# TV characters who are incompetent at their jobs **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 3, 2009, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112 "2009-08-03T01:07:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/61 "2009-08-03T19:02:48Z")
Nobody has mentioned anyone on the Drew Carey show? ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/62 "2009-08-03T19:33:01Z")
> [@tumbleddown](#): > > Professor Frink and Professor Farnsworth are both incompetent mad scientists. How are they incompetent? Their goal is not to take over the world, and they regularly invent things that work. ---
**Author:** ![notfrommensa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f14d63/32.png) [@notfrommensa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notfrommensa)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/63 "2009-08-03T19:34:30Z")
> [@Rod1199](#): > > And speaking of Adam West, what about Commissioner Gordon and Chief O’Hara from the old Batman TV show? The police never apprehended anyone on that show. All the criminals in Gotham City were always captured by Batman. The criminals were incompetent, too! Try as they might, they were never able to kill Batman. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/64 "2009-08-03T19:34:52Z")
Nah, Wilson is not medically incompetent. He does have ethics issues (dating nurses and a patient or two, enabling House’s drug antics), but medically he is a good oncologist and does a great job dealing with his patients. From NYPD Blue, Medavoy was always the third string detective. He did manage a few good ideas, but usually was the shlub of the department. Though apparently he could have been a great detective on the night shift. **Intergalactic Gladiator** , did you mean Lt. Thomas Bale? > **[List of NYPD Blue characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lt._Thomas_Bale)** > > The following is a partial list of the numerous characters that appeared on NYPD Blue during the twelve seasons it was on the air. > (each connects to individual article) I wouldn’t say Eames from L&O:CI is incompetent, just overshadowed by her “brilliant” partner. She knows how to work with him and use his intellect to solve the case, which is really the issue at hand. ---
**Author:** ![bleach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bleach/32/3106_2.png) [@bleach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bleach)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/65 "2009-08-03T19:36:57Z")
Richard Fish in _Ally McBeal_. Bygones. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/66 "2009-08-03T19:43:55Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > Nah, Wilson is not medically incompetent. He does have ethics issues (dating nurses and a patient or two, enabling House’s drug antics), but medically he is a good oncologist and does a great job dealing with his patients. Why would dating nurses be unethical? Apart from the marriage thing, I mean; you make it sound as if it’s unethical for a doctor to date a nurse no matter the circumstance, just as it is unethical for a doctor to date his or her patient. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/67 "2009-08-03T19:53:54Z")
Dating nurses isn’t unethical. Moving in with a patient is unethical. While I think that Wilson does a good job with patients who have already been diagnosed (by somebody else), I think he is a terrible diagnostician. There have been countless times he has believed that a patient has cancer only to be proven wrong, and very often he just shrugs his shoulders and says “It might be cancer.” Of course, all of this is designed for House to make the ultimate (correct) diagnosis, so for Wilson to just say “He has cancer” and then everybody goes home is counterproductive to the show’s goals. It makes sense for Wilson to be wrong a lot. And so he is. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/68 "2009-08-03T20:21:21Z")
> [@Abby\_Emma\_Sasha](#): > > How about Jack Malone? I love _Without A Trace_(rip) but Jack has always been a loose cannon and a detriment to the department. There was a story arc where he was going to move to Chicago and reunite with his ex wife and kids, but that fell through because…why? IIRC, in the middle of all that, his wife let him know she really didn’t want him to, and that she took the job partly to get away from their marriage. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/69 "2009-08-03T21:21:45Z")
> [@Icerigger](#): > > Col. Klink on Hogan’s Heroes I had a friend in college who theorized that Col. Klink was actually a turncoat and was secretly working for the Allies. She said there was no way someone so incompetent could have become a Nazi officer, the Nazis being famous for both evil and efficiency, so it had to be that he was just pretending to be clueless to enable Hogan & Co. to go about their business while still protecting his own cover. > [@bramma23](#): > > In Giles’ defense, it’s a part of the show’s mythology that almost all of the students at Sunnydale High don’t even know where the library is located and never visit. That’s why he and the gang are able to research vampires and other undesirables openly during the day without the risk of being disturbed. That’s not a defense at all. I’m a university librarian, and I’d consider myself a miserable failure if students didn’t know or care where the library was. I understand that Giles had other priorities, but a good \*librarian \*would have been doing outreach and promoting the library and library services to both teachers and students. ---
**Author:** ![tumbleddown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9bcb4/32.png) [@tumbleddown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tumbleddown)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/70 "2009-08-03T21:35:00Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > How are they incompetent? Their goal is not to take over the world, and they regularly invent things that work. Frink, at least, screws things up all the time, with stupid excuses for a “scientist” like “I forgot to carry the one.” (When calculating when the robots would attack.) He invents things like the Monsterometer, Frog Exaggerator and computers that get larger, less powerful and more expensive over time. Frink is not so good with the scientisting and the inventing and the glayven. > [@thirdwarning](#): > > IIRC, in the middle of all that, his wife let him know she really didn’t want him to, and that she took the job partly to get away from their marriage. Setting up one of the more ham-fisted storylines, interweaving Malone’s divorce and the protracted decline of his father (a brilliant guest spot by Martin Landau) and even managed to ruin Christmas. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/71 "2009-08-03T21:38:21Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I had a friend in college who theorized that Col. Klink was actually a turncoat and was secretly working for the Allies. She said there was no way someone so incompetent could have become a Nazi officer, the Nazis being famous for both evil and efficiency, so it had to be that he was just pretending to be clueless to enable Hogan & Co. to go about their business while still protecting his own cover. I always thought that. Klink wasn’t a NAZI Nazi. He’d have killed Hogan & crew many times over. My fanwank is the tunnel network preceded the establishment of the stalag, that Klink was the only commandant who had ever served tehre, and that the whole setup had been arranged by Fifth Columnists. Klink knew about Hogan’s crew, though not in detail; not all the prisoners in the camp were in on it, after all. But certainly he knew that Hogan was an agent, and I think he was the one sending them their orders. I’m not sure how much Hogan knew. Except certainly he realized it was in their best interest to keep Klink in place. I enjoy the image of them meeting after the war and Klink revealing that he was the one who had been pulling the wool over Hogan’s eyes all those years. > [@](#): > > That’s not a defense at all. I’m a university librarian, and I’d consider myself a miserable failure if students didn’t know or care where the library was. I understand that Giles had other priorities, but a good \*librarian \*would have been doing outreach and promoting the library and library services to both teachers and students. Except that being a librarian wasn’t Giles’ real job; it was his cover. He might have abandoned it after Buffy graduated even if the high school hadn’t been destroyed, as the job’s purpose was to give him a way to stay in contact with Buffy. Does anyone know if the Watchers always realized the door to the hellmouth was literally right under the library? Re: House. I don’t think it’s fair to call him an incompetent diagnostician based on the wrong diagnoses each episode is peppered with. By definition he is only getting the weird, hard-to-identify ailments. In the first episode, which seems to have occurred very early in Foreman’s tenure, Foreman quotes the “When you hear hoofbeats, expect horses, not zebras” axiom; House immediately points out that it doesn’t apply to their cases, because horses never got to House in the first place (any more than Commissioner Gordon turns on the bat-signal for shoplifters). ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/72 "2009-08-03T21:51:31Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Except that being a librarian wasn’t Giles’ real job; it was his cover. I understand that, but if the question is whether he was good at being a _librarian_ then it sounds like the answer is “no”. I didn’t watch the show so I don’t know anything about his job performance beyond what has been posted here, but it sounds like he was not serving the students of the school except for Buffy & Friends. “But none of the other students knew where the library was!” isn’t an excuse, it’s further evidence that he was a bad librarian. He was apparently great at his _other_ job, but he was presumably getting paid to be a school librarian too. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/73 "2009-08-03T21:58:50Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I understand that, but if the question is whether he was good at being a _librarian_ then it sounds like the answer is “no”. I didn’t watch the show so I don’t know anything about his job performance beyond what has been posted here, but it sounds like he was not serving the students of the school except for Buffy & Friends. “But none of the other students knew where the library was!” isn’t an excuse, it’s further evidence that he was a bad librarian. He was apparently great at his _other_ job, but he was presumably getting paid to be a school librarian too. Fanwank 1: Sunnydale, despite being behind the times in cell phone use, was ahead of the curve when it came to net access; most students were using the web. Fanwank 2: The psychological pressure that led Sunnydalians to continually rationalize away the existence of monsters and vampires was due to the Hellmouth’s influence; it causes the students and teachers to generally rationalize reasons not to go to the school library. This pressure isn’t irresistable, and the more times you overcame it, the easier it it is to do; but it does take an act of will to start on it. Fankwank 3: The Sunnydale school board, noting the low library usage, intended to eliminate the librarian position. The Watchers’ Council, through proxies, offered to fund that position if their candidate were hired for it. ---
**Author:** ![SmashTheState](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@SmashTheState](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmashTheState)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/74 "2009-08-03T22:50:17Z")
Maxwell Smart (Get Smart) Detective Ron Harris (Barney Miller) Governor Eugene Gatling (Benson) Milburn Drysdale (The Beverly Hillbillies) Vera Gorman (Alice) Dan Fielding (Night Court) Dave Lister (Red Dwarf) Michael Woodman (Welcome Back, Kotter) > [@SSG\_Schwartz](#): > > Les Nessman Les Nessman won the Buckeye Newshawk Award, the Silver Sow Award, and the Copper Cob Award. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2009, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/75 "2009-08-03T22:53:30Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > **Intergalactic Gladiator** , did you mean Lt. Thomas Bale? > [List of NYPD Blue characters - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lt._Thomas_Bale) > > I wouldn’t say Eames from L&O:CI is incompetent, just overshadowed by her “brilliant” partner. She knows how to work with him and use his intellect to solve the case, which is really the issue at hand. Nope it was after him. Bale wasn’t incompetent, but he was a bit of an ass. AM I thinking of Eddie Gibson? ---
**Author:** ![dzeiger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/46a35a/32.png) [@dzeiger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzeiger)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2009, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/76 "2009-08-04T02:06:22Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I had a friend in college who theorized that Col. Klink was actually a turncoat and was secretly working for the Allies. She said there was no way someone so incompetent could have become a Nazi officer, the Nazis being famous for both evil and efficiency, so it had to be that he was just pretending to be clueless to enable Hogan & Co. to go about their business while still protecting his own cover. I thought it would have been cool to have a final episode in which Schultz turns out to be a paid Russian agent–one that the Western command knows absolutely nothing about. Impossible at the time it was produced, of course, but I think it could have worked. And let me add Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment to the list. Dude is the Big Boss, but is never able to actually ever get rid of people he doesn’t like. You’d think that an employee bringing in a cement truck and dumping a full load into your new corvette would be just cause for termination of employment, but there’s always some contract clause, or he decides on some sort of contract-on-a-pole match that he always loses. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2009, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/77 "2009-08-04T02:14:36Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Klink wasn’t a NAZI Nazi. He’d have killed Hogan & crew many times over. My fanwank is the tunnel network preceded the establishment of the stalag, that Klink was the only commandant who had ever served tehre, and that the whole setup had been arranged by Fifth Columnists. Klink knew about Hogan’s crew, though not in detail; not all the prisoners in the camp were in on it, after all. But certainly he knew that Hogan was an agent, and I think he was the one sending them their orders. IRL, the prison camps for air force POWs were run by the Luftwaffe, not the SS or Gestapo. In other words, professional soldiers, not psychos and, really, not prison wardens, and the guards were not getting Red Cross packages or goodies from home and were not averse to looking the other way. Watch the _Nova_ episodes on the camp made famous in “The Great Escape” and the “escapeproof” Colditz Castle. POWs were building a freakin’ ESCAPE GLIDER in the attic of Colditz when they were liberated. _Hogan’s Heroes_ coulda been a documentary. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2009, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/78 "2009-08-04T03:19:25Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Les Nessman won the Buckeye Newshawk Award, the Silver Sow Award, and the Copper Cob Award. The point of Les winning those awards was to make fun of such awards. He was preposterously inept. [QUOTE=dropzone] POWs were building a freakin’ ESCAPE GLIDER in the attic of Colditz when they were liberated. Hogan’s Heroes coulda been a documentary. [/QUOTE] There was another case where the POWs built an elaborate two-tunnel escape system. It was no hole in the ground - it was a reinforced, braced passageway with electrical lighting and ventilation systems. One gets the sense that the German personnel guarding such camps were perhaps not all that interested in their work. God knows it had to be the most boring job in the Wehrmacht. After all, it’s pretty easy to just sit in the machine gun nest and every few minutes poke your head up and say “Don’t see anything” while continuing your euchre game. ---
**Author:** ![BiblioCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ed8c4c/32.png) [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2009, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/79 "2009-08-04T03:45:24Z")
> [@SmashTheState](#): > > Detective Ron Harris (Barney Miller) Wasn’t Harris one of the better detectives? I would have picked Wojo or Dietrich before Harris. ---
**Author:** ![SSG\_Schwartz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@SSG\_Schwartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SSG_Schwartz)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2009, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112/80 "2009-08-04T03:48:13Z")
Fish was the worst of the bunch. Even then, he was a good cop in his time, just got too old. Now, Jim and Louie from Taxi could have each used a different career. SSG Schwartz [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tv-characters-who-are-incompetent-at-their-jobs/505112.md?page=5)