Once you learn that term, you start noticing it everywhere in movies and shows. So many conflicts would disappear if just one character asked a simple question. 😅
Every episode of Frasier.
It’s crazy to me how many gay and liberal folks worked on Frasier and Kelsey Grammer is a huge Trump supporter.
That’s the entire “It’s always sunny” plot!
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
Hitchhikers Guide? I feel like I’ve read that somewhere…?
That’s the one.
well, they tried to warn humans but alas they were only able to make out
So long, and thanks for all the fish
They did warn one person: Wonko the Sane.
He’s probably my favorite character in all the books.
I’d forgotten about him and his wife… might be time to read that series again. It’s my all time favorite. I can’t even tell you how many times i have read it or listened or watched! It’s a story that came into my life at just the right time and I can honestly say it was a singular in helping me survive my childhood
It’s my Torah.
Discworld is my Talmud.
Discworld is my new obsession
Small Gods is so fucking good, I can’t express how amazing in so many ways that book spoke to me. It’s more biblical than anything else I have ever read
I love how Nanny Ogg is described as having the equivalent of a “kingdom” for herself out of her own children and grandchildren
This is the way
One of my favorite Hitchhiker quotes.
They didn’t feel the need to make a complex language, because they were content in keeping their more complex thoughts to themselves.
Real Life.
Oh look, the USA
You shouldn’t attribute to idiocy what is committed in malice.
I always call the trope “Steve” when I see it.
“Hey look, Steve left the door open so the dinosaurs got out.”
“Oh no, Steve forgot to zip his hazmat suit now all the apes are smart.”
“Steve took his helmet off on an alien planet because the air smelled fine.”
“Steve went on a spacewalk without a tether cable!”
“Smoking indoors near flammable chemicals again, Steve?”
“Really Steve, no condom?”
There is also another similar trope, defined by “Any problem important to the plot that can be solved by 5min honest conversation between participating parties”
That sounds like the Trump Administration’s whole plan
I’m wondering about examples of this sort of movie. Are they talking about obvious ones like Dumb and Dumber, Blazing Saddles, Airplane!, etc.?
Or do they mean movies that were supposed to be serious, but are accidentally bad because of bad writing?
Romcoms are notorious for it as so many plots come down to a refusal to stop and communicate
Good one. Yeah, there’s some misunderstanding, and she yells at him and stomps out, and he never bothers to say “I wasn’t even there, I was at work.” But then you wouldn’t have 90 minutes of hijinx as he goes on some half-baked but romantic plan to win her back, involving a hot air balloon and dynamite.
Instead of just telling her what really happened.
I mean, if my experience is any indication, she won’t listen… But then again, it turns out my wife was passive aggressively trying to get me to leave her for years but I was too oblivious to get her hints…
I mean a whole lot of horror movies would end in 5-15 minutes if the victims weren’t idiots who decide to explore the obviously dangerous “thing”.
Ah, valid, Horror is my least favorite genre. Probably a lot Idiot Plots there.
Or if they’d just break a window instead of freaking out because the door is locked.
I always go back to Prometheus when talking about the “Idiot Ball” because it’s the gold standard. You’ve got these world-class scientists sent on a trillion-dollar mission who don’t even know what they’re doing there until they wake up from cryo, and then they immediately act like children playing in a backyard.
The second the sensors say the air is “breathable,” they’re ripping their helmets off like they’ve never heard of a space-virus or a spore. It’s insane. Then you’ve got the biologist, a literal professional, seeing a hissing, alien “space-cobra” in a clear threater posture and his first instinct is to try and pet it like a stray cat.
And don’t even get me started on the guy who literally mapped the cave with high-tech drones being the one who gets hopelessly lost in it. Or the “Prometheus School of Running Away from Things” where you run in a perfectly straight line under a falling, circular ship instead of just… stepping to the left? It’s like the script needed the plot to happen so badly that it just stripped every character of their survival instincts and professional training.
Compare that to competency porn shows, like the Martian, where they FEEL like the best of the best
I used to hate Prometheus but caught a second viewing years later and came around a bit. The running only straight thing is… yeah. But I’ll defend the inclusion of stupid scientists as a key part of the story because the movie goes out of its way to show that these are people only interested in getting paid, which suggests they might not be the best scientists. Yeah, it’s a “trillion dollar mission,” but I’d assume that in the future that trillion dollars isn’t as much as it might be for us. So these are, perhaps, the cheapest scientists that Wayland can buy, the sort of guys who’d give up years of their lives and careers to fuck off on a starship based solely on the premise of “we might find the aliens that made us.”
Life comes to mind for me. Its a set of unfortunate and stupid events made worse entirely by the fact that these highly trained scientists abord a space station are too stupid to do proper quarantine.
Prometheus comes to mind as well. Aww look at this cute alien snake thing. I’m gonna take my helmet off and pet it.
I don’t remember that movie. I first thought you meant that movie with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence where they go to jail for Life. Hilarious movie.
I like Jake Gyllenhall, so I think I’ll watch your Life, even with your bad review.
Think Burn After Reading
Hahaha precisely the movie I’ve used to describe my feelings about the current illegal war going on right now.
Definitely the badly written movies. Where the whole plot would have changed if they just communicated.
Not a movie, but death note.
If the dude didn’t take the obvious bait every episode there’s no way of catching him.
That’s why It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is my favorite show. 100% idiot plots all the way down. They represent some of the worst human beings on Earth, and it’s more fun to laugh at the morons than think about how much they’re fucking up life for the rest of us…
Seinfeld is also like that. The best ones are where all their individual idiocy ends up making a spectacular fireball of stupidity.
Though I hope Earth gets a better finale.
Wouldn’t Arrested Development fit in here too?
It’s one banana Michael, how much could it cost? Ten dollars?
Luz, that coat cost more than your house! Oh, that’s how we joke. She doesn’t even have a house.
I love Lucille :D
No, they’re not just idiots, and not just “bad people” like in Seinfeld, but powerfully stupid and actively hateful. I just can’t stomach that show.
I can only watch it in small doses
The only episode I’ve seen is the crossover with Abbott Elementary
I remember the first season or two that it was out, it was too stressful for me to watch. At that point I had simply never seen any fiction with that level of consistent, nonstop manic trainwreck quality and it was overwhelming at first. Loved it after I acclimated, of course.
I recently watched a miniseries called A Teacher, in which a highschool teacher has an affair with her student and there are actual consequences. With all the people in the epstein files that are escaping justice, it was kind of cathartic to watch a sexual predator be punished for her actions
Oh? They made a tv show about that republican mayor already?
I assume we can add “coming clean” to this?
Where a whole movies plot could be solved by the characters just listening to each other
Makes me think of Gilligan’s Island. The scientist could make a radio from a coconut, but couldn’t fix a hole in the side of a boat, and no one questioned that.
Show should have been over in no more than 2 episodes.
I always wondered why they brought all those clothes on a “three hour tour.”
Honestly, I think the skipper was a proto-Epstein, and had cooked up a scheme with that Sociopathic Oligarch Thurston Howell III to kidnap the hot Ginger, and the adorable MaryAnn, to be their sex slaves on his private island.
I suppose Gilligan was destined for the bamboo cuck-chair.
Sons of Anarchy. There’s a season ender where some Irish bloke kidnaps a child and sails away. They had to make an entire season in Ireland because these knobheads of criminal but also mechanics can’t figure out to follow the kidnapper on water, even though they’re standing on a pier with hundreds of boats.
They are motorcycle guys and were looking for jet skis, the motorcycle of the ocean.
I remember watching SoA, because people said it was good. It was alright i guess, from the three or so episodes i’ve seen. I read somewhere that the ending was mind-blowingly bad, so i peeped on YouTube and i had to laugh so god damn hard and i knew i could never again take this show seriously and stopped watching
and this lead to a season full of atrocious irish accents
I have no idea how I made it through that entire series. I don’t even remember anything about the ending, other than relief. Right from the beginning I was constantly telling my wife “these are the stupidest criminals ever”.
Does this include the plot points where there’s a misunderstanding in a relationship? Like where a girl sees her boyfriend hug another girl but doesn’t know it’s his cousin or something and instead of talking about it just ignores him and so he ignores her and it’s just dumb and entirely avoidable?
“wait! I can explain!”
No waiting or explaining ensues
The real idiots are the audience who finds that compelling instead of enraging
Ah that’s end of season 2 or beginning of season 3 of every series that has a couple in it, right?
That’s gotta be its own trope
It is, they even reference it in the IT crowd.
“So I followed him to the restaurant.”
“She was his sister, wasn’t she.”
“Yeah.”
Often, but not always, yes. If the misunderstanding is reasonable and they had ample opportunity for an explanation but didn’t, then yes, it’s an idiot plot.
If they legitimately didn’t have an opportunity to explain, or the explanation, while true, was completely unbelievable, that’s not an idiot plot IMO.
Only if 3rd parties who witnessed the context of such misunderstanding re-enforce the stupid. Otherwise that’s just your average contrived romance drama.
They already said idiot plot
I feel like there are so many plots that stem from simple miscommunications or a lack of communication between two charatcers which would easily resolve the whole situation.
That’s similar to the one where the couple breaks up over a misunderstanding and all it takes is one of them explaining in like 10s. But instead someone storms off while the other pleas, and deep down you’re like, “That motherfucker so wanted it to end anyway.”
But then we deal with post-break up scenes and you realise they’re just idiots that still haven’t even thought to clear up the misunderstanding via a single text, call, or friend. It could all be resolved, laughed about, and fucking again like that afternoon.
I think idiot plot is supposed to be so stupid that it’s essentially not possible to happen irl
The example you outlined could happen in real life if one person completely blocks the other or something
Would be an idiot plot if everyone involved is fully able to communicate to the other parties, everyone has plenty of information, and they decide to go through with whatever stupid shit they think they need to do, that would be completely unavoidable and anyone with half a brain would understand that they don’t need to do what they think they need to do.
Like a movie where there’s a killer on the loose and nobody thinks of even trying to call the police. No “oh there’s no signal here”, just straight up nobody even tries.
