I’m noticing a bit of a trend in some of the more episodic, arc-based TV dramas of late, in that there seems to be at least one character who serves no other purpose but to be completely wrong about everything, and whose advice you can safely (and often must) ignore. Some examples:
Jericho: Gray Anderson. Everything that he’s done since being elected mayor of Jericho has proven to make things worse and dug the town into a deeper hole. It’s especially glaring when we have our paragon of strategic planning and diplomacy in Major Dad in the town. Recently, after sending off a team half cocked to destroy a mortar position but failing miserably, he got all weak in the knees and almost ceded half the town before common sense prevailed.
Heroes: Mohinder. Gee, thanks, dude, for leading Sylar around to a bunch of specials and hand delivering them to their deaths, while at the same time making it harder for the real heroes to defeat him. Just get the hell out of the way, already, Mr. Science.
Honourable mention to Parkman here, who manages to pick the wrong side on every fight, even in the future.
From a meta-perspective, Mother Carlson from WKRP. She made decisions that were wrong from a business standpoint by design, with the purpose of driving down the worth of the station (for tax purposes, I think?) and, as the decisions she made had the effect of improving the station’s ratings and thus its worth, her strategy was wrong.
Lt. Benjamin Kreig in the first season of SeaQuest DSV. His role was to be the guy scheming to turn a quick profit (or in one case, eat a contraband cheeseburger) just to get taught a lesson by the morally superior Lucas and/or Bridger.
Well, in standard TV shows and books about private eyes, the cops and the D.A.'s are always wrong. They seem to exist solely to arrest annocent people, so the heroes can save the day.
A few candidates:
Hamilton Burger, who lost every case he ever prosecuted in the Perry Mason mysteries.
Inspector Lestrade, who always susppects the wrong man, and must be set straight by Sherlock Holmes.
Lionel T. Cramer, who never has a clue who commited the murder until NEro WOlfe feels like revealing it.
Banacek’s chauffeur only had one purpose: to come up with incorrect theories about how the Impossible Crime was committed, just so that smug, suave Banacek could punch holes in his (the chauffeur’s) theories as a prelude to delivering the correct solution at the end.
Seemed to me when watching The X-Files, Dana Scully always had some perfectly reasonable scientific explanation for the weirdness going on, and it was always found to be wrong, and what was correct was whatever crackpot theory Mulder had, no matter how ridiculous. Maybe that’s actually how it was, but it sure felt that way.
Usually, not always. Quite often it would be something else entirely; on occasion, Mulder’s true believerism about aliens was used to manipulate him. Of course, this being The X-Files, the plausible explanation was never the real one, but if it was there wouldn’t be a show, would there ? “This week on The X-Files, Mulder and Scully find more swamp gas !”
From Deathworld 2, by Harry Harrison, Mikah Samon. A true believer idiot who kidnaps the protagonist Jason dinAlt to punish him because he’s a gambler ( backstory reasons as well ), and in the course of the story manages to create disaster after disaster with his totally inflexible and impractical morality ( yes, Mikah, lying to the guy who’s enlaved you is perfectly all right; so is fomenting a slave rebellion ). Jason ends up giving his girlfriend permission to kill him ( yes, she is the sort for whom “kill” is the default solution ) when he tries to kidnap Jason again.
