Mad Magazine’s 10 Best (and 3 Worst) TV Show Parodies

Until reading about how “Breaking Bad” is lampooned in this month’s issue, I hadn’t thought about Mad Magazine in years. Actually, no, that’s not totally true; I did recently see “The Simpsons” episode where one of the publication’s writers proudly exclaims, “Why don’t we call it Everybody Hates Raymond?” To which another one responds, “Well, we stayed up all night, but it was worth it.”
That, right there, is Mad’s humor in a nutshell: pun-based, often using lots of funny sounding words (“blech” is a favorite), with a target audience of 12 year old boys. They also LOVE bad parodies. I believe that that the Mad writers know how (intentionally) lame their spoofs are, so they run with it, which would explain the woefully inaccurate “Fading Bad” instead of “Breaking Bad.” I hope. Either that, or it’s just really, really terrible
I looked back through the magazine’s long, storied history (via Doug Gilford’s amazing website) and found 10 of their better TV show cover parodies, as well as three of the worst. So, here’s to you Mad, the nation’s largest mental-illness-themed humor magazine that everyone forgot still existed.






I have been looking to brush up on caning and condoms facts…


It’s obvious, sure, but they couldn’t NOT do it, either.



Their best work.

And now the worst…

“They called me Smellson…”

Was “My Name is Earl” ever enough of a Thing to warrant a cover?

This doesn’t make me want to buy the magazine so much as it makes me want to vomit.