DETOUR: You must engage a local in a game of Team origami.
Pat, Fountain Valley, CA
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race4/features/archive/archive03.shtml
Compiled by Janet Hamilton
The ABC sitcom Dharma and Greg on February 4, 1998, had a storyline where Dharma'sold boyfriend comes back. In typical sit-com fashion, he's perfect, making her husband jealous. At one point, they come home from having dinner with the boyfriend, and Dharma is carrying a paper rose. Her comment "Wow! Who knew Leonard [?] was an origami expert?"
On ABC's That's Life 3/24/1998, the lead character is watching his very intelligent nephew for the day and is says they'll be busy watching the games on TV. The child's mom says he is not into contact sports, he is into reading, computer games, chess and origami. The lead character tells the child to go upstairs and play his origoo goo game and the child tells him it is not a game but the ancient Japanese art of folding paper. A friend of the lead comes over and the child is asked to go to the kitchen and bring back some beers and fold a couple of coasters. The friend asked if that means the coasters will be smaller and more efficient. The child returns with the beers and has folded a swan for one man and a duck for the other man.
On a rerun of the sitcom Happy Days Ritchie (played by Ron Howard) is working on a newspaper loading dock. At the end of the show, one of the other workers tells him he is "all right" and folds him a paper hat.
On the show Boy Meets World, the boy is folding paper trying to forget a love interest. He then starts tearing the petals off a paper flower saying "she loves me, she loves me not".
In an episode of The Thin Blue Line, Inspector Raymond C. Fowler, played by Rowan Atkinson, tries to organize his police force by role-playing himself as a tree in the forest. One of his team members puts an origami crane on his head saying that it is a "sparrow". The crane stays on his head through most of the first scene.
The character of Jarod on The Pretender has folded origami on multiple episodes. In one of the first episodes he folded Icarus, and was seen on an episode in November 1998 folding the traditional swan.
The episode of Hercules-The Legendary Journeys, that deals with the Norse gods (November 1998), shows Loki (the villain) float a page from the book of fate toward the heroes. It is folded into a modern looking paper airplane.
In March 1999, a Chicago Hope episode had a side story where one of the doctor's does not want to put his dog to sleep. At one point, someone said, "It's called origami." A model with wings kept reappearing throughout the scene, greatly out-of-focus and head-on.
An origami sighting was reported on 4/16/99 on an episode of Millennium titled Darwin's Eye . The story was about a young girl who escaped from a mental hospital and decapitates men because she was abused by her father. A side line to the story is Agent Hollister's father who's dementia is becoming increasingly worse. He was folding palm trees and flowers from paper which were photocopies of his dead daughter's picture, then sending them in boxes to Hollister. The Palm trees were designed and folded by Joseph Wu.
Only Fools and Horses (UK) has an episode where Del comes face to face with a big person who he has conned. He warns the big guy saying he has a black belt in origami. The original joke about having a black belt in origami came from Woody Allen, back in the old days when he was a stand-up comic. It was part of his nebbishy character, apparently, to use a reference to origami to defend himself.
In June 1999 on Chicago Hope the young female neurosurgeon screamed at her male secretary for doing origami rather than something more important.
In an episode of Dawson's Creek, one of the male characters was folding dollar-bills into various creations. The scene was in a restaurant with a girl and a guy chatting about life, the universe and everything.
On the 9/23/99 episode of NBCs Stark Raving Mad, Patrick Neil Harris (of Doogie Howser fame) played an editor trying to break the writer’s block of a bestselling horror writer named Stark. He folded a flapping bird to illustrate the elements of the story being folded together. Stark then set it on fire.
On the soap opera Another World, one of the surgeons was folding origami models for a Christmas tree. The girl with him mentioned she didn't know he could do origami. Oh yes, he replied, when he was in med school studying to be a surgeon one of his mentors told him origami was a wonderful way to learn new skills with your hands. He then hung what looked like a dinosaur model on the tree.
In 4/2000, an episode of Good News Week (an Australian current affairs/gameshow/comedy-type program where two teams try to gain points by identifying current news stories from various obscure clues) featured three origami models. The teams are given three objects to help them identify a current news story. One of the objects was a set of origami models, including a fish (from the traditional samuri helmet), a standing crane, and a "crawling baby".
The TNT channel ran the two-part pilot on 7/1/2000 for the series Brisco County Jr. In the second part the outlaw, Big Smith, wore the equivalent of the bounty for his capture on his hat -- $3000 in folded large denomination bills in a zig-zag pattern around the brim. It looked as if they used the gum wrapper chain fold to make the links. The hat finished the episode floating down a raging river.
UK ITV3 showed the worst 100 clips from British TV on 9/9/2000. Origami was featured in the first third of the program, and showed Robert Harbin in a clip from his 60's/70's series. One national newspaper listed their top 50 (whether or not these will feature in the program), and at number 18: "Origami on Daytime TV".
10/9/2000 episode of Strangers with Candy - an offbeat show about a 40-something woman who returns to high school. There is a scene in an art class where the teacher asks to look at the students' "Origami Projects". The main character, Jerri, pulls out a one dollar bill folded to make George smile and frown. At the end of the scene the art teacher fires the paper models in the kiln.
In the 10/26/2000 episode of ER, Dr. Carter took a patient in a wheelchair to the roof of the hospital so the little fellow could fly his paper airplanes.
A British program called Art Attack featured an artist folding a large sheet of paper in December 2000. The paper was white against a white background, so the camera shot wasn't the best, but the end result was a large origami elephant that was at least 2 feet tall.
On the 1/9/2001 episode of Judging Amy, Amy's little girl got a new babysitter. She was a know-it-all and Amy was a bit jealous. She taught Amy's little girl to do a flapping bird and, Amy, trying to best the baby sitter, was trying to learn it herself.
On the animated comedy King of the Hill on 3/4/2001, Dale was told not to wear his cap at work. He then wore an origami sailor’s cap instead, but they made him take that off as well.
Origami was spotted in the 4/18/2001 episode of That's my Bush.
The hotel information channel in Disney World in 6/2001 used animated origami twice between segments: 3 pieces of paper folded themselves into a hat with mouse ears, and and multiple pieces folded into Cinderella Castle.
The Crow: City of Angels had a show where one of the guys is found dead with a paper crow stuffed into his mouth.
An episode of the series China Beach entitled “Promised Land” had one of the characters folding letters from his ex-wife into paper planes and hats and setting them on fire.
An episonde in August 2001 of The Secret Life of Us (an Australian drama) has a scene where three of the main characters were casually folding origami as they chatted. Models spotted were a crane, a fortune-teller, and there were some other pieces scattered around. Actually the actors were not shown doing the folding; they were just handling finished products (i.e. spreading the wings of the crane, or moving the fortune-teller).
Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie were doing a sketch on Who's Line Is It Anyway in August 2001. They were secret agents making breakfast for a royal visitor. Ryan was making Colin do crazy things such as laying eggs and cutting off slices of bacon from his part pig, part chicken body. Then they needed flowers, so Colin exclaims about making Origami flowers.
On the Star Trek spin-off Voyager which aired 11/12/01, Tuvak produced a 5 pointed star which Neelix thought looked like origami.
Thursday night 12/6/2001 on the show CSI - Crime Scene Investigation Episode #205, the boss, Grissom, thought his employees were working on evidence. However, when he arrived back at the office and found them taking a break, he asked about the paper one person was holding. Grissom said "I hope that is not the crossword puzzle", the employee turned around and handed a him a folded crane.
Everybody loves Raymond had a scene where one of the characters has just come back from vacation and is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, sun glasses and base ball cap. He hands another character a origami bird as a gift. "Here" says the first character. Then he falters as if he cannot really explain the gift in words. Finally he says, "It's Oriental."
An episode of Smallville that aired 12/2001 or 1/2002 has an opening shot is of a baby in its crib. Hanging above the crib is an origami mobile.
The 2/13/2002 episode of The Drew Carey Show has one of the characters taking up origami and folding a large number of paper cranes. Robert Lang also folded a life-size origami model of Drew Carey (with color-changed glasses) but the writers cut that gag from the show before filming.
The Japanese television series called Sukeban Deka (Girl Detectives) was a live action drama featuring three junior high girls who fought evil in the world. As weapons, one girl had a steel yo-yo from which sharp blades would pop out. The second girl had super sharp darning needles that she used like throwing darts and when yarn was attached, she could entangle the evil doers with it. The third girl had "shuriken" or metal throwing stars that were shaped like paper cranes. There was also a feature movie based on this television show.
Part one of a two part season finale of Crossing Jordan aired 5/6/2002. One of the characters was shown in a mental hospital folding a bunch of models. He was shown folding only briefly, then other completed models were shown.
The spring 2002 season of Big Brother saw the housemates completing an origami task, which they intentionally failed by ripping the petals of a lily.
Dr. Phloxx on the series Enterprise used a large flapping origami bird/bat mounted on the top of a pole in an attempt to capture an escaped bat. The episode was seen 10/16/02. Michael LaFosse was asked to send instructions and folded models of his Happy Good Luck Bat for use in the episode, but instead they used the Samuel Randlett Flapping Bird from the waterbomb base.
A desk attendant on ER folded a crane and showed it to a female doctor on 10/17/02. She said, "why don't you put it on the fridge next to your report card". Later in the show a male doctor bit the head off it. There is another episode where 1000 cranes are dropped.
In the A&E movie Shackleton, about the Antarctic explorer's incredible story of misadventure and survival, there is an early scene showing the crew celebrating Christmas while still on the ship.. Many of the men are wearing the tissue paper hats that come with a traditional Christmas 'cracker', but Kenneth Branagh (as Shackleton) and another of his crew are wearing variations on the classic newspaper hat.
Nigel Pottle adapted a John Montroll beaver into a platypus for the television series Honey, I Shrunk the Kids which was filmed in Calgary. According to the script, one of the characters delivers the platypus to his sister as a peace offering. The script said something like, "Here, I've folded you an origami platypus." Stage directions: Hands her a crumpled piece of paper. A film company in Calgary did an episode for the TV series based on Disney's "Honey I Shrunk the Kids". In the story, the scientist clones himself, and one of the clones makes an origami platypus for a rival, to try to make peace. Nigel Pottle provided models for the filming.
In the reality TV show, The Amazing Race, 12
teams race around the world. They encounter various tasks, detours (a choice
between two paths), and roadblocks (one team member must go it alone). Each week
there is a photo on the show's website and viewers are invited to submit
captions. In June 2003 the photo showed several teams getting directions off a
crumpled map from a local resident. One of the submitted captions was:
DETOUR: You must engage a local in a game of Team origami.
Pat, Fountain Valley, CA
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race4/features/archive/archive03.shtml
On the television special, Lance Burton: Guerilla Magic, that played on the Animal Planet cable channel in summer 2003, magician Andrew Goldenhersh folds a Robert Neale "Fluttering Butterfly" dollar bill fold and then transforms it into a real monarch butterfly.
The 10/7/03
episode of Everybody Loves Raymond called "Cruising with
Marie" had Raymond taking his mother on a
cruise for her birthday. She took an origami class while on the cruise. "I
played bridge, I jazzercized, and, look, origami. Mr.
Sassa thinks I have natural talents. What's this made out of? Paper."
Narration on the sitcom Arrested Development is provided by Ron Howard. On 11/18/03 one of the characters is attending a ceremony for the Latin TV Awards (the Desi), and is so bored that he begins folding a paper crane. A minute or two later he gives it to his companion to cheer her up.
In November 2003 the Singapore TV series, True Courage, focused on a woman who was abandoned by her husband when she was in early pregnancy. This woman went on to have her child, a boy. He was her whole life and joy. When the boy was about 4 years old, he was diagnosed with a blood disorder. After a long period of treatment and a couple of years of remission, a week or so before Christmas, the boy complained of a bad headache, started throwing up, and passed out. The mother rushed him to the hospital in the middle of the night. The boy never regained consciousness and was diagnosed to have suffered massive bleeding in the brain. Despite her grief, the mother decided to donate her son's body parts for transplant to other desperately ill patients. Through this unselfish act, three children were given an extended lease of life, and two adults could see again. At home on Christmas eve, the mother was going through her son's personal effects when she noticed a little package, with her son's familiar scrawl: "Merry Christmas, mummy. I love you." With tears welling in her eyes, she opened the package. It contained a handmade Christmas card, decorated with neatly folded origami: a Santa, boat, bird and a squiggly abstract piece. A few months later, she received a second package through the post. The sender was an 11-year old girl, recipient of a kidney donated by the mother's unselfish act. The package was a handmade 'Thank You" card, also decorated with origami. It is quite unusual for children in Singapore to send handmade cards to people that they do not know, let alone a card that is decorated with origami.
Spotted on the cable music channel VH1 in 8/2003 - the network logo on the bottom right hand corner of the screen is a cube/square that folds up into a origami peace crane and then back to a colored square.
An episode of Charmed in February 2004 (a show about three young witches), Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) was in Hong Kong with her boyfrienD/boss "catching up on her origami". She is warped back to San Francisco to battle a demon, and gives Piper (Hollie Marie-Combs), her older sister, an origami tiger. She says, "Be careful with that thing, it took me two hours!"
On an episode of the 80's sit-com Webster, they were attempting to do origami, and wound up twisting the paper into shape and calling it Halley's Comet. This episode aired around the time of that comet's most recent appearance (1986).
A She Spies episode from December 2004 showed the trio having a flashback to when they met in prison, and one of inmates is announcing activities including "Anger management through origami, in the yard." Another inmate says something to the effect, "I do my own anger management. I don't need to fold little bits of paper."
A rerun episode "C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation" was spotted in December 2004 in which Gil Grissom walked into a room to find three of his lab workers. One of them had folded the newspaper's crossword puzzle into a crane -- something that Grissom frowned at.
The sitcom It's All Relative is about a young couple and their families in which the wife's parents are two gay men that are rich and elegant and the husband's parents own a dinner and are a bit low-class. In an episode reported 1/1/2005, the wife's fathers were decorating a Christmas tree and her mother-in-law gives them an origami angel. She says: "It's origami, the Japanese art of paper folding." One of the wife's fathers says "arigato" (thank you in Japanese) and the woman replied "No, o r i g a m i".
On the PBS series The Red Green Show, Red folded
plans into a paper airplane, and then folded a blueprint into a larger paper
airplane. Harold then realized that wall board that was just a large rectangle.
He he scored and cut it with a knife, then folded it, and using the handy man's
secret weapon, duct tape (a running joke on the show), created a large airplane
/ glider, that 'flew'. (Episode #1014 "Comrade Harold", 2/12/2005)
In June 2005 Origami, the HBO series Six Feet Under showed some origami cranes on a table and a wife and friend folding cranes for her husband's 40th birthday celebration. For the rest of the show, cranes were shown hanging from every light fixture, doorway etc., with the cranes moving slightly as people walked by.
Monday, August 29, on the Fox television network, Prison Break showed an origami chicken or possibly a duck (?).
8/31/2005, the beginning of the soap opera, Days of Our Lives, on NBC, began with a family in the pub, the dad was holding a red and white checked paper napkin folded into a plane. Someone said the wings were too short (or something) and it wouldn't fly, the dad said, sure it will, but wadded it up instead.
9/23/2005, the season premier of Numb3rs was titled
"Judgement Call". Charlie was explaining how there are a few basic
folds in origami (mountain and valley), but an infinite number of things can be
folded using combinations of them. He is shown folding what appears to
traditional lotus.
An episode of the series Starved aired 8/18/2005 was called "Scrotal Origami". http://www.tv.com/starved/scrotal-origami/episode/464626/summary.html
NY Times, 3/19/2006 - "A Paper Jailbird in Every
Cell", by Coeli Carr, describes engineer Michael Scofield (played by Wentworth Miller) on
the series Prison Break dropping origami cranes into drains and conduits
to test his escape plan. The article also talks about teaching origami in
prisons, and interviews Teresa Volta, who taught origami in prison in Vermont.
"Paper is one of the few art supplies and creative outlets allowed in
prison ... It's amazing how many prisoners wanted to make flowers for their
wives, girlfriends and children for visiting day." The cranes for the show
were folded by a production staff member, and the article reports that origami
cranes will make further appearances, representing family responsibility.
"It becomes very relevant to the relationship between Michael and his
brother," according to show creator Paul Scheuring. Dave Sliozis, producer
for the Fox.com website, said fans seemed more interested in origami
instructions than in downloads of Wentworth Miller posters. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/arts/television/19coeli.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
and http://www.fox.com/prisonbreak/
A video showing the folding of the Prison Break swan (not the crane shown
below) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYfGu8HnAv0
Crossing Jordan, 5/7/2006, in the opening scenes, Nigel was shown sitting in the office, playing with a fortune teller/ salt cellar.
Cold Case episode "The River", May 7 2006,
opens with a yellow crane being folded and the following dialog: "Is that a
squirrel?" "Japanese crane."
"Looks like a squirrel."
Danger Man, Season 1 Episode 8 (10/30/1960) aired an episode called "The Lonely Chair". In the series, John Drake is a lone operative working for a top-secret NATO office, traveling the globe to bring international villains to justice. This episode has Drake assigned to impersonate a kidnapped girl's father in order to save her life. Robert Harbin, magician and paperfolder, appeared as the character Rolf. Unknown whether there was any paperfolding in the episode. http://polish.imdb.com/title/tt0553800/ http://www.tv.com/danger-man/the-lonely-chair/episode/134932/summary.html http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/danger/danger8.html
Sept 18, 2006 Prison Break (FOX), Episode 205, a woman receives a letter with a folded origami swan, under whose wing is a special phone number. "In her apartment, Sara goes through the mail. She sees a letter addressed to her in Michael’s handwriting. She rips it open. Inside is a blue Origami swan. She opens the folds of the swan, inside is a phone number. She’s not sure what to do with the swan, then opens the AA Big Book, and slips it inside."
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, September 17, 2006
(Season 3 Episode 28), built a house in Bergenfield, NJ for the Llanes family.
The father, grandmother, and 2 girls were completely or mostly blind, and the
son was deaf. The mother took care of the whole family in a house not well
suited to a family with disabilities. The 13-year old daughter loved origami,
and folded even though her sight was impaired. OrigamiUSA was contacted to help
with an origami themed bedroom, and received mention on the show's website. http://abc.go.com/primetime/xtremehome/bios/328.html
http://abc.go.com/primetime/xtremehome/featured/sears328.html
11/01/06 - CSI:NY episode "Murder Sings the
Blues" has a dead girl with an origami crane inside her bra and a crane
outline burn on her chest. The dialog mentions an old Japanese custom of folding
a thousand cranes brings good luck, and one of the staff notes that it looks
like her luck ran out. Lindsay recognizes the crane as the work of a 'trash
artist' she frequently sees on the subway. The dead girl's crane unfolds to
reveal a phone number.
In an episode of Scrubs, Zach Braff's character wears an
origami T-shirt on one of the episodes. The rabbit design is by Joseph Wu. http://preshrunk.info/2005/02/origami.php
11/03/06 on an episode of Numb3rs called "Blackout" last night, Larry was holding a modular model and spinning it between his fingertips in an early scene. There are quite a few similar brief origami appearances on that show. Numb3rs a water lily was spotted in another episode and in January 2007 a glider was quickly folded by Charlie, to demonstrate how a yacht would sink.
11/28/2006 on an episode of Heroes called "Six
Months Ago", Hiro [a young Japanese man, with the ability to bend time and
space] comes in with a Japanese paper. He tells Charlie about the myth of 1000
origami cranes. He concentrates and suddenly there are 1000 colorful cranes
hanging around the diner. On the 12/9/06 episode, "Fallout", Hiro is
transported back to Japan, meets another man in a store and hands him a red
paper crane. Then they both walked to the back of the store. Also, issue #2,
"Hiro", of the Heroes online comic at NBC's website features Hiro
folding a crane for his Grandfather's grave. http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/
http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/ http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/novels/downloads/Heroes_novel_002.pdf
12/13/2005 - A folded eagle appeared on the TV series Bones in "The Man in the Fallout Shelter" (Christmas episode # 108). In the show, the forensic team is quarantined just before Christmas and prepare handmade gifts for each other from items in the lab. FBI agent Booth (David Boreanaz) makes an origami eagle for Dr. Goodman, the director of the Jeffersonian. The model was the eagle from "Origami Zoo" by Robert J. Lang, and was folded by Michael Ujin Sanders.
Feb 26, 2007 on How I met Your Mother (episode "Arrivederci, Fiero"), one of the couples on the show were including origami cranes in their wedding invitations. The male characters escaped having to fold the cranes by taking the car to the auto repair shop. However, the woman and her friend brought the paper to the auto shop so they all could fold. They never actually showed anyone folding a crane, but the pile on the table grew as time went by. http://www.tv.com/how-i-met-your-mother/arrivederci-fiero/episode/973752/summary.html?tag=ep_list;ep_title;16
Feb 28, 2007, CSI: NY episode "Sleight Out of Hand", Mac folds and rolls a piece of paper into a rose on a stem, blows on it, and it becomes a real red rose. The show features the CSI team solving murders that mimic magic tricks gone bad. The same rose appears on CSI Las Vegas April 6, 2007 in an episode called "Big Shots". A napkin rose folded from a bar napkin is found in the victim's purse. The comment by the CSI staff was, "Las Vegas style origami". It was unfolded to reveal a name and phone number.
April 23, 2007, in The Sopranos episode called "Remember When" Junior Soprano is living in a "group home" where he's incarcerated in for accidentally shooting Tony. A woman is teaching something to the group of adults. The scene opens with her saying something about mountain folds and she mentions how to do a Blintz Fold. Then they show a table full of models.
July 8, 2007 - The episode of Rome showed a paper hat folded using the lost letter from Cicero to Brutus and Cassius.
Sept 26, 2007 - In the pilot for the new drama series Dirty Sexy Money, one of the Darling kids folds a sailboat from a dollar bill, and says that he learned the model from a coke dealer. http://homepage.mac.com/jrutzky/origamisighting/PhotoAlbum101.html
November 28, 2007 - An episode of "Pushing
Daisies" called "Bitter Sweets" has a flashback sequences of
Ned's at boarding school. His lab partner folds an elaborate airplane in under a
minute.
November 29, 2007 - On the Serbian Big Brother show the daily task for the residents of the house was to fold 1000 cranes. They were hilariously clumsy but still very concentrated and happy when they managed to fold their first cranes.
During the Writer's Guild strike that stopped production of many TV shows, fans took to various means to show support to the writers or to convince them to go back to work. "Heroes" fans are sending origami birds to the Writers Guild of America because a character on the show once folded a thousand cranes for a woman he had fallen in love with.
December 2007 - The new Heroes book has traditional
cranes on the cover.
January 2008 - An episode of MythBusters had the team trying to make a lead balloon float. They called it origami, but it was more of a cut-and-taped-together cube of very thin lead foil, pre-collapsed with a twist-fold. It was very gently inflated with a mix of air and helium so as not to stress the delicate lead foil, under the assumption that pure helium would exert too much force on the foil. They were successful in getting the lead balloon to float.
January 2008 - An season 2 episode of the PBS show, Rosemary and Thyme, shows a paper boat being folded and placed into a fast rushing stream. The characters wondered if the water held the memory of Jim, who had been murdered and dumped into the water.
February 1, 2008 - The Ghost Whisperer episode "Haunted Hero", returning Iraq war veteram Matt folds and demonstrates a flapping bird for a child.
June 2008 - The soap opera "One Life to Live" recently killed off a villain ("Uncle Rob") who folded origami. He would drop a simple origami as he left the scene of a crime. He was seen folding and that gave him away as the perpetrator.