And that wasn’t much to make up for the fact that the poor guy’s name was Ham Burger.
Eric Cartman
(My snip, of course) Cramer actually did solve one case on his own, but Wolfe wasn’t involved at all. The book is Red Threads, and is one of Stout’s lesser works.
[hijack]
“it’s my dream turnip”
“C: a big blue wobbly thing mermaids live in”
Ahh that’s better
[/hijack]
Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes.
Dr Smith from Lost in Space.
And Dr. House himself is wrong on his first two guesses. Always.
And the treatment always comes down to a coin-flip choice between Option A (will the cure the patient of Condition X, but kill him if he has similar-symptom but unrelated Condition Y) and Option B (the same, but reversed).
They always choose A and the patient gets worse, prompting a hasty switch to B, which makes everything okay.
And somewhere around minute 40, the patient will refuse further treatment or disappear from his hospital room or some relative will show up with a court order or some other intrusion will prompt House to make a quip about the morgue, for which he will instantly but insincerely apologize.
Nobody’s mentioned George Costanza on Seinfeld? They even did an episode where he decides he’s going to do the exact opposite of whatever his first impulse is and his life takes a 180 turn for the better. I always thought they should have pursued that plot line a bit more in the series.
Not TV, but John Goodman’s character in The Big Lebowski was always spectacularly wrong. What made him special was his incredible conviction that he was right. There must be four scenes where he seems so self-assured and so convinced that he gets you to fall for it – again – just before events prove him totally incorrect.
I was going to.
Pretty much every character on Arrested Development. GOB especially. Still, where’d the lighter fluid come from?
Is Cliff Clavin too obvious to mention?
No. That’s a ridiculously shortsighted statement. The success of Mythbusters makes it quite plain that the show would have been stronger if they’d had some well-written pro-skeptic episodes.
Scully would have looked less stupid for her constant stubborn naysaying, and the stories would have more dramatic tension, because we’d know that whatever Mulder thought wasn’t automatically going to turn out to be true.
This meme is taken to extremes in the Pink Panther movies, where Jacques Clouseau is always obviously wrong on every issue, except that he proves to be right in the end.
So there are different eps, I thought I was watching a repeat.
Hell, I thought my TV had a screen saver.
No indeed, Watson is no bungler. That’s a bit of an invention of the stage. He’s meant to be of ordinary intelligence, and just looks dumb sometimes compared to Holmes. His open nature is also often mistaken for a kind of hokey foolishness, again when contrasted with Holmes’ general aura of mystery, but he’s got a more complex internal life on the page than comes across in the popular images of him.
A big part of Night of the Living Dead is the animosity between Ben and Harry - they’re constantly arguing over what they should be doing. Ben is clearly the hero of the movie and he is usually able to persuade everyone to follow his plans. Harry is portrayed as a coward and a fool. But the irony is that if you look objectively at what happens in the movie, it’s Harry that was right and Ben who was wrong.
Harry said at the beginning they should run for it but Ben convinced everyone they’d be safer in the house. Then several hours later when the zombies had gathered and began attacking the house, Ben finally realized they should try to get away. But by that time, the zombies were everywhere and all his attempt to escape did was get two people killed. If they had run when Harry had originally said it, they probably would have made it.
Meanhwile, Harry is telling everyone they should hide in the cellar. Ben argues against this and convinces everyone they should defend the house. The result is that the zombies keep attacking and eventually everyone except Ben is killed. At which point Ben goes to the cellar to hide and survives.
I’m tempted to mention Wonder Twin Zan from The SuperFriends… but I won’t. I don’t dare.
Well, he had a medical condition - water on the brain.