Minor Flaw, Major Breakup: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

A Guy or [[Girl of the Week]] that is otherwise perfect in every way, but has one glaring flaw that any normal person would probably be able to live with, but the protagonist feels is too much for him or her to handle. The 'glaring' flaw is often something incredibly minor, and may be used to show that the protagonist is a pretty shallow, self-absorbed and petty character. Other times, the writers just wanted to hit the [[Reset Button]].

 

 

For the sake of comedy, the more that one of these breakups sounds like an example of a tale from [[Cloudcuckooland]], the better. Usually.

Compare: [[Derailing Love Interests]], [[Girl of the Week]]. See also [[Toilet Seat Divorce]].

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* While not being a romantic situation at all, one ''[[Soul Eater]]'' episode has Hero, the one student mentally capable to have [[Jerkass|Exca]][[Cloudcuckoolander|libur]] as a partner (because he was the only one that didn't find Excalibur's behavior annoying). While they were perfect Meister and Weapon, the former dumped the latter because {{spoiler|he sneezed too much and in a very disgusting manner}}.

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[So I Married an Axe Murderer]]'', this is something of a recurring gag for the main character, and it even foreshadows things that are to come later in the movie.

* [[Eddie Murphy]]'s character in ''Boomerang'' spends most of his relationships doing this to women due to an unconscious fear of commitment. He waits until after they've had sex, then breaks up with women because they don't have tiny feet and other such jackassery. Then he finally meets a woman he can't find fault in and falls in love. And she leaves him. ''Bazinga''.

** This is arguably what Rob has done with many of his relationships.

* Inverted in ''[[Love Actually]]'', wherein everyone goes on about how fat the girl who makes the tea for the Prime Minister is ([[Hollywood Pudgy|she isn't]]) and how she has 'huge thighs' -- except for the Prime Minister himself, who can't see what they're going on about at all.

'''Dr. Leo Marvin:''' I see. So, what you're saying is that even though you are an almost-paralyzed, multiphobic personality who is in a constant state of panic, your wife did not leave you, you left her because she... liked Neil Diamond? }}

* [[Reese Witherspoon]]'s character in ''[[Sweet Home Alabama]]'' leaves [[Patrick Dempsey]]'s loving and caring character to return to her abusive and downright awful ex-husband...because she didn't like his mother.

 

== Literature ==

'''Ron:''' [[Continuity Nod|Her nose is off center]]. }}

* In [[Woody Allen]]'s humorous short story "The Lunatic's Tale", the narrator breaks up with a woman because she "made the fatal mistake of defending candles shaped like [[Laurel and Hardy]]".

 

* This trope used to be known for the ''[[Seinfeld]]'' episode "Man Hands". In it, Jerry eventually parts with a girlfriend with because she has huge, man-like hands ("...like George "The Animal" Steele!") which poorly complement her otherwise modelesque looks. ''Seinfeld'' had one of these just about every episode.

** The other characters have this as well, such as Elaine breaking up with a man because of his scarce use of exclamation points.

** There's a nice compilation of break-up reasons the show used [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ4vwNv8htQ&feature=feedrec_grec_index here.]

* On ''[[Friends]]'', Chandler in particular had a habit of doing this: he refuses to date one girl because she "has a big head", and talks about breaking up with other women for such reasons as large nostrils and "[[Fan Hater|not hating Yanni]]". He ''does'' end up giving the girl with the "big head" a chance after this, but finds that he still can't get past it. This was only mentioned once, in the episode ''The One Where Heckles Dies'', until ''The One With Phoebe's Ex-Partner'', when Chandler gets freaked out by the fact that his new girlfriend has a prosthetic leg. He gets over it, but then she discovers that he has a third nipple and breaks up with him.

* Inverted in ''[[Black Books]]'': Fran finds an old boyfriend incredibly annoying but can't resist him because he has [[Audio Erotica|a sexy voice]].

* Danny Tanner. ''[[Full House]]''. Earlobes that were different sizes. Though it turned out this and his other reasons were just excuses; he was reluctant to get close to another woman as he was still in mourning over his deceased wife.

** Parodied in the episode "Out With Dad", when Niles has to dump his father (as he's pretending to be gay).

* ''[[Will and Grace]]'' has this every so often. One episode has Karen falling for a servant and pretending to be one, worried he'd leave her if he found out she was rich. When he does find out, [[Milholland Relationship Moment|he accepts her regardless]], and she gets excited and calls for champagne.

'''Karen:''' It can't work. We're from two different worlds. }}

* In the third season of ''[[The IT Crowd]]'', Jen finds herself unable to continue dating a man because he "looks like a magician". He tries to rectify this by learning magic ("would it be less weird if I actually ''was'' a magician..?"), but he's hopeless at it.

** There was also the time she dumped her boyfriend Peter after finding out his last name was File.

** Who is a Paedophile?

** And none of the other characters call her on it. Even Freddie thinks it's weird, and he's pretty nerdy/subjected to odd things via his mother. Like ''tick baths''. And ''anti-bacterial underwear''.

* An episode of ''[[Still Standing]]'' had Bill, Judy, and Linda attend a high school reunion. Linda hits it off with a guy she always liked in school, but then can't get over the fact that he doesn't like [[The Beatles]].

** A subversion occurs with Lowell.

'''Lowell:''' Okay, make that two annoying habits. }}

* In [[Drake and Josh]], Drake dumps his girlfriends over an annoying laugh and [[No Guy Wants an Amazon|toughness]]. The laugh probably wouldn't have been so bad if she didn't laugh at ''[[Most Annoying Sound|every single little thing]],'' which is closer to Drake's actual grievance.

* Played with in ''[[Castle]]''; Martha offers some of these kinds of reasons for breaking it off with her boyfriend. Castle explicitly notes that these are 'sitcom reasons' for breaking it off with someone, and it's later revealed that this is just Martha's insecurities establishing themselves.

* Lampshaded in an episode of ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]''. Ted thinks his new girlfriend is perfect, but everyone else finds her hard to deal with because {{spoiler|she talks way too much}}. Barney describes it as "the oh moment": the moment you realise a person's fatal flaw and your perfect image of them is shattered. The rest of the episode revolves around everyone coming to notice each others' flaws: Lily's is that she chews loudly, Ted's is that he's always correcting people's grammar, Marshall's is singing about everything he does, Robin's is overusing the word 'literally', and Barney's is... basically his entire personality. The episode ends with them learning to live with these flaws, {{spoiler|but Ted still breaks up with his [[Girl of the Week]]}}.

* One episode of ''[[Fresh Prince of Bel Air]]'' had a similar scenario to the ''[[Full House]]'' example above- Hillary was dating this great guy but intended to break up with him due to the size of his Adam's Apple. Will confronted her on this, pointing out that she was still recovering from Trevor's death and just looking for excuses to not date.

** She got over that, but then started fixating on his mole (or perhaps the mole was first), leading to a [[Your Mileage May Vary|great]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|line]]:

** To be fair, Will convinced her to date the guy because it was one of his professors and keeping him distracted and happy was all that was keeping Will from flunking. However, this doesn't keep her reasons for breaking it off from being any less silly.

* In ''Girlfriends'', Joan dates a man who while fairly attractive, has girl hips. Her constant obsessing over this causes them to break up.

* Leslie had a brief relationship with Leonard in [[The Big Bang Theory]], but she broke it off over philosophical differences regarding their preferred model of spacetime (Leslie supports loop quantum, and often clashes over it with Sheldon, who goes in for string theory, but Leonard doesn't actually care, and would have let their hypothetical children decide for themselves).

* In ''[[Jonathan Creek]]'', Jonathan decides that a girl he's dating wouldn't work out because of her habit of sticking out her tongue when she eats. Later, he had a much more legitimate excuse not to date her: {{spoiler|she turned out to be that week's killer.}}

 

== Music ==

** Another Weird Al example: In "Albuquerque" the singer dumps "the girl of [his] dreams" because she asked him if he wanted to "join the Columbia Record Club" and that was too much of a commitment. This was after years of marriage and two kids.

* [[Paul Simon]]'s "You're Kind" from the album ''Still Crazy After All These Years'' (1975):

So goodbye, goodbye, goodbye }}

 

== Newspaper Comics ==

* There was an entire story arc dedicated to somewhat shallow Jeremy from ''[[Zits]]'' obsessing over a large mole he never noticed on the back of his girlfriend Sara's neck. It gets to him so much he begins to start seeing her as a mole herself. Eventually, he confesses to Sara and "forgives her" for her imperfection.

 

== Radio ==

* Tom Leykis once told the story of a graphic artist he knew whose girlfriend dumped him when she found out that he occasionally used Microsoft Paint in his work.

 

== Video Games ==

* Alex, the spineless protagonist of Stephen Bond's [[Interactive Fiction]] story ''Rameses'', goes on a double date with a girl named Claire. Toward the end, {{spoiler|he meets her by the quay and is about to kiss her but gets distracted by a mole on her face. It's enough for him to ruin the moment until, it's implied, he regrets it for quite a while after.}}

 

== Web Comics ==

** There's a good reason his nickname is "Dick the Picky". Or, rather, a long string of shallow reasons.

** This particular variant is termed [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2280 "Solar Geeklipse"] in ''[[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]]''.

* "[http://scythemantis.deviantart.com/art/Lycanthropy-264814892 Lycanthropy]" by the infamous Scythemantis

 

== Western Animation ==

* In an episode of ''[[The Weekenders]]'', Carver's new secret admirer is minor recurring character Nona, who is significantly taller than all her peers. This eats Carver up at first, but he eventually gets over it... only for Nona to suddenly realize that Carver's head looks like a pineapple, get weirded out by it (she had a fear of pineapples), and nervously back away.

* Leela from ''[[Futurama]]'' has trouble keeping boyfriends because of her single large eye. (She also has large feet, but most people who get past the eye can accept that.) Not that she's any better; in one episode, she dumps a guy because of his long reptilian tongue.

'''Bender''': You really ''are'' too picky! }}

 

== Real Life ==

* The recent discovery that [[Megan Fox]] (yes, her!) has "toe thumbs" was apparently enough to disgust many male fans.

* Non-dating example - in the 2007 series of [[Big Brother|Celebrity Big Brother]] (UK version), when several of the other female housemates were picking on Shilpa Shetty, they resorted to making fun of the fact that her second toes were "almost as long" as her big toes. Yes, something that was actually a joke in [[Shallow Hal|a comedy about this very topic]] was all they could come up with. It should be noted that the ladies in question were not up to Shilpa's level looks-wise, and a close-up showed her feet to be rather yummy [[Foot Focus|(if you're into that)]] despite this [[Sarcasm Mode|crippling handicap]], so they sounded pretty hypocritical from the off. [[It Got Worse|Then the racist remarks started...]]

** The blog also appears to contain some inversions, where people appear to have put up with a hell of a lot of crap for fairly superficial reasons (i.e. he's gorgeous so I can live with him being a complete sponger) only for their personality faults to eventually grow way out of control.

* Subverted by stand-up comic Adam Ferrara when talking about getting a wedding ring proportional to his girlfriend's hand. He did marry her, but while checking her hands for the ring, he was thinking thusly:

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Character Flaw Index]]