After 18 years on the air, America's Funniest Home Videos is one of the longest-running shows on television. "You guys have been on almost as long as I have, for goodness sakes," Oprah says.
"Yeah, and it's all based on trampoline mishaps and crotch hits," host Tom Bergeron jokes. "If it wasn't for gravity and male genitalia, we'd have no franchise."
While people love the slapstick comedy videos, Tom, who also hosts Dancing with the Stars, says viewers respond most to the nonphysical comedy. "It's real life caught in little bubbles of hilarity," he says. "It's just the moments that are genuine."
To celebrate the end of its 18th season, AFV producers have given The Oprah Show unprecedented access to some of their all-time favorite videos.
One of the most popular clips stars quadruplets who are spending some quality time with Mom. Whenever their dad does something funny from behind the camera, the foursome erupts in an orchestra of laughter.
"It's just something about it that's so sweet and natural," Oprah says.
Allison and Steve took those 50 seconds of giggles, recorded seven years ago, all the way to the bank. They won $395,000 and are the biggest AFV winners ever.
Their four girls—Grace, Anna, Emily and Mary Claire—are now 8 years old, and they've already been seen by millions of people around the world.
"People have been trying to have quads since," Tom jokes.
The Oprah Winfrey Show gets its share of funny videos too. In one of the funniest, a mother, Gina, enters the room where her two kids, Emily and Ethan, are playing. To Gina's surprise, Emily has covered her brother from head to toe with peanut butter!
When asked what she was trying to accomplish, Emily answers very practically. "I was trying to put peanut butter all over him," she says.
Gina says grabbing the video camera was her first instinct. "When you walk into a room and you see your two toddlers on the table covered with three pounds of peanut butter, what else do you do?"
Another AFV classic involves a high school drill team performing a choreographed routine. While most in attendance were focused on the show in front of them, the cameraman notices a boy in the corner stealing the show! Instead of watching his sister's team perform, the boy, Henry, does the entire performance, step-by-step, right along with them. He doesn't miss a beat!
The video, which was shot 25 years ago, still gets big laughs—even from Henry!
"Mom was the drill coach and my sister was part of the drill team, and I had nothing else better to do than to go with them and watch and participate," he says. "I wanted to be on that drill team so bad, and it didn't work out—they didn't let boys get on there. So I wanted to show them what I [could] do…so I did it."
A staple in almost every episode of AFV is wedding bloopers, which Tom says are his favorites. "Your wedding is the one day you want to go perfect," he says. "But when your wedding video ends up in our hands, you know it didn't."
In one classic video, a bride named Mindy is repeating her vows. "I, Mindy, take you David…"
The only problem is that her groom is named Gary! Mindy and Gary won $5,000 because she said the wrong name at the altar 10 years ago.
One question remains…who is David? "It is my baby brother who sat right in the front row with his precocious 1-year-old child [who] talked the whole ceremony," Mindy says. "My mind was going a mile a minute, and in my mind I'm saying, 'David, please take her out. David, please take her out.'"
"That's your story and you're sticking with it, right?" Tom jokes.
Another all-time favorite clip is called "Dancing Machine." A man is locked outside in various situations—he's locked out from the back door, he's locked out after taking out the trash in the rain, and another time he's locked out of his car.
"Oh, come on!" he yells each time he realizes he's been locked out.
Each time his wife, who is rolling video, orders him—through giggles—to dance before she'll let him back in. "Just do a quick dance," she says. "Cabbage patch or the running man."
The man relents and starts dancing while his wife—along with millions of viewers—explodes in a fit of laughter.
"It's more like dancing under duress," Tom says.
Bryan and his wife, Angela, are now dancing all the way to the bank. Their running joke has won them more than $200,000! "We've been doing it for 10 years to each other when the other one gets a little angry," Angela says. "It puts them in their place a little bit."
To prove he's a good sport, Bryan busts a move on Oprah's stage!
Meet the man who started it all—AFV creator Vin DiBona. Vin says he was inspired to create the show after watching a Japanese variety program. "They had dancers. They had comedy sketches. And then they showed three home videos," he says. "I thought, 'Why don't we just do home videos and see if we can make a show?'"
Vin took that idea to ABC and had a deal within four minutes. Nearly 33 million people tuned in that first night, and Vin says his staff has received nearly 680,000 videos since then.
Eighteen years later, Vin's staff still cracks up as they screen the 1,500 videos sent in each week. As for what's considered funny, Vin says anything goes. "There's no funny meter, per se, but there's laughter in the hallway, and when it happens, we all run to see the video."
The reason the show remains so successful, Vin says, is because hilarious home videos have a way of bringing everyone together. "When you see people fall down—adults seeing children fall down, children seeing adults fall down—everybody's leveled," he says. "So it works."
