Become absurdly outlandish as a TV show / MON 7-10-23 / Expressions of gratitude in texts / Snoopy's alter ego in sunglasses / Disposable parts of grocery purchases

Constructor: Brad Wiegmann

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: verb the animal— theme answers are all colloquial phrases that follow a "[verb] THE [animal]" pattern:

Theme answers:

• POKE THE BEAR (17A: Antagonize a powerful figure)
• JUMP THE SHARK (27A: Become absurdly outlandish, as a TV show)
• SHOOT THE BULL (43A: Chat idly)
• FLIP THE BIRD (58A: Gesture rudely, in a way)

Word of the Day:The Fault in OUR Stars (34A: "The Fault in ___ Stars" (2012 best seller)) —

The Fault in Our Stars is a novel by John Green. It is his fourth solo novel, and sixth novel overall. It was published on January 10, 2012. The title is inspired by Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which the nobleman Cassius says to Brutus: "Men at some time were masters of their fates, / The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." The story is narrated by Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old girl with thyroid cancer that has affected her lungs. Hazel is forced by her parents to attend a support group where she subsequently meets and falls in love with 17-year-old Augustus Waters, an ex-basketball player, amputee, and survivor of osteosarcoma.

An American feature film adaptation of the same name as the novel directed by Josh Boone and starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Nat Wolff was released on June 6, 2014. A Hindi feature film adaptation of the novel, titled Dil Bechara, which was directed by Mukesh Chhabra and starring Sushant Singh Rajput, Sanjana Sanghi, Saswata Chatterjee, Swastika Mukherjee and Saif Ali Khan was released on July 24, 2020, on Disney+ Hotstar. The American film adaptation and the book enjoyed strong critical and commercial success, with the latter becoming one of the best-selling books of all time. (wikipedia)

Pretty straightforward stuff, but very solid for a Monday theme. Solid premise, consistent execution, and colorful phrases. All the boxes ticked, thematically. The fill is also remarkably solid. All except TYS, that is, woof, inexplicably terrible. "ty" is definitely something you might text someone ("pls" and "ty" are just good texting manners, though I see—and use—"thx" much more), but the plural TYS, yikes, when where why and how? (A: never, nowhere, who knows?, in no way). Is there really no way to have fixed that. Seems like the fix would be easy. You might have to tear the corner down, but who cares, it's Monday, nothing up there (except that first themer) that couldn't be sacrificed. The ugliness of TYS is not counterbalanced by anything equally (or more) beautiful. I'm not sure such beauty exists. I never saw TYS, because I was solving Downs-only, so (thankfully) my solve was not marred by it, but it sure would've been if I'd been solving normally. I can handle MSDOS and SLRS and ROTC and ESP and all the other fairly to very common stuff, but TYS, woof, no. I probably said something like this the last time TYS was clued this way (which is the last time it appeared, in 2021). With every other appearance of TYS (save one), going back to 1964, the constructor / editors had the decency to just be honest about the fact that the only thing TYS can plausibly be is a plural name, e.g. [Cobb and others]. Fun fact: the first ever clue for TYS, going back to April 1964, is the one clue that refers neither to texting abbrevs. nor to names. Instead, solvers were confronted with this: [Northwest, Indian, etc.: Abbr.]. I ... don't even know how that works. What does that even mean? Indian ... trout yogurt? Northwestern ... tongue yoga? No idea. Also, when I look up [TYS abbr meaning] on google today, right now, I'm told it can mean either "thank you, sir" or "told you so," LOL. So even as a texting clue: bad. Don't let bad stuff persist just because someone once got away with it. Tear the answer out or clue it reasonably. TY.