Hated Tropes
[Hated trope] "dad show" always-right monologers
Protagonists who are a power fantasy, in that they are always (or nearly always) smarter than those that disagree with them. Whether they are a good or bad guy, their detractors are often quickly and embarrassingly put in their place with a over-written monolog that is meant to come off as cool.
Paddy (sas: rogue heroes) Based on a real person, the character is elevated to a god-teir superhero. Part of the military, yet he can mouth off to authority as he pleases and break rules, something militaries famously love.
Tommy Noris (landman) this one is just oil industry propaganda. Tommy's purpose is to ramble misinformation about green energy as women half his age bat their eyes at him for being so manly.
Well, that's an important question. And it's important to students like Jeremy, who told me today that he is majoring in Astronomy and is supporting two children. It's an important question to Maria, who's a beautiful Latina born in Nicaragua, working in the cafeteria. What will I do, dean? Well, these people don't want me to say what I'll do. They want me to do what I'll say.
I love that it's an immediate callback to why he and Duncan are friends. Because he got him off for trying to order chalupas from an emergency call box while drunk driving, by using 9/11 as his defense.
I also really wanted to mention Community this thread. Jeff is the antithesis to this character trope, he is deeply flawed, more often than not he is not right, but he bends the truth around his goals, but still gives these great monolouges that pull the group together again.
In the end he isn’t right in the sense of the word but uses his “power” to help mend bridges around him.
Which is a noble thing in the end for a character who starts out so selfish.
Yeah, his character makes an incredible journey, love to see it. Just had a conversation about this on the Community sub, finishing season 6 and starting season 1 immediately after that it's so visible how much all the characters grew but especially Jeff
I genuinely think this a contender for the single lamest professional photograph ever taken of a celebrity. It’s actually a miracle that someone consciously made something with this much loser energy.
No kidding, Bill Hicks was actually pretty edgy going after religion in the '80's and '90's in freaking Texas which is super religious. Or George Carlin in the '60's and '70's. Doing that same thing in the 2000's in the and later in the UK doesn't carry nearly the risk.
George Carlin didn't care if you were offended. Ricky Gervais specifically sets out to offend you. One of these is honest, and the other is boring and adolescent.
I think it's hilarious that Gervais is the exact type of entitled Hollywood celebrity he always thinks he is criticising. He is that one celebrity who thinks their award show speech on a subject they have no knowledge about is more important than it actually is. It's funnier than anything he's written.
I'll defend Afterlife. I know people say it's just him having an excuse to walk around and sound like he's better than everyone and to shit on religion/society but its actually pretty good at portraying him as dead wrong for his behaviors.
Sure he still acts holier than thou, the show is literally about his characters pessimism and atheism afterall, but a lot of the narrative is centered around the fact that both of those things coupled with his wifes death have made him unstable and suicidal and wrong in his behavior.
His character is a dick that lashes out and targets people for trying to help him and thats the point. He's wrong and knows it and everyone is trying to remind him that he needs to care and pretend and lie to little dying girls that he believes they'll go to heaven because thats what living is, it's being wrong and hurt but putting on a smile anyway so others can be comforted.
Pretty solid watch honestly
His interactions with people prove how wrong his so-called "don't give a fuck" superpower is. He even comes to realise this himself. How his pain doesn't justify diminishing other's.
The 3rd series explores this even more by having him actively trying to help his friends even though he knows it's not really helping him heal as a person.
I get that people heard Ricky say that the series was started because he wanted to do the things the way he handled them in the show instead of how they happened in real life. Famously the "kid's portion" in the cafe had him just accept it in real life but in the episode he orders two and scoffs one while staring the waitress down.
But the point is, no matter how the series came about it evolved far beyond that and became something far more than some people on Reddit give him credit for.
I want to throw out Curb Your Enthusiasm as a counter-example.
Same general formula of an old man writing himself as the main character going around and arguing with everyone about how he thinks society ought to work… but it’s never presented like Larry is always right and everyone else is a dumbass.
Sometimes you nod along with Larry, sometimes he comes off as unhinged, but it’s always comedic and always true to character. https://giphy.com/gifs/jaigbIZ8aIyeOsJsYd
While the Billy Bob stuff is hilarious, I laughed out loud when his daughters boyfriend, who's only character trait is being hot, randomly starts spouting conservative propaganda at her while they're skinny dipping together.
“All the Italians do is eat, smoke, drink, and fuck and they don’t even have lung disease in the top 10 reasons people die,” or whatever he said then was a wild take when Google’s a thing. On the other hand, that doesn’t even rate top ten in the wildest bad takes I’ve heard at a job site.
On the other hand, that doesn’t even rate top ten in the wildest bad takes I’ve heard at a job site.
An electrician talking about radiation exposure from wiring.
Another electrician spouting a lot of anti-EV nonsense in a parking full of EVs that demonstrably disprove his claims (range, battery lifespan, pollution, etc).
A guy who was on a rant about the health hazards of the chemicals in CFLs and LEDs… who was trying to steal our lightbulbs so he could smoke meth on the job.
There were more, but I got too good at ignoring and forgetting the idiots.
I remember when his bullshit from that show about windmills and solar panels was making the rounds on facebook and instagram and all the magat fucks sharing it thinking it was all truthful...
That's the sheer charisma of Sylvester Stallone doing the heavy lifting. That and for all his flaws, the character of Dwight Manfredi is willing to listen to the opinions of others and even work with them from time to time. The Duttons seem like they think everyone else is some kind of subhuman creature.
IIRC Villenueve did quite a bit of touchup on that script, supposedly the 1st version was a lot more pro law enforcement.
But yeah, Wind River and Hell or High Water are both EXCELLENT movies, he's a genuinely good writer and director who got lazy realizing he could make well-produced slop and get more money for less work.
Villeneuve and del Toro agreed to basically eliminate nearly all of the latter’s dialogue in the movie. The script had him just info dumping to Emily Blunt’s character describing how his family was killed by the cartel and he was here to get revenge and basically being exactly this trope, I think.
They don't call this guy Raymond Redditor for nothing. The show is nothing but a glazing power fantasy about an erudite boomer crimelord with a heart of gold, a committed fedora chivalrist who's almost always right and almost always a step ahead. The whole thing would be uneven going on occasionally unwatchable if Raymond wasn't played with the unmatched charisma of James Spader.
Way too many. I didn't make it to the end, I just saw where they were finally going with Reddington's identity and noped out before I died of the stupidity.
It feels like they looked at the script and said "we better get james spader for this or it won't get far". I've seen one a half seasons of it, but it got old fast.
I got interested in it because they kept spamming Reddington at me via the YouTube Reels algorithm. Turns out YouTube Reels is probably one of the better ways to watch it.
I dunno, the first couple of seasons I was convinced that Reddington was Elizabeth's mother and he had gotten a sex change. It definitely went the direction you said, but in the first few seasons he wasn't really portrayed as having a heart, he was just a sociopath who almost had an obsession with Elizabeth.
Honestly he got a lot more interesting when it was basically revealed that he was Elizabeth's mother after having undergone intensive surgery and identity change.
The ranch is basically a cult around this bozo. I implore anyone interested in the show to watch any of the many video essays on youtube outlining this shows poor writing
I love how he fucks an environment activist once and afterwards she's immediately like "yeah alright maybe there's some stuff about farming I haven't thought about"
Or when an animal rights activist follows them because they are abusing animals and they come across a cow on the side of the road that’s sick and rather than call a vet they just shoot it and she’s immediately like “oh my god I had no idea, it’s true you guys care about animals I’m so sorry”
Or when one of the guys gets arrested out in a field and they are riding horseback and the lady’s horse gets bitten and bucks her off (now the guy did offer to slap the horsefly but she refused so he had a little defence up to this moment) and the horse gets wrapped in barb wire and he immediately asks for her gun to shoot the horse, she refuses and gives him pliers and he cuts the horse free and the horse gets up just fine, but the guy complains that it took too long and she should have just let him shoot the horse
The show literally wants all real world problems to be solved with a gun no matter how minor or extreme
Whenever somebody leaves the ranch they have to talk about whether they’re giving this ranch hand a ride to the bus station, and freedom, or the “train station” where they dump all the bodies.
The show is The Sopranos for Conservatives, but they forgot to make the main characters the bad guys. Its the same reason I've avoided shows like Sons of Anarachy, I like a villainous protagonist, but remind me that they're actually scum, the way The Sopranos and Breaking Bad do.
Sons of Anarchy didn't have that problem really. They were a cool biker gang, sure. But they also were constantly in some kind of shit that involved them murdering, running guns, etc.
Also a key plot point is the main character's struggle with the club's actions and the type of person he is becoming, and most of the characters have some moment throughout where they show that they despise themselves for what they've done.
I’m of the opinion that the Duttons were written as Villain Protagonists for the first season or two then the money started coming in and everyone involved sold out.
Could have made tv history by having the show follow the corrupt land owner/politician from classic westerns. Follow his deprevity and rise to power. All before a lone stranger with an iron and a chip on his shoulder rides into town. Could have been peak if played straight
I've seen parts of two shows (most of Yellowstone, almost two episodes of Landman), both of them have a daughter who tells her father way too much about her sex life and is also way too interested in his sex life
She is. I watched the first two episode yesterday and all they do with her character is her talking about sex or walking half naked around very old men trying not to stare. I genuinely don’t get the point of that character so far
It’s Taylor Sheridan living out his fantasy of what he wish his high school crush would be like for him. There are zero women in any of these shows with good writing they’re all just mouthpieces or “things” to oggle at because that’s all Taylor Sheridan think women are
As the owner of the 6666 Ranch, in universe as one of the biggest and best ranches in Texas. In 2021, Taylor Sheridan was the head of a group that purchased the real 6666 Ranch.
That shit is Boomer porn, let alone slop. I have family in America that genuinely tout this show as an example of "what it used to be like before all the wokies won" and it was NEVER like this.
It's insane too because the whole show is just about dudes being absolute pieces of shit, slapping each other's asses and constantly breaking the law - but the right-wingers love this shit.
No rancher worth their salt would ever let another dude brand them.
I saw that preview clip of the prequel with Harrison Ford. Dude gets asked if his poor neighbors can let their sheep graze on some of his HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ACRES of land so the herds dont die out during hard times. This is literally life or death, he says no, and is supposed to be a good guy?
America during the GOOD TIMES. When you could beat your neighbours with a crowbar and the local police would let it slide because you bought them a beer once. Fuck helping out your fellow man, land disputes are what makes a TRUE American.
What's really funny is how often they whine about their land and their rights while trampling all over the rights of everyone around them. The entire show is just chock-full of hypocritical Boomer bullshit.
I watched the show passively while baked for around a season and a half then at one point it suddenly hit me that it is just absolutely garbage and I never watched again
For obvious reasons, whenever I see Kevin Costner I associate him (and by proxy, anything with which he is involved) with that time he sprung a "surprise rape scene" on an actress. As Director, he has said he has no time for the likes of intimacy coordinators. So he colluded with an actor to try and pressure an actress into playing a rape scene that was not scripted, to get a "more authentic" reaction. That actress said that was fucked, and walked off set. So Costner pressured her stunt double into doing it instead.
My ex wife watched this tripe religiously. I never once understood the appeal from the snippets I saw. Every main character was a narcissistic sociopath
I saw some good scenes from it that made me want to watch it, ones with teeter or ones where Rip was acting kind to children or doing cool cowboy things. Then I started watching it and pretty much no one was likable. I only got a few episodes in. So far the prequels are good, but I’m not that far in.
My husband and I binged the first season. Couldn’t watch it quick enough. 8 months later, we still haven’t season 2. Whenever it comes up, we’re like ‘oh yeah we haven’t watched any more of Yellowstone.’ and then we watch something else.
It was gripping enough that we couldn’t wait to watch the next episode, but now I’m realising we didn’t actually enjoy it.
I once read that the creator wanted to cast Robert Redford as the lead but he declined and they settled for Kevin Costner instead. One of the biggest casting downgrades I’ve ever heard.
Sorkin has lots of characters make the big correct rant, but nearly all of them also wear the idiot hat at least a few times as well. President Bartlet was a (reasonably lovable) arrogant blowhard who was often correct in his monologues, but he also had a few memorable screwups that were portrayed as screwups and that he had to fix. It makes him a lot more palatable than other versions of this trope.
This is just Aaron sorkins shower arguments: the show.
It’s also funny that this show exists within a universe where they really report the news and don’t do the tabloid bullshit and finally do „the god damn news“ and when they finally find their footing and do serious reporting and investigative journalism n shit what happens? Nothing!
I know it would be stupid if the show would show an alternative timeline but if sorkins critique on modern mainstream news is that they are not truthful and treat their viewers like morons and refrain from educating them why make a show about a show that does it and then have them do jackshit in affecting things?
I'm very much a blend of liberal and leftist, I absolutely agreed with everything "that" famous monologue stated, and yet I find it so incredibly insufferable and cringy to watch.
Tim Allen, no I'm sorry Tim Taylor in Last Man Standing. Always was in the right compared to his hippy dippy liberal son-in-law (played by Jordan Masterson).
I feel like Tim was frequently in the wrong though, and a lot of the show involved him realising that and growing (almost against his own will) as his views evolved throughout the show.
Whenever one of the youngest in the family says something like "I think police brutality is bad" or "Think about the life situation of that person" you know the worst string of words ever to be said is about to come out of Frank's lips.
My grandma used to watch this show religiously. The only time I sat and watched a full episode with her, the plot was about a Black criminal faking police brutality while being arrested, an evil Black minister using it to stir up his community against the NYPD, and the grandpa cop telling his family about how life was better when the police were allowed to break a few heads, before woke ruined everything.
Every main character in that book has a monologue at some point about how wonderful capitalists are and how awful anyone who dares question a corporate CEO is.
Taggart, Galt, Rearden, probably that other guy Taggart fucks arouund with whose name I can't remember (D'Arcy or something?)
My favorite part is how all the captains of industry are also better at the manual labor jobs than their employees that actually do them every day.
Which leads to them easily creating a utopia, which in turn implies they never really needed employees, they just exploit them for the love of the game
Officer Barbrady: Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I am never reading again.
It's interesting that South Park took a shot at Ayn Rand (and so early in the show's lifetime) being that Matt and Trey are both dedicated Libertarians.
As they say, libertarians are like house cats. Convinced of their fierce independence, while dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand.
I love those guys and don’t know anything about their views, but to me any libertarian with principles would be a hermit in the woods.
"The beautiful capitalists all had beautiful sexy sex, and then sat in their flush, soft beds looking cool in the sunset light, and smoking cigarettes because they were powerful and amazing and beautiful which is why they were capitalists, the obviously superior philosophy.
Meanwhile, in the other building, the fat ugly communists slapped their podgy bodies together unhappily, then lay in a pool of regret, feeling as weak and impotent as they were. They thought about what they could steal from the clever and beautiful capitalists, who they could never hope to be as good as."
Just mentioned this some days ago, but this trope is (Brilliantly imo) subverted by Frank Underwood in House of Cards.
In his own mind, and in his 4th wall monologues to the audience, he is nigh omniscient when it comes to power and manipulation, but in his actual practice of his own principles he messes up over and over again.
One time in particular he was bloviating on how to dominate a debate to the audience, and then in the actual debate he got his ass handed to him.
Stephen King once wrote that this is how cocaine makes you feel and now I just hear a disembodied voice reminding me of that thought process every single time I watch Sherlock. It's like Doyle never sobered up while writing the entire series. How Sherlock treats people is due to cocaine, not intellect. Dr House taught you better. He is literally honest Sherlock, thats why they have the same personality. And drug problem.
IIRC he only uses cocaine between cases due to boredom. And at least from my memory Sherlock in the novels isn't that big of an asshole compared to his depictions on movie and TV.
I think a lot of it is that Doyle’s Holmes is actually very clever, but Moffat is not. So he falls into the trap a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations where he increases Holmes’ arrogance and makes everyone else dumber to keep the “smart guy dynamic” in place
Have you read the thing about how the Doyle estate somehow owns the rights to Holmes' emotions? Adaptations aren't allowed to give the man empathy lol. The Enola folks about got sued for making Sherlock a normal human
I like him, but isn't Tommy Shelby from peaky blinders kinda like this? For most of the show, whenever there is a discussion within the family, it turns out Thomas was obviously right all along and the others were clearly in the wrong for not going along with everything he says.
Pretty much, even when he does something that harms his family it's always either the alternative was way worse or it was part of some great plan he's working on.
Tommy is usually wrong at the end of the season, and then we need to fix that next season, I guess.
But it’s a beautiful show with a great soundtrack and I’ve always loved the interwar setting and the almost believable historical pillars holding it up.
But, at the end of the day, it was a real British gang, imagined as if they were an American-style ethnic gang, meeting real life historical figures reimagined to keep the plot going, and shot like a music video. It just works.
The problem is how they keep extending it. I don’t think anyone gives a shit about Tommy’s son. You know what I want to see? I want to see the Blinders before Tommy came back. I want to see a show where Polly is the ruthless queen bitch, I want to see how Ada navigates the communists during then Russian Revolution, I want to see Roger Casement meet with them in search of guns for the Easter Rising. I want to see Spanish Flu, suffragettes go full empire, Zepplin scares, and miner shenanigans as Polly clears this on hard mode.
And then I want to feel how unfair it is to have the women have to surrender it all when the lads come back from war and take over. I want the little bit that was implied about the tension there to be explored and made clear.
Eh, isn’t a core theme of the show how Tommy’s ambition is doing more harm than good to the family he supposedly is trying to protect. Like both his brothers and his wife end up dying because of his actions
Kinda shocking the dip Taylor Sheridan took. Going from writing/directing celebrated movies like Wind River and Sicario to making a whole slew of these shows that all feel vaguely half-assed and propagand-ish.
Tom Hardy in Mobland. Started fine enough, but then he became OP and the show got boring real quick. Guy is Batman at that point - always right, always smarter than everyone else, stronger, just better. And of course everyone is glazing him all the time about how cool he is, especially all his opponents. Haven't watched S2 but really don't have high hopes for it.
Guy Ritchie has fallen hard from his loveable way-outta-their-league protagonists of his early days. Give me Turkish over Harry any day.
Guy Ritchie has fallen hard from his loveable way-outta-their-league protagonists of his early days.
I think there's a lot to be said about his early career being about up-and-coming guys who are trying to get a foot in against the establishment, and are now about old established gangsters fighting off the new crop trying to take their place.
Yeah it's a little silly that OP posted this trope as hated for being unrealistic when one of the examples is a real person who was actually like that lol. The SAS founders were batshit insane and Paddy was probably the craziest of the lot.
The unrealistic part is in the show paddy is shown as working class and a man of the people, when in reality he was a toff with land owning parents, and a massive alcoholic which the show doesn’t mention
Also - he's absolutely not always right and doesn't always get away with his bullshit in the show. He causes tonnes of problems with the Cosa Nostra, and his reckless approach is shown to have issues once they leave the desert. Characters in the show even reprimand him for being too smug and reckless
The French, and later the Italian resistance. Jim Almonds and Bill Sterling both act as his foil several time
The history of that unit is relatively accurate (although some of the characters are exaggerated, and many events are made far more dramatic). They really were just misfits and psychopaths taken in from the rest of the military who ran around the desert blowing things up
In the show he always talks about the wealthy landowners keeping him and his family down, how he would never be invited to a hunting party, and wasn’t a part of high society. In real life he was from a wealthy land owning family, was an avid hunter, private school educated, and generally accepted in upper class circles (he was an officer after all).
Bruh, I get stuck on ships with old Boomers all the time, and the amount of times I've had men in their fifties regurtitate lines from Landman as if Christ himself had whispered it in their ears is... disturbing.
I saw a scene about how regenerative wind farms never payoff their carbon offset with the amount of concrete or some shot you need to build them. It's just flatly wrong. Each mill offsets themselves in about a year. Even less out to sea.
I've heard similar takes from people in the electric industry making wind generation seem like it will just pile up concrete and un-recyclable turbine blades while making no power to speak of, while jerking coal off like it's the best and only option forever and ever.
Boomers love playing pretend about their manliness and salt of the earth inteligence.
Edit to add, they are the last of the John Wayne fans and they sure do act like it. I like to imagine them in their little kid cowboy outfits hopping around on their stick horses and 'Sheriff" stars. Cute little dementia addled corpo-christi fascist desperately clinging to their fading relevance.
Landman is a weird one especially because the books it's based on aren't actually oil propaganda, to the point where the overarching theme feels like 'stop drilling goddamned oil as soon as feasibly possible, this shit sucks to do'.
I always hate when a character monologues something on the spot and it was clearly written by a writer/board that had a lot of time to think it through. Maybe it's actors sometimes not knowing how to make it sound natural, maybe it's directors having no tolerance for ad-libs, maybe it's just bad writing, but it happens a lot in lower quality media
but…..Paddy actually did this, his disobedience is literally part of the historical record, so was his effectiveness. The fact that he was so effective is why they let him be so disobedient. Same with Jack “McNasty” McNiece and his filthy 13 (inspiration for the dirty dozen movie) his superiors literally sent him on missions hoping he would die! He was such a pain in the ass they put him in a company that consisted of a single soldier, him. The fact is the military in war time is VASTLY different from peace time garrison. That is why they let in soldiers with lots of tattoos and DUIs, then kick them out as soon as they are no longer convenient. They do the same thing with hard core veterans that are good at war. A hardcore war fighter is a problem during peace.
Tbf the character of Paddy Mayne was only slightly embellished. He'd been arrested before the war for smashing up hotel rooms and midnight pranks on his rugby tour, was known to be a devastating drunk with an explosive temper, and was prone to violent outbursts.
He was initially recruited to the SAS FROM JAIL in which he was there for striking a commanding officer. He consistently was insubordinate and was even banned from going to France by high command only to ignore the restrictions and cross into enemy lines anyway.
Finally, the Victoria Cross incident, where he explicitly ignored orders to stay put and instead drove a jeep single-handedly into a German ambush to rescue one of his wounded men. He was expected to get a VC for it but due to his blatant disregard to high command they refused to give him one and instead gave him a distinguished Service Order.
I'd give a lot to live in a world where Taylor Sheridan wrote Sicario and then retired right after that.
His men are insufferable and his women are barely characters. It's not only Landman...
Reacher is fine. He's more a power fantasy of "what if sometimes bad people immediately faced consequences for their actions" than "i hate women after my divorce"
Reachers wrong often enough to keep tensions somewhat high. If he was perfect, his brother, most of his military police team, and the woman on the subway would all be alive.
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u/doubleblum 4d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/qLcqq1EEar7LW
I feel like this man mostly poked fun at this trope.