Believe it or not, cheap metaphors don't usually piss me off (unlike incoherent metaphors, which always piss me off). They're 100% obvious to anyone with a middle school education; so blatant that you couldn't miss them from a mile away. Take something like wieners. I wonder if that represents men somehow...
What makes a metaphor cheap? Perhaps it's a lack of depth, like a puddle that's not very deep.
Where do you draw the line between deep and cheap? Give this a try: see where you'd draw the line in the following sequence.
A
B
C
D
E
The correct answer is D. E is overkill, and for all we know, C could've been an honest conversation about liking snow.
Here are some cheap metaphors that aren't directly from True Tears. See if you can figure out what they mean.
Other notable metaphors:
Here are some metaphors so pathetic that even True Tears would keep its distance.