The Worst Seat in the House

A common Narrative Device in stories involving a big event at an arena or stadium.

Alice and Bob want to spend a nice day at a baseball game (or a basketball game... or a big concert... etc.). Unfortunately, they don't have much money and want to make sure they have enough to spend on snacks and souvenirs to enjoy themselves. Then suddenly, to their aid comes their one friend "who knows a guy," if not some obviously seedy ticket scalper, who can promise them the best seats for a low, low price. Problem is solved. Everything is going to work out fine.

Yet just when everything feels like it's going to be great, Alice and Bob find an usher who can show them their seats, and one of two things becomes apparent:
 * Their seats are way up in "The Nosebleed Section", and everyone where the action is looks like ants or tiny dots from up there. Or, even worse...
 * The view from their seats is obstructed by a support column.

Completely unhappy with this discovery, Alice and Bob are motivated to attempt to sneak their way into empty seats closer to, if not in, the front row. Results of this decision always vary. Sometimes our heroes are successful and manage to get some bonus preferential treatments, possibly even finding their way into a player locker room or backstage area at a concert and getting to personally meet their heroes. Other times, they might be defeated or foiled by the dreaded venue ushers and ordered to return to their original seats.

One minor variant may see a character have a perfectly modest seat with a decent view, except for a person directly in front of them who is blocking it. Maybe someone is wearing a really big, outlandish hat, or maybe someone is just really big, whatever the case, a character will struggle in vain to try and see over the person in front of them until he/she gets enough nerve to ask the person in front of them to try and accommodate him/her. As with the above, the results always vary.

Advertising

 * Inverted in this commercial for Heineken where an usher shows two men to their seats in the upper level just as someone spills beer all over them. The two men are surprisingly content with having to deal with what they've been given, but their usher, even more surprisingly, has a heart and decides to escort the gentlemen to the front row where they are personally served Heineken beer.
 * A Wendy's commercial for the chain's 99¢ Crispy Nuggets had two people deliberately buy cheap seats and proceed to upgrade to increasingly better ones by offering people in front of them the crispy nuggets in a trade.
 * Bob Uecker's Miller Lite commercial, where he uttered the immortal words, "I must be in the front row!" and ended up in the nosebleed section. Apparently the Milwaukee ball stadium, Miller Park, now has a section of $1 seats in the nosebleeds AND with obstructed view called "The Uecker Seats."
 * A Dutch shampoo commercial of Fructice features this.

Anime and Manga

 * In Case Closed, Conan and company end up in the nosebleed section (called "Alps seats" in Japan) and Kojirou makes an Pun in regards to this. Of course, this ends up helping them solve the Mystery of the Day.

Comic Books

 * There's a Spirou and Fantasio comic where they're supposed to attend a "car ball" (like soccer, but the players are all in cars, and the ball is also a car) match to write an article about it. They are late (since they spend the entire comic on wacky mafia hijinx), but a shady guy sells them the last set of seats. Which are inside the "ball."

Literature

 * Spoofed in Terry Pratchett's Maskerade. Witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are given tickets to the stalls (quite good seats), but they insist on trading them in for seats in the Gods right up in the rafters because the name sounds grander. They aren't displeased by this though.

Live-Action TV

 * Happy Days: Richie knows the keyboardist of Johnny Fish and the Fins from summer camp so he gets his friends free tickets (after the band stays in his house to escape from their rabid fans), but they're in the nosebleed section. Nobody believes Richie actually knows the guy and thinks he's lying and got bad seats because that's all he could afford. The girl he asked to go with him goes with someone else instead because the other guy has better seats, so instead Richie takes his dad. Then his friend from the band gives him a Shout-Out during the concert and suddenly he's a big man again. The girl comes up to where Richie is sitting and wants to be with him, but he says, "Sorry. That's my dad's seat."
 * On The Drew Carey Show Drew, Oswald and Lewis were all going after the same girl. Drew and Oswald each got tickets for a concert. Drew's were "restricted view" but he managed to convince Oswald that that was better and traded tickets with him.
 * From Saturday Night Live:
 * There was a sketch on an episode guest-hosted by Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees where Jeter and the women of SNL played the wives & girlfriends of the players... and sat in the nosebleed seats.
 * Another sketch from the early 1990s had four friends attending a Billy Joel concert, with one of the characters being stuck behind the one person in the crowd who would rather stand out of her seat and dance, thus blocking the character's view of the stage. After several failed attempts at trying to look around the woman and asking her politely to sit, the character admits defeat and decides to be content with having to miss seeing most of the concert. The segment ends with another song beginning and everyone in the audience getting up from their seat to enjoy the music.
 * One classic segment on Sesame Street with Bert and Ernie at a movie theater saw Ernie having to contend with a woman in front of him wearing a really tall hat. Hilarity Ensues.
 * On one episode of Seinfeld, Jerry, a big New York Rangers fan, was desperate to attend NHL playoff series games between the Rangers and the New Jersey Devils at Madison Square Garden. By the end of the episode, Jerry's one means of getting a good seat is with Elaine's boyfriend, Puddy, and his friends... but they're all going with their chests painted to spell out the team name, and to only make things more embarrassing for Jerry, Puddy's group is composed of Devils fans.
 * In the second-season finale of Slings and Arrows, the Canadian Minister of Culture goes to see the festival's performance of Macbeth and finds herself sitting right behind an enormously tall goth wearing a top hat. She tries to get Richard to switch with her, but the house lights go down before he can.
 * A first season episode of Everybody Hates Chris contains a brief montage of all of the obstructed view tickets Julius inadvertently bought from neighborhood hustler Risky.

Western Animation

 * One Rocko's Modern Life cartoon saw Rocko and Heffer go to a baseball game in an effort to replace a prized foul ball that he once caught as a kid. It turns out that their seats are beach chairs on top of an extremely tall lighting rig that's even above space satellites and where Rocko would have no chance of catching a foul ball. Luckily, Heffer was able to spot two empty seats in the front row with a pair binoculars, where they're able to sit out most of the game until an usher sends them back to their original seats when the rest of the stadium is completely empty. Funny enough,
 * On Hey Arnold!, the title character and his best friend, Gerald, once wanted to go to a baseball game to see Arnold's favorite player play his last game before retiring. They decide to buy two tickets from a scalper promising them great seats for half the price of what they're selling at the ticket booth. It turns out that their seats are both in the nosebleed section and obstructed by a pole. Arnold decides to get closer to the action and ends up catching the home run ball from his favorite player at his final at-bat while simultaneously being chased by ushers.
 * A classic Looney Tunes cartoon, "Porky's Baseball Broadcast", included one character who was constantly looking for his seat throughout the game. He finally finds his seat at the bottom of the ninth inning, just in time to stop and witness the big play that brings home the winning run... except his view is completely obstructed by a support beam. The man stays perfectly still, staring directly at the support beam long after everyone else has cleared out, at which point he pulls his chair out of the ground and starts trashing the stadium in a fit of rage.
 * Arthur doesn't buy his ticket for the big concert on time so he gets a much worse seat than all his friends. He has various fantasies about how bad a seat it will be. Luckily for him, his father is catering the event so Arthur can get to go backstage and meet the band, and Binky, the resident Jerk with a Heart of Gold, offers Arthur one of his tickets, which are in a great section.
 * The Simpsons: In "The Homer They Fall," Marge's seat for Homer's big boxing match was directly behind a pillar, so she couldn't see anything.
 * Another episode "Dancin' Homer" had Marge and the kids sitting in the nosebleed section near the players' ex-wives when they watch the Capital City baseball game with Homer filling in as the mascot.
 * In another episode, we have a guy stuck behind Marge's gigantic hairdo at a football game. She tells him to just push through it.
 * The Futurama episode "Raging Bender" starts with Bender stuck in a movie theater behind a robot with an incredibly tall and pointy head.
 * There's an episode of King of the Hill where Hank, his son, and a few of their friends attend a conference title game in Dallas. They buy absurdly expensive seats that turn out to be in the bloodiest of the nosebleed section. Through some good luck they end up in a luxury suite by the end of the game.

Real Life

 * The Worst Seats in Stadiums Around the World.