately Homer used it to clean his hat (and only his hat), and one scene had him sitting in a lawn chair entertained watching the sole piece of attire spin round and round in the dryer.
- In Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?, Herb sells Marge's broken washing machine and dryer to Moe's Tavern and the patrons have a great time racing them against each other.
- In the King of the Hill episode "Hank's Dirty Laundry", the Hills are at a store looking to buy a new dryer. Bobby looks at one with a clear front and says "It's like watching TV only the show is about wet clothes."
- In "Pandy's Puddle" from Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, Tolee sits sadly and crying at times in front of the washing machine watching Pandy get washed after accidentally dropping Pandy in a mud puddle.
- The WildBrain version of "Caillou Is Sick" at one points shows Caillou watching his stuffed toy Teddy spinning in the washing machine.
- Garfield and Friends: In "Castaway Cat", Jon gives Garfield a copy of Robinson Crusoe to read while he hires a repairman to fix his cable. Garfield acts out the story, which results in him interfering with the repairman and destroying the TV. Jon is disappointed in Garfield, but decides to make the best of a bad situation, saying there's still something they can watch; their washing machine. Garfield settles on it, saying it's better than nothing.
- The Critic: In "A Day at the Races and a Night at the Opera", Duke Phillips reveals to Jay that Coming Attractions' ratings are so low that people prefer to watch the Dryer Channel, and shows him footage of a sneaker being tossed about in a tumble dryer.
Jay: People watch this?
Duke: They don't just watch it, they send it money! - Count Duckula: In "Rent-a-Butler", Duckula rents Igor and Nanny out to an agency to make some money. At the agency, Nanny complains to Mr. Nouveau-Riche that all his television plays are underwater shows. Mr. Nouveau-Riche tells Nanny that she's watching the washing machine.
- In "Getting Muddy Getting Clean" from My Friend Maisy, Maisy places her stuffed toy Panda in the washer to get clean and watches as it and some of her clothes spin around, then goes off to have a bath to get herself clean.
- Tom and Jerry: At the end of "Slicked-up Pup", a furious Spike puts Tom inside a washing machine and turns it on; he then gleefully watches Tom getting thrashed around inside, as do Jerry and Tyke.